Originally Posted by BristolUK (Post 12498881)

Do you mean Childish Gambino?

Originally Posted by Shard (Post 12499363)

Yup. Hadn't heard of him before this...

Originally Posted by Oink (Post 12499377)

America is the "last primitive society of the future."

Originally Posted by BristolUK (Post 12499367)

Me neither.

It reminded me of Gangnam Style. :lol:

Originally Posted by Cyan (Post 12499375)

It's a start - having a creative interpretation of the gun and police state dystopia that abounds south of the border. But it's kind of preaching to the converted - the type of folks who will watch it and stroke their chin in nodding agreement, sipping their lattes with their MacBook open.

It will take years to build any momentum just like anti-smoking and LGBT issues. I thought Sandy Hook would be pivotal moment but I underestimated the low-life politicians who are in the pocket of the NRA.

Canada has no similar issues to speak of, other than the handbag fight between BC and Alberta over pipelines...

Originally Posted by Shard (Post 12499892)

Really? Gangnam was pure fun.

Originally Posted by Shard (Post 12499889)

Hard to know what America is these days, but video certainly illustrated its ever present darker side.

Originally Posted by MarkG (Post 12500660)

America is becoming the first truly post-industrial society in the West. And that's unravelling all the uneasy compromises that were made to keep industrial society working.

Originally Posted by dbd33 (Post 12500794)

In what way is it post-industrial? They still make cars in America, washing machines, drywall compound, commercial ice cream, guns, there's no end of industry.

Originally Posted by MarkG (Post 12500807)

But it matters less and less every year. Today, if an American wants something made, there's no need to find someone in America to do it, they can just send the design to China and have the Chinese company send the results back to them. There are lots of tiny companies which do that already, for the parts they can't make on a CNC machine or 3D printer.

Tomorrow, they'll skip the whole China business and just make it at home.

And decentralization of production inevitably leads to the decline of centralized power. If you need a giant factory to make stuff, the people in Washington can do a lot to help you make that factory work, and there's a strong incentive to favour a big, centralized government and to go-along-to-get-along with people you don't much like but need to work with in your factory. If you get all your stuff from China, or build it in your basement, there's little that people in Washington can do for you other than get in the way, and you no longer have to care about people you don't like.

The whole post-WWII compromise between left and right was based on the belief that we'd be better off by working together, because we could build bigger factories and make more stuff. And that's increasingly no longer the case.

Hence the rapidly-accelerating breakdown of American society, with Canada and the EU not far behind.



I specified the West, because I know a lot more about Western countries than I do about any others, and I didn't want someone to say 'what about Wazakistan, eh?' And pretty much the whole of the west is faux post-industrial at this point, they just have lots of factories to make stuff to send to America.