The end of the lower class in the west

[Darth Executor]

There hasn't been a worthwhile thread in this forum for quite some time, so it's time to stir the pot:

1. An unforgiving world where virtually everybody had to work hard from dawn to dusk and people still starved sometimes. This is our distant (and present, in some faraway places) past. Employment is virtually 100%
2. A world where technological development has reached theoretical peak. The secrets of the universe have been unlocked and can be manipulated at will. Perfect matter conversion is achieved. We can produce anything by plugging otherwise useless matter into a machine and turning it into food or breathable air or Sean Penn's corpse. This is a theoretical future. Unemployment is virtually 0%. Nobody really needs to work, aside from maintaining this technology.

We are nowhere near either scenario, however we are slowly swinging away from 1 and closing in on 2, and technological development is driving huge changes in the worldwide job market. In particular:

1. Technology drastically reduces the need for laborers, particularly in manufacturing, where mountains of low and medium skilled workers can be replaced with machines.
2. Cheap transportation drastically reduces the need to overpay workers due to union/government enforced price gouging since you can just pay workers overseas to do the job.

Some jobs are relatively immune to outsourcing (construction, for now, as well as cleaning/maintenance) but they are still subject to technological advancements that allow fewer workers to do more of the work.

Regardless, the end result is the same (assuming a pure capitalist system):

Positives:

* Labour efficiency increases. You can get a lot more out of the same amount of work.
* Buying power among the productive population increases. This means people can own more than they could have in the past, even if their income doesn't grow.
* The net worth of high skilled work (this includes management and investments) increases.

Negatives:

* Low skilled labor becomes obsolete, turning what would have previously been an economically productive citizen into an economically useless citizen. This is a serious negative, because you have more and more people who are literally too stupid to do any better fighting for fewer and fewer positions that pay less and less.

The negative leads to an attempt to change the system (since it is in fact a serious problem). The west starts swinging left.

Starting effects:
Positives:

* Labour efficiency increases. You can get a lot more out of the same amount of work.
* Buying power among the productive population increases. This means people can own more than they could have in the past, even if their income doesn't grow.
* The net worth of high skilled work (this includes management and investments) increases.

Negatives:
* Low skilled labor becomes obsolete, turning what would have previously been an economically productive citizen into an economically useless citizen.

Now, we add liberal interference:

*Miscellaneous Regulation. I will not get into whether current regulation is excessive or not because it doesn't matter. Virtually all regulation has an economic cost that someone must pay.

End result: Economy of scale kicks in. Large enterprise (which already has an advantage over small enterprise, particularly in large cities) can better absorb the costs of regulation than smaller enterprise. This pushes individuals from the skilled work tab down into the medium and low skilled tab. It also has the added disadvantage of leaving even more people unemployed. More human resources are available which lowers the value of all labor, and requires a drastic increase in the prowess of new high skill entrepreneurs to be able to build up large enterprise. To make matters worse, corporations are notoriously risk averse, and risk is necessary for finding new markets that lead to economic expansion.

*Labor price gouging. This includes minimum wage and political corruption (IE: union/corporation backs candidate, candidate grants monopoly to union/corporation for a project).

Despite what a lot of ignorant people think, the price of labor and a "fair" or living wage have absolutely nothing to do with each other. The price of labor decreases as competition for any particular job increases, just like it would for any other product. There is no guarantee that this wage will be a living wage. The solution proposed and implemented by the left for this problem is usually a minimum wage. In some cases (like with public workers) left leaning politicians will also pay government workers obscene wages/benefits and send the city/state on the road to ruin.

End result: Some low and medium skilled workers see an increase in their net worth. Since the minimum wage leads to an increase in expenses for both private and public organizations, it also has the negative effect of creating a ticking bomb in government (in the case of corruption) and a decrease in buying power for everybody as a result of increased expenses in the private sector.

*Entitlements. This includes social security, government health care, welfare, subsidies, etc.

Idiots like Nancy Pelosi and JimL (but I repeat myself) think things like food stamps create economic expansion. It is possible (though I doubt it) that they do. If you work in a restaurant or grocery store you are probably aware that they throw a lot of the food away. More people buying food does not mean the stores/food companies will need to hire any more workers. You're just further fattening up their shareholders. If you think lower taxes doesn't lead to investment, there is no reason to think already rich people receiving a transfer of wealth would. Stuffing money in saturated markets does not create new expansions. Finding and investing in new markets does. The only positive that comes from doing this is that people who aren't making a living are less likely to resort to more desperate measures. Suffice to say this is only a temporary measure, for reasons which I will discuss in the next part.

Let's recap:

Positives:

* Labour efficiency increases. You can get a lot more out of the same amount of work.
* Buying power among the productive population increases. This means people can own more than they could have in the past, even if their income doesn't grow.
* The net worth of high skilled work (this includes management and investments) increases.
* Misc potential value gained from regulation.
* Potentially fewer low income workers
* Temporary decreased risk for social unrest

Negatives:
* Low skilled labor becomes obsolete, turning what would have previously been an economically productive citizen into an economically useless citizen.
* Reduction in number of productive citizens
* Time-delayed government implosion
* Across the board decrease in buying power
* Lower economic expansion

Now, there is a third element that is frequently ignored in economic comparisons: culture. Culture is the difference between Communist East Germany and Communist Romania. It allows a nation/people to overcome some of the problems inherent in their systems. For example, communism has a problem with worker motivation. Why work to become more productive if you can just find an easy job that pays the same? If your culture values work in and of itself, regardless of reward, you get East Germany and can weather communism much better than if you value drinking instead like most of the Eastern Block does.

The western left's basic nature has not changed, it is and always has been a victimhood cult. This is not automatically bad if there are actual victims around, but as the number of victims collapse (and they have collapsed), the previously beneficial antibodies will turn on their host.

With that in mind let's examine some of the deeply held values that the left ingrains in the idiot masses:

* If you fail, it's someone else's fault (usually teh rich). Sometimes even if you fail because of specific people it's still the fault of other people that had nothing to do with it simply because they're in the undesirable class. End result: correction of personal failures decreases
* The system is rigged and you will not break through (in all fairness, they're half right, since they're trying their best to rig it). End result: why try?
* You are entitled to someone else's wealth, even if you had nothing to do with earning it and would still be a broke loser if rich people did not exist. End result: Productive activity is replaced with destructive activity (like looting).
* Give us your money and everything will be ok. End result: Abdication of social responsibility since people expect the government to doit. The money doesn't actually go to help people beyond what the left needs to do to keep them from revolting. But hey, you can rest easy knowing the local union bosses are smoking crack out of gold plated boxes you paid for.

Many of these ideas are reinforced by the fact that there are in fact people in positions of power who engage in harmful activity directed at the lower classes (though for the most part these people just steal from each other). Like the old saying goes, the best lies contain a grain of truth.

Cumulative end result:

The problem of technology crowding out low skilled workers does not go away. The lack of economic expansion and left wing policies that favor the growth of corporations ensure more and more people become economically useless. If you have been unemployed for any significant period of time you know the malaise that sets in that cripples your ability to interact with the rest of the world and make you more bitter and hopeless (none of which is a recipe for future success). The system inevitably explodes and the lower classes overrun the upper classes. Society as we know it reverts to a more primitive state and the whole cycle begins anew (unless we nuke each other in the process).

Incidentally, I don't think the conservative solution would be a real solution. The only difference would be that the lower class's resentment will be far less likely to be tolerated and they would be the ones who would get wiped out. You still get mass slaughter in the end but human society as a whole stabilizes in favor of continued technological advancement with a population suited for it.

The only bloodless solution I can see would be eugenics. Sterilize low income individuals and set a price floor on the reversal of this operation to be very high (say, 20 thousand dollars). This would solve a great deal of problems, though getting society to accept this without revolting would be rather low.

I was gonna cover the conservative version in depth but I got a guild wars 2 beta code so my weekend is gone. Sorry.

troll-face_design.png

[The Moonshield]

...I got a guild wars 2 beta code so my weekend is gone.

You too, huh?