Boomers: The Evil Generation!

[Hygro]

That's typical human thinking, you realize.

Thank God.

 

[Modder_Mode]

This is a boomer problem actually, an outsized concern of scarcity combined with the numbers to outvote other blocks both to support policies that reinforce notions of scarcity and distribute the leftovers their way. Millennials will be the same if we think the real economy is limited to the financial compensation we've received.

I think inheritance will play a massive role in the lives of Millennials, the wealth generated by the boomers (regardless whether you think it has been justly acquired or not) will eventually trickle down to their pockets in some form or another.

 

[Modder_Mode]

Better read that again. Or more likely learn what socialism actually is. II Corinthians, chapter eight, starting at verse 13 provides good instruction.

There's a fundamental difference between voluntary charity and government enforced socialism.

 

[Hrothbern]

And by most measures we have had steady progress in improvements to people's lives over the past 200 or so years. You can also change the measuring stick and say that in the past 20 years we have not made progress in responding to an increasingly evident environmental crisis that looks like it is coming quickly.

That adding environment aspects...
Is that not the natural development of new measure sticks to be used ?

Also: "human values" are actionable at human interaction, but not at societal policies except laws. Converting "human values" into measure sticks, makes them actionable at governing level.

Convert "human values" in actionable measure stick values, leading to the development of policies, and an agreed tool to measure the effectiveness of those policies.
In this range of this thread it is about converting "human values" into measure sticks, develop policies that increase the measure stick value, find out that some not explicitly used "value" suffers, define a new measure stick to represent that, aggregate that new measure stick in your Top measure stick with a certain weight, develop policies aimed at an increase of that new measure stick value AND as well the top measure stick value... rinse and repeat.

I think the most experience in using and improving a pyramid of "measure sticks" is in business, where they are called performance indicators. The most handy ones called KPI's (key performance indicators). The leading and following PI's. etc.
The Financial KPI's very old. The quality KPI's emerging strongly in the 80ies. And all kinds of other KPI's being added in the decades following on customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, environmental, health & safety, etc, etc.
And the overall change being that event decision management, with clear effects, but is expanded into process management, the multiple small steps, made possible because of higher accuracy feedback on the chosen KPI's.
Also enabling much better to measure the performance of employees, from bottom to top, and direct them in the strategic direction when they employ and allocate their reesources. In principle a top-down mechanism for strategy.
And yes.. the usual tension in culture between driving a business on a small set of KPI's or a much bigger technocratic set of KPI's.

What the mature governments, the IMF et al (like the OECD, etc) are doing the last two decades is exactly this broadening of KPI's to get a more stable, higher and growing Top KPI (or set of Top KPI's, to choose from depending on political/societal choices).
It is a matter of choice how you look upon that.
An advanced maximising happiness system.... or an advanced obedience system for the wealthy granting minimal needed happiness for stability... or any hybrid...
But both need the same toolkit.

Pure governing in the management sense above, is converting the ever-changing perception by the people of what is of human value and the everchanging situation from new techs and effects of existing policies on our surrounding into new weights of the KPI's, new KPI's and adapting policies.
Political aspects can vary greatly on above "management". Is a matter of choice by the people.

With a great variety between us as citizens in what are those "human values", and on top a great variety between us as citizens on who should matter and how it should be implemented, we have a system that has a lot of inertia, reacting slowly on the negatives from the existing policies, reacting slowly on cultural changes.
A response time of "only" 20 years is perhaps pretty quick already !

 

[AmazonQueen]

There's a fundamental difference between voluntary charity and government enforced socialism.

Effectiveness?

 

[Modder_Mode]

Effectiveness?

No doubt organized distribution of wealth would be more effective than a voluntary basis, but I am strongly against the "stealing" (yes those quotation marks are there for a reason) of other peoples legitimized wealth.
You don't think the tax system plays a pivotal role in wealth distribution? (I'm trying to keep this in the realms of the original discussion, but it really is hard lol)

 

[AmazonQueen]

No doubt organized distribution of wealth would be more effective than a voluntary basis, but I am strongly against the "stealing" (yes those quotation marks are there for a reason) of other peoples legitimized wealth.
You don't think the tax system plays a pivotal role in wealth distribution? (I'm trying to keep this in the realms of the original discussion, but it really is hard lol)

Not pivotal enough
The problem I have with charity especially when it comes down to things everyone should have like food or housing is that it depends on the goodwill of the giver who gets to feel all sanctimonious and smug because hes given a tin of baked beans to the foodbank whilst the recipient is supposed to feel grateful because they will get to eat that night

 

[Modder_Mode]

Not pivotal enough
The problem I have with charity especially when it comes down to things everyone should have like food or housing is that it depends on the goodwill of the giver who gets to feel all sanctimonious and smug because hes given a tin of baked beans to the foodbank whilst the recipient is supposed to feel grateful because they will get to eat that night

Well I'm not going to lie, I can't stand the virtue signalers on Facebook and Youtube who do virtuous deeds usually for someone who is homeless and then filming it and uploading it to social media, but then I realize who cares of their motives, someone benefited from it and usually the video inspires others to do likewise.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

It's such a big generation it's hard to make full, sweeping generalizations. And a lot of what the generation did politically is just a continuation of America's racism and greed and infatuation with war and all kinds of things. Or just the inherent flaws of capitalism accelerating wealth upwards. I really only join the joke-y kill boomers chant given two things. One, if it's pushback to complaints about millennials, young adults, whatever. That kind of blanket crap has littered news sites for years now and I don't mind being snarky in return to some 57 year old beltway journalist complaining about their Applebees dying. Second is global warming. There are toooooons of polls that show global warming acceptance and support for policy is generational. Like, 20-30 year olds support it the most, then 31-40, than 41-50, it's like a straight line of decreasing acceptance and desire for response as you climb up each decade, and that pisses me off becuase it just feels like a "well I'll be dead so screw you all" mindset.

What do the 20-30 year olds do about it though? Apart from go travelling all over the place and have 15 electronic devices on them at all times that they charge daily. All stuff that really helps I'm sure.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

Some of your groups overlap in a confusing way. And part of your list is only applicable to the U.S.

The whole concept is only applicable to the U.S.

 

[AmazonQueen]

What do the 20-30 year olds do about it though? Apart from go travelling all over the place and have 15 electronic devices on them at all times that they charge daily. All stuff that really helps I'm sure.

At my local school quite a few took part in the recent climate strike. Mind, its an affluent area so many of the 6th formers drive to school every day in the cars their parents bought and no doubt are planning where they'll jet to on their gap year.
Hypocrisy is a human thing, not a generational thing.

 

[Thorgalaeg]

You folks seem very confused about what the world is. The world is a lot bigger than human society, in fact it contains human society. I have conceded in the very message that the life experience for some people has improved. But the WORLD has become a worse place. We have extincted thousands and thousands of species. We have poisoned entire biomes and made them permanently unliveable for a majority of living creatures. The world has become WORSE.

The world is getting worse since the Big Bang. You know universe entropy continuously increasing and such. But it is more useful to narrow our area of interest to humanity. And i think humanity has got way better in last centuries. Anyway we should be careful with our surrounding or we could lose everything we have achieved.

 

[Lexicus]

land lines to iPhones

Personally I think it is fascinating that we use the existence of these things as any kind of measure of progress. I think that is highly dubious at best; the fact that many tech CEOs do not allow their own children to use that technology is of interest there.

These devices are designed to be addictive, on principles very similar to slot machines. I'm not sure it's anything to celebrate really.

Yes, the world is pretty much at peace now. Widespread war is probably something you can't imagine.

The world isn't peaceful for millions of people in the underdeveloped world. And it isn't peaceful for billions who are exposed to the structural violence of capitalism in a way that the affluent in the global north...can't imagine. One thing that is remarkable is how the convenience of a smartphone exposes workers in the undeveloped world to poisons both directly in the manufacturing process and via the poisoning of the environment.

If that is your perspective, then again you are wrong. As an entity, the world is neutral to life and its existence. The world is, what, 2 billion years old? And you want to look at a pretty random 8000 year period and say OMG! things are terrible. The things you complain about are only important to us. The Permian extinction wiped out 95% of all life. That was pretty bad for life, but the earth shook it off and moved on. And guess what, 250 million years later, life is thriving. You need to better define what you are talking about and how you are measuring things.

And all this retreat into billion-year abstractions is to sidestep the actual problem which is, simply stated: that the human civilization that exist today is rapidly destroying the conditions of its own existence, and may well be destroying the conditions of existence of the human species (passing over all the other species in silence). I think there are lots of reasons to think this is a Bad Thing, a Thing So Bad that it may well outweigh whatever improvements in living standards you want to point to.

 

[Traitorfish]

There's a fundamental difference between voluntary charity and government enforced socialism.

"Charity" seems like an insufficient word for what Jesus of Nazareth espoused. It suggests an act of giving, and moreover of giving what from that which you have decided you spare, but what he advocated was sharing, the dissolution of distinctions of "mine" and "yours", the assumption that any surplus was a common surplus. I agree that this bares little resemblance to state socialism- but it bears less resemblance to the noblesse oblige of the employing class.

A better word might be "community... ism"? "Communism"? Is that a word?

 

[metalhead]

The entire developed world is being torn down because wealthy elites give pittance "charity" and sell it as a reason we don't need policies that actually diminish their obscene wealth and disproportionate political power and influence, and this cat over here is talking about "charity" being preferable to "socialism."

Sometimes I can't even.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

The entire developed world is being torn down because wealthy elites give pittance "charity" and sell it as a reason we don't need policies that actually diminish their obscene wealth and disproportionate political power and influence, and this cat over here is talking about "charity" being preferable to "socialism."

Sometimes I can't even.

Betsy Devos just tried to justify her proposed elimination of funding for the Special Olympics because she has personally donated to the cause.

 

[metalhead]

Betsy Devos just tried to justify her proposed elimination of funding for the Special Olympics because she has personally donated to the cause.

Yep. A better distillation of the fundamental problem plaguing our society I could not imagine.

 

[Yeekim]

What do we need Special Olympics for?
Or the 'regular' one, really?

 

[inthesomeday]

The world is getting worse since the Big Bang. You know universe entropy continuously increasing and such. But it is more useful to narrow our area of interest to humanity. And i think humanity has got way better in last centuries. Anyway we should be careful with our surrounding or we could lose everything we have achieved.

Things have gotten better for some humans. “Humanity” hasn’t necessarily gotten better, that doesn’t make much sense. Precisely what do you mean by this?

 

[Lexicus]

Or the 'regular' one, really?

For the record the Olympics are a terrible capitalist hellhole and should be replaced with the People's Games or something. Something that's about sport and competition instead of capital accumulation.