Are we returning to the Gilded Age?

[Darth Stateworker]

www.alternet.org/story/156111/8_ways_america%27s_headed_back_to_the_r%20obber-baron_era/?page=1

Thought provoking article I came across tonight that I thought would be a good idea to share. For me, it really outlines what's going on in the US today.

[sunrunner]

If you get a chance to read this book....awesome. It really lays out what early organizers were facing.

[NYS Techie]

They can't take us all the way back to the gilded age. The internet makes it impossible.

How?

Because now everyone can reach anyone, publish anything, produce and sell anything. People are no longer dependent on traditional work. They can start their own micro-companies and sell things directly over the internet.

Musicians, for example, are bypassing the labels and selling directly to their fans. Artists are selling stuff via Etsy and Deviant Art. Writers are self-publishing...

Basically there's a way out for a large segment of the population. Anyone capable of creating something worth buying now has a way to make that happen.

Of course, people who lack that ability are blued, trued, and screwed.

Call it a "Gilded age with a new independent merchant class".

Point being: the rich cannot attain ALL their goals no matter how much they try. People will still have a way to drop out and do their own thing. This did not exist the last time around.

[Darth Stateworker]

Meh - how one goes about doing their own thing might have changed, but I wouldn't say it's easier.

Back then, you could have easily started a brick and mortar business without all the red tape of today. It's actually how my family business got started - no jobs, so my great grandfather started his own place.

And lets face it - not everyone is cut out to be able to start selling their own shit online. Half the nation is too dumb to even figure out how to get their own rudimentary e-store up and running, even if their hosting service provides easy tools to just throw a canned one up that requires no coding skills.

Not that it would be impossible. Just saying that while things have changed due to technology, I don't think it's easier or harder. Just different.

However, there's also the seedy down side of the internet, where dumb people use it to keep getting dumber. They never learn a damn thing. They simply seek out like minds with like opinions. Prime example - gilhags. It's not just politics - dumbasses do this in every aspect - including talking about business ideas. Moron A thinks that he can re-invent the pet rock and he'll be a millionaire tomorrow. Morons B, C, D, E, and F all confirm for him that it's a solid idea, while level headed poster G tells him he's a dipshit and it won't work. Moron A mortgages the house because B, C, D, E, and F all told him it was a winner. Moron A subsequently goes bankrupt.

[NYS Techie]

Darth, Darth, Darth... There's also the newest cottage industry, the micro-pron business! In which couples with no money, skills, education, or brain cells film each other doing the sex and sell the videos via a website. Then it finds its way around thousands of other websites, which may or may not send them some advertising money, until everyone gets bored with seeing the same women blowing the same guys over and over again.

Still. It's a thing now!

[Darth Stateworker]

We'll I would say that not everyone can do homemade pr0n, however, the internet has allowed those with all sorts of weird fetishes to now get their kick - like those that want to see granny pr0n or plumper pr0n.

Obviously, not my bag, but surely, with billions of people around the world, that still leaves millions of customers even if it's only 0.01% of the population that actually wants to see such a thing.

[NYS Techie]

See?

But on a more serious level, I think the genie is out of the bottle. The rich have zero ability to dominate the way they used to. They can SORT OF keep down maybe 75% of the population with low-rent jobs, but those people will just turn to a black or gray market to get the stuff they want, and download the rest as bootlegs. The upper 25% or so will create their own markets for products and out-compete the rich, who are still thinking in an outmoded, 20th century mode. It all leads to lower profits for the rich -- the more they abuse the lower classes, the less money they'll receive from them because they're not the only game in town anymore.

That upper 25% will start their own businesses, regardless of type, and interact directly with the public. This cuts the rich out of the picture; ordering over the internet makes a brick and mortar store unnecessary. On-demand manufacturing makes manufacturing plants unnecessary. Hell, 3-D printing allows people to DOWNLOAD your product and print it out! That cat's out of the bag too -- you can order a 3-D printer from a number of small companies online.

Even better, some people will GET rich by supporting non-rich entrepreneurs (like the guy who started Etsy) and this will give other rich people a financial motive to keep such services going.

So I think we're a lot better off than we were back then, and I don't think the rich will be able to undo this bit of internet magic.

Of course, I still think the rich are a bunch of fart-filled gasbags, and their desire for a zero-sum game makes them the biggest assholes that have ever existed. I mean think about it: back in the fifties, when people were paid a living wage and the middle class was supported, the rich earned money hand over fist and the economy was booming. By being such skinflints, they're killing the economy and reducing THEIR OWN PROFITS! So it's not really about money, it's about SPITE, and their hatred for the poor and working classes.

I hate them all. May God strip them of their wealth and turn them into toilet scrubbers in a New Mexico burrito restaurant.

[Darth Stateworker]

Well, all of what I said is predicated by whether or not they are smart enough to figure out how to work the camera and upload the videos to a PC - which is also a challenge for a great number of people... LOL

[NYS Techie]

Hey, Darth, it's rule 34: "34. There is porn of it. No exceptions."

There's also the corollary: "35. If no porn is found of it, it will be created.."

;D

www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=rules%20of%20the%20internet

[sunrunner]

[NYS Techie]

Rule 34 Proof!

(Mmmm yeah, Peter... How about those TPS reports?)

Attachments:

[Darth Stateworker]

Oh Jesus.... That last thing I want to see in the morning is Bill Lumbergh getting it on!!!

Let's try to move back on topic though on the public part of the forums, funny as Lumbergh is... ;D

[NYS Techie]

MMmmm... Yeeeeeeeaaaahhh... I'm going to need you to sort of... Get back on TRACK, mmmmmkay? (sips coffee). I'm thinking... (stretches back, looks at ceiling, looks at coffee) how about a comment about the Great Gatsby and how it applies to appointees in the state, mmmmkay? ;D

In all seriousness, I really don't think it's possible to return to the Gilded Age. We've got internet, and worldwide, always-on communications. Everybody can sell to everybody. Even people who can't create can make money on a black or gray market, or offer services. And anyone can learn anything online.

If I wasn't such a slacker, I could design and construct an arduino-based home internet filter, hire a Chinese company to manufacture it for me, take orders over the internet, and sell to anybody in the world. Think about that. Each of those steps would have previously taken a gigantic pile of money, all sorts of industry connections... Now, it's something you can do in your GARAGE.

Seriously, the cat's out of the bag. Why do you think so many corporations hate the internet so, and keep trying to turn it into Cable TV Part Two? The fact that they keep failing -- these HUGE, INCREDIBLY POWERFUL COMPANIES getting the snot kicked out of them by grassroots efforts started by COLLEGE KIDS -- reinforces my point.

Fun times!

[Darth Stateworker]

Actually Techie - if you look at income and wealth distribution now (wealth distribution as shown above), and back in the Gilded Age - the figures are close to being identical.

So while more intelligent people might have a "way out" that helps them avoid it, for the vast majority of the population, we have, in fact, come very close to returning to it.

*Edit: Here's a good link showing that we have now return to Gilded Age levels of inequality:

www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/26/income-inequality_n_1032632.html

[NYS Techie]

Yes, yes, OK, you started with a known conclusion, asked a question to which you already knew the answer, expected us to restate the answer, and when I disagreed, you revealed -- PRESTO! -- the aforementioned answer.

This does not invalidate my points. Think outside the box.

Whether or not income differences have reached the same level as the gilded age is IRRELEVANT to the question of whether we're returning to the gilded age.

The IMPORTANT part of the equation is, are poverty levels the same as in the gilded age? And they are not. Are people living in company towns, paid in company chits, spendable only in company stores? No. Does the federal government use troops to break strikes? No. Do tycoons hire private armies of Pinkertons to murder policemen and union workers? No. Are people living a bare subsistence existence, scraping by on a few cents a day, living in tenements barely able to safely house them, working eighteen hours a day and collapsing from exhaustion before they hit 40 (if they aren't killed by an industrial accident or fire first)? NO.

Walk into any working class guy's house, and you'll see a wide-screen TV, stereo, nice furniture, plenty of food in the fridge, a COMPUTER, Internet and cable television... He works a 40 hour week, too, has health care, dental, and a vision plan!

Complain about the rich all you want, I hate 'em too, but at least be honest about the situation. The lowest of us today has more advanced stuff, and more access to information, than the greatest robber baron of the Gilded Age. That working class Joe has more freedom of travel thanks to airlines, better health care, and more entertainment than any robber baron.

We aren't going back to any Gilded age, because you can't put the genie back in the bottle. The conditions that made the Gilded age possible NO LONGER EXIST.

Income differences may be the same, but that's about it. Is that worth being pissed off about? Sure. But let's not resort to hyperbole.