
Side Effects of the Growth of Wealth (1999) - howrude
http://www.nytimes.com/books/99/02/07/daily/turbo-book-review.html
======
fluxic
> _Using the Microsoft Corporation as his benchmark, Mr. Luttwak says that the
> new high-tech titans produce much capital but relatively few new jobs. The
> rich get richer, but those driven out of work by the computer revolution are
> forced to take lower-paying service jobs. The unskilled they displace turn
> rationally to criminal activity like drug dealing._

Prescient.

Facebook is a $400B corporation, one of the world's most valuable, and it
employs, what, 15k people? Before, your bigcorps like Carnegie Steel and
Standard Oil employed hundreds of thousands.

We no longer need labourers for factory work, to fight wars, to flip burgers
or drive trucks. People say that automation will only create more jobs and
freedom, but I have a hard time believing that. Automation is the ultimate
triumph of capital over labour. The rich don't need Middle America any more,
because most Middle Americans don't have any worthwhile skills. Americans in
"flyover country" are increasingly unemployed, filing for disability, and
dying of opioid overdoses. And people wonder why Trump got elected.

I'm parroting the points made in this delightful talk here, by a YC alum no
less:
[https://www.facebook.com/antonio.f.garcia.martinez/posts/101...](https://www.facebook.com/antonio.f.garcia.martinez/posts/10106466808735263)

~~~
gragas
I think you are right that "automation is the ultimate triumph of capital over
labour," but I'd really like to point out that knowledge capital is a huge
part of this. Having an employable skill these days is becoming more and more
synonymous with having some sort of knowledge capital, because essentially
everything that doesn't require knowledge capital can be automated away.

>Americans in "flyover country" are increasingly unemployed, filing for
disability, and dying of opioid overdoses.

That's not true in general, and it implies that states like California don't
face these same issues. If you look at the unemployment rate of states, the 25
states with the lowest unemployment rates are all "flyover country." [1]

I think the root of these problems are caused by structural unemployment.
Living in a flyover state is a great predictor of these problems, but it is
not the cause.

1\. [https://www.statista.com/statistics/200017/state-
unemploymen...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/200017/state-unemployment-
rate-in-the-us/)

~~~
fluxic
[stupid comment, deleted]

~~~
hawkice
You have this backwards. New Mexico is #1 for unemployment only if you're
going for a high score. Obviously, high unemployment should match low labor
participation, which is what you see.

The numbers make a lot more sense than you think.

[https://www.bls.gov/web/laus/laumstrk.htm](https://www.bls.gov/web/laus/laumstrk.htm)

compares well with your link,

[https://www.expresspros.com/Newsroom/America-
Employed/Expres...](https://www.expresspros.com/Newsroom/America-
Employed/Express-Releases-State-by-State-Analysis-of-Labor-Force-
Participation-
Rates.aspx?&referrer=http://www.expresspros.com/Newsroom/America-Employed-
News-List.aspx)

------
mabbo
> In the end, he offers no prescription for turbo-capitalism, merely predicts
> that "the wave of the future could be populism," the essence of which is
> always "a revolt of the less educated against elite rule, elite opinions,
> elite values and the elite's consensus on how government and the economy
> should be run."

Published in 1999. Sounds like he got at least some things right.

------
dpark
> _As for Rule Three, it is for the non-Calvinists who reject Rule Two, "who
> are not paralyzed by guilt and who are too uneducated to express their
> resentment legally." For them "there is only one possible form of
> expression: to break the law, by engaging in criminal activities such as
> murder, armed robbery, violent assault, rape and the smoking of marijuana in
> pipes or home-made cigarettes." Followers of Rule Three end up in prison._

This feels really out of touch. Aside from the stilted language ("home-made
cigarettes" in 1999, really?), lumping people who use marijuana with rapists
and murderers is absurd. Might as well lump in people who jaywalk.

~~~
macawfish
Not everyone who jaywalks is following the third law, but jaywalking might be
a good indication that you are! From what I can tell, the idea of those three
laws is to emphasize the first two. Anyone who isn't falling for the mentality
of the first two risks, by their 'out of the box' tendencies, being tossed in
the clink with the rapists and murderers.

In ultra-capitalist America, they are saying, money's power is protected at
the cost of some human freedoms, such as the freedom to smoke homemade
cigarettes that didn't feed into the industry. If you don't make the
sacrifices required by the first two laws, you might find yourself sacrificed.
It's safest to conform.

------
jondubois
There is definitely something in it when the article links turbo-capitalism to
"the destruction of authenticity".

I find that wealthy people lack authenticity and more often than not, they
seem to be completely unaware of their predicament.

They've seemingly lost their ability for self-reflection (if they ever had it)
- That's why many of them trust financially-motivated personal growth gurus,
success coaches, high-end psychologists and advisors to guide them.

A lot of wealthy people don't seem to fully appreciate that absolutely
everyone around them is constantly trying to milk them - Eventually, they get
so used to it that they start to think that they're living in some pink cloud
surrounded by friendly people and they forget that these so-called friends
always have their skinny hands on those fat udders of theirs.

~~~
averagewall
From your tone, I would guess you feel offended that other people are richer
than you so you're looking for ways to find faults with them to convince
yourself that it's actually you who's superior.

Perhaps you should compare who is doing the most good to other people. To me,
that's a more important quality than the nebulous ones you identified -
"authenticity" and "self-reflection". You can always find some arbitrary trait
that makes somebody you don't like look bad. Try "diligence", "humility",
"intelligence", "motivation", "non-violence", "work ethic", "laziness" and see
how your wealthy family members stack up then.

~~~
jondubois
I don't see myself as superior. I'm jealous of wealthy people. My real
motivation for writing the previous comment is that I'm just not good at
pretending and so I'm bitter about missing out on opportunities because of
that.

For example, I see that the kinds of people who get funding are those who are
really good at presenting themselves in a particular way. You don't need to be
smart, you just need to look/act smart, talk fast and tell the prospective
investor exactly what they want to hear - In the current economy, only people
who are really good at faking seem to succeed.

Those who are good at faking are those who don't realise that they're faking.
"Fake it till you make it" is the name of the game. Nobody can lie better than
those who lie to themselves.

------
BrailleHunting
Turbo-capitalism's full name is "suicidal, greedy, libertarian, utopian
delusions worshipping anarchy and extinction, while scapegoating sensible
democratic socialism (government and commonwealth) as 'the great Satan.'"

------
stefco_
"The god of the market-worshipers that celebrate the glories of turbo-
capitalism is Adam Smith, but theirs is a devotion that crucially depends on
not reading him."

I found this amusing. It seems that fanatical devotion to dogmatic source
texts is always predicated on not having read the source text to begin with.
(Thinking the words in your head without digesting their meaning does not
qualify as reading IMO.)

~~~
zeckalpha
In fact, he warned of this very thing. No one listens.

~~~
dredmorbius
Where, specifically?

(Genuinely curious, as I, too, strongly advocate actually reading Smith:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/4cyroa/adam_sm...](https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/4cyroa/adam_smiths_lost_legacy_or_why_you_should_read/))

