2016 U.S. Presidential Elections: The Circus Is In Full Swing

[rektasaurus]

Currency is a strange idea but it is necessary as a medium of exchange especially in the age of specialization. Currency, unlike potatoes, is also non-perishable and portable. Ty college econ. I think it is different when you earn a big pile of it, not that I was ever in any danger of it either. Being paid in lsd is giving me some serious a brave new world vibes.

 

[Bromden]

Yes, I know it is a necessity in this international and interconnected culture of ours. I wouldn't try to barter a basket of aforementioned fruits at the tobacco store, or offer my services to paint the clerk's walls in return of some smoke. Oftentimes it would be hard to find a tobacco store where the flat of the clerk or owner needs painting, and the fruit option would be nonexistent in the winter. And I wouldn't even know whose flat to paint and how often if I wanted a continuous internet service. But it won't make this system of bartering large quantities of IOU notes any less stupid upon closer scrutiny, because of the mass delusion aspect.

What I wanted to mention in my previous post, but totally forgot about it by the end, is how that big family system and similar close community ones were/are able to circumvent the system and give you that sense of pride in individuality (however strange that sounds) more than any number of Nike ads ever will. By people, be it relatives or neighbours, helping each other out, you are getting rid of the state and other players as middlemen, making everything a more personal thing. You have all the wheat in the world, but you want to eat meat with your bread? Pigfarmer Joe will gladly barter with you. You need new warm clothes? Auntie Marjorie on the other side of the village will gladly knit some for you and your family for that fruit basket. You are building a house? There's a dozen brothers and cousins living nearby who will gladly help you out. In return, you will gladly help them out when they are building something. Everything is personal in such places, and you don't have to deal with the faceless, dehumanising consumersim while trying to solve those problems. No shady, low quality import meat, no chinese slave labour clothing, no drunk-ass moronic prole construction workers. And much less VAT and other taxes paid, so the guv'mint, be it capitalist or communist, doesn't really like such communities. Also because they are prone to listening to official propaganda much less, as they tend to get their ideologies from their elders. Hence the methodical destruction of the big family system during the last century or so.

 

[ClownWithABunchofFlowers]

i think trump will win

 

[rektasaurus]

It sounds like you’ve been getting paid in lsd ? I think the tomato is the fruit and the potato is the vegetable.

But to seriously respond to your comment, communities of people still gather together and either pool their money or trade services and perform favors for each other. But yeah, I think I agree with your overall sentiment. Being useful, involved, and appreciated in a community is an essential part of happiness, and it is a little sad how much of that is dependent on the size of your wallet, and how much the size of your wallet depends on it. A real chicken or egg type of deal for the vast majority of people.

I think Trump will win too. I honestly don’t care either way at this point. It won’t fix the problems in our senate and house.

 

[Bromden]

When I said "aforementioned fruits", I meant the fruits from my family's plot of land, not the potatoes from your example. But that doesn't mean I was never paid in drugs.

Yes, I know that such communities exist, especially in rural areas. Even more, some(=not many) people are actively trying to estabilish 'em. I was invited to such a "modern-traditionalist" village a few years back, which was that kind of a community. It was consisting of enlightened people who escaped city life to build what they built there. They were the only community that I've seen in this country in the new millenium yet that wasn't either hostilely competitive or seriously self-bull****ting (there's probably more out there, but I'm a city dweller now and the city is filled to the brim with selfish assholes).

But when I was a kid, my family was part of such a community, where noone needed to call construction workers when they built something and resource- and skill bartering was a thing. That one slowly dissolved along the years, giving way to this beautiful modern, selfish, comfort-centric society I live in now.

 

[rektasaurus]

I see. I meant that such communities form even in the city. Usually revolving around families of friend groups or otherwise known as networks. My perception of such communes like you speak of is that they’re typically ruled by cultish weirdos who aren’t quite sure what to do with power. But yeah, I can see how my comment that people would be happier living in huts would conjure up such images. I was thinking more along the lines of living like Native Americans.

 

[Bromden]

Yes, cultist weirdo communities are a thing here in the city too, they were who are thought of with my "seriously self-bull****ting" description, but that one village was nothing like a cult, they were just people who escaped into the middle of nothing to start over. There was no great leader or forced religion, just people who used modern agrarian techniques without an overreliance on technology (they live in the area of the country with the least amount of light pollution). Mind, a lot of them were intellectuals who had a source of money without needing a regular 8+ hours a day job.

Yeah, I'd prefer to live like injuns too. Although I would have died last year without modern medicine, but it probably would've been worth it.

 

[Anarion]

It would be nice if we could enjoy the many benefits of modernity like a dramatically decreased chance of dying from disease without the alienation.

 

[rektasaurus]

I’d jump on something like that. As long as there was an internet connection but honestly I could do without that too.

I remember the heady days of my youth thinking that urban sprawl and corporate America were the primary reason for the sense of unhappiness and alienation many of us feel.

 

[kurczak]

Even the most conservative estimates are that peasants never worked (for someone else) for more than half the year. Modern workers spend their entire lives working in and for systems that don't benefit them. A lord expecting 8+ hours of work 300+ days a year (like most modern people are expected to do) would get his manor burned down. Peasants were primarily independent communities which lords tried to exploit and make dependent, while modern people have no choice but to be dependent.

Today you work 8+ hours 300+ days and you get remunerated for them. The peasant of old worked "only" half the year for someone else and got jack **** for it (other than the vague promise the lord will protect him against external violence) and had to make an actual living in his "free" time during the other half of the year.

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

"Getting paid less than enough to survive despite working my entire life in a robotic totalitarian job" vs "Spending less than half the year working for some prick and then being able to make my own unalienated living the rest of the time"

The fact that peasants had so much free time to do festivals and go on pilgrimages even between these two responsibilities should be a condemnation of all wagecuckery.

 

[Bromden]

That ain't fair with poor Maria Theresa. She set that a peasant with his own land above a certain size should work 1 day a week with workstock, or 2 days a week manual labour on the lord's land. If you were a peasant with your own house but no or minimal land of your own, that was 18 days a year. If you didn't have your own house, it was 12 days. Worktimes for the lord weren't much bigger than that before that, just more varied. You don't need to work half a year on any kind of agrarian piece of land.
Taxes were lower too, because the main income of the nobility and the state was the land that they owned. Other than that, the peasant paid 10 percent of the products to the church and 10% to the lord. There were some other kinds of taxes when the state was in trouble or wanted to go to war, but those came and went when needed. Compare this to the current 40+% income tax and the 25% VAT on everything.

It sounds to me like you didn't really enjoy living under the Monarchy and have contempt for olden times.

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[rektasaurus]

To be fair, there was basically no upward social mobility and being doomed to manual labor without access to education your whole life does suck. Unless you could pull a Count of Monte Cristo and bamboozle your way in. Today, it’s basically money which decides your class. And we have, in theory anyways, equal opportunity to earn money. In practice, as usual, it’s more complicated.

 

[Bromden]

I'd trade my current life to a steady, peaceful, medieval peasant life in a blink. I wouldn't do the trade with a wartime peasant life. And I definitely wouldn't want to be a medieval landless labourer in peace- or wartime. It's better doing that here and now.

Edit: I'm speaking in the context of this country, which always had a lot of fertile land and was rich in agriculture. I am aware that there are lot of places where medieval peasant life sucked much, much more by standard.

 

[rektasaurus]

Yeah, I think there’s a reason the primitive building channel exploded on YouTube. As well as the popularity of the bushcraft channels. Everyone is sick of the circus and there is no end in sight. I enjoy learning about the old trades guilds and lives of, say, the immunes during Roman times, and merchants a la Sinbad, although those stories are from the orient.

The life of a tenant farmer does seem pretty sweet, during peacetime under a benevolent lord. Personally, if I had the power to choose, I’d probably go for something like the landed gentry ? I wonder if it would be better to be able to go back now with the knowledge one has of the modern world or if being born into such a station would feel claustrophobic and ultimately boring.

 

[Adorno]

It sounds like an attempt to vilify modern capitalism - and there are certainly reasons for that - and glorify, to some degree, peasant life.
Child mortality was about the same as the worst parts of Africa today. Infectious diseases were widespread and life expectancy very low. It's estimated that about 400 million Europeans died during the 18th century from smallpox. Nutrition was dismal and starvation, or close to it, not uncommon.
The lord or farm owner had the right to physically punish peasants, just like parents could beat their children, as long as it didn't lead to permanent damages (or handicap as we would say today). There are examples of minor peasant rebellions over particularly sadistic lords.
In Russia peasants were effectively slaves up until the revolution. In Denmark it was slightly better, but during most of the 18th century peasants were bound to their parish and could not leave. As mentioned, even before then, peasants needed a letter from local authorities to travel outside their parish/municipality. Wedlock was also limited, and you couldn't just marry anyone outside the parish.
Peasants were the lowest of the low with very few rights - basically owned by the lord/land owner.

 

[Antoine de Saint-Exupéry]

It sounds like an attempt to vilify modern capitalism - and there are certainly reasons for that - and glorify, to some degree, peasant life.

only if you stubbornly misread Jacob's point.

it's obviously not a comment on all points of quality of life including health and so on or social mobility or justice, merely contextualising how much time is spent working for the boss; how much you are dependent as a measure of work obligations.

there's a lot to be said about justice and stratification for the peasantry, but none of it is particularly relevant to Jacob's point.

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

Also, 18th century serfs were kept in line by massive standing armies of musket-armed soldiers, allowing the nobility to get away with a lot more than they could in the middle ages when the differential between a peasant army and a levy army was much smaller. In premodernity if a peasant revolt happened, there was a very real chance of the nobility not having enough power to deal with it at all, hence why things like common law existed to make sure none of the feudal classes overstepped their boundaries. Absolute Monarchs and totalitarian nobles are products of the early modern period, not the middle ages, and their introduction is what eventually led to the french revolution.

 

[Adorno]

only if you stubbornly misread Jacob's point.

it's obviously not a comment on all points of quality of life including health and so on ...

I was replying to rektasaurus' post.
My point being the production system and society as a whole has changed so much it makes little sense to single out working hours as a factor when analysing working conditions under capitalism.

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

Working hours are working conditions, or at least the sizeable part of it. Society as a whole has changed in many ways because of the increase in working hours. I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here.