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[sebastian_dangerfield]

Yes, when pushed, you acknowledge that the rich use government to serve their self-interest. You don't seem to get that this undercuts the argument (which you described and seem to believe) that the poor should not be allowed to use government to serve their self-interest.

You're missing my argument. There was a time when noblesse oblige worked. I could cite endless examples of past advantaged sorts who followed the rule, "don't be a pig and wreck a good thing." Investment bank partnerships of old come to mind.

But those days are long gone. And if we want to talk about whose dick is most prominently inserted in the poor's ass, the upper middle class and affluent-but-not-rich are the real culprits I see. The rich can pay greater taxes. It's the aspirant affluent who refuse to cough an extra $3k of their $600k salary because they want to use that money to put Mackenzie Childs doorknobs through the first floor, a liposuction tune-up, or bring the nanny along on summer vacation.

The implication here -- and it's a fiction -- is that the rich use their control over the government in a neutral, selfless way that the poor would corrupt. "We can't let the poor into the club -- they'll eat all the pie." That pie is getting eaten already, and what we're talking about is who gets to eat it, not whether there will be any left.

Older generations did follow a "don't wreck the place" rule. Sure, you had Fricks and Rockefellers who plundered the environment and abused workers. But you also had Henry Fords (loathsome bigoted views aside) who realized the best way to sell the most cars was to allow workers to earn enough to afford them.

If you had immigrant grandparents who did alright here and were thankful for the opportunity, they probably drilled it into your head: "Treat people fairly, and don't draw attention to yourself." You hear anyone following that rule today?

That's bullshit. There's a lot of irrationality among rich and poor alike, but ordinary people are not that hard to figure out. They want ordinary things, like jobs and schools and roads and healthcare and a local sportsball team that wins more than average.

What you've just described is an incurious and narrowly focused person. You are correct - the rich are often just as clueless. But never the whole household. There's always at least one person in a rich household who took advantage of educational opportunities and grasps complex issues from numerous angles. This is usually the brother or sister who runs the family business, or manages the family funds, while the rest of the kids sell real estate, broker antiques, or tinker on their horse farm.

The poor are often too harried by life, trying to simply survive, to avail themselves of educational opportunities which would give them a better grasp of the issues. Hence, they acquire the narrow view you describe.

Again, the worst class are the non-earning members of the newly affluent. The spouses and children of docs, lawyers, small business owners... These people are often amazingly, shockingly incurious. And dull as all fuck.

Alas, we have a two-party system that often lacks good solutions to hard problems. The Republicans are so committed to cutting taxes that they cannot offer solutions to problems which involve spending money, which is most of them. The Democrats often lack the courage of their convictions, and often struggle to propose solutions that will make a difference to ordinary people. Also, the nature of our government makes it hard to get things done, and people get frustrated with that.

2.

There is no alternative. What you just described is a transfer. My point is what you are attributing to democracy (transfers) is not an attribute of democracy per se, but an attribute of all government. The earliest civilizations in what is now Iraq involved a lot of poor farmers and a small ruling class that grew rich taking a share of what the farmers grew. Plus ca change, plus le meme chose.

I have never bought the argument there is always an elite that exploits everything. I think the post-war boom in this country (yes, possibly a non-reproducible aberration, for a number of reasons) demonstrated that a benign elite could simply manage things, and profit a decent bit more than everyone else, while delivering broad prosperity.

I don't think it needs to be turned upside down. I think our government is pretty excellent, in a world historical sense.

I think we need a full on revolution to stop an emerging class system that will destroy this country. You might call my affinity for the old notion of noblesse oblige classist, and perhaps it is. But that was a class system that benefited people more broadly. What we have to today is a vicious, stagnant system that makes it near impossible for talented people of modest means to reach the higher levels. This undoes the whole idea of the American Experiment.

We've allowed the merchant class to morph into a rentier class. These people know no bounds. They are your Mnuchins, your Pruitts, your [Insert everybody on Wall Street in 2008]. They're blunt, thoughtless elitists. Nihilists, really. You don't get rid of these people, or their corrosive mindsets, with government policy giving the poor more power. You get rid of them with Great Depression level crisis that shocks some decency out of politicians and business people alike. You need an extreme event the forces politicians to elevate their sense of decency over their careers and say, "Wait minute. This is not America anymore. We need to stop this. We can't destroy the environment, create massive underclasses like Brazil, run a budget indistinguishable from that of a Banana Republic, and worship consumption. this degenerate behavior does not work."

Most of the time, it succeeds in resolving disputes between people without violence or oppression.

I view this as a flaw rather than a feature at the moment. The system is precluding necessary radical change.

(Cue Adder.) Also, it does pretty well (in a comparative sense) at enabling innovation. How many dominant European (or Japanese, or Chinese) tech companies do you see? But I do think it needs to be reformed. A government that was fairer and more egalitarian would be even better at these things. The problem, of course, is that some people are threatened by these things and want to block them (#maga).

I agree with the first half. As to the second, I don't. I think we need a political civil war. We need a giant reset.

We're going to get it one way or another. 2008 is not over. Not by any stretch.

It's an interesting suggestion, but that's not what you think, because there are many other things the government does that you like, like national defense, primary education, building roads, regulating financial markets, and fighting infectious diseases. Et cetera. I think some kind of universal income is a good idea, but it is not a panacea.

I never said I didn't want those things. I was unclear, so I'll be clear here. When I said, "Here's money, you're on your own," I meant, "The state will continue to provide the basic necessities to qualify as a state," which include most of your list (I'd eliminate a few).

You are significantly changing your tune, while pretending to be reading from the same music. Even so, what you are saying is still nonsense. Just to make this more concrete, late-18th century France and England were both monarchies in which the government served the interests of a relatively small number of people who exploited everyone else. France went bankrupt, and more, and England did not, and slowly expanded the franchise.

Our form of noblesse oblige worked. But it's long gone. Now we just have a Gatsbian mess.

Dude, I am responding to your argument that the poor cannot be allowed to have a voice in government that will let them advance their own interests. My point is, if they don't, everyone else will exploit them. How do you "stop the rich" other than by letting others share government power? Noblesse oblige was tried, and it didn't work. A nice theory, but the rich found too much upside in exploiting everyone else.

They need to learn the lesson that comes with going too far. You think that can be delivered via the ballot box. I think we need a crisis, and one where investors are savaged, and labor's value increases radically in relation to capital's.

Agreed. (I think you're saying, we could save the banks without saving their investors.)

Exactly.

This is such nonsense. The government is spending that money because, for the most part, people want it spent. I personally don't believe that we need to spend as much on defense as we do. But no one gets elected to Congress on a platform of radically cutting defense spending. No one.

You can't always get what you want. And if you try sometimes, you should get only what we can afford.

(This version was rejected by Keith.)

I want a pony.

I disagree. Compare what happened under Obama and what is happening under Trump. The differences are real. Healthcare reform (for example) made a real difference to people. Having a black President made a real difference to people. In both directions -- Trump got elected, at least in part, because so many people were threatened by both. IMO, Trump is not going to reverse the long-term trend that the government is more egalitarian and more representative, though he's doing his worst.

Trump demonstrates my point about ordinary people being seriously uninformed. (Cue Hank telling me this applies to me. I'll pre-empt that: Hank, the horse has been dead for about a month now. Put down the stick.)

I think you are truly schizophrenic on this issue, and that often leads you to climb to such a high altitude that you can say things like "The system always reverts to the default setting: Doing what the moneyed want it to do." so that you can avoid reconciling the contradictions.

I think letting any one sector acquire too much power, particularly in regard to transfers, puts a nation on a road to bankruptcy. Those who need money from the govt do it by sacking the treasury. Those who want to avoid paying money to the govt do it by sapping the Treasury of funds to pay fixed obligations.

It's ultimately all of the classes working together to demand too much. A pincer effect where the rich create rules allowing them to avoid paying money to support the lower classes and the lower classes demand increasing benefits. The govt is left with no choice but to borrow.

Come back to Earth, Sebby. You've climbed so high here that we're losing your signal -- it's just all incoherent.

Touche. I went for the grand finish there. I don't even know wtf I was saying as I read it now.