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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   34390 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 13, 2023

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to the great benefit of the city's working poor

But if the city's working poor would benefit the most from this, why aren't they agitating for it? One would expect to see community groups spring up to deal with the issue, much like they did for the last 100 years of American history, but now there's nothing. Heck, I'd even expect it in the ballot box and candidates.

Now, I'm very willing to accept that the reason they aren't is propaganda and sabotage- and indeed, the entire reason why "muh oppression" continues is because it works- but I'm starting to suspect that even urban poor Americans are rich enough that their sense of apathy can take over (they're certainly much better off than any poor person anywhere else in terms of standard of living, and even some of the lower to middle class in other countries) and that the US crossed that point a generation ago.

So long as the poor don't feel themselves under threat and can afford the luxury belief of bike cucking accepting the occasional theft and confusing it for charity, I think it also releases citizens from the standard form of charitable obligations: the toleration of the underclass' behaviors is itself viewed as the charity.

The only place that really breaks this rule are West-aligned East Asian nations- but then again, they still have wireheaders all the same, and that's what hikikomori-dom is fundamentally caused by.

How often do the working poor ever organize politically, and when they try, is it ever effective? It wasn't effective at stopping the destruction of many poor neighborhoods to build roads through American cities back in the 60s (when the upper class, with more money and political capital, organized, they were able to stop it in their neighborhoods).

Political movements are almost always drawn largely from the middle class, often being more educated than average. As far as I'm aware, this is true of groups from Occupy Wall Street to Islamist terrorists to the Bolsheviks to the far more milquetoast political parties of modern developed countries. You could probably make a political organization called "more stuff for poor people now" and it would be 90% college-educated middle-class or richer (99% in leadership).

How often do the working poor ever organize politically, and when they try, is it ever effective?

Unions. Seriously, in their heyday they were the most effective grassroots political organisations ever.

Also the big-city political machines - although the leaders tended to be from respectable working class or lower middle class backgrounds (Boss Tweed was the son of a cabinet maker, and worked in various skilled trade jobs and as a bookkeeper before getting into politics via volunteer fire brigades), the middle-rank members of the machine who actually delivered the votes tended to be working poor. In western Europe where there wasn't the ethnic vote, the distinction between big-city political machines and unions was generally one without a difference.

Unions. Seriously, in their heyday they were the most effective grassroots political organisations ever.

Unions are the only way you'll get anything done on your behalf, if you're working class/working poor. But unions have become ossified as 'get plum jobs for our members/fat sinecures for our officials', which means cutting deals with city government (and that would be Democrats in LA, and the whole Democratic Party middle-class membership reacting with horror to the notions of cops on trains, crackdowns on drugs, etc.) and they have been weakened by the interests of employers who saw them as too powerful, and the taking for granted of the blue collar workers by the Democratic party:

https://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/labor-unions-hillary-clinton-mobilization-231223

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/22307891/democrats-unions-pro-act-policy-feedback

https://www.lawcha.org/2016/11/23/bill-clinton-remade-democratic-party-abandoning-unions-working-class-whites/

Unions have always been quickly captured by moneyed interests in the US.

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