The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Socially how the next 20 odd years will play out

Ok, let’s get down to brass tacks.  The riots in Britain are an important event, and combined with the decision to double down on austerity they tell us a lot.  This is my baseline, loose model for the next generation.

The decision has been made by Cameron and society in general that the way to respond to the riots is to crack down, hard.  They are sentencing people to long sentences for minor crimes (a year for stealing a bottle of water) and they are extending the punishment to families, kicking people out of housing if a member of their family was arrested.  They are discussing cutting people off from social networks, and in Calfornia today the powers that be cut off cell phone service during an entirely non-violent protest.

The decision has been made to double down on repression.  To extend repression to families, a logical extension of our socieity’s obsession with family as above all else, and a very aristocratic thing to do, which reeks on the 17th century.  In terms of social media, Wikileaks was the bleeding edge of this, when Paypal, VISA and Mastercard cut off Wikileaks, despite them having been convicted of no crimes, it was clear that access to the modern economy would be held hostage for those who didn’t play the way the oligarchs wanted them to play.

Repression of this sort always spirals.  Cut-offs from the internet, from cell phone use, from specific sites, will continue to spread.  Sometimes they will be temporary and blanket.  Sometimes they will hit individuals.  Sometimes they will hit specific sites in specific areas.  Access to the modern credit economy will continue to be used as a weapon.  There will also be continued removal of the right to travel, with no-fly lists moving to trains, and later to bus stations and eventually there will be a ramp up of stops of automobiles.

This sort of stuff is easy to get around, right now, by anyone relatively bright and even slightly technologically savvy.  So there will be a renewed, and successful push towards what might be called the biometric surveillance state.   You will carry ID, your biometric data will be centrally located as well as stored on ID, and this data will be used to control what privileges you have access to (you have no rights.)

Meanwhile, on the other side of the equation, throwing youngsters into prison for very minor crimes is a mistake.  It will harden them, and connect them.  This is especially true in British prisons, because British prisoners are a hardened bunch of criminals.  But it is a mistake no matter where, because in America and Britain, having ever be thrown in jail means your life is over.  Every decent job does a criminal record check, and if you have a criminal record, you will never ever have a good job again.  At that point you might as well become a criminal, and why not a revolutionary?

Which leads to the crackdown on hackers.  Throwing young, bright, technically savvy young adults in with the criminal element is, again, a mistake.  The rise of the surveillance state means that tech savvy is going to become very important to anyone who doesn’t want to live by what might be called “Society’s new rules”.  And  the young hackers have a revolutionary mindset.  The combination of men with nothing to lose, with men who have tech skills and believe society is corrupt and needs to be brought down, will be explosive.  And since the biometric security state will be done on the cheap, by the sort of incompetents who run the current wars and the current security apparatus, there will be plenty of cracks in the system to exploit.

Likewise the increase in punitive sentences is a mistake, pure and simple, because it means people have less to lose.  If a relatively minor crime gets you in for years, and destroys your life, many will make the calculation that they might as well fight, might as well use violent force, rather than be taken.

Meanwhile the ranks of the permanently unemployed will swell.  At this point companies simply don’t want to hire anyone who has been unemployed for longer than about 3 months, and have a strong preference for the currently employed. If you don’t find a new job in 3 months, you are probably never going to have a good job again.  The data is clear on this, what is also clear is that the developed world has made a hard turn for austerity, one which will do damage for years to come.  A decade is modestly optimistic.

This will increase social disorder, of course, and our lords and masters and the remnants of the middle and working class who scream “they’re criminals, pure and simple”, will double down on repression, again and again.

This is, of course, a big mistake.  It may turn into a relatively stable solution set in some countries, but they won’t be places you want to live unless you have the morals of totalitarian, and in others it will lead to revolutions, while in others it will lead to outright failed states.  We can hope that a few will turn aside from this path.  So far in Europe only one country has, Iceland.

As with most of my predictions, folks will scoff at this one, think I’m hysterical, and doom-monger, and so on.  But this is just social mechanics played out over time.  This is the glide path, it can be stopped, but it is unlikely to be.

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69 Comments

  1. As with most of my predictions, folks will scoff at this one, think I’m hysterical, and doom-monger, and so on.

    It all sounds horrible.

    It is also bracing, as you have well pointed out.

  2. Curmudgeon

    I think there are two dynamics at work. On one level, there are the elites, who have decided that they have no further use for a functioning middle class. On the other level, there is an intergenerational problem in that the elderly demographic bubble hates and fears its own (generational) children. It’s very easy for the elites to keep the masses busy by prompting the teabagger generation–a generation which already hates its own kids to the point of working to deny them access to healthcare or any government investment–channel teabagger resentment into even greater hatred for the uncertainties created by youth.

    It’ll only get worse as the population ages. The elderly are deeply conservative and demand stability above all else. When the majority of voters are 65+, riots or political activism by younger people (under 40s) simply will not be tolerated. This is the current situation in the US.

    The most probable result from a demographic crackdown by the aging baby boomer bubble against the subsequent generations will be a reversion to stable authoritarianism. Failed states and revolutions don’t happen without fractures within the elites around which competing centers of power, in alternative to state power, can coalesce. Mass protests in absence of sectional elite support end only in massacres and further repression. Political events of over the past 30 years, of course, can be largely defined by the creation of a unified elite with very high levels of class solidarity. No one of consequence will break ranks from their class peers on account of repression against the public. There will be riots, but the only consequence will be further repression in an endless spiral into authoritarianism.

    I do not see a any probability of positive reform until the aging population demographic is reversed (i.e. after the baby boomer generation dies) and missteps by supreme elites fracture elite class consensus and lead to the use by disaffected elites of popular anger to alter the balance of power within the elite class. It is highly likely that no one currently alive to read this post will live to the day to see it happen.

  3. Ghostwheel

    Ah, Iceland!

    The problem with emigrating to Iceland is that the language is said to be one of the most difficult European languages to learn.

    Too bad for me.

  4. Ian Welsh

    Good analysis Curmudgeon. I think, however, that many of the top level retainers, the people who direct a lot of the most effective repression and violence, are on the edge of being let go. I think within the next few years, many will be let go and replaced with more ideologically sound but less competent individuals. The folks being let go are very dangerous people.

    The thing about the oligarchs is that it’s hard to underestimate their incompetence, and they have a strong preference for having people who are even less than them working for them. So I think there’s some hope. That said, 20 years is how long I think it is before we have a chance to get to the beginning of the end. This last year has been the end of the beginning, but we still have to get through the middle. Things will get worse, repression will be stronger than resistance, and so on. This is just going to take time to play out.

    I do have some hope that a few nations may do an about face. But as I’ve noted before, when I’m wrong it tends be because I’ve been a bit over-optimistic (despite my reputation as a pessimist.)

  5. Celsius 233

    That’s why the hell I left; this cannot end well. Icelandic can’t possibly be harder than the Thai language and I’m still learning after 8+ years (58 when I started). So age ain’t no excuse, but admittedly more difficult than if I was 20, 30, or 40. But you know what? I can travel and shop alone and get by just fine.
    I’m sure a damn site grumpier as the years stack up and I watch my beloved country going down.
    The government is as worthless as tits on a boar and a bore as well.
    Little by little, I see my self pulling away from all of the bullshit that I can’t possibly do anything about and it pains me to see all of the gnashing of teeth here and on the other decent sites.
    I started out over on Truthdig about 6 years ago and I still see a core of posters still there as though stuck in a time warp; posting the same crap and acting like petulant children.
    I couldn’t bear to see that this is all these sites are good for; the perfect material to absorb the stoutest blows, like a bowl of liquefied corn starch.

  6. Ian Welsh

    Might be, Celcius. Might be. We’ll see. Revolutions, peaceful or otherwise, have an intellectual wing and a press/propaganda wing.

  7. Celsius 233

    Ian Welsh PERMALINK*
    August 13, 2011
    Might be, Celcius. Might be. We’ll see. Revolutions, peaceful or otherwise, have an intellectual wing and a press/propaganda wing.
    ======================================
    Indeed Ian; we’ll see; it’s as sure as nature itself…

  8. BDBlue

    I think one thing that doesn’t exactly bode well, but is perhaps a path to a better future (albeit one that goes through a very bad decade or two) is that most of the steps of repression you’ve outlined push people out of the system. There has been a nascent movement in this country to simply create new systems outside the old. We’ve even seen local currencies in some areas. From what little I’ve seen, some of the more simple ways have grown more popular in recent years (for example, I believe there’s some stats showing an increase in home gardening). Now, there will be attempts to crack down on this, too, but it’s harder to do than to simply crack skulls or turn off internet connections.

    On a related note, anyone interested in building these alternative systems – or in simply escaping corporatism – should cheer the 11th Circuit ruling yesterday striking down the mandate for health insurance. That people on the alleged left actually defend the right of the Government to force you to buy an expensive, defective product that won’t actually protect you or the Government from financial ruin just shows how far we have to go, IMO.

  9. StewartM

    Curmudgeon:

    I think there are two dynamics at work. On one level, there are the elites, who have decided that they have no further use for a functioning middle class. On the other level, there is an intergenerational problem in that the elderly demographic bubble hates and fears its own (generational) children. It’s very easy for the elites to keep the masses busy by prompting the teabagger generation–a generation which already hates its own kids to the point of working to deny them access to healthcare or any government investment–channel teabagger resentment into even greater hatred for the uncertainties created by youth.

    Yes–but you’d think that such a political dynamic would mean that the elites wouldn’t touch Medicare or SS for current or soon-to-be seniors. But they plan to do just that. And even Teabaggers don’t want their SS or Medicare touched.

    I realize that the Teabaggers aren’t the brightest crayons in the box, but if they get a TeaBagger President and Congress, you can only blame “the libruls” so far. Of course, because Obama’s going to do it for them, and stick the “librul” brand name to dismantling the New Deal, this might greatly alleviate that responsibility.

    Even then, when President TeaBag and TeaBag Congress don’t repeal Obamacare (because their corporate masters like it too much!) or don’t roll back the SS/Medicare cuts (see above) then how will their allegiances play out then?

    -StewartM

  10. Michael

    Reading your post I was wondering what you thought of the direction that canada’s heading in. It seems the situation there is a little different from the rest of the wester world. Yes it has a conservative government but the switch to the NDP as the opposition party of choice also seems to indicate that at least in quebec the population really is heading in a more leftwing direction.

    Also considering the fact that my country is unwilling to solve any of it’s problems, and you mentioned before that canada’s economy is tied to the U.S. what do you think will be the effects of the coming renewed downturn on canada. To what extent will policy up north be able to ameliorate it.

  11. StewartM

    Curmudgeon:

    The elderly are deeply conservative and demand stability above all else.

    I wonder how this came to be. People in their 60s today were the flower children, the anti-war, and the Civil Rights generation of the 1960s. People in their 70s were the Beatnik generation. Even people in their 50s saw the counterculture and the partying 1970s.

    I don’t deny that individuals do a lot of purposeful forgetting (I see it in my own family!!) or that these stereotypes probably don’t represent the bulk of the population (those Civil Rights marchers got abused by a lot of young-looking men) but still….it doesn’t make sense.

    My explanation is that the Teabaggers are nothing new, they’re the same 20 % of the population that always votes conservative. What might be more important is the religious demographic–the “Jesus freaks” started in the 1970s and evangelical fundamentalism started growing again then. And the Teabaggers are nothing if not “fundamentalist” and ideological on all aspects of life; their solution to every problem is to open some book, be it the Bible or Adam Smith, and quote their interpretation of it.

    -StewartM

  12. Duncan

    Stewart

    the conservative old have nothing to gain and everything to loose.

    the liberal young have everything to gain and nothing to loose,

    Yes, there are conservative young, ones with everything to loose, and liberal old, ones with nothing to loose.

    Any some outliers. These are rare.

  13. Cameron is a Troy and that is there heritage.

    If they could transport the rioters they would, however Australia is no longer a penal colony.It not a very big step from harsh imprisonment, the death camps (It’s so expensive to run Prisons, as the Americans).

    The British working class is already hardened by criminality. Most harsh punishments are handed out for crimes against property.

    They will reap what they sow. The technical hackers can build a parallel internet with open-source wifi routers, or wifi routers based on old PC’s Linux and a wifi card.

    There is no shutting down these social networks, all prohibition does is to push things into the black economy (pun intended in the UK’s case).

  14. nihil obstet

    I don’t agree that the elderly hate their children, or that intergenerational conflict is a major force. It’s more a trumped-up talking point. The neither the elders nor the young are trying to take Social Security away from the other — the rich are trying to take it away from everybody else.

    The tea partiers are a media creation, a short flash in the pan, a fad of lazy political analysis that Fox worked up into some poorly attended demonstrations. It’s about fanning the flames of the politics of resentment.

    The elderly ripping off the young has been the elite’s preferred explanation for why the social welfare programs are evil and have to be dismantled. Is there any evidence that it’s true? My experience has been that the people who learned political framing with Reagan (e.g., people now in their thirties and forties, especially white males) are more conservative and anti-government than either the younger or older cohorts. In any case, unless there’s evidence of this much touted intergenerational conflict, I’d be reluctant to spread the let’s-all-fight-among-ourselves-over-crumbs propaganda.

  15. After this late-night post, I screened Radford’s Nineteen Eighty-Four before I went to sleep. I’ve seen that movie maybe 10 times, but there is a depth to the third act, as Burton & Hurt render it, that I hadn’t experienced before.

  16. Michael

    @stewart m

    I think a lot of the change has to do with the economy. Put simply a lot of americans are convinced that some group is going to have to pay for this recession through a reduction in living standards and the older generation doesn’t want it to be them. As for why this is happening i think theres been a notable decline in mass solidarity among the american left.

    Most leftwing groups these days operate much closer to corporate lobbying groups than mass political movements, with a narrowly defined single issue focus. Animal rights, gay rights, environmentalists, feminists, antiwar these groups tend to operate wholely seperate from each other and are willing to sell each other out for small victories. It’s bitterly ironic but the old phrase “I’ve got mine where’s yours.” might be a better description for the american left today than right. Corporate interests have shown a surprisingly good united front, and even the evangelical bigots have been willing to ally themselves with right wing catholics and mormons to get what they want.

    In a situation where the right is strong and the left is fractured it’s no wonder right wing policies are getting passed. But this brings up a more fundamental question. Why is the left fractured? We could talk about the split over liberal interventionism, or the tensions between white workers and racial minorities, or even the liberal contempt for religious movements but i think that’s ignoring the elephant in the room. The reason why the left is so fractured in the U.S. is that major left leaders abandoned class.

    Unions embraced business unionism which frowned on struggle and prioritized compromise and deal making, liberals focused on issues of sexual and racial opression while ignoring social inequity and abandoning the politics of redistribution. In short without class the basis for the earlier alliances between these disparate groups that made up the left dissapeared. And without class as an organizing principle people fell back on identity politics as a means of creating networks of support. Which brings us back to why the elderly are selling out their kids. It’s simple, almost all politics in the U.S. today are now identity politics, special interest politics. And if politics even among so called progressives now amount to “i’ve got mine where’s yours” why should the elderly act any different. There just another group looking out for their best interests, and if they don’t take care of themselves no one else will.

  17. StewartM

    Nihil Obstet

    My experience has been that the people who learned political framing with Reagan (e.g., people now in their thirties and forties, especially white males) are more conservative and anti-government than either the younger or older cohorts.

    That’s my personal experience too. I lived through it, I’m of the Micheal J. Fox Family Ties generation in college. I saw knew such people, argued with with them, the YAF’fers and College Republicans of my era (one of them ended up working for Jessie Helms as a staffer, while another prominent conservative letters-to-the-editor writer at college now is advocating (*bad*) economic policy. Here’s a hint–in his college writings the latter guy LOVED to quote approvingly from 1930s fascist figures).

    Coupled with that, I’m from the South, and I’m the political outlier of my family.

    I think that old people aren’t necessarily more conservative than younger, save on social issues. Yes, they’re less likely to be for gay marriage, but if anything they’re more likely to be liberal on economic issues than some of the privileged young. There’s a fair number of Ayn Randies at elite universities (according to my sources there, hehe) who believe that the free market cures anything from racism to poverty to ingrown toenails.

    And, oddly enough, I’m witnessing more older people trending left as they age. It’s not just SS or Medicare or personal issues, at least with those more politically active there’s also the question of “What kind of world do you want to leave as your legacy?” And they don’t like what they’re seeing.

    -StewartM

  18. And, oddly enough, I’m witnessing more older people trending left as they age. It’s not just SS or Medicare or personal issues, at least with those more politically active there’s also the question of “What kind of world do you want to leave as your legacy?” And they don’t like what they’re seeing.

    In my weekly visits to my Mom’s community, I’m seeing that as well. It has accelerated in the last couple of years.

  19. “People in their 60s today were the flower children, the anti-war, and the Civil Rights generation of the 1960s. People in their 70s were the Beatnik generation. Even people in their 50s saw the counterculture and the partying 1970s.”

    Even at the time and within that cohort there were plenty of people who remained mainstream or conservative. In many cases the involvement in the stereotypical Sixties was very shallow, amounting to no more than sex, dope, and rebellious gestures. And many who did the Sixties in a big way ended up repenting and doing a 180 degree switch.

    A lot of the anti-entitlement noise comes from people 40-55 who, given the lags and political deals inevitable in policy change, are clamoring to have their own entitlements reduced while their elders continue to collect the full rate. And benefit cuts are being sold to them as the protection of benefits, and they’re buying.

    Quite sensible people will repeat the canned and marketed winger wisdom “Social Security won’t be there for me”. Their response is almost always fatalistic, and they almost never try to fight to protect their own social security. It makes them feel tough-minded, etc., but I don’t see what’s tough-minded about letting yourself be cheated by ideological thugs.

  20. StewartM

    Michael

    The reason why the left is so fractured in the U.S. is that major left leaders abandoned class.

    Wholeheartedly agreed. The great tragedy of the American left and recent history was the battle between the hardhats and the hippies, in the late 60s, that gave Nixon and the conservatives their chance. Both sides were right, and both were wrong. More importantly for the future was that the New Left then was largely made up of the young from educated and privileged backgrounds, for whom the American labor movement must have seemed like a bunch of knuckle-dragging Neanderthals.

    (I’ll now offer apologies to any Neanderthals who happen to be reading this thread in advance, given some of the flame wars of late).

    It would have taken a leader of great skill and personal charisma to bridge the chasm back then between the Old 1930s Left and the new 1960s Left until–to put it bluntly–both sides learned better. Maybe RFK could have been that leader, or maybe one didn’t exist. But that battle created the first cracks in the New Deal. Labor was the first to suffer for it; now if Ian is right in the outlook for the next 20 years the hippies (who value personal freedom and diversity) will be the next.

    StewartM

  21. StewartM

    John Emerson:

    Their response is almost always fatalistic, and they almost never try to fight to protect their own social security.

    I heard this from coworkers all the time. “They’re going to cut our benefits”–the “they” being their corporate masters or the government. My coworkers say this as if this were an announcement of God, or a corollary of the First Law of Thermodynamics, one of the inviolate laws of existence. It drives me nuts, I tell them that this is all politics, they’re being screwed, this is being done to them and so it can be prevented or undone.

    But there’s a synergy behind this—as politicos become more responsive to the demands of the elites, and less so to ordinary people, the more hopeless it seems to fight the “they”, and the more fatalistic they become. Which in turn emboldens the politicos even more.

    -StewartM

  22. So there will be a renewed, and successful push towards what might be called the biometric surveillance state. You will carry ID, your biometric data will be centrally located as well as stored on ID, and this data will be used to control what privileges you have access to (you have no rights.)

    Already happening. And already being sold as some kind of advancement by the DHS, TSA, and that criminal John Pistole, abetted by the craptastic press, who eagerly sucks up the shit that’s being spewed and spits it back out at us. The so-called Trusted Traveler program, another scenario ripe for abuse, another profit-making boondoggle for “security” corporations, is the authoritarian program du jour.

    Also, agree with Michael’s assessment of the fracturing of the left. As Chris Hedges, among others, has repeatedly pointed out, too many on the left abandoned social justice in favor of identity politics.

  23. The left only had any strength in the US because of militant unions, third parties, independents, and maverick Republicans and Democrats. Its decline can be traced as far back as 1936, when Roosevelt easily defeated a challenge from the left, allowing him to return to austerity economics in 1937. Starting about then issues in foreign and military policy fractured the left, and after Pearl Harbor domestic issues were subordinate. Starting about 1948 the leftists who had supported WWII were purged, and the independent and militant unions were crushed. People call this McCarthyism, but he was really a latecomer.

    Democratic intellectuals and politicians at that time (Hofstadter, Shils, Schlesinger, Bell, and Galbraith, and people like Humphrey among the politicians) constructed cold war liberalism: anti-communist, interventionist, and corporation friendly (anti-anti-trust). They preached harmony and consensus and rejected what they called ideology as well as what they called populism. They defined themselves as wise technocrats behind the scenes, helping the people and handing out favors, but never attempting to respond to popular demands. Dividing the Democratic electorate into competing interest groups was part of the strategy. No more American People, because any large group will make inconvenient demands (as the 1930s militants did).

    In 1968-1970 the house of cards collapsed for various reasons, and the Democrats have been crippled and conservative ever since.

    The conservative Democrats have always been there. Non-conservative Democrats are the historical exception. It’s really been a long decline, 1936-2008, with an upward blip 1960-1968. Before about 1970 the decline was not visible because the Democrats were living on their past accomplishments.

  24. The civil rights movement was both identity politics and social justice politics. It was also the kind of populist movement politics that the 1948 intellectuals wanted to avoid, and Democrats ignored it as long as they could. After 1968 the civil rights movement was transformed into an interest group, one identity group among others competing for federal goodies. This was the preferred model of politics for the 1948 intellectuals, basically derived from urban boss largesse. Often enough the goodies were purely symbolic. I’m not black, but in my opinion, MLK Day, MLK Avenue, Black Studies Departments, and Black History month all put together don’t do the black co0mmunity as much good as a 1% reduction in employment or a $2 rise in the minimum wage would.

  25. I’m not black, but in my opinion, MLK Day, MLK Avenue, Black Studies Departments, and Black History month all put together don’t do the black co0mmunity as much good as a 1% reduction in employment or a $2 rise in the minimum wage would.

    Totally agree.

  26. Ken Hoop

    StewartM

    Many of the New Left were David Horowitz dawks—doves on Vietnam become hawks when Mideast trends demanded dual loyalty-ish shifts from the latent covert to the overt.

  27. jo6pac

    I think this is to postive it will be very dark then the light goes out all together here in Amerika.

  28. Horowitz switched teams for other reasons, as I remember. He totally rejected his whole political past, and not on account of Israel, as I remember.

  29. Jumpjet

    You might as well say that what the Left is missing is ruthlessness.

  30. I realized that destabilization serves the interests of people like the Koch brothers. You could just keep throwing people in for-profit prisons and turn the whole country into a gulag archipelago of Koch brothers for profit labor camps. It really would be like China.

  31. groo

    Ian,
    I very much appreciate Your capacity to condense and channel the essence of the state of affairs.

    To boil this further down:
    Does the middle class align with the ‘underclass’ or the ‘elite’?

    Well, everything considered, it will align with the -ahem- elite.
    Relative status aligns itself UPWARDS, not downwards.

    Wisconsin anyone?

    The middle class obviously lacks as much thinking as the other two classes.

    This is the breakdown of all efforts to control affairs by THINKING.

    Affairs change, when they PHYSICALLY HURT!
    So it seems.

    Sort of a Waterloo for the tiny fraction O.0x% of ‘thinking’/’feeling’ people.

    You don’t have a chance –take it!
    Rescuing oneself into the domain of the absurd, just to avoid total insanity.

  32. Oaktown Girl

    As with most of my predictions, folks will scoff at this one, think I’m hysterical, and doom-monger, and so on.

    You analysis sounds spot on to me, especially the stuff about a growing biometric surveillance state.

    For those of us who don’t have the means to leave the country (or simply want to stay and fight on principle), what I’d like to hear are some ideas of how we can collectively fight against this. Going to jail one by one as individual conscientious objectors doesn’t seem very effective.

  33. Oaktown Girl

    Ian – by the way, I want to thank you for being one of the few who’s willing to talk about how the fethishization of our children and “family” (being that these days it is only defined in the very narrowest sense of the word: nuclear family) is so corrosive to our society. It breeds nothing but fear and divisiveness. It’s a brilliant strategy to suppress people from ever having thought-crime ideas like banding together to fight against real enemies instead of the made-up ones.

  34. DupinTM

    On NPR just during this week there was a story about how police departments all over the U.S. were getting brand new $3000 toys. Link:
    http://www.npr.org/2011/08/11/138769662/new-police-scanner-raises-facial-profiling-concerns

    Biometric scanners. The NPR piece’s radio tone was jokey, as in how this ‘nonlethal’ device will hurt/maim/kill way less people than the taser. For balance against the pure awesome of catching criminals w/ fake IDs getting away, they had an ACLU lawyer and a Univ Prof, who respectively gave a bland cautionary warning, and a more specific fear of stalkers using the same tech to track ex-lovers.

    Of course, as Ian and comments noted, the incompetents who are in charge still have no quick n cheap way to get us all registered into this national retinal scan system. I say this, b/c no cops, upon being given such a harmless device, wouldn’t just go around scanning everyone. Of course not! Or, perhaps, doing even more of that harmless racial profiling every single person darker than themselves – why, I’ve never heard any cases where they did such things w/ tasers, and they’re much less happy police state time for its victims! And besides, where’s the harm in it? What, do you have something to hide, hippie?

    (this being the internet, sarcasm tag was on that last graf. gotta make sure)

    Throughout the U.S., family members (and some friends I think, unsure) of cops get a ‘Fraternal Order of Police’ sticker for their car. As far as I can tell it’s how well off white kids avoid DUIs, busting big parties, and drug busts. I wonder how fast such a tech filter, compared to the speed of this biometric stuff coming online, will appear? And, of course, how quickly some of those disenchanted hackers at Anonymous and LulzSec will find it out? I give it maybe a week, unless Anon wants to give em more rope to hang themselves with.

  35. The endless cycle of Elite Mistakes used to be something like a merry-go-round; now it’s more like a tornado.

    The most galling part of this situation is that so many of us know, pretty much, what’s wrong, what’s making things worse, and what to do about it, and we say so. Not just in places like this, but practically everywhere these days — except in the major mass media which is caught up in that same Elite Mistake Tornado as The Gods Who Walk Among Us and the rest of those who would rule in perpetuity.

    We know what’s wrong, we know what needs to be done to fix it. We say so. Nobody who can do anything about it pays any attention.

    What then? The Uprising is inevitable; as is the repression.

    Again and again, until exhaustion or The Revolution wins.

    We’re living in those Interesting Times we were warned about.

  36. oekoman

    This is an interesting slice that partially describes what is already happening and has been for at least 50 years and especially more since 2001. The article’s title, however, belies the message. It might be better titled “Big Mistakes in the Current Police State.” More than an observation in future social trends it is a statement of our present loss of civil rights. I find it rather dull, however, since there is no new information and the predictions, if you can call them that, simply reflect what we already know and what is currently taking place. It does not address the root cause of these already occurring events nor does it tell us where these may lead, except to note that there may be more resistance. To say that British prisoners are hardened bunch and to keep repeating that brutal treatment of people is a big mistake s rather banal. Historically these conditions are the norm. It was only for a short period in the entire known history of human civilizations that there has been a middle class and any significant civil rights. The rest of the story of civilization is the story of a few powerful and rich dictatng to the bewildered mobs how to live, what to eat, where to work, and what they can and cannot do. Where is the historical context in this blog? In fact, where are any references to facts, statistics etc. Seems more like the rambling of someone who is beginnng to wake up to what has already been happening to our civil rights for the past 50 years. Anyway its a good to know that others are beginnng to understand our plight and I do not want to discourage even these latecomers from writing about the sad state of moderen civil rights. In a few years hopefully this writer’s content and style will also improve. Keep trying!! Also suggest reading Zinn’s history books. He was a great writer on these and related topics.

  37. “Most leftwing groups these days operate much closer to corporate lobbying groups than mass political movements, with a narrowly defined single issue focus. Animal rights, gay rights, environmentalists, feminists, antiwar these groups tend to operate wholely seperate from each other and are willing to sell each other out for small victories.”

    If the energy and money going into single-issue groups went into a united left party, we would possibly have a chance. Besides the single issue groups, a lot of talented people seem to put energy into NGOs with limited goals.

    There are layers and layers of reasons why this doesn’t happen. Many educated, somewhat aware Americans think that politics is dirty, and that “ideology” is all lies, and that the left is discredited, and that activists are a joke. Many have a sort of above-the-battle attitude and only want to supervise and police what the activists are doing.

    Second, real political change is a frustrating, long-range, uncertain process, and many want to put their energies in something with possibility of visible results. This is easiest in cultural, environmental, and lifestyle politics.

    Third, a lot of people don’t want to make enemies or lose their “moderate” friends.

    Fourth, plenty of groups get their finding partly or mostly from mainstream or corporate sources, and with good funding the staffs of group members can live successful middleclass lives.

  38. StewartM

    John Emerson:

    There are layers and layers of reasons why this doesn’t happen. Many educated, somewhat aware Americans think that politics is dirty, and that “ideology” is all lies, and that the left is discredited, and that activists are a joke.

    What struck me when I read this is was how:

    a) Republican sex scandals, which seem to outnumber Dems;

    b) Republican “dirty tricks” and like sending out leaflets with the wrong date for last-chance voter registration. Also transparently partisan things like redistricting and vote suppression;

    c) “Ideology” like the Tea Partiers which is quite frankly flat-earth.

    d) Coupled with this–the idea that government is incompetent, aka the debt ceiling fiasco.

    Notice I focused on the sins of the “other side”. I did because even when the conservative/Republicans screw up, they win. They create the impression that public servants are a sordid and immoral lot (many are, but not for moral trifles like who fucked whom). They create the impression that politics is “dirty” and all about partisan “dirty tricks”. They create the impression that intellectual frameworks by which to interpret events is what loons do. They create the impression that government is inherently incompetent when it is in fact not.

    In short, it’s in conservatives’ interest to get the public to think that “all” politicians are scoundrels, that all politics is dirty and partisan, (what? businessmen are moral??? Sheesh.) that political ideology is only for the insane. that government is incompetent. They of course are aided mightily in all the above by the he said/she said mainstream media that’s been intimidated (or bought) into describing politics using the framework of “balanced” at the expense of “accurate”.

    Many have a sort of above-the-battle attitude and only want to supervise and police what the activists are doing.

    Which ties into what I said above. Ian says we yearn for a Robespierre. I differ, because a Robespierre or a Lenin acquiring power requires a particular set of circumstances I don’t think we will see. But many do yearn for a non-partisan, “above politics” technocrat.

    The danger is that fascists of the 1920s and 1930s presented themselves as rising “above” partisan politics.

    StewartM

  39. Cynicism works for the Republicans, because it’s “balanced”. Some Republicans are quite happy with “The Democrats are no better than us”. That’s their “innoculation” tactic, accusing the other side of what they’re doing themselves. If they get equivalence they win.

    PJ O’Rourke is an example of how Republican cynicism works. I’ve unfortunately known a number of people with his politics.

    It’s hard not to be cynical. I have to watch myself because sometimes people accept my bitter criticisms of the status quo without having any interest whatsoever in my positive ideas.

  40. Celsius 233

    Hmm, I have no positive ideas; my ideas revolve around bringing the system down! Once and for all!
    Then I want to hear the creative, the positive, the pragmatic, the benevolent, the generous, the; oh, wait, that’s all an impossible dream………….

  41. StewartM

    Oaktown Girl:

    Ian – by the way, I want to thank you for being one of the few who’s willing to talk about how the fethishization of our children and “family” (being that these days it is only defined in the very narrowest sense of the word: nuclear family) is so corrosive to our society.

    I noticed it too, though I think it tracks well with the death of the welfare state and the rise of scarcely-fettered capitalism. Humans have a desire to love and be loved, that is hardwired into us, and that is a need that cannot be satisfied by dog-eat-dog cutthroat capitalism where your boss, your coworkers, your neighbors, may be stabbing you in the back to advance themselves.

    So we create this temple supposedly isolated from all that–“the family”–where such needs can be met. And children, especially, who give and receive love so spontaneously, are a focus. The fact that because of the collapse of the welfare state, and its child-supporting mechanisms, that children have become so expensive means that one has to guardedly “protect” the few one can afford to have from real or (more likely) imagined dangers that the news media trumpets.*

    The fact that the reality of nuclear families differs from the imagined nuclear family matters little. The real nuclear family consists of squabbling, even fighting or abusive spouses, ungrateful or delinquent children, headache and heartache galore. It usually often also means that the parents are faced with the equally bad choices of neglecting their own physical and emotional needs, or neglecting those of their children (I’ve seen examples of both, and both are equally bad). The nuclear family can work today–I don’t deny that–but it usually works best when there’s a fairly high and reliable source of income and where the parents have “good jobs” that allow both considerable time away from work.

    This is why–I’m sure as Oaktown Girl infers–why saner cultures adopted the extended rather than the nuclear family as their model. The extended family shares the burden of child-raising among various grandparents, aunts, uncles, “adopted” friends of family, etc., spreading out the work and obligations and keeping everyone sane. The extended family also recognizes the simple truth that in parenting and child-raising, biology means little–the question of who fucked who one night doesn’t make you a good parent; the skills that make babies aren’t the same as those needed to raise them. (Our legal system, by contrast, gives biological parents almost dictatorial powers). That’s why child abuse is very rare in cultures that use the extended family model, and where children have a sayso with whom they want to be with. But extended families are almost impossible to make work nowadays; the demands of the job market scatter family members all over the country, which is why the nuclear family has become the norm, “the family”.

    By contrast, who is in favor of nuclear families? Capitalists, as the nuclear families require less payout and benefit than extended families; for them, an atomized workforce is best (again, this echoes the personal life of childless Ayn Rand). Also, the religiously cultist or bigoted, or anyone else who believes that all information to “their children” (as if they own them the same way they own “their furniture”) should be carefully screened for anything that might screw up the methodical indoctrination they have planned. The latter is the real reason why the Religious Right is pro-nuclear family and pro-private schooling, as they only know their indoctrination only has a chance if they can keep the kids away from those inconvenient discordant facts until the mental molding has set. But these aren’t the only ones; I know of counterculture types who act very much the same.

    *As per real and imagined dangers: a coworker and I were discussing Halloween, and how the celebration of it has changed–not only it is more commercialized, no surprise there, but how the old tradition of children with or without parents walking from house to house to house trick-or-treating is dying, being replaced by Halloween Parties held by churches. He said he was taking his son to such parties.

    I asked him “What is the danger of simply walking *with your kid* through your neighborhood, house to house, and going trick or treating and saying ‘hi’ to your neighbors?” He started talking about sexual predators and all true but very rare instances of what has happened to kids on TV. I tried to tell him such things were very rare, far more people get hit by lightning each year, and that there was far greater chance of his kid being maimed or killed while they were *DRIVING* to the church. His response was the ghastly “Well, rather than my kid being molested it he’d be better off dead”.

    I was stunned. For one, I know of instances of people who were actually raped as kids, and who have put it behind them to live normal lives. But the “better off dead”–I mean, do people really believe such nonsense? Not to mention that he’s making that choice for his kid.

    StewartM

  42. BDBlue

    Extended families (where the people are truly related) are hard to pull off these days because so many people live so far from their cousins, uncles, etc. What we’ve basically done is harvested rural and small town America of its “best and brightest” (e.g., people who could afford a decent education, not necessarily the best people there) and sent them off to work for corporations via universities, law firms, etc., in bigger cities. We’ve also forced those who do blue collar work (and I don’t strictly mean manual labor, I’d include adjunct professors, temp workers, etc.) to become itinerant, moving from one hot labor market to the next looking for jobs. At least those who can. The rest are forced to stay and work for minimum wage at some crappy clerical or retail job or are unemployed.

    I have pockets of my family where they still all live in the same area and from a family perspective, it seems like a really great thing. They have a huge support system, despite everyone being in everyone else’s business and all the little petty dramas. Having said that, I also know recent college graduates there who are having to decide whether to stick in the area where the family lives where all they can get is a Walmart job or try moving to some place where they’ll have a “better” life. Not an easy decision.

    I live further away and have had to build an extended family of close friends, etc. It works, but you have to stay in one place a long time (most of them I’ve known for 20 or so years now), which a lot of people cannot do in terms of jobs, and even if you can do it, the friends may not be able to.

    I don’t think it’s fetishism but economic reality that has forced so many to focus on the nuclear family. It’s the only family near them.

  43. BDBlue

    I should’ve added that I was focused on why people buy into the nuclear family concept. The selling of it is something I agree with Stewart – it’s capitalist propaganda to a large extent. They need people to be willing to move to serve their interests, to be willing to bankrupt themselves to buy houses they can’t afford in good school districts or send their children to colleges, etc.

  44. Child-rearing and education. Whew.

    I want to preemptively state that, in the interests of simplification, some of what follows may sound like strawman-building. Yes, that would be true if I were arguing with any of the previous commenters, and I most decidedly am not. Especially not this crowd, whom I hold in the highest esteem. I am “purifying” some concepts in the interest of exploring some points. I beg your indulgence.

    As pointed out here, the extended and nominally “dysfunctional” family is the natural state, warts and all.

    The “nuclear family” as defined by the current culture is the sharp edge of a wedge designed to strike insecurity into the hearts of real families, a prelude to getting one’s “marching orders” on proper family structure and behavior.

    And so the Corporate State plays on this, ultimately asking us to deliver our children to the propaganda version of the “extended family” – create a sharp division between family life and public life.

    The Corporate State pulls off a nasty trick of breaking and re-forming the concept of “family” for its own ends. (It is us, of course, because we are all caught up in the messaging.)

    The liberal version of this is “it takes a village.” But this is only good if “the village” is healthy. It is not. So we slog along trying to “improve” our schools, which are in the grip of a sick producer/consumer paradigm of human nature, and these “round” children will be crammed into that “square” model, so help them Invisible Hand.

    Conservatives react with homeschooling, private schools, etc. Liberals see this as subversive, and it is a great point (Jesus rode a dinosaur, WTF?) But this is simply reactionary behavior gone wild, because the village is broken, and the two sides struggle with this. (I will note, strongly, that the xenophobia and reactionary attitudes against “multiculturalism” – a ridiculous issue that I cannot go into here – by the right, do indeed make cloistered education toxic, and the left is very correct on this.)

    The conservative ridicule of “it takes a village” has a real basis, albeit frequently for the wrong reasons. Ditto liberals’ horror at homeschooling. Regarding children and family, both sides are right and both sides are wrong.

    Such is the sorry result of a public sphere that has been commandeered by sick interests.

    It is tragic that this drama is being played out on our children, along with the other arenas. Would that we could at least leave *them* out of it, but the truth is, kids is prime-pickin’s when it comes to propaganda.

    This is not a black and white issue that can be laid at the feet of children and family choices, but what is black and white is that there is “something” wrong with the zeitgeist, en toto.

    /Concern troll off. 🙂

  45. Back around 1970-75 everyone I knew was into alternatives to the nuclear family, but a high proportion of them were not into childraising at all and were looking for more freedom, not really for a larger extended family.

    I’m hunkering down for the depression, and I end up going through my extended family (~23 people) figuring out who’s in good shape, who will need help, who will give help and who probably won’t. With one exception, the most prosperous members of the family are the ones most into the conventional lifestyle.

  46. …I end up going through my extended family (~23 people) figuring out who’s in good shape, who will need help, who will give help and who probably won’t.

    You, sir, have a beautiful heart.

  47. Cloud

    Good thread.

  48. StewartM

    Back around 1970-75 everyone I knew was into alternatives to the nuclear family, but a high proportion of them were not into childraising at all and were looking for more freedom, not really for a larger extended family.

    FWIW: as I said, I have witnessed a good many nuclear family failures. Extended families are to be preferred because the more people the more chance (as a kid) of finding someone to be with who’s sane. I grew up in something like an extended family situation (moreso than the norm today) and I can now look back and see the advantages of it: mom and dad had more sources of financial backing, as well as people to set them straight when one or both were going to do something stupid plus the kids get their own “advocate” when need arises (these are usually called “grandparents”).

    But one of the paradoxes I have witnessed of late is that the very people who are materially best fitted to create a successful nuclear family–the well off–often make the worst parents. The same “me first” self-absorption that drove them to doing whatever it took to land that high income means that they have no time for their kids, who they almost let go feral. I have met a number of these type kids online as college-aged young adults, and their parents have no time at all for them. They don’t go to their graduation, they can’t be bothered when they get awards, they don’t help them move to college, it’s amazing.

    And those are the good examples. The bad ones are when they leave them alone on weekends off on some personal or career junket and the kids, unsupervised, throw hellacious house-wrecking parties complete with alcohol and drugs. You’d think the parents would then get a clue, but after cleaning up the mess, such scene repeats again and again and again. Some of these kids have then went on to develop either substance abuse problems and/or mental problems because of this.

    As someone who couldn’t step out of my yard without permission until high school, and whose family would have read me the riot act for doing anything close to that–I am astounded. I mean, when this repeats over and over and over again, and finances are not any problem–I mean, wouldn’t you arrange adult supervision even if you HAD to be out-of-town? (Moreover, my impression from one story I’m thinking of is the parents were out of town on personal outings, not business). It seems that with rich parents they think their responsibility is taken care of by writing a check that cleans up the mess, and that finishes it. No investment of time or companionship need be involved.

    Keep all this in mind when someone will write an article, and I’m sure someone will, about the “failure” of the black parenting of London which created those rioting “beasts”. Poor nuclear families suffer a lot of material problems, and they’re hardly placed in a good environment, but they don’t fail for reasons like the examples I gave above.

    -StewartM

  49. “I think, however, that many of the top level retainers, the people who direct a lot of the most effective repression and violence, are on the edge of being let go. ”

    Remember, England laid off 40,000 cops last year. Good call, huh?

  50. Other people are picking up this topic:

    http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/08/guest-post-austerity-and-runaway-inequality-lead-to-violence-and-instability.html

    There’s a lot to read there, with lots of links and a nice trio of pictures at the end.

  51. Ian Welsh

    Stewart, close supervision isn’t always required. I sure as hell could leave my yard without permission before high school. Hell, I could do it in grade 1, heck, in Kindgergarten, heck in pre-Kindergarten. I just had to let my parents know where I was going, and “to play” (unsaid, in the neighborhood) was acceptable. And I had to be home for mealtimes and bedtime, or all hell would break loose.

    Rules were few, but they were strict.

  52. Ian Welsh

    Commenters:

    1) Obama is no FDR.

    2) Obama isn’t even Herbert Hoover.

    ha!

    Sadly accurate. Hoover genuinely tried to help.

  53. Oaktown Girl

    I could greatly expand on the fethishization of “family” in popular culture in the U.S. and how corrosive it is to society at large, but I’ll leave that for now.

    Specifically back to the topic of “Socially how the next 20 years…”, in case anyone missed it, here’s an AlterNet piece from a couple of weeks ago that’s got some good stuff in it: “8 Reasons Young Americans Don’t Fight Back: How the US Crushed Youth Resistance”.
    Link:
    http://www.alternet.org/story/151850/?page=1

    h/t Majority Report:
    http://majority.fm/2011/08/11/thursday-august-11-2011/

  54. Mary McCurnin

    Great thread. I am going to read it again tomorrow. I am so glad I found you, Ian. Again.

  55. Celsius 233

    Ian Welsh PERMALINK*
    August 14, 2011
    Stewart, close supervision isn’t always required. I sure as hell could leave my yard without permission before high school. Hell, I could do it in grade 1, heck, in Kindgergarten, heck in pre-Kindergarten. I just had to let my parents know where I was going, and “to play” (unsaid, in the neighborhood) was acceptable. And I had to be home for mealtimes and bedtime, or all hell would break loose.
    Rules were few, but they were strict.
    ==================================
    Wow, that echos my upbringing way out on L.I. N.Y., which was very rural 60 years ago. Springs, streams, lakes, woods, turtles, frogs, tortoises, snakes, salamanders and my magic world were at my beck and call; but whoa unto me if I missed dinner; which was frequently.
    Hell, there was no time then; just the magic, the ever loving magic; dog I miss it sometimes…

  56. There will also be continued removal of the right to travel, with no-fly lists moving to trains, and later to bus stations and eventually there will be a ramp up of stops of automobiles.

    With or without the excuse of Muslim terrorism?

    If without, that would represent an uptick of overt class war.

    Decades of Murdochized media have done their work, then.

    The masses come down on the side of their own class enemies.

  57. “I’ll now offer apologies to any Neanderthals who happen to be reading this thread in advance”

    Thank you. Apology accepted.

  58. LC

    I’m going to put in with Ian and Celsius233 about the “supervision” side of things. Had to let the parents know what I was doing, had to be back for meals (or make sure I told them before if I wasn’t), but otherwise largely unsupervised.

    As for the extended family thing in general, I saw lots of the Cambridge/Somerville crowd in MA looking for “intentional communities” and sharing child raising, etc. The problem I always had is that these communities always felt very closed off and in each others’ business all the time.

  59. Oaktown Girl,

    Join us.

    (Click link at my name.)

  60. BDBlue

    Maybe I missed it in the text, but I think the article about why young people don’t fight back is missing one very important point – background checks for jobs. Add that to educational debt and it’s a great recipe for control and compliance. You owe tens of thousands of dollars, which can never be forgiven, when you graduate = you need a job. If a background check shows some sort of protest, labor organization, etc., activity (or misdemeanor for same), will you ever get a decent job? Hell, is Walmart going to hire someone who worked to organize unions, much less someone who got arrested protesting?

    The rest of the list may all be true, but except for the drugging (which is another important point), most of those factors existed previously. Television and education has long been about conformity, for example. Maybe it’s moreso now, but it’s not new.

    And put me down as one of the many and lucky who could simply go out to “play” when I was a kid so long as I was back when I was told to be back and didn’t go where I was told not to go (e.g., no crossing certain busy rural highways).

  61. By David Harvey:

    Feral Capitalism Hits the Streets

    “Nihilistic and feral teenagers” the Daily Mail called them: the crazy youths from all walks of life who raced around the streets mindlessly and desperately hurling bricks, stones, and bottles at the cops while looting here and setting bonfires there, leading the authorities on a merry chase of catch-as-catch-can as they tweeted their way from one strategic target to another.

    The word “feral” pulled me up short. It reminded me of how the communards in Paris in 1871 were depicted as wild animals, as hyenas, that deserved to be (and often were) summarily executed in the name of the sanctity of private property, morality, religion, and the family. But then the word conjured up another association: Tony Blair attacking the “feral media,” having for so long been comfortably lodged in the left pocket of Rupert Murdoch only later to be substituted as Murdoch reached into his right pocket to pluck out David Cameron. . . . .

    http://www.zcommunications.org/feral-capitalism-hits-the-streets-by-david-harvey

  62. Ian Welsh

    @Celcius when I was about 5 I spent a bit over a year living with my grandmother who lived on a beach. Happiest year of my life.

  63. Albertde

    The reason the Left is so poorly fractured today is that the real leaders of the Left were murdered and replaced by corporate turncoats.

  64. ks

    Great post and comments. I agree that the London riots are an important event. I would say its more of a continuance of past events but with an important political twist. It’s really remarkable how these incidents from London, to Watts to Newark, to Harlem to Detroit to Overton (Miami) and so on always seem to have the same common ingredients – a long oppressed and neglected minority community, a suspicious police action, a protest then riot. Also, “austerity” is the norm for those areas but what I think is the twist I mentioned above is the multiracial and in some cases multiclass, makeup of the rioters. Apprently, they were not just the “usual suspects in the usual areas”.

    In my terms it would be if a similar riot erupted in Bed Stuy and white kids in Bensonhurt or Park Slope rioted as well. I think one of the articles Lisa posted from the NY Times in of one the older threads mentions the multiracial and multiclass aspect. Of course they missed the point which is that there seemed to be a loose cross racial and class solidarity that started to coalesce that TPTB would be wise to note and pay attention to instead of doing what they are currently doing which is the usual moralistic finger wagging about “bad parenting”, “gangsta rap” et. al and further security clampdowns.

  65. Celsius 233

    Ian Welsh PERMALINK*
    August 15, 2011
    @Celcius when I was about 5 I spent a bit over a year living with my grandmother who lived on a beach. Happiest year of my life.
    ==========================
    We spent a number of years on the north coast L.I. (Northport). 5 min. walk to the beach, which I often went to alone at 4 am. to go snapper or flounder fishing; bamboo pole, sand worms, and a bobber.

  66. Celsius 233

    Oh, I forgot; that was in the 5th grade.

  67. StewartM

    Ian Welsh:

    Stewart, close supervision isn’t always required.

    I’m not disagreeing necessarily, and I think that I was probably “oversupervised” to that extent. But when the case I was referring to involved their kids getting into trouble, repeatedly, when they left town. And there was no corrective action. You got the impression that they couldn’t be bothered.

    I also think one of the many myths about child-raising in our culture that has arisen over the past generation or so is that kids prefer the company of their peers, not fuddy-duddy stupid adults. What I’m seeing is quite the opposite; kids who are hungry for the adult attention. That’s because our culture doesn’t give much of it to them.

    StewartM

  68. nihil obstet

    There has been a radical increase in the supervision of children over the past several decades. On average, children used to have a mile and a half radius from home where they could play spontaneously. Now, it’s more like the block where they live as long as someone is watching them. There are issues about the child’s ability to act independently today.

    This is not to dismiss the problem of parents who are too busy to pay adequate attention to their children, but a lot of it may be emotional exhaustion in a high stress economy rather than lack of attention to micromanaging children’s lives.

  69. StewartM

    nihil obstet

    There has been a radical increase in the supervision of children over the past several decades….This is not to dismiss the problem of parents who are too busy to pay adequate attention to their children, but a lot of it may be emotional exhaustion in a high stress economy rather than lack of attention to micromanaging children’s lives.

    I think both are going on. And what I call “mis-supervision” as well as, and in addition to, “over-supervision”. “Mis-supervision” I define as being focused on trying to prevent unlikely threats while ignoring the much more likely ones. (As per my original comment on my coworker not allowing his kid to go trick-or-treating through the neighborhood, even with adult company, while driving him to a church event instead).

    But as for the well-off, I can’ t help but think of a review of Atlas Shrugged I read–one that said that Ayn Rand couldn’t fathom the investment any parent makes in their own children, or in any other interpersonal relationship for that matter, at least any that would fail the cost/benefit-to-me test.

    StewartM

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