
Trump-Sanders Signal an Oligarchy on the Brink of Collapse - naivepiano
http://evonomics.com/trump-sanders-phenomenon-is-a-sign-of-oligarchy/
======
tcoppi
This article is massive clickbait, but I'll comment anyway.

Trump and Sanders are manifestations of a long-term trend that has been
building at least since the 2008 Financial Crisis. People are dissatisfied
with the options they are presented politically, and economic participation is
at historically low levels. We have never been more prosperous, but at the
same time that prosperity and wealth gains are not only not very evenly
distributed(they never really were), but large swaths of society are
completely left out of them. In the early half of the century, it was a
democratizing effect that everyone was drinking a 10c glass of Coke. This is
just one example, you can also see it with iPhoneistas vs cheap Android
phones, etc. etc. Now the hip drinks are craft beers and fine wines, and a
former factory worker forced to work menial part time jobs is looked down upon
for drinking what he can afford, Bud lite and coke. There are major class
shiftings and reorganizations going on, and people living in and near large
prosperous cities have largely been immune and isolated from it.

We dismiss and ignore their rise at our own peril.

~~~
chao-
_> Now the hip drinks are craft beers and fine wines, and a former factory
worker forced to work menial part time jobs is looked down upon for drinking
what he can afford, Bud lite and coke._

Two related articles that may inform your discussions of this topic:

[http://www.vox.com/2016/4/21/11451378/smug-american-
liberali...](http://www.vox.com/2016/4/21/11451378/smug-american-liberalism)

[http://www.stirjournal.com/2016/04/01/i-know-why-poor-
whites...](http://www.stirjournal.com/2016/04/01/i-know-why-poor-whites-chant-
trump-trump-trump/)

For context, and lest anyone think I'm taking a cheap shot at liberalism or
progressivism, I definitely see myself in the first article. Particularly in
my teens and early twenties, I was about as smug as they came. Then I went
meta-smug by posing as an angry libertarian, and was utterly insufferable.
These days, I think and feel much the same, I just don't go out of my way to
socially advertise it (or I put more effort into not making others feel
small?).

 _> There are major class shiftings and reorganizations going on, and people
living in and near large prosperous cities have largely been immune and
isolated from it._

One place a prosperous urbanite might bump into this shift is when a city
winds up with a commuter police force due in part to high rent.

~~~
tcoppi
Those are both good articles that express much better than I the trends I am
seeing. Particularly, in the Vox article, when it talks about G.W. Bush being
a "dumb hick", you can see shades of this with Trump and his rhetoric today.

------
PaulHoule
To be fair, the "New Deal" regime was perceived to be failing circa 1970.

For instance, the New Deal left racism intact in the South, there was the
Vietnam war, the "Spirit of '68", high inflation, a huge expansion of
regulations leading to more problems (for instance the 1974 model year of
automobiles were awful because they had to satisfy stricter emission standards
without a perfected catalytic converter, etc.) There was the cult boom and the
strange fact that "The Greening of America" sold millions of copies.

In 1979 Merril Lynch was a penny stock, in many ways capitalism seemed to be
on the ropes. If you don't believe me look at "Legitimation Crisis" by
Habermas.

One contemporary diagnosis of the condition was that there was "too much
democracy" and if you look at what happened, all of a sudden the door got
slammed on people like Ralph Nader and the range of what you could ask
Washington for diminished over the 1980s, with the 1990s sealing the deal --
at that point the lobbying system became almost entirely focuses around tax
breaks for special interests with an occasional scam like "Medicare
Advantage".

For instance in the 1980s you still saw environmental legislation being
passed, but once Clinton got in the Republicans ran fanatical resistance until
getting solid control of the House and since then there has been gridlock.

People like the Koch brothers threw unlimited money at promoting right wing
ideas, Fox News has a 24 hours hate whenever there is a democrat in the White
House, etc.

This has led to a new condition of ungovernability which is as much a riot of
the rich (who funded 17 losers to run for the Republican party because
Conservatism makes them feel warm and fuzzy) as a riot of the middle class.

"Boaty McBoatface" sealed the deal for Brexit because it symbolizes what
"democracy" is about these days. They ask your opinion, because they want to
look legitimate, but they don't honor it.

~~~
orf
> "Boaty McBoatface" sealed the deal for Brexit because it symbolizes what
> "democracy" is about these days.

What does that even mean? I hope you don't honestly think that that poll had
any effect on the brexit situation?

I tend to side with the bookies over listening to polls, and the bookies odds
are on staying[1]. Apart from recent football mishaps they seem to be on the
ball, they saw Khan coming a mile off for example.

1\. [http://www.oddschecker.com/politics/british-politics/eu-
refe...](http://www.oddschecker.com/politics/british-politics/eu-
referendum/referendum-on-eu-membership-result)

~~~
emodendroket
I guess what he means is that more substantive issues work the same way as the
boat naming thing -- they ask for your vote but then if they don't like the
result they'll toss it.

~~~
humanrebar
Good point. I'll be controveraial and point out that there are parallels to
Prop 8 in California here. And the immigration legislation in Arizona that was
overturned.

Tell me that doesn't feed into the Trump candidacy.

~~~
emodendroket
Well, IMO the biggest thing is the economy -- people feel like they were sold
a bill of goods with the experts coming in and telling them that free trade
would be great and make them more prosperous and now they live in towns that
are shadows of their past selves and suffer under- and unemployment.

~~~
humanrebar
The parts of the economy that Trump supporters see are absolutely affected by
immigration policy.

~~~
emodendroket
Well, that's true, but it'd be less of a hot-button issue if so many factories
weren't shuttered.

Anyway, your point about judicial review is well taken -- whether you're the
type of person to get riled up about Prop 8 or about Citizens United it's
basically anti-democratic.

------
Kurtz79
I find somewhat hilarious that the supposed harbingers of this "collapse" are
staunch members of said "oligarchy" (an elitist billionaire and a career
politician).

Revolutions are not as they once were...

~~~
sqldba
Bernie is a career politician trying to do the right thing though.

~~~
awesomerobot
Trying to do what his limited view of the right thing is. There's a lot of
good stuff there, but a blanket "make everything better for everyone" ignores
a lot of the nuanced problems of inequality.

For example: free healthcare and college — great, that's what a civilized
country should have... but while that reduces an economic burden on the poor,
it also keeps dollars in the pockets of the rich and our tax system is so
broken that it doesn't necessarily mean you can recover that money.

While much less appealing, Clinton's criticisms of Sanders for giving free
college to the rich seems fundamentally rooted in the reality that while yes,
eventually al“l of these things should be public services — but in the
immediacy it's not really helpful to help everyone out the same amount because
that's keeping everyone in the same place.

------
Kinnard
>"What we’re now facing is a combination of: 1) people who still believe; and
2) people who doubt, but: a) would have to sacrifice their livelihood to act
on it; or, b) are willing to leave the system but don’t necessarily know what
comes next."

We're approaching a tipping point where one of these groups is bigger than all
the others . . .

------
coldcode
Like in the movies, I imagine the next chapter is "The Oligarchy Strikes
Back".

------
discardorama
How about this headline:

Hillary's Nomination Signal an Oligarchy Doing Fine

(Hillary is all but nominated, I know)

------
awinter-py
I like that someone is taking a systems perspective on this but the '26
abandoned cities' stuff doesn't seem relevant.

Yes every underclass represents a threat of revolt. But describing this
oligarchy as rich stealing from the poor is not completely accurate.

The mesopotamians had a 'palace economy' where a large portion of the wealth
(i.e. grain) was brought to a central city to be redistributed to non-farmers
by the priests. (hence the word 'hierarchy'). The current global economy is to
some extent a palace economy (explains the higher salaries and prices in
cities) but our economies are no longer 70% agricultural, 30% stonework and a
small slice 'prayer services'. More of the economic work than ever is
concentrated at the 'top' \-- maybe not in the top slice but certainly in the
top fifth. If the bottom half of mesopotamian society disappeared the priests
would starve. If that happened in, say, switzerland their economic metrics
would blip up.

Not saying that's a good or a bad thing but it defies the article's definition
of oligarchy.

------
jessaustin
_1980-2000s: Reagan removes the Fairness Doctrine..._

TIL Rush Limbaugh will cause the end of the world. Hilarious.

~~~
ideonexus
Not the end of the world, but I do see him historically as the beginning of
the end for the Republican Party. I was in college when I first heard of Rush
Limbaugh. Before him, Republicans were these very stuffy folks like William
Buckley Jr, who came to our campus and bored many to tears with highly-
intellectual and logical arguments that were extremely challenging and
generated a great deal of cognitive dissonance for me. Republicans were
considered the intellectual party back in those days.

Then Limbaugh came along, never referencing anything he said or wrote,
constantly contradicting himself and making offensive cracks like calling a
12-year-old Chelsea Clinton the White House dog. My young Republican friends
loved him, chanted slogans like "Rush is Right!" and labeled themselves
"dittoheads." Anyone who pointed out Limbaugh's contradictory logic or took
issue with his offensive statements was dismissed as being "politically
correct."

Flash forward 25 years and Limbaugh is now considered tame in comparison to
Coulter, Savage, and some of the other voices that have followed in his
footsteps. I was sad to hear that William Buckley, who I still admire
intellectually even if many of his positions are anathema to me, was largely
forgotten and ignored in his final years. Trump's nomination would not be
possible without Limbaugh laying the groundwork for him two and a half decades
ago.

Some on the left are gloating about it, but it frightens me. America needs a
plurality of voices debating issues and policy logically in order to thrive.
We can't let it become one party of power on the left and an easily demonized
opposition party on the right, but with the Republican party falling apart...
that's the way it seems to be going.

*Edited for grammar.

~~~
whyenot
In Limbaugh's lexicon, feminists turned into "feminazis" because advocating
for equal rights for women was somehow equatable to a group advocating
genocide.

------
wycx
For those interested in the relevant history that lead the US to this point,
may I suggest American Character by Colin Woodard [1].

The ideology that drives the oligarchy (and arguably modern libertarianism) is
descended from that which informed the founding of the Carolina and West
Indian slave colonies.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/American-Character-History-Struggle-
In...](http://www.amazon.com/American-Character-History-Struggle-
Individual/dp/0525427899)

Colin Woodard's previous book, American Nations was the most interesting book
I read last year.

------
donatj
I'm very hopeful this election gives the third parties a boost. Unless I
suffer a terrible stroke between now and the election I know I will be voting
libertarian simply because I couldn't live with myself voting for Trump or
Hillary.

~~~
filoeleven
I would like to see a coordinated effort from those of us who won't vote for
the mainstream candidates.

If any 3rd party candidate gets over 5% of the vote, they must by law be
included in the debates next time around. We know that a 3rd party will not
win the presidential election this time around, so coordinating our votes to
get one over 5% in order to inject a new voice into the process seems like a
win, even if the party is one I am generally opposed to.

~~~
Kinnard
This is a good idea. I was unaware of the 5% rule. Would you consider putting
up a site?

------
FLUX-YOU
It's not the zombie apocalypse we wanted, but at least the bunker still works.

------
dmode
I strongly believe Trump and Sanders signal to the rabid balkanization of
media (aided by proliferation of web, mobile, and social media), rather than
an oligarchy on the brink of collapse. It has never been easier to read
clickbait radical news that provides ample confirmation bias. Globally
speaking, Americans have by far one of the best quality of lives anywhere in
the world. But hearing Sanders - Trump, you would think we live in some war
ravaged developing country.

------
sickbeard
How is it going to collapse when they will pretty much do the exact same thing
the previous governments did?

------
lr4444lr
Well, that headline is click bait if I ever saw it...

~~~
Kinnard
I disagree, I think it's both true and succinct.

