a broken economic model; an educated and technologically empowered young
September 22, 2014 2:16 PM Subscribe
Scotland’s young, feisty yes generation has nowhere to go
Scottish politics has been about class, community, land and nation. But the working-class youth of Clydeside found themselves cut adrift from these traditional markers. This is a generation born when the death of communism was already a finished fact; when Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History was already in its paperback edition. To them, neoliberalism was not a spectacular historical eruption but simply the world around them. As it destroyed the remains of the industrial society their fathers knew, rendering the stone churches and granite docksides as meaningless and depopulated as medieval ruins, they did what they were told to do: get an education and a low-paid job.
Scottish politics has been about class, community, land and nation. But the working-class youth of Clydeside found themselves cut adrift from these traditional markers. This is a generation born when the death of communism was already a finished fact; when Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History was already in its paperback edition. To them, neoliberalism was not a spectacular historical eruption but simply the world around them. As it destroyed the remains of the industrial society their fathers knew, rendering the stone churches and granite docksides as meaningless and depopulated as medieval ruins, they did what they were told to do: get an education and a low-paid job.
I think that youth are going to figure this out for themselves
That might be a bit difficult, what with all the pre-existing power structures standing in the way.
posted by Dysk at 2:41 PM on September 22, 2014 [21 favorites]
That might be a bit difficult, what with all the pre-existing power structures standing in the way.
posted by Dysk at 2:41 PM on September 22, 2014 [21 favorites]
There is NOTHING WRONG with day glo and 'skunkweed' (sic)
posted by yoHighness at 2:46 PM on September 22, 2014
posted by yoHighness at 2:46 PM on September 22, 2014
I mean fuck off Guardian dude I was all agreeing with you until you got to the patronising bit at the end. I think I need some skunkweed to calm me down here
posted by yoHighness at 2:47 PM on September 22, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by yoHighness at 2:47 PM on September 22, 2014 [1 favorite]
Realizing that the system is designed to make you fail so a tiny group of rich parasites can increase their net worth by a fraction? That's the first step. I don't think we know what the second step is yet. Maybe a tax regime that punishes idle capital and hands-off investment is a good start.
posted by 1adam12 at 2:51 PM on September 22, 2014 [15 favorites]
posted by 1adam12 at 2:51 PM on September 22, 2014 [15 favorites]
He didn't say there was anything wrong with those things. He certainly doesn't deserve a "fuck off" from someone who agrees with him. Do go have a smoke.
posted by General Tonic at 2:52 PM on September 22, 2014
posted by General Tonic at 2:52 PM on September 22, 2014
Vibrissae: "I think that youth are going to figure this out for themselves"
I'm not so convinced. I think there's going to be a lot of fighting over scraps as the labor market dwindles and very few options for those who refuse to grub in the dirt.
posted by Strass at 2:53 PM on September 22, 2014 [6 favorites]
I'm not so convinced. I think there's going to be a lot of fighting over scraps as the labor market dwindles and very few options for those who refuse to grub in the dirt.
posted by Strass at 2:53 PM on September 22, 2014 [6 favorites]
Realizing that the system is designed to make you fail so a tiny group of rich parasites can increase their net worth by a fraction? That's the first step. I don't think we know what the second step is yet. Maybe a tax regime that punishes idle capital and hands-off investment is a good start.
A tax regime imposed by the system you start off saying is designed to benefit the rich parasites you are trying to impose said tax regime on?
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 2:54 PM on September 22, 2014 [3 favorites]
A tax regime imposed by the system you start off saying is designed to benefit the rich parasites you are trying to impose said tax regime on?
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 2:54 PM on September 22, 2014 [3 favorites]
Strass: I'm not so convinced. I think there's going to be a lot of fighting over scraps as the labor market dwindles and very few options for those who refuse to grub in the dirt.
I dunno. There's going to be that, no question, but there could easily start being a lot of unrest as people can't succeed by any means they have access to. It'll go up in direct proportion to how severe their deprivation is - either food, or medical care, or the ability to buy houses or raise kids, etc.
What worries me is that the ultra-rich will preserve the present scheme by making pointless work; either creating a huge and unnecessary service class for themselves, or funneling people into useless or antagonistic jobs that basically don't make anything better for anyone. Stuff like direct-email advertising where literally everyone but your company would be better off if you stopped doing your job. I would say a lot of jobs already fit into that category.
The reason this possibility worries me is that trying to starve the poor will merely bring revolution, but it feels like this might actually work, if you don't mind completely squandering most of the potential of humanity.
posted by Mitrovarr at 3:09 PM on September 22, 2014 [8 favorites]
I dunno. There's going to be that, no question, but there could easily start being a lot of unrest as people can't succeed by any means they have access to. It'll go up in direct proportion to how severe their deprivation is - either food, or medical care, or the ability to buy houses or raise kids, etc.
What worries me is that the ultra-rich will preserve the present scheme by making pointless work; either creating a huge and unnecessary service class for themselves, or funneling people into useless or antagonistic jobs that basically don't make anything better for anyone. Stuff like direct-email advertising where literally everyone but your company would be better off if you stopped doing your job. I would say a lot of jobs already fit into that category.
The reason this possibility worries me is that trying to starve the poor will merely bring revolution, but it feels like this might actually work, if you don't mind completely squandering most of the potential of humanity.
posted by Mitrovarr at 3:09 PM on September 22, 2014 [8 favorites]
So where, now, does the disappointed Yes generation go? Not to the SNP, for sure – or not in large numbers. And not to Labour: a big part of the marginalised urban poor of western Scotland has had it with them. The revolt on Clydeside was a swing to a form of populist leftism for which there is no adequate political expression.
Has neoliberalism commoditized political expression so much that yesterday's movements have become passé fads? The Greens. The Pirate Party. Heck, start an Occupy Party. There are plenty of good symbols to use as rallying points.
posted by Apocryphon at 3:17 PM on September 22, 2014 [3 favorites]
Has neoliberalism commoditized political expression so much that yesterday's movements have become passé fads? The Greens. The Pirate Party. Heck, start an Occupy Party. There are plenty of good symbols to use as rallying points.
posted by Apocryphon at 3:17 PM on September 22, 2014 [3 favorites]
The Greens, along with the SSP and and, of course, the SNP have added thousands of new members over the last few days. If they can maintain Indyref levels of engagement through the Westminster elections, where there's fairly serious talk of a cross party alliance backing the candidate most likely to win, the Yes Generation may just shake things up yet.
posted by IanMorr at 3:28 PM on September 22, 2014 [6 favorites]
posted by IanMorr at 3:28 PM on September 22, 2014 [6 favorites]
He didn't say there was anything wrong with those things
He said "we" didn't offer this generation a clear alternative to these things. Ie something better. I had a smoke but he can still get stuffed. (It did affect my vocabulary)
posted by yoHighness at 3:31 PM on September 22, 2014 [1 favorite]
He said "we" didn't offer this generation a clear alternative to these things. Ie something better. I had a smoke but he can still get stuffed. (It did affect my vocabulary)
posted by yoHighness at 3:31 PM on September 22, 2014 [1 favorite]
aside:
There is a political vacuum in working-class Glagow
Oh, how I love you, my dear sweet Grauniad.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 3:33 PM on September 22, 2014 [11 favorites]
There is a political vacuum in working-class Glagow
Oh, how I love you, my dear sweet Grauniad.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 3:33 PM on September 22, 2014 [11 favorites]
I think Nicola Sturgeon's SNP will be really quite left wing; she's certainly to the left of Salmond and she's almost certainly going to look to split the Scottish Labour vote.
posted by jaduncan at 3:34 PM on September 22, 2014
posted by jaduncan at 3:34 PM on September 22, 2014
Welcome to a permanent future of structural unemployment, as automation begins to replace human work. This is one of the greatest looming, long-term social problems. It will not abate. How we are going to adapt to this structural scenario is anyone's guess.
I don't have a solution for this, but I worry about the trend to act like a basic income will solve it. It seems to me that treats an awful lot of people like their only value is as consumers and if we can just put money into their hands, all will be right with the world. Yet, that approach strips humans of any role beyond consumption in their relationship to the economy.
I think we need to think about things like that while we contemplate what might work. Humans need to be treated like whole people and not just consumers for the economic machine to feed.
posted by Michele in California at 3:44 PM on September 22, 2014 [6 favorites]
I don't have a solution for this, but I worry about the trend to act like a basic income will solve it. It seems to me that treats an awful lot of people like their only value is as consumers and if we can just put money into their hands, all will be right with the world. Yet, that approach strips humans of any role beyond consumption in their relationship to the economy.
I think we need to think about things like that while we contemplate what might work. Humans need to be treated like whole people and not just consumers for the economic machine to feed.
posted by Michele in California at 3:44 PM on September 22, 2014 [6 favorites]
We need to start thinking about how to keep people busy, and at the same time enable them to have sufficient food, clothing and shelter.
Hey, the first half of that problem is solved. We don't need to figure out how to keep people busy, since we people are very good at keeping ourselves busy with sports and games and crafts and art and sex and love and scientific research and books and poems and play and endless, endless, endless interpersonal drama, at least when we're not being coerced into wasting our time working for capitalists.
So how about we just distribute the goods won through use of industrial automation evenly and let everyone get to all the important business we were born to do: sport, games, crafts, art, sex, science, love, novel-reading, novel-writing, poetry and interpersonal drama.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 3:46 PM on September 22, 2014 [43 favorites]
Hey, the first half of that problem is solved. We don't need to figure out how to keep people busy, since we people are very good at keeping ourselves busy with sports and games and crafts and art and sex and love and scientific research and books and poems and play and endless, endless, endless interpersonal drama, at least when we're not being coerced into wasting our time working for capitalists.
So how about we just distribute the goods won through use of industrial automation evenly and let everyone get to all the important business we were born to do: sport, games, crafts, art, sex, science, love, novel-reading, novel-writing, poetry and interpersonal drama.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 3:46 PM on September 22, 2014 [43 favorites]
Lets worry about optimizing the potential of all people after we have fed, clothed, sheltered, and provided security and medical care for them. Let's not use abstract values like "only having a role in society as a consumer" as an excuse to withhold the bare minimum needed to actually survive and have a decent life.
posted by rustcrumb at 3:48 PM on September 22, 2014 [11 favorites]
posted by rustcrumb at 3:48 PM on September 22, 2014 [11 favorites]
A basic income leaves space for self-actualisation, much as many of the 80s rock bands were on the dole when that was still possible as a life.
posted by jaduncan at 3:49 PM on September 22, 2014 [4 favorites]
posted by jaduncan at 3:49 PM on September 22, 2014 [4 favorites]
You Can't Tip a Buick: "So how about we just distribute the goods won through use of industrial automation evenly and let everyone get to all the important sport, games, crafts, art, sex, science, love, novel-reading, novel-writing, poetry and interpersonal drama business we were born to do."
But we can't reward the poor for being lazy... (is how the argument goes)
posted by Strass at 3:49 PM on September 22, 2014
But we can't reward the poor for being lazy... (is how the argument goes)
posted by Strass at 3:49 PM on September 22, 2014
Perhaps things will change when people start to organize under the principle that it's far better to reward the poor for being lazy than it is to reward the rich for being fucks.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 3:51 PM on September 22, 2014 [14 favorites]
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 3:51 PM on September 22, 2014 [14 favorites]
Considering that we have to find a way to get off carbon or we're doomed, I don't know where all of this "automation means no more jobs" stuff is coming from. Those windmills and solar panels aren't going to erect themselves.
posted by wuwei at 3:56 PM on September 22, 2014 [4 favorites]
posted by wuwei at 3:56 PM on September 22, 2014 [4 favorites]
What worries me is that the ultra-rich will preserve the present scheme by making pointless work; either creating a huge and unnecessary service class for themselves, or funneling people into useless or antagonistic jobs that basically don't make anything better for anyoneCharlie Brooker has a theory.
posted by fullerine at 3:56 PM on September 22, 2014 [4 favorites]
fullerine: "Charlie Brooker has a theory."
Black Mirror is a really amazing show, not only for being very creative speculative sci-fi, but also for existing – it's not your average hour of TV entertainment (and was an 'anthology show' before they got popular). The ending of this particular episode was chilling and left me thinking long after the episode ended.
posted by Strass at 4:03 PM on September 22, 2014 [1 favorite]
Black Mirror is a really amazing show, not only for being very creative speculative sci-fi, but also for existing – it's not your average hour of TV entertainment (and was an 'anthology show' before they got popular). The ending of this particular episode was chilling and left me thinking long after the episode ended.
posted by Strass at 4:03 PM on September 22, 2014 [1 favorite]
The ending of this particular episode was chilling and left me thinking long after the episode ended.
Fifteen Million Merits bothered me because it seems to violate the first law of thermodynamics.
posted by Nevin at 4:50 PM on September 22, 2014
Fifteen Million Merits bothered me because it seems to violate the first law of thermodynamics.
posted by Nevin at 4:50 PM on September 22, 2014
Stuff like direct-email advertising where literally everyone but your company would be better off if you stopped doing your job. I would say a lot of jobs already fit into that category.
I'd say it's even further along than you think. When I look for work online, the primary thing I see available for writers is evil SEO stuff. Another popular entry-level job is the telemarketer.
posted by JHarris at 4:56 PM on September 22, 2014
I'd say it's even further along than you think. When I look for work online, the primary thing I see available for writers is evil SEO stuff. Another popular entry-level job is the telemarketer.
posted by JHarris at 4:56 PM on September 22, 2014
After a career change 5 years ago, I started out writing "evil SEO" stuff, but the industry has been radically transformed. So now I get paid to write quality marketing copy. "Engagement" is the new buzzword, and you can only get engagement by created "content" that people actually find useful.
I also do quite a bit of email marketing. Email is an interesting discipline because it's permission-based. You're only sending emails to people who have opted-in to receiving them. And to preserve that engagement, you gotta offer them quality in their inbox.
I've competed against marketers in "low-cost countries", and their main differentiating feature is low cost. They may deliver quality, but for the most part SEO's in cheaper countries have not figured out the shift to quality and engagement.
I also had the chance to work with another SEO agency earlier this year, and they were very old-school when it came to SEO and content (I suspect most of their biz comes from PPC, which is another vertical with its own rules). Anyway, their approach to SEO was very old-skool ("Get links for the client any way you can, including crappy directories), and it was not a good fit for me.
I just thought I would mention that. Online marketing and e-commerce have totally evolved.
I am actually helping develop marketing curriculum for a local post-secondary institution, and in our discussion today the question was, "Will SEO still be relevant a year from now when the program launches?" I argued it won't be.
But what will be relevant will be online marketing skills - understanding your audience and what they want, choosing the right tactics, measuring success.
I don't think this has anything to do with the Scottish referendum. I do think that there seems to be a lot of challenges for the 16+ cohort in a de-industrialized economy, and from what I see in the UK, there is no one (save for the SNP) with a real, heartfelt strategy for creating prosperity within a social justice framework.
posted by Nevin at 5:07 PM on September 22, 2014 [4 favorites]
I also do quite a bit of email marketing. Email is an interesting discipline because it's permission-based. You're only sending emails to people who have opted-in to receiving them. And to preserve that engagement, you gotta offer them quality in their inbox.
I've competed against marketers in "low-cost countries", and their main differentiating feature is low cost. They may deliver quality, but for the most part SEO's in cheaper countries have not figured out the shift to quality and engagement.
I also had the chance to work with another SEO agency earlier this year, and they were very old-school when it came to SEO and content (I suspect most of their biz comes from PPC, which is another vertical with its own rules). Anyway, their approach to SEO was very old-skool ("Get links for the client any way you can, including crappy directories), and it was not a good fit for me.
I just thought I would mention that. Online marketing and e-commerce have totally evolved.
I am actually helping develop marketing curriculum for a local post-secondary institution, and in our discussion today the question was, "Will SEO still be relevant a year from now when the program launches?" I argued it won't be.
But what will be relevant will be online marketing skills - understanding your audience and what they want, choosing the right tactics, measuring success.
I don't think this has anything to do with the Scottish referendum. I do think that there seems to be a lot of challenges for the 16+ cohort in a de-industrialized economy, and from what I see in the UK, there is no one (save for the SNP) with a real, heartfelt strategy for creating prosperity within a social justice framework.
posted by Nevin at 5:07 PM on September 22, 2014 [4 favorites]
Fifteen Million Merits bothered me because it seems to violate the first law of thermodynamics.
It makes more sense if you assume that the real purpose is to keep the useless labor pool completely occupied and exhausted.
posted by George_Spiggott at 5:11 PM on September 22, 2014 [2 favorites]
It makes more sense if you assume that the real purpose is to keep the useless labor pool completely occupied and exhausted.
posted by George_Spiggott at 5:11 PM on September 22, 2014 [2 favorites]
Nevin, you say it's evolved, but then you go on to point out both SEOs from "low cost countries" aren't as "engaged," and then how earlier this year you worked with an old-school SEO company that's pretty much as evil as I pegged it as being. It sounds more like you're an exception to the rule. I'd love it if it was transforming as you say, oooh believe me. (OFF-TOPIC ASIDE, probably best to take it to MeMail after this: And anyway, I don't look for "engagement" in my own personal email box. If I want information, I get it through Google. This all sounds like something that was hashed out and abandoned years ago. Anyone remember Lockergnome?)
And what are online marketing skills, ultimately, other than a way to get monied employers to pick you instead of someone else, that is to say, empty money spent, not production at all, but just a way of shuffling counters around, using it as a stool to make yourself slightly more visible than the thousand guys around you? From where I'm sitting, that's exactly the problem these youth are facing -- to get good jobs, they basically have to fight against each other to become visible to the people with the checkbooks, keeping them divided for the benefit of the rich.
posted by JHarris at 5:26 PM on September 22, 2014 [1 favorite]
And what are online marketing skills, ultimately, other than a way to get monied employers to pick you instead of someone else, that is to say, empty money spent, not production at all, but just a way of shuffling counters around, using it as a stool to make yourself slightly more visible than the thousand guys around you? From where I'm sitting, that's exactly the problem these youth are facing -- to get good jobs, they basically have to fight against each other to become visible to the people with the checkbooks, keeping them divided for the benefit of the rich.
posted by JHarris at 5:26 PM on September 22, 2014 [1 favorite]
It makes more sense if you assume that
...it's a metaphor for repetitive work and modern bread, circuses, meaningless rewards and the death of authenticicity as everything is commodified including resistance to commodification?
posted by jaduncan at 5:49 PM on September 22, 2014 [1 favorite]
...it's a metaphor for repetitive work and modern bread, circuses, meaningless rewards and the death of authenticicity as everything is commodified including resistance to commodification?
posted by jaduncan at 5:49 PM on September 22, 2014 [1 favorite]
Well I guess even Adbusters, the cynical bastards, flog their own line of shoes...
posted by Nevin at 7:59 PM on September 22, 2014
posted by Nevin at 7:59 PM on September 22, 2014
Could be that life is pain, and anyone who says differently is selling something.
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 8:15 PM on September 22, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 8:15 PM on September 22, 2014 [1 favorite]
Probably skunkweed
posted by yoHighness at 9:25 PM on September 22, 2014 [2 favorites]
posted by yoHighness at 9:25 PM on September 22, 2014 [2 favorites]
I wonder whether conservatives realized how thoroughly they would triumph merely by defeating effective population control until maximum possible sustainable total income divided by the total number of individuals represented an intolerable level of poverty.
posted by jamjam at 9:50 PM on September 22, 2014
posted by jamjam at 9:50 PM on September 22, 2014
So if we can move on from the brow-beating and "aren't the Tories eeevil":
The decline of mass employment in places like Glasgow is due to mechanisation, globalisation, and the loss of our captive Imperial market. The same factors apply in New England and are applying in Japan. Those jobs aren't coming back, except through vastly lower wages, which aren't politically or socially possible in the short term: look at the hand-wringing over the low wage inflation that has helped keep unemployment down in the last five years. Scotland is also far from the European markets.
The political crisis is because we have a huge lump of baby boomers who vote, and thanks to their numbers and propensity to vote, our democratically-elected politicians have to do what they want. So more funding for pensions and healthcare, less for education and welfare for the young poor. Short of some radical re-imagining of the electoral system I can't see that changing until the rich old die and are replaced with a smaller cohort.
My best proposals are: a continued expansionary economic climate - low interest rates, deficit spending - which helps transfer the acquired wealth of the old rich to the working young: better education, particularly for the lower economic classes, although that's incredibly hard to achieve: targeted life-long skills training to improve employability: house-building and publicly-funded amelioration of brownfield sites, although that transfers money from public purse to private. What are your thoughts?
posted by alasdair at 1:41 AM on September 23, 2014 [3 favorites]
The decline of mass employment in places like Glasgow is due to mechanisation, globalisation, and the loss of our captive Imperial market. The same factors apply in New England and are applying in Japan. Those jobs aren't coming back, except through vastly lower wages, which aren't politically or socially possible in the short term: look at the hand-wringing over the low wage inflation that has helped keep unemployment down in the last five years. Scotland is also far from the European markets.
The political crisis is because we have a huge lump of baby boomers who vote, and thanks to their numbers and propensity to vote, our democratically-elected politicians have to do what they want. So more funding for pensions and healthcare, less for education and welfare for the young poor. Short of some radical re-imagining of the electoral system I can't see that changing until the rich old die and are replaced with a smaller cohort.
My best proposals are: a continued expansionary economic climate - low interest rates, deficit spending - which helps transfer the acquired wealth of the old rich to the working young: better education, particularly for the lower economic classes, although that's incredibly hard to achieve: targeted life-long skills training to improve employability: house-building and publicly-funded amelioration of brownfield sites, although that transfers money from public purse to private. What are your thoughts?
posted by alasdair at 1:41 AM on September 23, 2014 [3 favorites]
The political crisis is because we have a huge lump of baby boomers who vote, and thanks to their numbers and propensity to vote, our democratically-elected politicians have to do what they want. So more funding for pensions and healthcare, less for education and welfare for the young poor. Short of some radical re-imagining of the electoral system I can't see that changing until the rich old die and are replaced with a smaller cohort.
The generation who reaped all the benefits of the establishment of the modern welfare state in the lean years after WWII are now burning the ladder underneath them because they don't want to pay for shit for the next generation. My grandparents' generation were part of a taxation scheme that had marginal income tax rates as high as 90% in the UK - now, with my parents' generation largely in charge, 50% is apparently unacceptable.
"Fuck you, got mine."
posted by Dysk at 1:56 AM on September 23, 2014 [10 favorites]
The generation who reaped all the benefits of the establishment of the modern welfare state in the lean years after WWII are now burning the ladder underneath them because they don't want to pay for shit for the next generation. My grandparents' generation were part of a taxation scheme that had marginal income tax rates as high as 90% in the UK - now, with my parents' generation largely in charge, 50% is apparently unacceptable.
"Fuck you, got mine."
posted by Dysk at 1:56 AM on September 23, 2014 [10 favorites]
or we'll see more and more people start to opt out of the neo-liberal capitalist society and live co-operatively and communally
How the fuck are people going to do that? You pretty much need to belong to the landed classes for this to even be an option. You can't live communally and co-operatively on nothing.
posted by Dysk at 3:49 AM on September 23, 2014 [1 favorite]
How the fuck are people going to do that? You pretty much need to belong to the landed classes for this to even be an option. You can't live communally and co-operatively on nothing.
posted by Dysk at 3:49 AM on September 23, 2014 [1 favorite]
So if we can move on from the brow-beating and "aren't the Tories eeevil":
The decline of mass employment in places like Glasgow is due to mechanisation, globalisation, and the loss of our captive Imperial market.
Hmm. Your claim is that the Tory 1980s abandonment of an interventionist industrial policy has nothing to do with this? That's a little bit of a stretch given that both Germany and France have large domestic industrial sectors after continuing with an active industrial policy. I appreciate that it doesn't fit neatly with your world view, but you should probably attempt a more sophisticated argument that explains why Germany and France could do it but Scotland couldn't.
Oh, and if you didn't summarise people's arguments as browbeating and "aren't the Tories eeevil" that would be just great and would certainly help me feel like you aren't just being disingenuous.
posted by jaduncan at 4:15 AM on September 23, 2014 [3 favorites]
The decline of mass employment in places like Glasgow is due to mechanisation, globalisation, and the loss of our captive Imperial market.
Hmm. Your claim is that the Tory 1980s abandonment of an interventionist industrial policy has nothing to do with this? That's a little bit of a stretch given that both Germany and France have large domestic industrial sectors after continuing with an active industrial policy. I appreciate that it doesn't fit neatly with your world view, but you should probably attempt a more sophisticated argument that explains why Germany and France could do it but Scotland couldn't.
Oh, and if you didn't summarise people's arguments as browbeating and "aren't the Tories eeevil" that would be just great and would certainly help me feel like you aren't just being disingenuous.
posted by jaduncan at 4:15 AM on September 23, 2014 [3 favorites]
(And less of the abuse, please.)
Abuse? Where on earth are you getting that from?
Meanwhile in the real world, small but meaningful changes are happening - take a look at the Scottish community land buy-outs for interesting ways that local people are taking control of their local lands.
What are they buying land with? Oh yeah, money. Wealth that they already have.
This is exactly the sort of attitude that leads to us living how we do now, it's a big reason why nothing ever changes in this country. (And less of the abuse, please.) There's no point even thinking about another, better future because it's all decided in advance for us.
This is exactly the sort of attitude that overlooks that some of us actually have NOTHING and no prospects. It is not possible for me to 'opt out' of capitalism. I would starve to death. I am not looking to stifle action. Rather the opposite. I am looking to change a system in which I am trapped, and I am looking to others for help with this, rather than them simply leaving a bunch of us behind when they take what they have and 'opt out'.
posted by Dysk at 4:58 AM on September 23, 2014 [1 favorite]
Abuse? Where on earth are you getting that from?
Meanwhile in the real world, small but meaningful changes are happening - take a look at the Scottish community land buy-outs for interesting ways that local people are taking control of their local lands.
What are they buying land with? Oh yeah, money. Wealth that they already have.
This is exactly the sort of attitude that leads to us living how we do now, it's a big reason why nothing ever changes in this country. (And less of the abuse, please.) There's no point even thinking about another, better future because it's all decided in advance for us.
This is exactly the sort of attitude that overlooks that some of us actually have NOTHING and no prospects. It is not possible for me to 'opt out' of capitalism. I would starve to death. I am not looking to stifle action. Rather the opposite. I am looking to change a system in which I am trapped, and I am looking to others for help with this, rather than them simply leaving a bunch of us behind when they take what they have and 'opt out'.
posted by Dysk at 4:58 AM on September 23, 2014 [1 favorite]
Meanwhile in the real world, small but meaningful changes are happening - take a look at the Scottish community land buy-outs for interesting ways that local people are taking control of their local lands.
This also completely leaves immigrants out in the cold. Local lands for local people.
posted by Dysk at 5:06 AM on September 23, 2014
This also completely leaves immigrants out in the cold. Local lands for local people.
posted by Dysk at 5:06 AM on September 23, 2014
The nature of industry in Scotland was closer to what the Ruhr, Wallonia, and Northern France have then the Bavarian and Northern Italian model. Aggressive industrial policy hasn't been able to save the former as comparative feedstock costs are an insurmountable issue. Maybe you could have created something like the later but that process should have begun long before the UK abandoned an industrial policy.
Shipbuilding in Europe has been a basket case since the 50's. The only surviving yards are those that do Military production or Cruise Ships - and those markets just aren't very big. France's big yards have been wards of the state for a generation.
posted by JPD at 5:17 AM on September 23, 2014
Shipbuilding in Europe has been a basket case since the 50's. The only surviving yards are those that do Military production or Cruise Ships - and those markets just aren't very big. France's big yards have been wards of the state for a generation.
posted by JPD at 5:17 AM on September 23, 2014
Increase taxation drastically. Like, DRASTICALLY. I want marginal tax rates of 80% or higher at the top end. Then start actually enforcing that shit, both with regard to individuals and companies. Stop settling for pennies on the pound in tax debt.
Then a return to a sensible welfare state. A universal basic income is a fantastic idea to this end.
What I don't want to see is people seeing the first few setbacks in this fight and then instead deciding to cut their losses and insulate them and their little local group of friends from the evils of capitalism while leaving everyone else to the dogs. Because holy shit have I seen that happen enough in my short life already, and there is little that more solidly entrenches the thing you're escaping from.
posted by Dysk at 5:37 AM on September 23, 2014 [1 favorite]
Then a return to a sensible welfare state. A universal basic income is a fantastic idea to this end.
What I don't want to see is people seeing the first few setbacks in this fight and then instead deciding to cut their losses and insulate them and their little local group of friends from the evils of capitalism while leaving everyone else to the dogs. Because holy shit have I seen that happen enough in my short life already, and there is little that more solidly entrenches the thing you're escaping from.
posted by Dysk at 5:37 AM on September 23, 2014 [1 favorite]
or we'll see more and more people start to opt out of the neo-liberal capitalist society and live co-operatively and communally
I foresee something like this, too (although maybe not so rosily tinted), but not until the central system has been weakened to the point where it can't stop it from happening. Strong central governments aren't in the habit of letting people "opt out" of taxes, etc. So, probably not for many decades. There will be much suffering before we get there.
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 5:43 AM on September 23, 2014 [1 favorite]
I foresee something like this, too (although maybe not so rosily tinted), but not until the central system has been weakened to the point where it can't stop it from happening. Strong central governments aren't in the habit of letting people "opt out" of taxes, etc. So, probably not for many decades. There will be much suffering before we get there.
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 5:43 AM on September 23, 2014 [1 favorite]
Metafilter's own Charlie Stross has a great post on this very topic that I've found myself returning to a number of times - A Nation of Slaves.
For myself, this was one of the reasons that I voted Yes. In my view, having levers of power closer to home allows a lot more pressure to be brought to bear on existing institutions to start addressing these kind of questions. I mean, a UBI is an actual plank of the Scottish Green Party's platform, and they're a party where policy is actually voted on by their membership, rather than cooked up in think tanks and controlled solely by leadership.
You simply cannot even begin to start having these kinds of conversations in a country of sixty five million people. But precedents in smaller polities can provide working examples. Far from 'narrow nationalism', I'm in favour of small-scale democratic trials.
posted by Happy Dave at 6:56 AM on September 23, 2014 [2 favorites]
For myself, this was one of the reasons that I voted Yes. In my view, having levers of power closer to home allows a lot more pressure to be brought to bear on existing institutions to start addressing these kind of questions. I mean, a UBI is an actual plank of the Scottish Green Party's platform, and they're a party where policy is actually voted on by their membership, rather than cooked up in think tanks and controlled solely by leadership.
You simply cannot even begin to start having these kinds of conversations in a country of sixty five million people. But precedents in smaller polities can provide working examples. Far from 'narrow nationalism', I'm in favour of small-scale democratic trials.
posted by Happy Dave at 6:56 AM on September 23, 2014 [2 favorites]
"No" majorities in every age group except 25-39 yr olds
What's with the age groups? They have: 9 Years, 14 Years, 19 Years, 4 Years, 65+. Aschroft's data went with straight 10 year groups and shows Yes in each one up to 55-64. Is there a poll of polls thpe thing that can normalize the data?
posted by IanMorr at 7:23 AM on September 23, 2014
What's with the age groups? They have: 9 Years, 14 Years, 19 Years, 4 Years, 65+. Aschroft's data went with straight 10 year groups and shows Yes in each one up to 55-64. Is there a poll of polls thpe thing that can normalize the data?
posted by IanMorr at 7:23 AM on September 23, 2014
but you should probably attempt a more sophisticated argument that explains why Germany and France could do it but Scotland couldn't.
I think we're at cross-purposes: I'm not saying Scotland couldn't compete in high-value, high-technology industry. With its excellent universities, relatively high status for engineering, good power and transport infrastructure and other benefits it should certainly have such a sector.
I'm saying that it's not going to provide mass employment: and it doesn't in Germany or France either. Huge textile mills full of ancient dangerous machinery and workshops of people banging metal with hammers provides mass employment, but we're past that bit of history: it's in Bangladesh now.
Ah, I see upthread that JPD is far better-informed than I am, and gives concrete examples. Until he or she disagrees with me, of course, grin.
posted by alasdair at 7:34 AM on September 23, 2014
I think we're at cross-purposes: I'm not saying Scotland couldn't compete in high-value, high-technology industry. With its excellent universities, relatively high status for engineering, good power and transport infrastructure and other benefits it should certainly have such a sector.
I'm saying that it's not going to provide mass employment: and it doesn't in Germany or France either. Huge textile mills full of ancient dangerous machinery and workshops of people banging metal with hammers provides mass employment, but we're past that bit of history: it's in Bangladesh now.
Ah, I see upthread that JPD is far better-informed than I am, and gives concrete examples. Until he or she disagrees with me, of course, grin.
posted by alasdair at 7:34 AM on September 23, 2014
hideously expensive privately rented accommodation.
Sadly, this is the market working: more demand for housing, fixed supply. Immigration and declining household size driving demand: more people coming to live here, more divorce and people living longer.
I don't see how housing co-operatives would help: if you managed to get into one, you'd be set for life, but many poor people wouldn't be able to get in, because of the restricted supply. Surely we have to get more houses built?
As it is, the (hated) bedroom tax might help. The increase in rents may drive up household occupancy rates (you have to share.) Developer and accountant friends of mine say that the development companies, for good or ill, are hanging on until property reaches 2008 levels again before they develop it - otherwise, psychologically, they think they're losing money, so that might start to happen in a year or two. And my amelioration proposal might provide more land in cities for housing.
posted by alasdair at 7:44 AM on September 23, 2014
Sadly, this is the market working: more demand for housing, fixed supply. Immigration and declining household size driving demand: more people coming to live here, more divorce and people living longer.
I don't see how housing co-operatives would help: if you managed to get into one, you'd be set for life, but many poor people wouldn't be able to get in, because of the restricted supply. Surely we have to get more houses built?
As it is, the (hated) bedroom tax might help. The increase in rents may drive up household occupancy rates (you have to share.) Developer and accountant friends of mine say that the development companies, for good or ill, are hanging on until property reaches 2008 levels again before they develop it - otherwise, psychologically, they think they're losing money, so that might start to happen in a year or two. And my amelioration proposal might provide more land in cities for housing.
posted by alasdair at 7:44 AM on September 23, 2014
The generation who reaped all the benefits of the establishment of the modern welfare state in the lean years after WWII are now burning the ladder underneath them because they don't want to pay for shit for the next generation. My grandparents' generation were part of a taxation scheme that had marginal income tax rates as high as 90% in the UK - now, with my parents' generation largely in charge, 50% is apparently unacceptable.
The dirty little open secret is that nobody paid those marginal tax rates except maybe upper middle class professionals. As soon as you hit the top rate of marginal tax you made damn sure everything you were "paid" was capital gains taxed at 25%.
posted by Talez at 11:20 AM on September 23, 2014 [1 favorite]
The dirty little open secret is that nobody paid those marginal tax rates except maybe upper middle class professionals. As soon as you hit the top rate of marginal tax you made damn sure everything you were "paid" was capital gains taxed at 25%.
posted by Talez at 11:20 AM on September 23, 2014 [1 favorite]
How the fuck are people going to do that? You pretty much need to belong to the landed classes for this to even be an option. You can't live communally and co-operatively on nothing.
Retreating tundras and melting glaciers caused by global climate change reveals fertile, farmable land beneath the permafrost, ushering a new age of colonization around the Earth's antipodes.
posted by Apocryphon at 11:49 AM on September 23, 2014
Retreating tundras and melting glaciers caused by global climate change reveals fertile, farmable land beneath the permafrost, ushering a new age of colonization around the Earth's antipodes.
posted by Apocryphon at 11:49 AM on September 23, 2014
The dirty little open secret is that nobody paid those marginal tax rates except maybe upper middle class professionals. As soon as you hit the top rate of marginal tax you made damn sure everything you were "paid" was capital gains taxed at 25%.
It's the same now, only at 15%. Progress!
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 11:55 AM on September 23, 2014 [1 favorite]
It's the same now, only at 15%. Progress!
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 11:55 AM on September 23, 2014 [1 favorite]
Whoops, I forgot we weren't talking about the US.
That's really the last five decades of world politics in a nutshell right there.
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 2:29 PM on September 23, 2014
That's really the last five decades of world politics in a nutshell right there.
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 2:29 PM on September 23, 2014
28% that's ridiculous. Those servants aren't paying for themselves you know.
posted by yoHighness at 5:09 PM on September 23, 2014
posted by yoHighness at 5:09 PM on September 23, 2014
"'You probably live in a house with 9 bedrooms' - I wanted to say I only have 6 but I thought the better of it." Actual content of email from wealthy no supporter to me describing encounter with yes supporting local teenagers.
posted by yoHighness at 5:10 PM on September 23, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by yoHighness at 5:10 PM on September 23, 2014 [1 favorite]
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This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
If we keep talking the same old line about "stimulating employment", there are going to be a lot of unhappy people out there. We need to start thinking about how to keep people busy, and at the same time enable them to have sufficient food, clothing and shelter. I think that youth are going to figure this out for themselves; they're creative, and adaptive.
posted by Vibrissae at 2:36 PM on September 22, 2014 [9 favorites]