People can downvote you, but that doesn't make what you're saying any less true. Analysts agree that Trump used these sorts of tactics to win the election.
I don't think the OP is being downvoted for saying Trump is a populist, but for drawing a false equivalence between Trump and AOC. I think you need more than "they are populists" to throw them in the same boat, it should be well supported.
AOC uses Twitter and social media well, just as Trump does, but are they really using it the same way, to the same ends? I have yet to see AOC just straight up lie like Trump does basically every time he opens his mouth. And many of AOC's policy proposals are backed up with historical precedent (especially the higher marginal tax rates for the wealthy).
Also, as far as I know, AOC is not implicated in any criminal behavior, whereas Trump and his family absolutely are.
This OP lost me at drawing the characature of both politicians. However one’s predominant biography will be racism, rank corruption and criminality and the other, hopefully will move us toward an America where more people pay their fair share and we all don’t have to go bankrupt from medical bills.
The political situation in the USA being what it is I honestly have difficulty deciding which politician to assign to which 'biography' in your list, although your nick clearly hints at which order you intended to describe them. It is flabbergasting to see how political systems so often seem to excel in pushing what appear to be the least suitable people to the highest positions.
You are completely missing the point about what makes them populist and thus you are trapped in only one perspective when there are in fact several. If green new deal isnt populist i dont know what is.
Trump was the last one who were able to do everything that would have killed any other politians hope. I am a bigger fan of his policies than his rethoric but the republicans needed someone like him to counter the bullying tactics the democrats normally use.
That’s a really interesting question. I don’t know the answer, but the common refrain is that Kennedy was the first president of the TV era - where personality and charisma were suddenly most important. In that case perhaps Eisenhower (his predecessor) was the last of the “facts” presidents?
Then by extension, perhaps Obama was the last of the “personality and charisma” era?
> Half of you think I’m describing Donald Trump. The other half, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Not really, no. The people who are aware of both AOC and DJT enough to have an opinion are not split evenly in terms of their thinking about each of these politicians. I don't despise AOC, I just don't particularly care for her, and I think the way she was elected by exploiting people's lack of attention to the primary race, and unwillingness to even consider any alternative party in the general.
Conversely, I don't laud Donald Trump, I'm just not personally all that offended by his MOR '90s Democrat style policies.
For anyone just skimming comments - this is a very well written, well researched, thoughtful, and objective piece. That's pretty rare in today's climate. Definitely worth the read.
It's the first time I can remember signing up for a newsletter voluntarily, despite my general distaste for those types of popovers.
I hate Trump and I found the intro tacky. The equivalence made it seem like the criticisms of Trump were arbitrary, held only because I'm on the opposite side of him.
I wouldn't call myself a Trump supporter. But then, there hasn't been a presidential candidate in decades who I could wholeheartedly support. And yet I do like some of his stated positions. Even though I don't trust him any more than I trusted Obama, Bush, Clinton or Reagan. Or much less, really.
"Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents."
Came here to say this. The intro seemed to think it was much more clever than it really is. It's very easy to pick descriptive language vague enough that it applies to multiple subjects. I had to stop reading after that.
You're generalizing 62,984,828 Americans. When you look at a number like that, combined with all the possible reasons that people voted for Trump (think those who validly wished for a Ross Perot victory in 1992), it just seems rude and unnecessary to say this.
I get why you'd think it's rude/unnecessary, but I don't think it's a generalization to say it's very unlikely that anywhere near half of the audience of a blog post like this is on Team Trump. I'm sure there are Trump supporters that read and digest this kind of content regularly, but any familiarity with the typical cultural attitudes and media consumption patterns of Trump supporters makes it obvious that that's far from the norm.
There's plenty of Trump supporters in silicon valley. We may be democrats previously, but we really like what Trump did against China, even though the large corporations (who owns mass media) hated the move. Trump rejuvenated the economy, increased competitiveness of American firms, and helped to increase jobs and wages for American workers. He stood up against dictatorship China and is winning the trade war. He is a very flawed man, but he did great for America
He didn't "rejuvenate" the economy. He doubled the deficit and the economy is still growing more or less as fast as it was under Obama. His actions are going to make the next recession worse.
Really? You genuinely think it's plausible that roughly half of the readers of this blogpost are Trump supporters? I'm really not taking an outlandish stance here... this post will have most of its traffic driven by HackerNews and Reddit, where California is an outsized plurality of the American audience, which went overwhelmingly to Clinton in 2016 (and even more overwhelmingly so in the densest parts of California where the overwhelming sub-plurality of HN/Reddit traffic comes from: the Bay Area and LA). Even if you believe that, all else equal, the average Trump supporter's media diet is about the same as the average non-Trump-supporter's, the demographics of these aggregators alone makes it more or less statistically impossible that what I'm saying isn't true.
I must have misunderstood. I'm not saying anything about the readership of HN, only that the characterization of Trump supporters in your post is based on media narrative and not fact.
I know that every Trump supporter I know gets a hell of a lot from Fox and Facebook. They tend to spout off talking points about how Liberals are bad and this is bad and that is bad, without solutions or actual, practical proposals on making the country better.
The status quo on healthcare is not an option. Deporting every "illegal" is not an option. Banning Muslims is not an option.
I don't think Trump supporters are un-American, but I think they've forgotten some American values if they continue to support Trump the man. His leadership is the antithesis of America. If you're conservative, that's one thing. To be a Trumpian is to have missed civics class.
I've read internet comments from many of them, met a few of them, and am friends with one. My friend regularly sends me articles from Brietbart and other conspiracy mongering outlets who write entire articles based on Jason Wohl tweets. People who consume /r/The_Donald, chain emails, and propaganda outlets like Fox News, Breitbart, and the like are Trump's base. They are typically not podcast-listening thinkpiece-reading latte-sipping yuppies.
Here, watch this BBC video [1] where they interview Trump voters about their views on the "mainstream media" (by which you quickly realize they mean anything that doesn't deal in pure pro-Trump anti-librul propaganda). Here's an article [2] on a study showing that pro-Trump people specifically like to consume fake news shared via Facebook.
But personally I didn't really need a study to tell me any of that -- how do I know? I live and breathe and observe the world and people around me...
And yes, this is a generalization and not true of every single Trump voter. Obviously. All I really claimed was that Trump supporters will definitely be a minority of readers of a blog like this.
It's funny how all the Occupy Wall Street protesters on the news were homeless, all Obama supporters were welfare supported, and all Trump supporters are ignorant rednecks. Socialists are all unemployed and look lazy.
So weird how they all find their way onto the news. It's almost as if they were selected by image to fit a story.
What's even funnier is how easily even intelligent people on intellectual websites like HN can fall for such bush league propaganda techniques. I don't know how we can ever fix this problem if even smart people aren't able to see it.
That's not the same as "content posted to HN and Reddit".
TBH, you're probably right that this article is going to have a viewership where supporting Trump is less likely.
The pushback you're getting is that you didn't make that claim, you made a claim that implied the Trump voter base was not interested in "long-form data driven thinkpieces", which is a brand of hubris that many are getting tired of.
Would you please not take HN threads into repetitive political back and forths? They're tedious, and don't gratify anyone's intellectual curiosity (the purpose of the site).
"condescending"?
Was there a particular passage which you feel had the 'superior talking down to inferior' characteristic?
Dialectical arguments tend to long, boring, and esoterical. I found the intro a mix of jocular and dialectical, which for me turned out to be the payoff for some of the article's repetitiveness.
If you like this article, I recommend the Martin Gurri book that is frequently chief in the article: "The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium". This article reads largely like a summary of that book. You'll also enjoy his blog https://thefifthwave.wordpress.com/
Indeed, very insightful. I myself is of similar opinion. The West is undeniably having a societal crisis now, regardless of what digits say about its economic wellbeing.
The West these days reminds me of USSR in the eighties.
Damn. This is the most coherent discussion of the Internet's impact that I've ever seen. Yes, it's a little smug. And it's long. But it's well worth the read.
And hey, it's kept me from commenting for several hours, as I've read it in breaks from work.
I agree. I just came across Alex Danco’s blog and it is very good overall. I can’t help to think though that he has flipped the cause and effect of why distributions have changed. My feeling is most of his examples are the result of an increasing wealth gap, and not the other way around. You can afford nyc, a $2000 phone, etc. or you can’t.
Higher Education Excerpt: "Education flows down from the needs of employers. Companies outsource their recruiting efforts to universities, who gauge the quality of applicants on their behalf."
Employers who do not pay a single penny in tax? Who game the labor markets to keep salaries low? Employers who are nothing but a ponzi scheme where the people who make most money are not even employed by the corporation? Employers whose sole aim is to be a monopoly (and call themselves unicorns!)
This article needs a rewrite. The author does not bring the right arguments to the table.
You say we shouldn't read the article because he asserts that educations flows down from the needs of employers. Your refutation of this point is that some companies don't pay as much tax as you'd like them to.
"Half of you think I’m describing Donald Trump. The other half, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez."
I also call them "unindicted co-conspirators in multiple federal crimes". Now who does everyone think I'm describing? I could smell the false equivalency coming on in the first three words of this article. I'm very tired of this urge within the hacker community to assuage what is happening with "everything is OK, this is just normal psychology, DT is just another politician, a symptom of something much bigger". No. He and his immediate family are likely criminals who are also likely compromised by multiple adversarial nations. There is no comparison to anything here not even Richard Nixon.
I don't think that is the case. You can make any two disparate groups look similar by leaving out crucial details. For example, suppose I describe a "Band of misfits from the middle of nowhere, working against the Empire that brought war to their homeland, striking against a symbol of that Empire." That could describe either the Star Wars Rebellion, or the 9/11 terrorists. The key is that I left out critical details to differentiate between the two.
This is a very common form of verbal sleight of hand.
* Step 1: Choose two disparate symbols.
* Step 2: Describe each in as vague of terms as possible.
* Step 3: Keep only the vague descriptions that are consistent between the two.
* Step 4: Imply that since the same reduced description fit both symbols, those original symbols are the same. Everything up to this point is a useful form of humor. It is this implication that is the false equivalence that zzzeek is referring to.
this is exactly the technique that the author used and the willingness of even highly intellectual readers on HN to fall right for it reveals to me a strong emotional urge to normalize the current state of affairs, so that they can go about their day and not really worry about it. The current state of affairs is not normal. There is no US historical precedent for it.
I understand what you're trying to say, but the point is Trump just isn't as bad as he's made out to be by some segments of the population. And everything he does tends to be inflated and exaggerated FAR past any reasonable point.
Not to mention the fact that he has a hostile media and the entire cultural segment (from sports athletes to celebrities) to contend with, a hostile Congress (certainly the House, and even the Senate), a judiciary that blocks him at every turn (and frequently overstepping their bounds), and an existing regulatory, and military hierarchy that is tepid (at best) towards him and has him in check. There's also a pending independent investigation that is looking at the more egregious accusations (for which we have no evidence at this point).
We had 2 years of Trump, and so far, his tenure has been a nothing burger compared to the Bush years, and the beginning of the Obama years when the entire economy was at risk of collapse. His tweets do suck, but everyone just ignores them now. He shit-posts on Twitter - once you get past that, there's nothing there.
I would be way more apprehensive with Bernie Sanders as president or a Democratic party where AOC-types are in charge. That kind of leaderships would have a far greater effect on day to day life.
I don't see step 4 in the article. Pointing out a similarity between two different things is only a false equivalence if you try to draw conclusions that are not supported by the abstract descriptions you have reduced them to.
For example, a band of misfits attacking an empire would be expected to use guerilla tactics and execute concentrated attacks against high-value targets. It only becomes a false equivalence if you try to argue that the 9/11 terrorists were capable of interstellar travel based on the Star Wars analogy.
The FEC has only confirmed that they've received the complaint from the right-leaning National Legal and Policy Center, but have not commented on whether they are investigating anything.
Not all campaign finance violations are created equally. The difference is that someone was already indicted and is going to jail for Trump's violation. If he weren't president, he'd be indicted as well. As another example, Ted Cruz was just fined $35k for his recent violation, no jail time. Even Barack Obama was hit with a huge fine for campaign finance violations.
AOC is not under investigation. A complaint was filed with the FEC alleging minor violations. It is yet to be seen if the FEC determines the complaint provided enough evidence to warrant an investigation.
Wow, almost a million dollars transferred to private LLC's doesn't sound minor. The stories I read said the allegations described potential felony violations of campaign contribution law with penalties ranging into decades in prison. Who knows what is true in the press these days, however.
The Trump family are not likely criminals, they are criminals, guilty of perjury before congress (Jared), violation of the emoluments clause (Trump), intimidating witnesses (Trump), interfering with the AG (Trump), collusion with the Saudis (Jared), bribery (Trump), adultery (Trump), assault (Trump on his 1st wife).
The only thing which is not out in the open (though highly likely to be at some point) is collusion with foreign powers like Russia.
I think a qualification really helps here. By definition, criminal requires a guilty verdict.
So while it can be productive to state opinion that someone may be guilty of criminal acts. The key part is a trial and conviction, before pronouncing someone guilty. Using precise language makes it less likely to be spun around and arguing with others who disagree, I think.
I'm not sure if that qualification adds a useful distinction. The usual definition I hear is "a person who committed a crime". Suppose I were to come home and find that my door has been broken down and my home ransacked, I would be justified in saying that "a criminal did this". There was an act of crime, and therefore it was done by a criminal. That it is ambiguous who the criminal was and whether there is sufficient evidence to prove that they did it, it was still done by a criminal.
Furthermore, even if I accept that criminality requires a guilty verdict to be a valid descriptor, it is something that applies retroactively. Once the conviction is given, it is retroactively correct to have called them a criminal between the time that the crime was committed and the time that the conviction was given. In this view, describing somebody as "criminal" prior to a verdict is an expression of belief as to what the verdict should or will be.
In either case, it is not incorrect to refer to the actions of the Trump campaign as criminal, to use one specific example. We know (1) that it is illegal to receive foreign aid in a campaign, (2) that the Trump campaign openly requested foreign aid (campaign speech, 2016-07-26), and (3) that the Trump campaign were in active negotiation for foreign aid (self-released emails from Trump Jr, dated 2016-06-03). From these, I conclude that the Trump campaign has performed criminal acts.
Please share the legal filing where the Clintons were named as Individual 1 and Individual 2 as those who directed the crime to take place, in a criminal case by federal prosecutors.
> It's unfortunate that otherwise intelligent people minds shut down when partisanship comes into play.
this is nonsense. Democrats are indicted and convicted of crimes as well and there is no need to deny these facts - Bob Menendez should likely have resigned, Anthony Weiner went to prison, Rod Blagoyovich is I think still serving time for widespread corruption. These people are criminals. The Clintons played fast and loose with rules but they are not in the same universe as even garden variety criminals much less the Trumps. You have to at least be indicted or in Trump's case named as an unindicted coconspirator for indicted parties for "criminality" to have a bit of a factual basis.
>Please share the legal filing where the Clintons were named as Individual 1 and Individual 2 as those who directed the crime to take place, in a criminal case by federal prosecutors.
>Neither Bill Clinton nor Hillary were ever prosecuted, after three separate inquiries found insufficient evidence linking them with the criminal conduct of others related to the land deal. The matter was handled by the Whitewater Independent Counsel, Kenneth Starr. The last of these inquiries came from the final Independent Counsel, Robert Ray (who replaced Starr) in 2000.[6] Susan McDougal was granted a pardon by Bill Clinton before he left office.
sorry, your post does not establish any criminality on the part of the Clintons, whereas the criminality within the Trump Whitehouse is unprecedented. More than 34 indictments and half a dozen guilty pleas including from the national security advisor himself, where the Trump white house refused to do anything about Flynn for 17 days after Sally Yates directly informed the WH that he was an active security leak.
If you don't think that pardoning everyone involved with your shady dealings on your last day in office isn't criminal I have no idea what your bar is. Other than 'a Republican had to do it'.
The only difference between trump and any other right leaning politician since the 80s is that trump says the quiet parts out loud.
Being a criminal doesn't automatically win you a ~90% party approval rating for wanting to build a massive racism wall or banning Muslims from entering the country. A hegemonic power structure and violent ideology does that. To say that the horrible shit trump has been pushing is not a symptom of a larger structure is to ignore the fact that equivalent horrifying injustices have also been committed by other Republicans (ICE, Patriot Act, invasion of iraq) and Democrats (civilian drone strikes, refugee child concentration camps) alike.
One thing that I find interesting is how none of the great dystopian works of the 20th century featured celebrities as the ruling class. The antagonists are like Bond villains, smart, sophisticated, rational, cruel. A worthy adversary you could respect and feel good about struggling against. Our reality is that we've made our lives so advanced and comfortable, that our fantasies can try to become our reality.
I guess Farenheight 451 and Brave New World come close with their focus on people immersing themselves in media, but even they had this smart, rational cunning clique running the show. Even in Idiocracy was based on the quaint idea that the ruling class was aware of its shortcomings and wanted to use rational methods to achieve objective goals.
Well, the US does currently have a president who got (at least partly) famous in the Pro Wrestling circuit, so big points there. But it's only a superficial resemblance.
President Comacho saw a real problem (lack of food), realized he needed help tacking the issue, sought out literally the smartest person in the world, followed his advice and solved the issue.
President Trump makes up problems, staffs his cabinet with some of the lowest quality members those offices have ever had, discards virtually all expert advice (In his own words, he only consults himself because he has a "very good brain") and generally seems to exist solely to troll people.
So even though Idiocracy seems to have hit it right on, it didn't. Mike Judge still could not make the mental leap required to make Comacho different from what he already knew (and I don't blame him).
I would add that Idiocracy's theme was the dumbing down of society, but in spite of society's failings the democratic government continued functioning well in working on the citizen's best interests. Unfortunatly Trump's government appears to be doing the exact opposite, to the point of looking as a government ran by anarchists trying to undermine it from within. That's arguably far worse than Idiocracy's central theme.
The current administration, the one you called Idiocracy, stood up against dictatorship China and exposed the bubble mirage that was the Chinese economy. The Chinese economy is now crashing hard. This current administration did what many said was impossible: wage increases in the age of automation and globalization. This administration has US economy growing at 3%, when most other global economies are going into recession. This administration gave jobs and money back to the main street people, when corporations were eager to give those to the prison labors in China.
You might be reading/watching the mainstream media too much.
Ironically, Idiocracy was too optimistic. The "idiots" of the future still ultimately respected knowledge and facts. They made the main character president once he clearly demonstrated he was the best person for the job.
In real life they'd just say the "big government deep state" is spreading "fake news" about Brawndo.
I sometimes think that the reason we don’t have these bond villains is because we were on the lookout and stopped them. And that caused us to miss the boiling frog situation of a ruling class of celebrity attention spinners.
There was a PBS documentary almost two decades ago called Merchants of Cool, which discusses exactly the issue of celebrity status and how it is used to buy and sell “cool” to teenagers in order to influence their buyin decisions. What is scary is that this documentary was shot long before smartphones and social media - I imagine the effects are amplified by orders of magnitude since the proliferation of social media.
I wonder if the present is more determined by the fact that the generation that used to be teenagers two decades ago are now in their prime years, rather than the latest greatest technology based social distruption.
But they are always obviously evil corporations. They never have a hip logo with cute aesthetics, and a sneaker clad hoodie wearing slacker founder. The movie Next Gen on Netflix is a good example of this though. The evil corp in that movie is basically Apple.
It's hard to see celebrities as anything other than an especially visible subset of people clawing their way into the ranks of the wealthy. Hereditary celebrity is possible, but wealthy celebrities mostly don't try to make their children celebrities. The ones who seem (subjectively) like the smartest choose to gift their children the traditional advantages of wealth, education, and connections.
Have you considered that the rational bond villains use celebrities as a visibility and accountability shield to accomplish goals that would otherwise be shut down if proposed directly?
Yes if you were to apply the Mcleod Corp pyramid they would be he clueless layer, happily indoctrinating the loser layer at the behest of the sociopath top.
It was my understanding that the loser layer understands what's going on though, which should inoculate them from indoctrination. Celebrities would then be the ones who keep the clueless from becoming losers.
Well, going too deep, there are three parts of the loser layer; committed losers, future clueless, and future sociopaths. The committed losers are aware and say things like “msm has always being lying”, future clueless are aspiring influencers, and future sociopaths are just waiting for the right opportunity to advance.
I have, and you can make the case that this is what's happening, and use Trumps 2017 tax cut as a very good example of elites complaining about him, but successfully using him for their own ends.
And that would be true, but I don't believe that overall, since it presupposes that just because someone is a celebrity, they are necessarily some sort of mindless, insentient vessel that optimizes for fame and can otherwise be controlled. Why shouldn't Kim Kardashian have strong-but-misguided opinions like any other random person? And wouldn't her existing fame make her way less amenable to influence by unknown individuals? To use a real-life example, much of Trump's immigration obsession is not shared by the elites who benefited from his tax cuts.
Ultimately, I don't believe it because I don't think any person can be as easily influenced as this scenario implies.
Useful idiots work freelance, because any longer and they become a liability. I think there is a vast pool of freelance celebrity today, with a deep bench of influencers attempting to expand it further. So if Kim doesn’t work tomorrow, someone else will. The difficulty with Trump is that his office has a 4 year appointment and he accomplished his goal in 2, leading to 2 more goalless years.
The Frankfurt school tackled the negative societal side effects of mass media and celebrity directly. Unfortunately, their work is rigorous, complex continental philosophy and so is relatively unknown in the states and does not have the popular appeal of a critique packaged as something more accessible like dystopian fiction.
They're worth checking out though if this sort of "pleasure"/entertainment/late capitalist dystopia theme interests you. Marcuses's One Dimensional Man is probably the work that relates most directly to this sort of thing. Horkheimer and Adorno's work also relates, but less directly, and it's less accessible. A sufficient background in the history of philosophy is prerequisite.
The Faint is also a great synth pop-punk band that quite frequently explores these issues in their music. Coincidentally, they just released an album this past Friday aptly titled Egowerk. Their older album Fascination is also great.
Century of the Self is another resource you can check out. It's a documentary by Adam Curtis about Edward Bernays and the radical shifts in advertising that he helped instate.
"A Face in the Crowd" comes close, with Andy Griffith playing a populist hero who gets involved in politics. Near the movie's climax, the front-runner offers him the position of "Secretary for National Morale".
"Below that come the dumb masses whom we habitually refer to as 'the proles', numbering perhaps 85 per cent of the population."
"What opinions the masses hold, or do not hold, is looked on as a matter of indifference. They can be granted intellectual liberty because they have no intellect."
"There was a whole chain of separate departments dealing with proletarian literature, music, drama, and entertainment generally. Here were produced rubbishy newspapers containing almost nothing except sport, crime and astrology, sensational five-cent novelettes, films oozing with sex, and sentimental songs which were composed entirely by mechanical means"
This is a long, well thought out just-so story with graphs that ends concluding that the world is in chaos because there are more media channels than there used to be. Which is maybe true for some value of "true", but this is largely an empty essay.
The book that he references a few times, Revolt of The Public is pretty good though.
This is a long, well thought out [theory] with graphs that ends concluding that the world is in chaos because there are more [is more communication than before, among more people, in more detail].
Note that changes in medium of communication have lead to political upheaval every time they’ve happened, whether we’re talking manuscripts to printed books (the Reformation), the rise of periodicals (nationalism), radio (fascism, socialism, the New Deal), cable tv (the first fracture in the post WWII US liberal consensus, as the ruling class had forgotten that amiable mostly non-partisan politics was an abnormal state of affairs that had been engineered) and now the internet (suddenly everyone realises there are large parts of “their” society that genuinely, non-ironically hates them and what they value).
If you go earlier every leap in communication technology makes more efficient bureaucracies possible, so you get larger states that are better at warfare.
Theory is too kind a word for this stuff. It's theory like critical theory is theory.
Sure, there have been massive changes in social organization that have accompanied changes in media. That doesn't say much though. Those changes compound and interact in unpredictable, chaotic ways. We like seeing patterns so we come up with stories about how we're either reverting to some imagined mean or how we're converging on another.
Definitely well written and well researched. Interesting that this is also a culmination of multiple not professionally bound people's ideas, editing, insights and feedback.
Below is towards the end of the article, so just in case any one feels more inclined to read it, here it is -
> I’m indebted to the following individuals for conversations that led to this post and feedback that improved it. I’d like to thank Arjun Balaji, Brendan Bernstein, Alex Hardy, Kevin Harrington, Mike Dariano, one anonymous Twitter user, and Nick Maggiulli for all the energy they invested in editing this piece. They improved this piece immensely.
> I’d also like to thank Nik Sharma, Drew Austin, and Adil Majid for the conversations that led to this post. Each of them contributed unique insights that I could not have arrived at on my own.
Comparing AOC to Trump got a laugh out of me. Acting like they’re even comparably detached from reality is ludicrous. Having political ambition and a vision of a changed society is not a bad thing if the thing you’re railing against is real and dangerous (climate change inaction). Leveraging the pervasive racist elements of American society into executive power for the purpose of building an expensive, unnecessary, and ineffective wall on the Southern border defies all rational consideration. These are not the same thing, and I would think that is obvious to nearly everyone left of Sean Hannity.
I think the opening was meant to show the opposing perspectives on each politician.
There's no question that the Fox Newses of the world like to portray AOC as a raving lunatic who is moments away from erecting guillotines and starting another October Revolution.
Mainstream liberal outlets have similarly detached problems with trump, with their primary criticism being that he's crazy and an asshole and says stupid things, and not that he's an instrument of neoconservative nihilism and promoter of the American White Ethnostate.
It took me two clicks to find out he's one of the nouveau grifters fawning over right wing demagogues (ie Jordan Peterson).
Funny how you can identify these kind of personalities within a few sentences from their oh-so objective writing. I'd love for HN to acquire some critical thinking skills to dismiss pseudo-'data-driven' articles like this one.
Huh, I've been seeing the term 'grifters' pop up everywhere in lefty writing recently. Is it just a verbal meme or do you all run the same script?
RE: Jordan Peterson, he may be favorite among, and a demagogue to, right-wingers... but he himself has almost no personally right-wing beliefs and is a self-avowed liberal.
Comparing Trump to AOC got a laugh out of me. Acting like they’re even comparably detached from reality is ludicrous. Having political ambition and a vision of a changed society is not a bad thing if the thing you’re railing against is real and dangerous (open borders). Leveraging the pervasive victim-worship of American society into executive power for the purpose of enacting an expensive, unnecessary, and ineffective Green New Deal defies all rational consideration. These are not the same thing, and I would think that is obvious to nearly everyone right of Rachel Maddow.
The legacy, industrial-era institutions are what support abundant and cheap access to information.
If belief in our traditional institutions crumbles due to cheap information, information asymmetry once again will rise, returning us to the prior era.
It takes coordination and peace to operate a globally-available internet, that enables us to have cheap communication and access information.
What does it take to offer the internet in its current form? Massive infrastructure, cables running every which way across countries and oceans, electricity, etc-- and governments protect that infrastructure.
If order and stability is lost to the extreme viewpoints the internet enables, and eroding trust in our existing institutions, there will no longer be necessary support for the infrastructure that enables free, open, cheap communication.
I tend to agree, but I actually don’t think peace is prerequisite. The internet was designed during the Cold War and was designed in a way to be resilient to massive fallout of the network (nuke safe). While, I do agree that if the establishment is not pleased with the openness of the internet they will attempt to regulated/censor it more heavily, but I think it’s too late. Attempts to regulate the internet would be met with massive resistance. Maybe, I am just slightly delusional about how much people care though, especially considering net neutrality in the states
It's hard to say what the political class thinks of things like Breitbart. To them, it might just be another tool to win elections. People generally vote with their emotions, and not based on policy -- driving home feelings of anger, fear, or resentment to "the other side" might just be another tool in the tool belt of keeping turnout high.
It's nicely written but I don't know how thoughtful it is.
> Big institutions, whose dominance once seemed eternal, are on the brink of collapse.
> The explosion of information has undermined and obsoleted the 20th-century organizational model. Big brands are losing market share. Big universities are going bankrupt. Big political parties are splintering and losing their control over the political narrative.
Isn't the exact opposite happening? The big universities are getting bigger, richer, more exclusive. In practice, Trump is probably less divisive of his party than Obama. Brands are consolidating (particularly in this media landscape that is supposed to be so dizzyingly dynamic and fractured!) . And sure, people identify less with retail or luxury hotel brands. But you know what brands they love? Apple. Netflix. That crazy new starter, "McDonald's". And data is making their strangle grip tighter, not looser.
Information wants to...empower those who have the money to leverage it.
Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose...I'm afraid this is a lot of words about Those Dang Kids Today
The point wasn't that David has beat Goliath. Netflix and Apple are examples of companies that changed the rules: when was the last time you visited a Blockbuster or used your Palm Pilot? What happened to companies like Sears, Border's, Radio Shack, Kodak? The point is that the mindset that used to enable these companies now works against them.
I could maybe see Netflix as an example of what the author was talking about, but how exactly does Apple fit in there? Apple is all about branding and mass-market appeal.
FWIW I had the same thoughts as the GP while reading the article. Look at the examples that it gives for brand fragmentation: Halo-Top, Talenti, So Delicious, Ciao Bella, and Coconut Bliss.
Talenti is a subsidiary of Unilever. Ciao Bella is 50% owned by Sherbrooke Capital Management. So Delicious is produced by WhiteWave which is owned by Danone (Dannon).
I think the article makes some good points, but ultimately gets a bit too cute trying to paint "information abundance" as the cause for all the discussed structural changes.
I wouldn't even give it "nicely written". Nicely presented, maybe...
Compared to all of the things he's quoting from--Chomsky, McLuhan, Caplan, etc.--this is far more sizzle than steak.
Maybe if he had some point to make with the source material, that would have saved it. Instead, it's like he couldn't choose between writing the McKinsey version of a book report, or an alternative intro to Fight Club.
Well written and interesting article.
If got a few points:
Education:
The cost factor is an American thing. Here, in Germany it way more affordable.
I have a Bachelor's in pure mathematics. I wouldn't have studied all those often hard and boring fundamental topics if they weren't required by the curriculum, that's what I like about the university. Now, I'm more interested into research and there the university is the best place to be
Of course you could offer a curriculum online, online learning doesn't have to be cherry picking. But I see a value in beeing enrolled. This whole student culture helps broadening my horizon.
Media:
I'd argue that the internet is getting more centralized. Most people use Google Search and YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. There, an algorithm decides what you see. So yes, it is easier to diversify your media intake but there is still a central entity.
Attention:
I think that's the thing this essay is mostly lacking in coverage. Having only the New York Times as reference you read a thorough report on a subject. Would you read it if you could get just a TL;DR or a quick video? I am not sure if the general public is really getting more educated or shut gaining a shallow knowledge based in FB or Reddit.
For example this article, or every Wait But Why article, are long and you read it only if you're interested. Otherwise I often catch myself only reading the comments.
The article argues that college bundles education and signaling (of competence). And that as information becomes more available, and college tuition costs skyrocket new signalling mechanisms are emerging / will emerge.
What are these new signaling mechanisms?
Searchable information? Things people publish or is written about them. Instead of proxies like educational institutions you get to examine them via other evidence. So education remains important but renown of institution as proxy for the individual goes away?
I would imagine it depends on the industry. In software, things like side projects, githubs, knowing the latest hip technologies, and being able to whip up the coolest algorithms during interviews are strong signals.
If you really think education is all about signalling, shouldn't you be more, not less, optimistic that it will be robust to technological changes that make delivering course materials cheaper?
A recent HN thread discusses the topic of how School is for Signaling rather than Skill-Building from another article, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19406432. The concept also explored within this post.
You can email hn@ycombinator.com if you feel a title is clickbait, requesting a change.
(I have, here.)
"How the shift from information scarcity to information abundance is transforming commerce, education, and politics", from the text, might work, though it's long.
These are real trends but I have a different answer to the opening question: the elites are failing, they don't seem better than the rest of us any more.
And I don't think it's just a matter of explosion of information available online. They're really not as sharp and competent as their predecessors, not as good, definitely not nearly as bold.
The reason Trump could bulldoze through two America's most powerful political dynasties is not Hillary's emails on Wikileaks but their weak candidates who had to rely completely on warchests, pundits, media and party machine. And the machine didn't fail them. They failed the machine.
On the one hand, some very good points. I think a survey of 20th century history strongly supports the idea that Big Media helped determine what kinds of leadership we got, and so it must be the case that 21st century internet media are doing the same. The comparisons of similar trends in education and commerce are worth reading (if over-long).
On the other hand, the underlying assumption is that the revolt against elite policy preferences, not only in the U.S. but in Europe and elsewhere, is entirely devoid of rational motivation. It discounts without comment the possibility that the pre-internet style of governance had substantive problems which the working class didn't like (e.g. globalization leading to a race to the bottom in manufacturing wages).
Surely the new methods of information access and distribution are having an impact. But it's not the only, or even necessarily the most important, driver.
>On the other hand, the underlying assumption is that the revolt against elite policy preferences, not only in the U.S. but in Europe and elsewhere, is entirely devoid of rational motivation.
That's the mainstream narrative, because like Maria Antoinette the 10% cannot ever consider why anyone (unless they're a faulty person) would ever be dissatisfied with the status quo in power, business, culture, economy, and so on. Except in their constrained pet causes, of course.
> It discounts without comment the possibility that the pre-internet style of governance had substantive problems which the working class didn't like (e.g. globalization leading to a race to the bottom in manufacturing wages).
It's there between the lines: the author mentions the power of the big companies in the 20th century to shape the narrative through mass media and a lack of proper information among the public, and how that power is now crumbling and how the narrative is being democratized.
Basically, it boils down to mutual knowledge, and large shifts in that causes power-shifts in society.
> On the other hand, the underlying assumption is that the revolt against elite policy preferences, not only in the U.S. but in Europe and elsewhere, is entirely devoid of rational motivation. It discounts without comment the possibility that the pre-internet style of governance had substantive problems which the working class didn't like (e.g. globalization leading to a race to the bottom in manufacturing wages).
I didn't get that from the article at all.
The article was purely descriptive, without ascribing any value judgment.
> pre-internet style of governance had substantive problems which the working class didn't like (e.g. globalization leading to a race to the bottom in manufacturing wages).
"Observing a problem", "diagnosing causes", and "presenting workable solutions" are three completely different things though.
Wage stagnation leading to quality-of-life declines is the first of these - people can notice this immediately in their life. Diganosing "globalisation" as the problem is harder and more complicated (would the US really have been better off trying to be a manufacturing autarky for the second half of the 20th century?). And the proposed solutions .. well, this is where it gets really bad.
The existing elite have done a very good job of suppressing the peaceful, workable solutions; various sorts of social inclusion and redistibution. That leaves only the unworkable and disastrous solutions out there.
> Wage stagnation leading to quality-of-life declines is the first of these - people can notice this immediately in their life.
Despite popular graphs making rounds, there has been little if any wage stagnation. Moreover, people are also really bad at noticing it: a median and an average Americans now have better housing situation than 50 years ago, in terms of actual living space available for them, fewer roommates, better quality of housing, and yet the sentiment is the opposite.
Source? Every piece of data I see shows that the top quintile is running away with almost all of the income and wealth growth (especially the top decile), and that economic opportunities are being concentrated in certain urban areas resulting in higher rents and property prices, all the while home ownership and stable careers are in decline.
Having a bigger room and smart phone does little in the face of higher variance of one’s future security. The compounding nature of the game’s fruits are clearly evident now, and people rightfully are afraid of permanently falling behind.
Wage stagnation primarily for unskilled men (women's wages have risen a lot, skilled labor has risen as well).
The reason? "The TL;DR answer is that it was a combination of immigration, loss of manufacturing jobs overseas, massive entry of women into the labor force"
So a drastically increased supply of labor depresses prices of labor.
He also avoids "household income" because households are smaller (fewer children, divorce) and because of two earners, but those very things increase economic "quality of life" measurements for individuals in those households ($ per capita).
This is a garbage post. I read as much as I could but it is full of basic errors like this: "The cost of a university education grew linearly, as the number of global college graduates grew exponentially. As a result, college degrees aren’t as valuable as they once were."
The number of anything grows exponentially because population grows exponentially. It doesn't mean anything. Earlier they say "big brands are in decline" because GM and Ford lost market share. Well, are big brands in decline or just those two? Were they replaced by a bunch of small brands or just Honda and Toyota?
This is a bunch of incorrect stuff masquerading as a point.
One thing is sure, I really don't engage in internet discussions the same way I did. I haven't used facebook (where everybody is) for such a long time, all I do is use reddit, and I've restrained more and more to leave a comment.
I'd rather let people yell and be part of a silent majority than participate in crowded internet discussions.
231 comments
[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 283 ms ] threadBoth Trump and AOC are populists. They care less about what's factually true and more about whats emotionally true.
Politics is not about being factually correct. You can be correct but still not have it your way.
This is what Trump knew. Perception is reality.
That's why it never make sense to judge a politician on their person but only on their policy.
AOC uses Twitter and social media well, just as Trump does, but are they really using it the same way, to the same ends? I have yet to see AOC just straight up lie like Trump does basically every time he opens his mouth. And many of AOC's policy proposals are backed up with historical precedent (especially the higher marginal tax rates for the wealthy).
Also, as far as I know, AOC is not implicated in any criminal behavior, whereas Trump and his family absolutely are.
Then by extension, perhaps Obama was the last of the “personality and charisma” era?
Not really, no. The people who are aware of both AOC and DJT enough to have an opinion are not split evenly in terms of their thinking about each of these politicians. I don't despise AOC, I just don't particularly care for her, and I think the way she was elected by exploiting people's lack of attention to the primary race, and unwillingness to even consider any alternative party in the general.
Conversely, I don't laud Donald Trump, I'm just not personally all that offended by his MOR '90s Democrat style policies.
It's the first time I can remember signing up for a newsletter voluntarily, despite my general distaste for those types of popovers.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
The status quo on healthcare is not an option. Deporting every "illegal" is not an option. Banning Muslims is not an option.
I don't think Trump supporters are un-American, but I think they've forgotten some American values if they continue to support Trump the man. His leadership is the antithesis of America. If you're conservative, that's one thing. To be a Trumpian is to have missed civics class.
Here, watch this BBC video [1] where they interview Trump voters about their views on the "mainstream media" (by which you quickly realize they mean anything that doesn't deal in pure pro-Trump anti-librul propaganda). Here's an article [2] on a study showing that pro-Trump people specifically like to consume fake news shared via Facebook.
But personally I didn't really need a study to tell me any of that -- how do I know? I live and breathe and observe the world and people around me...
And yes, this is a generalization and not true of every single Trump voter. Obviously. All I really claimed was that Trump supporters will definitely be a minority of readers of a blog like this.
[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-us-canada-38191313/no-tr...
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/feb/06/sharing-f...
So weird how they all find their way onto the news. It's almost as if they were selected by image to fit a story.
That's not the same as "content posted to HN and Reddit".
TBH, you're probably right that this article is going to have a viewership where supporting Trump is less likely.
The pushback you're getting is that you didn't make that claim, you made a claim that implied the Trump voter base was not interested in "long-form data driven thinkpieces", which is a brand of hubris that many are getting tired of.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Dialectical arguments tend to long, boring, and esoterical. I found the intro a mix of jocular and dialectical, which for me turned out to be the payoff for some of the article's repetitiveness.
The West these days reminds me of USSR in the eighties.
And hey, it's kept me from commenting for several hours, as I've read it in breaks from work.
Perell references Martin Gurri and Ben Thompson throughout. Going to dig in to Gurri as I'm not as familiar.
Alex Danco's series on Understanding Abundance is probably a good reference point as well.
Higher Education Excerpt: "Education flows down from the needs of employers. Companies outsource their recruiting efforts to universities, who gauge the quality of applicants on their behalf."
Employers who do not pay a single penny in tax? Who game the labor markets to keep salaries low? Employers who are nothing but a ponzi scheme where the people who make most money are not even employed by the corporation? Employers whose sole aim is to be a monopoly (and call themselves unicorns!)
This article needs a rewrite. The author does not bring the right arguments to the table.
You say we shouldn't read the article because he asserts that educations flows down from the needs of employers. Your refutation of this point is that some companies don't pay as much tax as you'd like them to.
How does that follow?
I also call them "unindicted co-conspirators in multiple federal crimes". Now who does everyone think I'm describing? I could smell the false equivalency coming on in the first three words of this article. I'm very tired of this urge within the hacker community to assuage what is happening with "everything is OK, this is just normal psychology, DT is just another politician, a symptom of something much bigger". No. He and his immediate family are likely criminals who are also likely compromised by multiple adversarial nations. There is no comparison to anything here not even Richard Nixon.
This is a very common form of verbal sleight of hand.
* Step 1: Choose two disparate symbols.
* Step 2: Describe each in as vague of terms as possible.
* Step 3: Keep only the vague descriptions that are consistent between the two.
* Step 4: Imply that since the same reduced description fit both symbols, those original symbols are the same. Everything up to this point is a useful form of humor. It is this implication that is the false equivalence that zzzeek is referring to.
Not to mention the fact that he has a hostile media and the entire cultural segment (from sports athletes to celebrities) to contend with, a hostile Congress (certainly the House, and even the Senate), a judiciary that blocks him at every turn (and frequently overstepping their bounds), and an existing regulatory, and military hierarchy that is tepid (at best) towards him and has him in check. There's also a pending independent investigation that is looking at the more egregious accusations (for which we have no evidence at this point).
We had 2 years of Trump, and so far, his tenure has been a nothing burger compared to the Bush years, and the beginning of the Obama years when the entire economy was at risk of collapse. His tweets do suck, but everyone just ignores them now. He shit-posts on Twitter - once you get past that, there's nothing there.
I would be way more apprehensive with Bernie Sanders as president or a Democratic party where AOC-types are in charge. That kind of leaderships would have a far greater effect on day to day life.
For example, a band of misfits attacking an empire would be expected to use guerilla tactics and execute concentrated attacks against high-value targets. It only becomes a false equivalence if you try to argue that the 9/11 terrorists were capable of interstellar travel based on the Star Wars analogy.
The only thing which is not out in the open (though highly likely to be at some point) is collusion with foreign powers like Russia.
So while it can be productive to state opinion that someone may be guilty of criminal acts. The key part is a trial and conviction, before pronouncing someone guilty. Using precise language makes it less likely to be spun around and arguing with others who disagree, I think.
For example Jared did lie to congress (along with many other Trump appointments):
https://www.justsecurity.org/61682/perjury-chart-trump-assoc...
Trump and his attorney Cohen did intimidate and bribe witnesses (to adultery):
See the link below, and his admission that he paid off the prostitute Stormy Daniels.
Trump did assault his first wife, and has been accused by multiple other women:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/24/documenting-tr...
Trump has not properly divested himself of his businesses, and violated emoluments rules on multiple occasions.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2018/05/15...
These are not opinions or speculation.
Furthermore, even if I accept that criminality requires a guilty verdict to be a valid descriptor, it is something that applies retroactively. Once the conviction is given, it is retroactively correct to have called them a criminal between the time that the crime was committed and the time that the conviction was given. In this view, describing somebody as "criminal" prior to a verdict is an expression of belief as to what the verdict should or will be.
In either case, it is not incorrect to refer to the actions of the Trump campaign as criminal, to use one specific example. We know (1) that it is illegal to receive foreign aid in a campaign, (2) that the Trump campaign openly requested foreign aid (campaign speech, 2016-07-26), and (3) that the Trump campaign were in active negotiation for foreign aid (self-released emails from Trump Jr, dated 2016-06-03). From these, I conclude that the Trump campaign has performed criminal acts.
The Clintons?
> There is no comparison to anything here not even Richard Nixon.
I'd compare him to Kennedy. Minus the mob 'losing' a few ballot boxes for him.
It's unfortunate that otherwise intelligent people minds shut down when partisanship comes into play.
Please share the legal filing where the Clintons were named as Individual 1 and Individual 2 as those who directed the crime to take place, in a criminal case by federal prosecutors.
> It's unfortunate that otherwise intelligent people minds shut down when partisanship comes into play.
this is nonsense. Democrats are indicted and convicted of crimes as well and there is no need to deny these facts - Bob Menendez should likely have resigned, Anthony Weiner went to prison, Rod Blagoyovich is I think still serving time for widespread corruption. These people are criminals. The Clintons played fast and loose with rules but they are not in the same universe as even garden variety criminals much less the Trumps. You have to at least be indicted or in Trump's case named as an unindicted coconspirator for indicted parties for "criminality" to have a bit of a factual basis.
https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/chapter/343893
>Neither Bill Clinton nor Hillary were ever prosecuted, after three separate inquiries found insufficient evidence linking them with the criminal conduct of others related to the land deal. The matter was handled by the Whitewater Independent Counsel, Kenneth Starr. The last of these inquiries came from the final Independent Counsel, Robert Ray (who replaced Starr) in 2000.[6] Susan McDougal was granted a pardon by Bill Clinton before he left office.
About as shoddy as shoddy gets, especially the part with the pardon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Clinton_pardon_controvers...
Again, partisanship is a hell of a drug.
sorry, your post does not establish any criminality on the part of the Clintons, whereas the criminality within the Trump Whitehouse is unprecedented. More than 34 indictments and half a dozen guilty pleas including from the national security advisor himself, where the Trump white house refused to do anything about Flynn for 17 days after Sally Yates directly informed the WH that he was an active security leak.
There is simply no comparison.
Being a criminal doesn't automatically win you a ~90% party approval rating for wanting to build a massive racism wall or banning Muslims from entering the country. A hegemonic power structure and violent ideology does that. To say that the horrible shit trump has been pushing is not a symptom of a larger structure is to ignore the fact that equivalent horrifying injustices have also been committed by other Republicans (ICE, Patriot Act, invasion of iraq) and Democrats (civilian drone strikes, refugee child concentration camps) alike.
I guess Farenheight 451 and Brave New World come close with their focus on people immersing themselves in media, but even they had this smart, rational cunning clique running the show. Even in Idiocracy was based on the quaint idea that the ruling class was aware of its shortcomings and wanted to use rational methods to achieve objective goals.
President Comacho saw a real problem (lack of food), realized he needed help tacking the issue, sought out literally the smartest person in the world, followed his advice and solved the issue.
President Trump makes up problems, staffs his cabinet with some of the lowest quality members those offices have ever had, discards virtually all expert advice (In his own words, he only consults himself because he has a "very good brain") and generally seems to exist solely to troll people.
So even though Idiocracy seems to have hit it right on, it didn't. Mike Judge still could not make the mental leap required to make Comacho different from what he already knew (and I don't blame him).
I would add that Idiocracy's theme was the dumbing down of society, but in spite of society's failings the democratic government continued functioning well in working on the citizen's best interests. Unfortunatly Trump's government appears to be doing the exact opposite, to the point of looking as a government ran by anarchists trying to undermine it from within. That's arguably far worse than Idiocracy's central theme.
You might be reading/watching the mainstream media too much.
And fwiw, real wage growth doesn't look that great. It has actually been negative for the last few months.
I don't think "standing up to dictatorships" is a very strong argument for this administration.
In real life they'd just say the "big government deep state" is spreading "fake news" about Brawndo.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmZOZjHjT5E
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctC56owCBJg
Jay-Z and Beyonce's child has their Instagram professionally done: https://www.instagram.com/blueivy.carter/?hl=en
Even Instagram only, average wealth, influencers, making like $1M a year or so, have whole teams of people working for their Instagram.
However, Wikipedia says: "While many reviewers compared Elliot Carver to Rupert Murdoch, Feirstein based the character on Robert Maxwell." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomorrow_Never_Dies)
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/dec/20/celebr...
And that would be true, but I don't believe that overall, since it presupposes that just because someone is a celebrity, they are necessarily some sort of mindless, insentient vessel that optimizes for fame and can otherwise be controlled. Why shouldn't Kim Kardashian have strong-but-misguided opinions like any other random person? And wouldn't her existing fame make her way less amenable to influence by unknown individuals? To use a real-life example, much of Trump's immigration obsession is not shared by the elites who benefited from his tax cuts.
Ultimately, I don't believe it because I don't think any person can be as easily influenced as this scenario implies.
They're worth checking out though if this sort of "pleasure"/entertainment/late capitalist dystopia theme interests you. Marcuses's One Dimensional Man is probably the work that relates most directly to this sort of thing. Horkheimer and Adorno's work also relates, but less directly, and it's less accessible. A sufficient background in the history of philosophy is prerequisite.
The Faint is also a great synth pop-punk band that quite frequently explores these issues in their music. Coincidentally, they just released an album this past Friday aptly titled Egowerk. Their older album Fascination is also great.
Century of the Self is another resource you can check out. It's a documentary by Adam Curtis about Edward Bernays and the radical shifts in advertising that he helped instate.
The Culture of Narcissism
The Revolt of the Elites
Haven in a Heartless World
The Minimal Self
and so on.
The only figure with a face is big brother, and he didn't exist. I think Goldstein had no face?
If the proles (85% of the population) had celebrities, they would not be actual people : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prolefeed
"Below that come the dumb masses whom we habitually refer to as 'the proles', numbering perhaps 85 per cent of the population."
"What opinions the masses hold, or do not hold, is looked on as a matter of indifference. They can be granted intellectual liberty because they have no intellect."
"There was a whole chain of separate departments dealing with proletarian literature, music, drama, and entertainment generally. Here were produced rubbishy newspapers containing almost nothing except sport, crime and astrology, sensational five-cent novelettes, films oozing with sex, and sentimental songs which were composed entirely by mechanical means"
The book that he references a few times, Revolt of The Public is pretty good though.
Note that changes in medium of communication have lead to political upheaval every time they’ve happened, whether we’re talking manuscripts to printed books (the Reformation), the rise of periodicals (nationalism), radio (fascism, socialism, the New Deal), cable tv (the first fracture in the post WWII US liberal consensus, as the ruling class had forgotten that amiable mostly non-partisan politics was an abnormal state of affairs that had been engineered) and now the internet (suddenly everyone realises there are large parts of “their” society that genuinely, non-ironically hates them and what they value).
If you go earlier every leap in communication technology makes more efficient bureaucracies possible, so you get larger states that are better at warfare.
Sure, there have been massive changes in social organization that have accompanied changes in media. That doesn't say much though. Those changes compound and interact in unpredictable, chaotic ways. We like seeing patterns so we come up with stories about how we're either reverting to some imagined mean or how we're converging on another.
Below is towards the end of the article, so just in case any one feels more inclined to read it, here it is -
> I’m indebted to the following individuals for conversations that led to this post and feedback that improved it. I’d like to thank Arjun Balaji, Brendan Bernstein, Alex Hardy, Kevin Harrington, Mike Dariano, one anonymous Twitter user, and Nick Maggiulli for all the energy they invested in editing this piece. They improved this piece immensely.
> I’d also like to thank Nik Sharma, Drew Austin, and Adil Majid for the conversations that led to this post. Each of them contributed unique insights that I could not have arrived at on my own.
There's no question that the Fox Newses of the world like to portray AOC as a raving lunatic who is moments away from erecting guillotines and starting another October Revolution.
Mainstream liberal outlets have similarly detached problems with trump, with their primary criticism being that he's crazy and an asshole and says stupid things, and not that he's an instrument of neoconservative nihilism and promoter of the American White Ethnostate.
Funny how you can identify these kind of personalities within a few sentences from their oh-so objective writing. I'd love for HN to acquire some critical thinking skills to dismiss pseudo-'data-driven' articles like this one.
RE: Jordan Peterson, he may be favorite among, and a demagogue to, right-wingers... but he himself has almost no personally right-wing beliefs and is a self-avowed liberal.
As a Korean who's viewing things from the outside, I found the hook hilarious and totally made me continue reading it...
If belief in our traditional institutions crumbles due to cheap information, information asymmetry once again will rise, returning us to the prior era.
What does it take to offer the internet in its current form? Massive infrastructure, cables running every which way across countries and oceans, electricity, etc-- and governments protect that infrastructure.
If order and stability is lost to the extreme viewpoints the internet enables, and eroding trust in our existing institutions, there will no longer be necessary support for the infrastructure that enables free, open, cheap communication.
> Big institutions, whose dominance once seemed eternal, are on the brink of collapse.
> The explosion of information has undermined and obsoleted the 20th-century organizational model. Big brands are losing market share. Big universities are going bankrupt. Big political parties are splintering and losing their control over the political narrative.
Isn't the exact opposite happening? The big universities are getting bigger, richer, more exclusive. In practice, Trump is probably less divisive of his party than Obama. Brands are consolidating (particularly in this media landscape that is supposed to be so dizzyingly dynamic and fractured!) . And sure, people identify less with retail or luxury hotel brands. But you know what brands they love? Apple. Netflix. That crazy new starter, "McDonald's". And data is making their strangle grip tighter, not looser.
Information wants to...empower those who have the money to leverage it.
Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose...I'm afraid this is a lot of words about Those Dang Kids Today
FWIW I had the same thoughts as the GP while reading the article. Look at the examples that it gives for brand fragmentation: Halo-Top, Talenti, So Delicious, Ciao Bella, and Coconut Bliss.
Talenti is a subsidiary of Unilever. Ciao Bella is 50% owned by Sherbrooke Capital Management. So Delicious is produced by WhiteWave which is owned by Danone (Dannon).
I think the article makes some good points, but ultimately gets a bit too cute trying to paint "information abundance" as the cause for all the discussed structural changes.
Compared to all of the things he's quoting from--Chomsky, McLuhan, Caplan, etc.--this is far more sizzle than steak.
Maybe if he had some point to make with the source material, that would have saved it. Instead, it's like he couldn't choose between writing the McKinsey version of a book report, or an alternative intro to Fight Club.
At least the author put in the time to present his case.
Education: The cost factor is an American thing. Here, in Germany it way more affordable. I have a Bachelor's in pure mathematics. I wouldn't have studied all those often hard and boring fundamental topics if they weren't required by the curriculum, that's what I like about the university. Now, I'm more interested into research and there the university is the best place to be Of course you could offer a curriculum online, online learning doesn't have to be cherry picking. But I see a value in beeing enrolled. This whole student culture helps broadening my horizon.
Media: I'd argue that the internet is getting more centralized. Most people use Google Search and YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. There, an algorithm decides what you see. So yes, it is easier to diversify your media intake but there is still a central entity.
Attention: I think that's the thing this essay is mostly lacking in coverage. Having only the New York Times as reference you read a thorough report on a subject. Would you read it if you could get just a TL;DR or a quick video? I am not sure if the general public is really getting more educated or shut gaining a shallow knowledge based in FB or Reddit.
For example this article, or every Wait But Why article, are long and you read it only if you're interested. Otherwise I often catch myself only reading the comments.
Still, good article
(I have, here.)
"How the shift from information scarcity to information abundance is transforming commerce, education, and politics", from the text, might work, though it's long.
These are real trends but I have a different answer to the opening question: the elites are failing, they don't seem better than the rest of us any more.
And I don't think it's just a matter of explosion of information available online. They're really not as sharp and competent as their predecessors, not as good, definitely not nearly as bold.
The reason Trump could bulldoze through two America's most powerful political dynasties is not Hillary's emails on Wikileaks but their weak candidates who had to rely completely on warchests, pundits, media and party machine. And the machine didn't fail them. They failed the machine.
On the other hand, the underlying assumption is that the revolt against elite policy preferences, not only in the U.S. but in Europe and elsewhere, is entirely devoid of rational motivation. It discounts without comment the possibility that the pre-internet style of governance had substantive problems which the working class didn't like (e.g. globalization leading to a race to the bottom in manufacturing wages).
Surely the new methods of information access and distribution are having an impact. But it's not the only, or even necessarily the most important, driver.
That's the mainstream narrative, because like Maria Antoinette the 10% cannot ever consider why anyone (unless they're a faulty person) would ever be dissatisfied with the status quo in power, business, culture, economy, and so on. Except in their constrained pet causes, of course.
It's there between the lines: the author mentions the power of the big companies in the 20th century to shape the narrative through mass media and a lack of proper information among the public, and how that power is now crumbling and how the narrative is being democratized.
Basically, it boils down to mutual knowledge, and large shifts in that causes power-shifts in society.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-son3EJTrU&t=7m40s
I didn't get that from the article at all.
The article was purely descriptive, without ascribing any value judgment.
That was pretty clear to me that the past had plenty of problems.
And recall that the US Founders were concerned. And they just had newspapers and handbills to worry about.
"Observing a problem", "diagnosing causes", and "presenting workable solutions" are three completely different things though.
Wage stagnation leading to quality-of-life declines is the first of these - people can notice this immediately in their life. Diganosing "globalisation" as the problem is harder and more complicated (would the US really have been better off trying to be a manufacturing autarky for the second half of the 20th century?). And the proposed solutions .. well, this is where it gets really bad.
The existing elite have done a very good job of suppressing the peaceful, workable solutions; various sorts of social inclusion and redistibution. That leaves only the unworkable and disastrous solutions out there.
Despite popular graphs making rounds, there has been little if any wage stagnation. Moreover, people are also really bad at noticing it: a median and an average Americans now have better housing situation than 50 years ago, in terms of actual living space available for them, fewer roommates, better quality of housing, and yet the sentiment is the opposite.
Having a bigger room and smart phone does little in the face of higher variance of one’s future security. The compounding nature of the game’s fruits are clearly evident now, and people rightfully are afraid of permanently falling behind.
Wage stagnation primarily for unskilled men (women's wages have risen a lot, skilled labor has risen as well).
The reason? "The TL;DR answer is that it was a combination of immigration, loss of manufacturing jobs overseas, massive entry of women into the labor force"
So a drastically increased supply of labor depresses prices of labor.
He also avoids "household income" because households are smaller (fewer children, divorce) and because of two earners, but those very things increase economic "quality of life" measurements for individuals in those households ($ per capita).
He also focuses on pre-tax/pre-transfer income, avoiding the net effect of our progressive taxation/transfer regime. If we include those effects, we get a different picture: https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/the-trend-toward-inequali...
The number of anything grows exponentially because population grows exponentially. It doesn't mean anything. Earlier they say "big brands are in decline" because GM and Ford lost market share. Well, are big brands in decline or just those two? Were they replaced by a bunch of small brands or just Honda and Toyota?
This is a bunch of incorrect stuff masquerading as a point.
I'd rather let people yell and be part of a silent majority than participate in crowded internet discussions.