[ajross]

Or maybe it's a complicated subject and the outrageous aggregate wealth increases might plausibly be seen as worthwhile even if they create this kind of localized disaster.

Basically: if you want to argue against "globalization" and for a return to, I dunno, the world of the 1960's, recognize that you are arguing for a return to the 1960's, and the 60's were by modern standards a human rights disaster basically everywhere.

Progress is good. It's not "all" good, and needs attention and regulation. But ludditism is never the answer. What was that about bad teaching again?

[coldtea]

>Basically: if you want to argue against "globalization" and for a return to, I dunno, the world of the 1960's, recognize that you are arguing for a return to the 1960's, and the 60's were by modern standards a human rights disaster basically everywhere.

That's one of the more bizarro strawmen I've seen.

He doesn't suggest some kind of time travel -- so that we have to take it all, the good and the bad, of an earlier era.

In that he doesn't even say anything about going back to an earlier era.

He speaks of going back to an earlier practice.

Which is what humans who shape their future, as opposed to being taken left and right by some impersonal forces, can perfectly do, without having to adopt anything else.

>Progress is good.

Progress, outside of technology (which is accumulative), is a myth.

History has ups and downs and can go either way. The horrors of WWII were worse than whatever 19th century came up with. American politics, for one, where better in the 60s and 70s than today. And so on....

[ajross]

> He doesn't suggest some kind of time travel -- so that we have to take it all, the good and the bad, of an earlier era.

He/you are hardly illustrating a clear example either. You're just flinging poop, basically, with your "bad teaching" and "progress is a myth". The bottom line is that trade with the developing world over the past half century has been a staggering engine of growth. So if you don't want "globalization" then you have to explain how you get China to grow at 9% year after year for like three decades (or whatever the numbers were) without that trade. You don't get to wave a magic wand and assume that part.

[coldtea]

>He/you are hardly illustrating a clear example either.

My argument is: if we want to change society in a way that resembles how one thing was in another era, there's no law or necessity that dictates that we also adopt everything else from that era.

We can pick and match.

>You're just flinging poop, basically, with your "bad teaching" and "progress is a myth"

Not sure what the "bad teaching" refers to.

The "Flinging poop" part, I find rude.

With 'progress is a myth' I made a statement, and gave two supporting examples just below it.

>The bottom line is that trade with the developing world over the past half century has been a staggering engine of growth. So if you don't want "globalization" then you have to explain how you get China to grow at 9% year after year for like three decades (or whatever the numbers were) without that trade. You don't get to wave a magic wand and assume that part.

I don't want "China to grow at 9% year after year". I want them to have a stable economy and work on redistribution. Similar for everybody else.

I don't want ever growing pies and larger slices. I want better cut slices of the already existing pies. Growth "year after year" is not sustainable (not just not sustainable itself, not sustainable for the environment and society either).

Besides, the net result of that "growth" was to make a middle class in China by deflating the middle class elsewhere (including the US).

The rich get to produce stuff in China and increase their margins (so the "economy grows"), but their country's working class (that used to produce similar stuff at home) is dealt a heavy blow and the middle class is squeezed.

The end result is not some large pie / bigger harmony slices and other fictional unicorns, rather it's trillion dollar bailouts of Wall Street and Detroit, plus "99% percent" on one side, and the "Tea Party" and Trump on the other side.

[ajross]

> I don't want "China to grow at 9% year after year". I want them to have a stable economy and work on redistribution. Similar for everybody else.

No one who knows anything about the cultural revolution would make that statement. A China starting in the 1960's with a "stable economy" and "better redistribution" would, today, be a dirt poor backwater having survived famine after famine. Think North Korea, but with a billion people.

You're fantasizing about a world that doesn't/didn't exist. There's no way to get modern Chinese wealth without "globalization". And without that wealth you have a humanitarian disaster.

[coldtea]

>You're fantasizing about a world that doesn't/didn't exist. There's no way to get modern Chinese wealth without "globalization". And without that wealth you have a humanitarian disaster.

China existed for milennia without "modern Chinese wealth" -- and was the biggest economy on earth for many centuries before the European powers started their colonial plundering.

Economies can also grow slowly and organically -- as opposed to a mad rush to "year over year N% growth" consequences be damned -- and can also chose which areas NOT to grow, and not to pursue, when those areas might be harmful etc.

[ajross]

What on earth are you on about? It genuinely seems like you're arguing that the only difference between the literal famine of the cultural revolution and modern China is... I dunno, attitude or something.

Something had to build all that infrastructure: the factories, generators, plumbing, aqueducts, cell towers, refineries... If you have an alternative economics that can get all that without "economic growth", then you really need to start explaining it to people.

[wilsonnb2]

> Progress, outside of technology (which is accumulative), is a myth.

I'm really not sure what definition of progress you're using here but calling it a myth isn't very meaningful unless you give a good definition first.

[coldtea]

I'm using the usual casual meaning of progress that conveys some overall, non-necessarily monotonic but steady, betterment of humanity in all aspects.

And in particular I (and many scholars -- though others of course disagree) say that:

1) there's nothing inevitable about progress in the areas where it has been made. Even technologically we could regress a la Mad Max if we hit e.g. continuous climate conditions, or a lengthy major war (nuclear or not).

That this can happen locally is a plain fact -- there are tons of places where it has indeed. Libya, for one, were more technological advanced, prosperous, safe, and progressive a mere few decades ago. I'm also saying that it can happen globally too.

2) actual cumulative progress, while itself volatile (see 1), is only increasing for the most part in the area of technology and/or knowledge. Not in moral norms, or in arts, etc.

Morally populations can regress on a dime, and we have ups and downs all the time, plus there are modern norms that are worse (or less progressive by even our standards) than older norms. There are also eras that produced far crappier art than earlier or later eras (e.g. medieval art vs classical).

[opportune]

Don't be obtuse. When people talk about going back to the 60s in this context, they are talking about a return to the economic conditions that actually saw a steady improvement of QOL for the working class in the US - namely, organized labor and high marginal tax rates. Shoehorning in the orthogonal human rights abuses is just a distraction.

[SamReidHughes]

High marginal tax rates don't create steady improvement for the working class. They might create a single step of improvement by lowering their taxes, but it doesn't increase the rate of improvement beyond that one jump.