Coming February 6, 2024 . . .
MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
Pre-order at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop
Coming February 6, 2024 . . . MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE by Michael Wolraich Pre-order at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop |
As jobless claims "surprisingly" go up by 32,000 this month (uh, did everyone forget the sequester?), an Atlantic reporter notes the abandonment of workers by both GOP & Democrats.
While he pushes 3 theories how workers ended up under the bus, I'll push a 4th - "social media whatever".
It used to be most of us were consumers of news and marketing, while a few made their money that way. Now we're all "engaged" (sad co-opting of that word) - selling our goods on Craigslist & eBay, friending & liking pages up the rec list, putting our portals & blogs on-line, passing on videos if not doing mash-ups of our own...
We've become a hive of little businessmen, little Eichmanns as someone once put it - with the corresponding lack of sympathy and objectivizing our fellow citizens, our neighbors as it were. Sure, we'll spare a moment to contemplate a touching story, but then we're on to the next interesting tidbit - we have no staying power anymore. (Andy Warhol's 15 minutes is an eternity in 2013.)
Just like when everyone started doing on-line investing - setting themselves up as amateur stock brokers, which made for pure chum to the pro sharks sitting waiting to mop up. (one description showed a pro watching all the activity during the day, pumping or withdrawing as needed, and coming in to skim off the real profits in the last 15 minutes of trading. How many self-deluded amateurs were oblivious to that?)
So now, we're amateur PR agents & marketers, while the pros know how to corral our screaming a mile from the actual stage (ref. Bush 2004 campaign, though in the blogosphere). Most of the Facebook & blog howling is like early ejaculation, while the pros are having lunch at The Palm with the real decision makers and getting all their agenda notched up in legislation, or more likely (since laws are for suckers these days - how many bills actually pass?), just getting a blind eye to whatever enforcement they want.
Since most politicians are easily re-elected, they're not looking for support - they're looking to avoid scandal, outcry, some publicity that will make them stand out enough to be removed. People with money might do that, businesses might be able to rig something, media outlets & reporters (all owned by big business now), and a few expert lobbyist orgs.
And the other issue with us profit-motivated Eichmanns these days is if someone's not making a profit a la Apple going through the roof, we avert our eyes and look down in shame. Those non-profits - maybe we're not calling them socialist, but God, they go from handout to handout, don't they? Always with their "hey ho, hey ho" chants. And if all us billion amateur investors quickly lose faith in a failed Facebook IPO or an Apple that sets record profits but doesn't meet expectations, how do we feel about a profitless advocacy group mired in lack of success?
After all, it wasn't until IBM & Google discovered Linux and Apple discovered OpenBSD that open source really became popular. So to all those long-termed unemployed, well, good luck with all that - the market helps those who help themselves, no? Should've gone to a better school, or fixed your search engine optimization to rise above the others, or at least logged on to more social nets to get the support you needed.
Comments
I believe one could find historical equivalents for most everything in your rant (not the linked article) in Tocqueville's Democracy in America. We were never a nation of good comrades.
by artappraiser on Fri, 05/17/2013 - 3:42pm
Maybe it's because I'm a math-lover, but I found this study that was mentioned in the linked article to be very much worth the read:
http://www.princeton.edu/~bartels/economic.pdf
I was skeptical of how they would measure representational responsiveness until I read the methods that were actually used. (Not that the model used was pioneered by that paper, but I was unaware of that model until reading the paper.)
by Verified Atheist on Fri, 05/17/2013 - 4:18pm
So you think extensive wage slavery to dependency-inducing conglomerates is the preferable way to run a market economy?
by EmmaZahn on Fri, 05/17/2013 - 5:19pm
I think the conglomerates still own us, we just do more of the work for them now.
Think of Google - they just sit back and let us click and pocket the change. Must be tough. Facebook changes terms to own everything we put online. We tell marketers how to market, they just follow the dotted lines, take all our demographic data and plug it into a cookie cutter program.
by PeraclesPlease on Fri, 05/17/2013 - 5:38pm
Maybe so but since I am in no prized demographic, it is really annoys me by not showing me a greater variety of ads. I really hate how the targeting algorithms limit so much of what I see unless I game them.
Anyway, thought you might be interested in one of the online conversations about some alternatives:
by EmmaZahn on Sat, 05/18/2013 - 4:33pm