The Day The American Economy Stood Still

[boztopia]

http://boztopia.com/?p=439$700 billion, american businesses, art, auto industry, automakers, bad news, bailout, bankruptcy, bob corker, business, cable news, ceos, Congress, conservative, credit, culmination, GOP, gop members, green, greenspan, hollowed, Home Depot, honest money, honest work

Comments

Bioshock and culture shock

[boztopia]

I haven't played the game, but I heard that it was deliberately designed to satirize the lunatic extremes many Randians claim they want. As Teresa Nielsen-Hayden said recently, when systems collapse, the result isn't a pure capitalist meritocracy, but a return to tribalism where warlords rule, and these pasty-faced Objectivist motherfuckers will be the first to get rolled.

Ah, a man can dream.

Anyway, to your larger point, there's a simple answer to your complex question: National health care. The reason why foreign auto manufacturers can afford to pay their workers less is because they're not also seeing after their health care and retirement needs--they already have a strong safety net in place to buttress their costs for medical care and the like. In America, we don't have that, so GM, Chrysler, and Ford are handling the legacy costs of their retirees on top of their many boneheaded and short-sighted decisions.

There's no argument that modern unions can be hotbeds for laziness and corruption, but the principle remains sound, and we need them to continue to fight for the rights of those people that aren't considered part of the creative class.

In fact, that's an interesting point--the IT sector has been seriously anti-union from the jump, but what has that led to? Angry programmers and engineers watching their jobs be outsourced to Third World countries where workers are paid peanuts, don't know how to solve problems outside the rulebook, and cause consumers endless frustration with the language gaps. Is that efficient? Of course not, but as long as it costs less, it'll keep happening.

Labor and creativity in this country are not valued by those who have neither labored or are not creative. Unfortunately, those people are all in management.

Re: Bioshock and culture shock

[quetzalcoatl_9]

The IT culture is filled with libertarians who think they got where they are only by the efforts of their own genius, and that there was nothing else in the world that helped them. It's myopic. I think a lot of IT people are borderline autistic. I have a friend of a friend who thinks this way, except he slept on his girlfriend's couch for a few years while he got his shit together. Oh yeah, way to go Mr. Rand, your own bootstraps you say!

For serious

[boztopia]

A lot of them make valuable philosophical points that are worth listening to, but it's mixed in with this lunatic craziness that really boils down to venerating the cult of the individual over all else. You could write books (and many have) about the curious intersection of the IT industry with this kind of cultural bent.

In a time where we're finally beginning to remember the power of collective action, stuff like that is just not worth listening to anymore.