[quote=FlyerInHi]CAr, I try not to make the fallacy of composition and conflate what is good policy for human kind with what’s good for me.
Globalization and trade, automation and so on bring about the greatest amount of goods and services. It’s up to us how we allocate all that wealth.
For example, automation does not have to mean that millions will go jobless and hungry. Shame on us if we let that happen, especially if productivity is greater than ever. It could be that we have more leisure and time to develop intellectually when robots produce many more things much faster and inexpensively for us.
To me, people are deplorable when they don’t embrace change and the future. They are deplorable when then hang on to anachronistic thinking. And you know what? The future always reveal the deplorables for who they are. For example people who were anti civil-rights in the 60s. They had to live in shame when history passed them by. If they don’t know what shame is, then they’re contemptible.[/quote]
I think that you’re conflating the rhetoric around Trump (propaganda pushed by those who favor neo-liberal policies) with the reason that many people voted for him. As someone who did a massive amount of outreach during the last election season, I can tell you for a fact that the vast majority of people who voted for Trump (or who voted against HRC) are not “racist, xenophobic, bigots,” nor are they “uneducated deplorables.” They are people who have born the brunt of the costs of the last few decades of neo-liberal economic policies, while benefitting the least from those policies. The costs and benefits of globalization have not been allocated fairly, and you are seeing the result of this lopsided, unilateral shift in power and wealth. Our problems did not start on January 20, 2017. Trump is a symptom of the disease, he is not the disease itself.
What you perceive as racism and xenophobia are symptoms of the massive shift in wealth and power from the working/middle classes to the global elite. You should not have expected anything different, as the trajectory was obvious to anyone who’s been paying attention.
I agree that automation, in itself, is not necessarily a problem, but if we don’t address how the costs and benefits of automation (and globalization) are allocated before we engage in these massive shifts, then we should not expect those who are most burdened by these changes to go along with the program.
So far, there has been very little discussion about how to share the wealth and the costs. Actually, there has been no public discussion about how to handle this. We need to debate the merits of different economic and political systems first.
Perhaps every U.S. citizen should get an even number of shares in each “publicly owned” (genuinely publicly owned) technology company or automated manufacturing company, or perhaps we need to adjust the way we tax productivity so that a greater share of the profits are distributed evenly among all citizens. We need to debate the merits of a Universal Basic Income, among other ideas. Whatever we decide, it needs to be debated and decided on before we take actions that so negatively affect such a wide swath of the population (and every citizen needs to have an equal say).
Until we address the root causes of the massive discontent in the developed nations, we can expect more protectionism, isolationism, and civil unrest. This isn’t “deplorable” behavior; it’s a survival instinct. People rightly understand that there are many people, like yourself, who would not bat an eye if they disappeared from the planet. You shouldn’t expect them to behave any differently because you would do the same thing if you were in their shoes.
