felis-parenthesis
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User ID: 660
felis-parenthesis
18d ago
Perhaps I'm guilty of skipping steps in my argument. I agree that "people are not really independent actors and social norms need to be shaped to lead people to make good decisions."
The idea that social norms need to be shaped to lead people to make good decisions is worrying. Could social norms be misshapen? The worries branches off in three different directions.
First, the leaders might be lazy. Social norms don't get shaped. People make bad decisions.
Second, greed. People might seek leadership intending to sell out. Social norms get shaped at the behest of business. People make decision that are profitable for the businesses buying norm-shaping, but not so good for the people
Third, structural. Social norms get shaped by advertising and product placement. Who has the money for this? Governments spend some money on Public Service Announcements. Charities promote awareness, and sometime get government grants. But the lions share of money comes from profitable businesses aiming to become even richer. The purest example of this is that you haven't heard of the society for barefoot living. Since they wear nothing on their feet, they have nothing to sell and make no money and buy no publicity. But you have heard of barefoot shoes. Where there is a product there is a revenue stream, and some of that money gets diverted to buy publicity.
I'm using the phrase "late Capitalism" because others use it and I'm trying to communicate. I would much rather say ConFinCap, as in Fragpowmop versus Confincap. Whatever. I mean the economic system we currently live under. My core claim is that late Capitalism is much the largest force shaping social norms, and shapes them according to its own internal logic, with no human malevolence require to bring about bad outcomes.
I may be claiming too much. What are the other forces hammering social norms in and out of shape? In the UK, Christianity used to be a big deal, but has pretty much gone. In the UK in 1900, intellectuals were socialist, but that was a labour-centric creed and has also pretty much gone. Tony Blair was a Labour Prime minister, but he was about management and procedure. His mantra was "Education, education, eduction" but with no vision of what to teach.
felis-parenthesis
19d ago
You cannot talk about Shane Gillis and women's gym attire without a link to "Scrunch Short" on a gym wear retail site https://thegymking.com/products/gym-king-365-scrunch-short-bubblegum-pink claiming "V-scrunch shaping to the back waistband to enhance and define the glutes"
The culture war aspect is that the this helps you understand moralists who want to ban things. When you operate in the paradigm that they are asking for bans on organic human stupidity, bans seems authoritarian, and (since human stupidity is infinite) rather futile. But many of them are operating within the paradigm that late capitalism turbo-charges human stupidity. The concern with cannabis is not that 1% of teenagers will drop out of college to become stoners; the concern is that big business will advertise cannabis into mainstream coolness, and money-politics will lead to cannabis smoking being expressly permitted by law, and your teenager will dorp out of college to become a stoner. The concern with prostitution is not what is available to sailors down at the docks. The concern is that Big Brothel will mainstream sex work. Your daughter will apply for Unemployment Benefit and be told that there are jobs available at McFuck and General Sex. She will be ineligible for welfare because she turned down sex work.
One notices an instance of this on the Gym King website. Women dress for attention in the gymnasium. And capitalism steps up to provide the tools with bubblegum pink enhancement of the glutes with "Squat proof" performance properties.
I tried writing a sentence to sum this up: "Law makers need to be aware that whatever is permitted will be turbo-charged by late capitalism.", but that isn't quite right. We live in an era of intrusive law making. If a gymnasium owner tries to open a "men only" gym, he may fall foul of sex discrimination law. If a teacher tries to run a school with strict discipline, expelling unruly pupils, he may fall foul of disparate impact jurisprudence. Any law has loopholes and unintended consequences. Late capitalism will turbo-charge the exploitation of loopholes and amplify the unintended consequences.
felis-parenthesis
23d ago
My perspective on the ICC comes from being Scottish. I'm not personally affected by Drug deaths rise sharply in Scotland as figures remain worst in Europe but it seems pretty clear that Scotland needs its own Duerte to save its young people from fentanyl and death. The ICC are the bad guys, on the side of drugs gangs and death. The ICC insist that government must be ineffective, with success being punished by prosecution for "crimes against humanity". Has the ICC been captured by organised crime?
I'm a semi-demi-Luddite.
Five days a week: soul destroying grind :-(
Five days a month: meaning and purpose :-)
Not sure that I believe me, because Tucker Carlson: Easy Money Is Destroying American Society is the inspiration. Even if people are in broad agreement, there is much to discuss about the actual amount of work, and what kind of work, and how the system would function.
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