[Sakes]

I've honestly been curious about this for years. Currently, at least in America, we have a culture where if you are not meeting your financial expectations it is your fault. So if you find yourself in an industry that has been outsourced or replaced by technology, you simply need to retool. Ignoring specifics, this is typically sufficient to satisfy concerns of people that are not directly affected.

So, what happens when retooling isn't even an option? Utopia for some, utopia for all? I just can't seem to make any sense of it, but given the lack of empathy in the current climate for people labeled as other, I would suspect the former.

[internaut]

Looking at how the American working class got increasing marginalized to the point where it is a popular trope on television to laugh at 'white trash' or 'hillbilly hicks' has always seemed ugly to me. That contempt has always been suspect. That there isn't even a broad recognition of class warfare as an extant reality in American society just makes it worse and further increases feelings of alienation and marginalization. To be frank it is bullying of the sort that is supposed to occur on playgrounds but on a group scale with adults.

I once asked a question on Reddit indirectly asking about working class men and what the Tiny House community (majority women) thought of them since many working class men would have the skills to help construct houses.

After that I felt pretty sure large swathes of Americans utterly despise each other. It wasn't a good feeling.

[ArkyBeagle]

TV has lots of formerly-white-trash consumers to sell to ( I mean LOTS ) , and nothing excites us* like an appeal to our superiority.

*not really.... right next to it, though. Of course I grew up "middle class" like everyone else, right?

[internaut]

Yes that's right.

I think rich people are well aware of the problem (appeals to superiority) in a way that most people aren't. They are constantly in contact with people trying to butter them up. Gradually they develop a sense of detachment, not really believing they're that awesome as they're being told but searching out independent metrics since the human feedback has become unreliable. Or they go batshit into fantasy land.

I may be biased myself but I honestly believe the middle class is responsible for many of the problems we see. They have been constantly buttered up by sycophant politicians and media sources.

I have even seen statements in the media to the effect that the middle class can do no wrong. Recent complaints about the reduction in size of this class often have this thrown in. It is never considered they might NOT actually be God's gift to planet earth but part of the problem.

Is it so surprising that the government has elected officials in western countries that are almost universally doctors and lawyers? Two groups of people who famously have no time for understanding anything other than their field of study because they spent the better part of their lives absorbed in that intense study. Maybe we can't be saved by lawyers and doctors, no matter that they have high IQ, because they are attracted to work on the wrong problems for society.

Consider how different a Congress of computer geeks and scientists would be. I also believe there would be substantial problems since our group also has failure modes like any other. But to say the least it would be different to what we have right now. To be frank I suspect the denizens of HN are more aware of their failure modes than present day Congress. It is not about IQ, it is about the problems you process.

There exist whole swathes of problem areas I see exactly nobody addressing! But by all means let's cross our t's and dot our i's in trade agreements and constitutional amendments.

I vote for the Brain In A Vat things I saw in Psycho-Pass. They had at least some handle on the distributed nature of knowledge and understanding.

[ArkyBeagle]

The American middle class has been quite the overall force for positive change - in the dimensions where it can change things. IMO, the "attack on the middle class" narrative is the other side of the advertising seduction dance - put people off balance so you can butter 'em up again.

I think the attraction of medicine and law is status. And you can't do anything about that. That's how hu-mans are wired.

[internaut]

> The American middle class has been quite the overall force for positive change - in the dimensions where it can change things.

Oh no! They got to you too! :-)

If you have an opportunity take a gander at "Ben's Mill" It's a short twenty minute documentary on youtube. I think it is very revealing about the kind of self confidence and respect the working class used to have in western countries but which is now lost.

If nothing else it is a beautiful illustration of how things were, it's well worth the watch.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2KJbRHO76s

To render all those people unto 'trailer trash' 'white trash', is despicable. You can tell a lot about people by how they treat others they consider their inferiors.

Doctors are responsible for killing their patients by virtue of not being efficient and by preventing technological adaptions. Even properly done digital medical records are impossible in the present world. I'm sure you read recently on HN that medical staff error is responsible for an incredible number of deaths. When I think: heart disease and cancer, it seems incredible that you should add 'Doctor' into the mix of things most likely to kill us, yet it is so.

Lawyers are harming the economic progress of in the main. Don't even think that is very controversial here. Niall Ferguson has outright accused them of this, that's the establishment!

On balance saying doctors and lawyers are a positive force for good is a crapshoot. Maybe so. Maybe there's objective evidence against the intuitive position. Just maybe, they're parasites in a parasitical system that is getting worse with their intransigeance.

[ArkyBeagle]

We don't know what will happen. I'm not sure empathy helps, either. As I understand empathy at a distance ( because personalizing it here seems creepy ) , it's sort of a scarce resource. And I don't consider scapegoating as the opposite of empathy. I think it's a related process - as delineated by Rene Girard. It's the dark side of the empathic response. Both are manifestations of the mimetic response.

Arnold Kling is fond of "The Diamond Age", with Thetes and Vickies. Thetes are proles who live on a stipend type thing; Vickies are the ruling elite with extremely tight social strictures. Hopefully somebody more familiar with the book than I can help - I'm repeating Arnold's view of it.

BTW, Arnold Kling also does work in "PSST" - Patterns of Sustainable Specialization and Trade, which is largely athwart this issue.

I do think that "opting out" will become more and more important as society becomes increasingly ephemeral.

[internaut]

I'm increasingly becoming of the view that The Diamond Age was a documentary from the future.

There are worse options!