
Billionaires to the Barricades - msh
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/05/opinion/sunday/billionaires-to-the-barricades.html?smprod=nytcore-iphone&smid=nytcore-iphone-share&_r=0
======
wavefunction
It seems in some ways that the solutions proposed by these anxious wealthy are
limited or perhaps too simplistic. While I applaud their indulgence in
supporting a $15 minimum wage, that doesn't mean much if commodity prices grow
to erase those gains. It also puts further pressure on the remaining members
of the "middle class" as they are the primary consumers of minimum-wage based
services and will also be the ones to support the higher wages as costs are
passed along to consumers.

For decades our relatively equitable societies (minus racial inequalities and
other gradually ebbing social issues) have been dismantled by these folks in
the upper echelons of wealth and their willing conspirators in the upper-
middle class and middle class in order to arrive at the situation we find
ourselves in today.

They have promoted favorable propaganda through their media organs that has
poisoned the minds of the laboring classes towards collaboration, towards
entrepreneurialism, and self-agency. They have defunded and neutered social
institutions that worked contrary to their goals, even if innocuously like the
attempts to destroy quality public education and labor protections.

They have introduced a culture of consumption in place of production and
individual industry to better capture a greater share of the productive gains
furnished by technological and social advances. They have turned whole sectors
of life into cut-throat for-profit industries such as health care and
education.

And the worst part is that they have been incredibly effective in convincing
the average person that they have a better deal with a 1 in a million chance
of striking it rich through individual luck than a more pragmatic chance at
general comfort through social collaboration with their fellow humans. Their
propaganda has succeeded wildly in programming many people to distrust
government or cooperation in favor of a nihilistic anti-humanist lifestyle of
consumer consumption simply because it is more conducive to social control and
easing their ability to maintain their positions in society.

How then do they propose to put this genie back in the bottle, having now let
it loose these past several decades?

~~~
hackuser
> the worst part is that they have been incredibly effective in convincing the
> average person

Agreed. Remember 'Trickle Down Economics', over 30 years ago? If I understand
correctly, the idea was to cut taxes for the wealthy, and their resulting
increased investment would cause the economic benefits to 'trickle down' to
everyone else.

The surprising results are that when you cut taxes for high earners ... they
become wealthier. Wages for everyone else have been flat since then.

------
applecore
The full video of Rupert's opening keynote at the Luxury Summit [1], informed
by Brynjolfsson's recent monograph, _The Second Machine Age_ [2], is epic and
well worth a listen.

[1]:
[https://www.eiseverywhere.com/ehome/108160](https://www.eiseverywhere.com/ehome/108160)

[2]: [http://www.amazon.com/The-Second-Machine-Age-
Technologies/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Second-Machine-Age-
Technologies/dp/0393239357)

------
hackuser
Two concerns with how the socially concious wealthy might respond:

1) There's a flavor of the paranoid stories that seem prominent in that
community (where do they hear this?) and popular on the right wing in general.
Remember when Tom Perkins wrote a letter to the editor of the Wall St Journal
saying that the wealthy are facing a "Kristallnacht"? [1] The French
Revolution comparison and others like it reflects a similar mass paranoia,
which is dangerous.

2) It's essential to maintain democracy, i.e., that each citizen has an equal
vote. As taxes and public funding have been driven down, recipients have
turned more and more to the wealthy donors, with gives the donors the only
vote. And as the wealthy few provide more of the funding, they have more
arguments to drive taxes down further -- look at what we're doing with our
wealth! The problem is, we live in a democracy; we decide by vote how we want
our society to change and progress.

For a simple example, a new park in NYC is being funded by a wealthy donor; is
the land use, design etc. decided democratically by the citizens or by the
donor? I read that state universities in CA are forming partnerships with
corporations in lieu of lost state funding; can they risk offending those
corporations? Finally, the Koch brothers funded some economics institute at a
U. in Florida (FL State?) and greatly influence the research, including the
selection of faculty (IIRC; my memory of the story is imprecise, but you get
the idea).

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristallnacht](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristallnacht)

------
lscore720
Correct me if I'm wrong: a revolution could not actually happen, right? The
militarization of law enforcement and advanced weaponry of our government
would prevent the people from rising up. I find this discouraging, because I
do see this as a last resort if inequality continues at this rate.

~~~
hga
One could certainly happen in the US, for the people are _very_ well armed and
are continuing to arm themselves at a rate I find alarming, even if, or
because, I'm one of them.

The militarization of law enforcement doesn't mean much, e.g. look at how they
completely loose there shit in the face of one disturbed, not very clever or
effective assassin like Christopher Dorner [ADDED: there's a lot of cargo
culting here; giving 10 police officer M16s/M4s, SAWs and grenades does not
magically turn them into an US Army infantry squad]. At the other extreme, we
the people can completely swamp them in a matter of hours, but of course
motivating us to do that would be quite a trick.

"Advanced weaponry" is of no use without the will to use it. As an extreme
example, a few nukes could terminate ISIS with extreme prejudice and
collateral damage, but I don't know of any serious "hawk" even suggesting
[WAS: advocating] their use.

I have grave doubts about your closing point, "a last resort if inequality
continues at this rate"; is that so bad it's worth killing millions of people
to merely attempt to fix it, with many and perhaps the most likely end results
further emphasizing it? For that matter, who/what groups are going to start
pulling triggers?

~~~
scottwhudson
I don't understand why the pro-gun community doesn't take a stronger stance
against mass surveillance, "swamping" a group of law enforcement requires
communication that can't be deciphered, and the general public has little
interest in that. History tells us that communication wins wars (think
cracking the enigma machine), but we're losing the ability to communicate
privately at an alarming rate. How do you plan to "swarm" when the safest
method of communication is the carrier pigeon?

~~~
hga
What "harder stance" would you suggest we take??? We don't exactly view mass
surveillance with approval (note how that first vote in the House didn't break
along any obvious lines), and I'll attest that, when not legally required,
many companies in the guns and ammo business are _dreadfully_ bad at keeping
long term records....

The "swamping" concept I was referring to was something of a thought
experiment, e.g. imagine an out of science fiction effective speech broadcast
to enough people that it doesn't matter that the police know "the people" are
coming _right now_.

As for your general point, people who think about this sort of thing often
focus on the old techniques like cells, one time pads, etc., subverting those
listening in, etc. etc. Plus I'd add, just how effective do you really think
governments are, especially against "non-crazy" people. That's the real danger
I see, that "middle class" or thereabouts people like me get upset enough to
take up arms, instead of the usual suspects like the Weather Underground. Note
our "revolutionary" Founding Fathers, especially apropos this day after the
anniversary of Declaration of Independence.

And there's a relatively new "leaderless resistance" concept where individuals
not in close communications nonetheless take effective action. Again, see how
"effective" for some value of effective Christoper Dorner, working alone, was.
One man, or a small group, can be dreadfully effective nowadays.

~~~
reagency
Relatively new? Guerilla war and resistance is centuries old.

~~~
hga
Per Wikipedia, this concept only goes back to the early '60s, which matches my
general reading on this sort of thing in the '70s as I struggled to understand
what had just happened in the Vietnam War (I came of political age just as it
was ending):
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaderless_resistance#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaderless_resistance#History)

~~~
wavefunction
The early revolution certainly saw the emergence of guerilla warfare if not
earlier instances providing that same starting-point. War was a formal issue
for many clashes throughout the ages: generally an amassing of resources, a
relative comparison and victory to the amasser of "more" with some casualties
paid as an afterthought. But guerilla warfare presuposes that a more numerous
and detested occupier cannot win because they are faced with a choice of
extinguishing their enemies (the domestic population conquered) or being
driven from those same holdings.

------
Chevalier
>And yet the extremely wealthy do face an abiding risk from festering
inequity: The have-nots might finally lose patience and turn upon the haves.
“That’s the real danger,” Mr. Cohan said. “This little thing called the French
Revolution.”

Yeah... I keep hearing this threat from people who really ought to know
better. Inequality is a major talking point from the left, but it reflects
complete ignorance of how the world works.

The French Revolution is memorable precisely because it's so incredibly
unusual. Look at Mexico, India, China... almost anywhere in the world aside
from Europe and North America. There is virtually no society on the planet
that doesn't concentrate wealth and power among the elite one percent, gated
off from the lower classes. I'm not even speaking historically -- show me a
modern country on any other continent that even remotely approaches a middle
class.

Also, re-distributing wealth doesn't necessarily solve the cultural problems
that create inequality. Egypt massively subsidized food... and Egyptians
promptly had massive numbers of children that overwhelmed even the
ridiculously cheap food prices. Just this week, Afghanis threw acid in the
faces of schoolgirls trying to get an education. The Saudis cling to power
through massive welfare programs to pacify their increasingly fundamentalist
populace. Even here in the US, cultures that discourage education and
responsibility aren't suddenly going to churn out engineers and doctors if
billionaires give away their wealth.

The US will just continue down the well-trodden path that the rest of the
world has already blazed, where tiny pockets of wealthy elites try to shelter
themselves from the increasingly lawless masses. A revolution requires
organization and discipline, which is absurd to expect even before you
consider the unbeatable modern surveillance of all communications and
movements in developed countries. The only threat that masses pose is lawless
violence, much like what we saw in the Arab Spring -- but that's not really a
problem when you can concentrate the rabble outside of elite pockets.
Particularly when the rabble lack a unifying religious fervor, like what you
see in the coalescing identity of fundamentalist Islam across MENA and Europe.

So please stop making vague threats about the French Revolution, people. The
Second Amendment is not going to help rednecks water the tree of liberty. The
people are not going to surge against their capitalist oppressors as a tide of
justice or whatever. At worst, less developed countries will turn into
Libya... but the more likely result is India, where elites gate off the masses
and let them cultivate self-destructive cultures.

~~~
wpietri
Do you have something more concrete than sweeping assertions and the claim
that people you disagree with are ignorant? Because at least two of your
examples are totally wrong.

Mexico's revolution was in large part about wealth and land reform [1];
Zapata's famous battle cry was "tierra y libertad", land and freedom. Many of
the reforms persists, albeit in weakened form, even today. China's revolution
is known as the Chinese _Communist_ Revolution [2] for a reason. The spike in
conspicuous inequality is so new in China that the newly rich quite literally
need instruction on how to display their wealth [3].

I do think a revolution is unlikely to happen in the US any time soon, but
that's because we've got some tradition of taking care of people well enough
that they're mostly not desperate enough to start a shooting war with the
cops. E.g., during the 2008 crash, we spent zillions of dollars propping up
the economy until things got better. We also have enough issues with race that
we may see a race war before a class war. But it's a mistake to think it can't
happen here. If we're ever dumb enough to pursue an austerity program like the
one being inflicted upon Greece, where the interests of a small number of
bankers are being hugely privileged over the great bulk of a nation, I would
not be shocked at all to see something like Occupy Wall Street crossed with
the Cliven Bundy crew.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Revolution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Revolution)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Communist_Revolution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Communist_Revolution)

[3] [http://www.gq.com/story/chinas-richest](http://www.gq.com/story/chinas-
richest)

~~~
Chevalier
Put mildly, you are mistaken about Mexico. From ECLAC [1]:

>It should not be surprising that today more than half of its population is
poor (CONEVAL, 2014), a proportion similar to the one prevailing three decades
ago. Thus, more than 55 millions of Mexicans live in conditions of poverty.

>In these years, What happened to inequality? Well for anyone that visits
Mexico, the words of Alexander Von Humbold (1811), more than two hundred years
ago, still ring true:

>“Mexico is the country of inequality. Nowhere does there exist such a fearful
difference in the distribution of fortune, civilization, cultivation of the
soil, and population. …The capital and several other cities have scientific
establishments, which will bear a comparison with those of Europe. The
architecture of the public and private edifices, the elegance of the
furniture, the equipages, the luxury and dress of the women, the tone of
society, all announce a refinement to which the nakedness, ignorance, and
vulgarity of the lower people form the most striking contrast.”

>As the writer Augusto Monterroso wrote in 2002 (p.60): “the unique, truly
hyper-real characteristic of Mexico is its social inequality; the misery that
marks the everyday life of the immense majority of Mexicans.”

>The figures corroborate this image. As Table 1 shows there is an almost
27-fold difference between the average incomes of the top and the bottom
deciles. This difference is in stark contrast with the average ratio of 10 to
1 in the OECD (OECD 2014). More worrying, the top 1% of Mexico’s distribution
has an average annual income 47 times that of the poorest 10% (del Castillo
Negrete Rovira 2012). It is very likely that, were there numbers for smaller
slices at the top, the ratios would be astronomical.

Likewise, I admire your optimism that Chinese inequality will be solved just
as soon as the newly rich realize that they're Communists. I hope the future
will prove you right.

Neither a race war nor a class war will happen in the US. Seriously? Even
ignoring your optimistic assumptions of organized minorities (speaking as one,
there are shockingly few war pacts among us), how exactly would such a
revolution be organized, funded, armed, or fed? How would they conduct
communications?

More to the point, what possible ideology would unite these revolutionaries?
The Arab Spring had fundamentalist Islam as a unifying identity, but the US is
nowhere near as sympathetic to fundamentalism... and even if it were,
Christianity has proven far less conducive to the sort of grassroots-organized
violence you see in MENA or South Asia. At worst (best?), you'll see the sort
of anarchic lawlessness you see today in Detroit or Flint.

I'm not being sarcastic when I say I admire your idea of revolution. Many in
the Arab Spring shared the same ideals, and were in for a rude awakening when
their revolutions were instead dominated by religious fundamentalism and
racial/cultural feuds. But the US lacks the strong cultural/religious
ideologies necessary to organize armies and instigate revolutions -- which is
a damn good thing, but it also limits possible plebeian uprising. Which is
also a very good thing.

[1]
[http://www.worldeconomicsassociation.org/newsletterarticles/...](http://www.worldeconomicsassociation.org/newsletterarticles/inequality-
in-mexico/)

~~~
wpietri
> Mexico is the country of inequality

You seem to be saying that the revolution didn't work out as hoped. Which
isn't surprising; many things don't. But that doesn't mean the revolution
didn't happen, or that it wasn't motivated by inequality.

> Likewise, I admire your optimism that Chinese inequality will be solved just
> as soon as the newly rich realize that they're Communists. I hope the future
> will prove you right.

That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that China has already had one
revolution where inequality was a driving force. That the inequality is
returning is again no proof that a revolution couldn't happen.

> Neither a race war nor a class war will happen in the US.

The US has a long history of racial violence:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_racial_violence_in_the_Un...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_racial_violence_in_the_United_States)

Further, unrest usually starts with the people getting the shortest end of the
stick, and in the US that has a strong racial component. That sort of unrest
quickly sets off white people; during Ferguson, for example, you had heavily
armed white people coming to Ferguson to "help" and plenty more offering.

I agree they are unlikely to happen in the next couple of decades, though.

> the US lacks the strong cultural/religious ideologies necessary to organize
> armies and instigate revolutions

Keep telling yourself that. We've already had two organized revolutions in the
US: the War of Independence and the Civil War. The latter of which was a war
driven by race and economics.

Further, there are plenty of ideologies available on the fringe. See, e.g.,
Niewart's long look at the US protofacist right.

------
a3n
>Given the political groundswell for decreasing wealth disparity, Mr. West
added, “There’s a realization among the billionaire class that it’s actually
in their own self-interest to at least spread some of the wealth around.”

Especially since _all_ of their wealth comes from having figured out how to
keep a larger portion of the product of labor than labor itself.

~~~
WalterBright
How do you explain Steve Jobs, who stepped into the nearly bankrupt Apple and
transformed it into the largest company in the world?

~~~
a3n
I don't understand the question, relative to my statement.

~~~
WalterBright
Steve Jobs created enormous wealth, using the same group of people that were
working just as hard before, but were headed for bankruptcy.

I.e. it's not about how hard or long one works. It's about working
effectively.

~~~
a3n
He didn't make anything. His wealth, and Apple's wealth, would not have
happened without the labor of all those people who actually made the products.

Scenario A: "I want to make iPhones. All you people at Apple, and all you
people at FoxConn, get to work."

Result: iPhones and wealth.

Scenario B: "I want to make iPhones. I wish I had some laborers."

Result: Nothing.

Scenario C: "We workers want to make something. Mr Jobs, we hire you as our
manager. Get to work, and sell these things."

Result: maybe iPhones, maybe what we have today, maybe something else.

Ideas and management are great and necessary, but not sufficient and not
exclusive.

------
angersock
You can _buy_ a hell of a lot of people for less than a billion dollars,
either directly or indirectly via a _chance_ at making it rich.

As Gould said: "I can hire one-half of the working class to kill the other
half."

Hell, most of our industry is based, in one way or another, on the slim hope
that out of all of the other companies destroying user privacy and selling
data that _our company_ will be the one the market deems worthy of lots of
funding and investment.

------
Animats
_“That’s the real danger,” Mr. Cohan said. “This little thing called the
French Revolution.”_

Occupy Wall Street should have set up a guillotine. Just to send that message.

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
The government was prepared to assassinate leaders, in case they needed a
response.

~~~
jessaustin
If they had been serious rather than play-acting, the leaders would have
jumped at the chance to die for the "crime" of speaking truth to power.

Unless you're talking about secret assassinations carried out by traffic
accident or similarly deniable means, months after the fact to prevent a PR
problem, out of spite rather than to silence. I'm not sure what could be done
about that sort of thing.

~~~
wavefunction
rm_-rf_slash is referring to plans by the FBI to shoot Occupy protestors "if
the need arose" that were leaked after the main occupations were broken up.
The NYPD for example set up an elaborate surveillance center and identified
"leaders" in the movement for such a scenario. Other police units around the
country did the same or similar.

