We so routinely see hateful people sheltered from consequences--heck, even aided in the harm they do, by others who want to ride the wave of power, or who don't know how to "get off the bus"--that it's mystifying how we manage to be so hard on ourselves in our more quotidian struggles.
But then again, it feels like it should be a low bar not to do the harm that genuine grifters and hatemongers do.
In a better world they wouldn't be at the centre of every public conversation about moral action.
I have often thought about shame, and ostracizing, as the cultural regulator for this. But it so often misused. That I don't think it is applicable today.
As with so many things, cultural regulation has disappeared. We need to bring back constraints as a virtue.
@corlin @MLClark Cultural regulators don't exist when your social fabric has broken down - which is the case in much of the West due to a combination of hyper-individualist mindsets (no doubt spread in large part by Cold War propaganda), an extremely isolating car-centric transportation/infrastructure paradigm that eliminates opportunities for natural social interaction, overwork robbing many people of the time/energy to socialize, and the two-income household norm reducing informal networking.
Yes all factors.
But perhaps, and I am just thinking aloud here, these factors all point to some more fundamental causes. What led to these culture factors developing and succeeding in the first place?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6V0qmDZ2gg&list=PL3VaCuWY1hJlNQ6a2PDd4Ib1kSxUAiflF
@corlin @MLClark They were intentionally fostered.
The hyper-individualism epidemic was caused largely by Cold War efforts to reduce sympathy for the USSR and harden the population against subversion.
Car-centric transportation and infrastructure paradigms were borne of auto industry lobbying, itself driven by the desire for more profits and successful because of corruption.
Overwork is a result of the intentional devaluation of labour by the bourgeoisie...
@corlin @MLClark And the two-income household norm, the result of bourgeois efforts to erode the value of labour - to vastly increase the available workforce without appreciably increasing the demand for labour, by manipulating the equal rights movement and selling them the idea that wage slavery is somehow freeing / empowering.
That's tripping into nuclear family fetishization. Lower-income women always worked, but the only way out of bad marriages for middle-class women was bodily autonomy and financial independence, with rights gained in the 1970s.
Middle-class women ran from the frying pan of toxic domestic spheres, or at least put up more defenses against abuse through careerism, and joined working-class women in the fire.
What's always been needed is more communal, less nuclear thinking.
@MLClark @corlin I agree about more communal, less nuclear thinking - but I think it'll take incremental change to get there, and it seems to me that "everybody works the 9-to-5" is a step in the exact opposite direction.
If everyone works the 9-to-5, it's like you don't even *have* units. Everyone's in their own little bubble. It's even more atomized than the nuclear family, which was already bad enough.
At this juncture, nothing less than UBI will help with our post-work crisis, but it might help to look to the greater world to see how other cultures manage.
A system that requires people to pair up to survive, and for one person to put themself in trust of the other's income, is never ideal except for the person who sees themself as being the one with the salary.
Other cultures have more collaboration built into existing economics. Western Protestant roots aren't it.
@MLClark @corlin I could agree with that.
The first step I had in mind wasn't quite like the traditional nuclear family, though: both parties would be expected to get the education/training to be *able to* work, but at any given time only one would... whether through some form of time-division (each only works for half the year, or maybe each only works 20 hours/week) or otherwise.
The reduced effective workforce would increase labor's market value, making things easier for single people too.
And that's why I'm saying it's important to look at other cultures. Job sharing and reduced scheduling are already implemented in other markets.
Your model is also focused on the wrong pressure point if the top concern is "labor market value" instead of quality of life. People are underpaid due to the disproportionate flow of wealth from labour to execs & shareholders. UBI studies show that investment *in people* increases entrepreneurship, creating healthier markets.
The solutions are there! They're not pipe dreams. But they do require us to look a little beyond the enemies that our capitalist societies want us to make of each other. The common scarcity myth of "too many women (or immigrants) in the marketplace is what's driving down the value of work" ignores the long history of working women and detracts from the stark facts of wealth and wage theft that actually underpin worker incomes still lying so far below our costs of living.
@MLClark @corlin Oh, I don't see it as an "opposing force" thing.
Way I see it, the capitalist class is *exploiting* immigrants and families - they've purposefully architected the systems and cultural norms that oversaturate the work force specifically to lower their labour costs.
The workers aren't to blame - they're just following the path they were funneled and manipulated into, doing what they had to / were told was necessary to survive and thrive. There's no shame in that.
I firmly disagree, Torin. You're still seeing this through the scarcity myth, and glossing over huge parts of working class and women's history in the process.
Women weren't tricked into the market place to drive down labour market value.
Most were already there (women have always worked), and the rest joined them as part of a hard-won mid-20th C fight for protection from abuse while giving free labour in the home.
Labour oversaturation isn't the issue. It's taxation.
@IrelandTorin @corlin
I have a bit of a background in history, which gives me exposure to how long this issue has been going on--but quite literally, the mid-19th Century was home to what was called "the woman problem" or "the woman question": too many unwed women competing in the marketplace. You also have writers of the era blaming women for over-saturating and "ruining" the ability for men to thrive in writing professions.
So this labour competition myth is old--and capitalists love it.