Cypherpunk Inadequacies / Why the 60's failed

[Steve Kinney]

On 09/02/2017 03:41 AM, grarpamp wrote:
>> \0xd:
>> Yeah, humans are both the cause and the cure.  The major source of
>> inadequacy in THIS population (crypto-anarchists) is the failure to
>> examine why the 60's failed to produce the revolution it desired.  It
>> had love, peace, and an awesome soundtrack -- yet it failed.
> 
> 60s quite possibly...
> Too much drugs, violence, disorganization...
> And unencrypted tappable mail, phone, bank lines...

I view the United States of the 1960s as the second half of an
unprecedented 20 year economic boom produced by unprecedented advances
in technology, setting the scene for a cultural war between advocates of
compassionate & egalitarian values fueled by Middle Class prosperity and
LSD, and a reactionary backlash against same by advocates of
authoritarian values.  The latter group won, hands down, because the
machinery of institutional violence was in their hands and the Golden
Rule was on their side:  Whoever has the gold makes the rules.

Around 1970 the Post-WWII economic boom started to flatten out, due to
market saturation - everyone with money to spend was spending it as fast
as they ever would.  Production costs also started to rise due to
resource depletion - the cheapest, easiest to get high value materials
were used up and continued extraction at established rates started
costing more every year.  Alongside this, a tipping point in domestic
political warfare arrived and the last vestiges of actually Liberal
radicalism were successfully replaced with a set-piece war between
militant factions covertly developed by the State then very publicly
attacked by the same agencies that created them.

On the economic front a collective decision was taken by the U.S. ruling
class - one might more accurately say a mindless tropism was followed -
and emphasis shifted from real economic growth to looting as a method of
sustaining the profit margins and growth rates our rulers had become
accustomed to.  Around 1975 this started to show up in economic
statistics as continued growth in income for the top U.S. earners, with
"stagnant" a.k.a. frozen incomes for the lowest earners.  At the top end
of the scale, a mighty, towering peak concealed in aggregate statistics
for the "top 10%" kept rising like a rocket.

1980 saw the last nails driven into the coffin of the American Dream for
all but the top 15-20% of earners, with the installation of the Reagan
Administration and a formal national policy of redistribution of wealth
from the poor to the rich by means of "trickle down" a.k.a. "voodoo"
economics.

Not sure they will make it through to the list, but I will attach some
amusing graphs.  See also http://lcurve.org for an income distribution
graph that will shock anyone who has not seen it yet - that's a promise.

Same graphs here:

http://pilobilus.net/xfer/class-warfare.jpg

http://pilobilus.net/xfer/productivity-versus-wages-1.jpg

http://pilobilus.net/xfer/real-family-income.jpg

If politics is the dynamic process of aggregate power in a society, and
money is power, then U.S. politics as presented to the public is a giant
scam supporting the process illustrated above.  And nothing else.

:o/





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