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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32947 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 27, 2023

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Much appreciated.

I have a lot of trouble evaluating whether the pre-capitalist leadership was genuinely better. I think the question for me kind of is: even if they were better at leadership, would that outweigh the economic growth we got under the new order? Competition leading to lower prices and maximizing consumer surplus and growth seems to have really not been a component of the old system at all. A lot of aristocrats did decide to go into business eventually as they lost their other privileges, but it seems like they really didn't make that transition till they were forced into it by new entrepreneurs. Would the industrial revolution still have happened if no one shattered that stasis? Capitalists might be selfish "I've got mine" types but they did produce benefits for the overall society - an excerpt about the Gilded Age, likely the height of the capitalist dominion:

The giant corporation would bring Americans of all stripes into its orbit with remarkable speed. A professional and managerial middle class began to emerge as the educated and skilled went to work as engineers, lawyers, technical experts, clerks, and middle managers for large companies. The ranks of permanent wage workers swelled, both within railroads and in the industries that fed their needs or expanded with the new markets they opened up. Labor prospered during the postwar boom, enjoying a 40 percent growth in average real income from 1865 through late 1873

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