Except "trad" households (full time SAHM in a nuclear home) are not traditional. Tradition is not something only the upper-middle class in a post-war boom attained for a short period of time.
Throughout human history, it was rare for only two people to raise a child, let alone one. Or for women to not bring money into the home.
Like many "trad" trends, it's based more on advertising and television than history.
At the very least, you need a whole society of aunts and uncles and grandparents and cousins, and deep friends to truly do any kind of traditional family structure in the traditional way. Otherwise it's just emulating an extremely narrow portion of the trad that didn't exactly exist in the first place.
> At the very least, you need a whole society of aunts and uncles and grandparents and cousins, and deep friends to truly do any kind of traditional family structure in the traditional way.
"It takes a village to raise a child" was meant literally. However, the glory of capitalism required people to move to where the jobs were, turning that millennia-old principle upside down ever since industrialization. And car culture was the ultimate fatal blow, when children can't even walk their own neighborhood any more.
I remember when Hillary Clinton said "it takes a village to raise a child" and she was mocked by conservatives and accused of undermining parental rights and wanting governments to control families.
And when BLM made it part of their charter to encourage community support for children beyond the typical nuclear unit they were accused of a radical Marxist agenda to "destroy families."
For some reason the very concept of extended families and community engenders deep anger and hostility from some Americans, and that's odd for a nation of immigrants considering how common the "whole society of aunts and uncles and grandparents and cousins" is in the rest of the world.
> For some reason the very concept of extended families and community engenders deep anger and hostility from some Americans
I think because excessive individualism plays into the hands of large companies. There is an individualist culture that has naturally grown over time in the US, but it has also been pushed by big corporations because if you can't depend on your neighbors and extended family, you need to spend money to fill the gaps.
But when leftists says things like community support, it doesn't bring up images of traditional villages and extended families. It brings up images of communists saying things like abolish the family. Naturally, due to their history.
It's not like leftists are known for their traditional family values now or then, so why should it be taken that way?
Yes, when you intentionally take what leftists say in bad faith and stereotype them negatively, then the bad faith interpretation and negative stereotypes make sense. But normal people don't hear "communism" when leftists say "community support."
Also given how many people espousing "traditional family values" among the right turn out to be abusers, pedophiles, rapists, deadbeats, etc, what you might consider "traditional" values don't actually mapped to the left-right political axis at all.
And I assume you didn't bother reading my comment or this thread very hard and just wanted to dunk on the left, but the American nuclear family isn't "traditional family values" to begin with.
"I did not have memory enabled, nor did I have information about me associated with my account; I did these tests in Incognito Mode. To make sure it wasn’t somehow feeding my account information to Claude even in Incognito Mode, I asked a friend to run these tests on his computer, and he received the same result; I also got the same result when I tested it through the API."
Given those precautions if it is just memory or some form of deanonymization that's also cause for concern.
There is rent-seeking, rent extraction and the rentier class. All are a part of the process of enclosure. Landlords are included in this but it may not seem that way because enclosure happened so long ago.
This is a trite response that doesn't engage with what was originally stated.
The double edged brilliance/danger of capitalism is that it constantly opens up and moves into new markets. This is good, it means once the market determines a need, capital investment can accelerate production of the good that meets that need.
But the flip side is it is coming for everything. Everything will be marketized and monetized and accelerated and made efficient. And there are genuine problems with that.
Regulation has been the historical response, but we've seen concentrated wealth chip away at regulations for decades or even rip them apart overnight.
This is a contradiction that needs to be resolved. One can be pro-capitalism or anti-capitalism and come to the same conclusion.
> we've seen concentrated wealth chip away at regulations for decades or even rip them apart overnight.
There are more and more regulations every day. Oil refineries are being abandoned in California due to regulations so heavy there's no way for them to operate anymore. A friend of mine pulled his business out of California due to stifling regulations.
> Everything will be marketized and monetized and accelerated and made efficient.
I give my unwanted items to the thrift store rather than the landfill. Others sell it on eBay. This is monetizing/making things more efficient. And it's good.
but not universally. oil refineries were causing asthma and environmental degradation.
them moving to another state is a regulatory failure (they shouldn't have another jurisdiction to move to, they should just operate without imposing negative externalities on others, spelling of the refineries).
what value is clean air? what is the value of a human life? how much is your attention worth?
these are questions that capitalism should not answer, but will nevertheless try to.
Socialist economies are much more environmentally destructive, because they are so inefficient they cannot afford the luxury of being environmentally cleaner.
The problem isn't capitalism. That's just poor thinking from someone who has spent too much time thinking about political ideology. The problem is how we finance campaigns combined with gerrymandering. And if you want proof, look at corruption in communist and formerly communist countries. It makes the US look like a bunch of choir boys by contrast. Thinking that it is about capitalism is just an attempt to wedge in some political ideology into a practical problem of governance and a sign someone has never actually had to lead real humans before.
Not op but if I’m being honest, I don’t feel as if that’s the case until I see a film whose special effects are limited to mise en scene and matte paintings and then I always have this overwhelming feeling that we’re all missing out.
Films on film using in camera effects are still made on occasion but they’re art films for niche audiences.
But we’ll never get another Ben Hur. And that doesn’t sit well with me even if society can’t yet fully explain why.
The collapse of the Soviet Union was ahistorical in many ways. It's rare that collapse of an empire can be pinpointed to a single day. And what you saw was a result of shock therapy imposed from the outside. I doubt that would happen to the US.
It's unlikely collapse will be felt as a singular, apocalyptic event. More like a slow, steady loss of influence and excess wealth. Countries on the periphery stop considering the empire's perspectives before making their own decisions. Other trading partners emerge. Bridges stop getting maintained until they're no longer usable.
And soft power declines. Imagine a day when the biggest pop star in the US, someone on the scale of Michael Jackson or Madonna nationally, is virtually unknown outside of its borders.
There are reasons to believe the American empire is in decline, but I maintain this will look more like Britain. It could take 50 years before American fully realize it.
Thankfully, that means there's plenty of time to reverse or mitigate the trends, or to make a decision to strengthen the Republic over the Empire.
I beg to differ. The collapse of USSR was 100% caused by internal causes.
First was the abominable low productivity in oil/gas and agricultural sectors from 1950s through 1980s.
Then came the corruption of Brezhnev era. Andropov tried to get some reforms going: first against corruption and then some Chinese-style economic changes. But Andropov died very quickly.
Eventually came Gorbachev- who had good intentions. Unfortunately he prioritized political reforms over economic. He wanted economic reforms with no pain, something to show his people some progress. Unfortunately that was impossible so he ended up with some half baked ideas (like limit alcohol sales. Or letting factory managers keep their profits expecting the managers to invest profits in new technology- managers used the profits to pay themselves. Or introduce free markets pricing between factories-when managers complained they had to pay market prices on inputs and nobody were buying their outputs the result was to subsidize factories for both inputs and outputs)
The result of these Econ reforms was that the Soviet state was running out of money. (A humanitarian policy was that for the first time in Russia’s history bad agricultural results did not result in famine-for the first time the govt bought food on the international market paying in Western currencies)
Add a few ambitious politicians who did not want to take orders from the center (Yeltsin being the principal example, but also Kravchuk) and the process of dissolution already started by the Baltic independence could only end with total collapse.
The shock therapy you mention was designed, advocated, and ultimately implemented by Gaidar - a Soviet economist fully trained by the Soviet state.
Sorry for the long reply. If you are interested in this topic I recommend reading two books, both called “Collapse” one written by Gaidar, the other one written by Zubok.
| The collapse of USSR was 100% caused by internal causes.
I wouldn't take the time to argue otherwise, although it's a question of what's considered an "internal cause." Afghanistan comes to mind. But generally, yes, absent any external pressure, the internal mismanagement still would have had the Soviet system in a very bad way and collapse would have been a matter of time.
So we're not particularly in disagreement there, except for matters of degree (100%? eh.)
But I disagree strongly that shock therapy can be put solely on the shoulders of Gaidar. You can't talk about shock therapy without talking about Jeffrey Sachs. Although I wouldn't put it all on his shoulders either. It was an extremely complicated situation from top to bottom.
But most of all, my post was really more about the how the American empire's fall will not look like the Soviet's. And I stand by that completely.
Afghanistan - economically not a big impact. The economic pressures in the 80s were low agricultural productivity requiring imports from Western countries, low oil/gas prices and productivity, endemic corruption. And if we really want to be pedantic, nobody forced USSR to invade Afghanistan.
I had to look up Jeffrey Sachs (0). He was an adviser-that is all he did. He did not impose anything on Yeltsin or Russia.
I agree that American decline will not resemble Russian collapse. Their commonality is both declines have internal causes. But other than that there isn’t much in common.
Britain's demise was relatively swift, and took place over the course of the two world wars. It fell almost immediately into vassalage, under the US. Not quite a bang, but not as drawn out as you suggest.
Its former colonies experienced all I described above and more. In this case, the colonies are most of the world: where are the bases? Everywhere.
With the States, here's the scenario, not too far fetched. We will see 1) constitutional breakdown, as Trump (or his crew) digs in, and 2) economic breakdown, 2008 but exponentially worse.
This would constitute a Soviet scale collapse, to my mind.
I put the collapse of Britain's empire at around 75 years, which is faster than the Ottomans or Spanish empires, but still nothing compared to the Soviets, which to reiterate, was an historical anomaly.
As for the US, for all the current turmoil, the dollar is still supreme in global economics, its soft power is still immense, despite the immigration chaos its still the primary destination for immigrants, and it would take decades for countries to push out our military bases because doing so would often mean building up their own military infrastructure.
Trump's unconstitutionality is a threat, and that the US has a series of bubbles built on shaky economics is not controversial. But I don't see how that could possibly result in a Soviet style singular day of collapse. At least internally, there isn't a cultural and linguistic separation between states the way there was with Russian imposition on their Soviet satellite countries.
And of course, there's the previously mentioned shock therapy, something that wouldn't have the same level of violent effect because the US is already a market economy. And there's nobody powerful enough to impose something like that on us regardless. Unlike the Soviets, if the US goes down, much of the world goes down with us, so there's strong incentives for an off-ramp, not a destabilization.
I agree there are major structural issues, and the US democratic system is being stress tested daily, but its all symptoms of decline, not imminent collapse.
Really cool UI. Makes me nostalgic for old NES games. I'm not sure this specific approach will catch on, but I'm excited to know that people see the need for a "slow internet" after years of algorithms and A/B testing optimizing people's feeds and attention-spans.
Throughout human history, it was rare for only two people to raise a child, let alone one. Or for women to not bring money into the home.
Like many "trad" trends, it's based more on advertising and television than history.
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