Amerika

Ironically, one of the more important conversations of our time has begun with insights from the Left, who have begun to be skeptical of social mobility as a liberator, and are seeing it as an enslaver instead:

To greater and lesser extents, our economies are based around social mobility rather than the ability to live in dignity without it, while ever-higher barriers to prosperity are erected and our public infrastructure is inadequate at almost every level.

With equality, everyone starts with nothing. That means that we must “prove” ourselves through meritocracy, which means tests and memorization, in order to get anywhere. The system controls our fate from the minute we are born to the instant we die, and obedience to the procedure of the bureaucracy is required to survive.

That in turn means that all of us are wage-slaves until we pile up enough cash to escape the corporate lifestyle and either run our own businesses or retire. This lifestyle is fundamentally oppressive, yet is necessary to create the growth necessary for the Keynesian economy.

That in turn requires bringing in more warm bodies to buy consumerist products and work jobs at starter salaries. The original group of workers, through the magic of unions and regulations, move up to higher salaries and as they retire, take more from the free money pot given out through entitlements.

At that point, the society goes into terminal spin because it is addicted to population growth which reduces its prosperity and brings about a crash and through that, political instability leading to further dubious Leftist reforms:

Productivity growth began in 1600 — almost a century before the Glorious Revolution. Thus, the onset of productivity growth preceded the bourgeois institutional reforms of 17th century England.

Stagnant real wages in the 18th and early 19th centuries — “Engel’s Pause” — is explained by rapid population growth putting downward pressure on real wages.

What drives the strength of a population is its will toward having a culture and rising to excellence, not laws or economic incentives. When your population is unified by a shared goal, you can accomplish anything as a civilization; without unity, you are disintegrating will rapidly become Mexico or Brazil.

Tags: circular ponzi scheme, consumerism, keynesian circular ponzi scheme, keynesianism, productivity