Is the West History?

RogueMale · Post by **RogueMale** » 10 Mar 2011, 01:00

Ludwig wrote:
RogueMale wrote: I'm afraid TV programmes have been dumbed down a bit over the last decade or so.
Yes, I know, and that's why I generally prefer to read books than watch documentaries.

As Groucho Marx put it, "I find television very educational. Every time someone switches it on, I go into another room and read a good book."

Kieran · Post by **Kieran** » 10 Mar 2011, 11:52

It's generally best to think of tv documentaries as being the televisual equivalent of the colour plates you find in a book. Pretty but not hugely informative.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » 10 Mar 2011, 12:10

Aurora · Post by **Aurora** » 11 Mar 2011, 06:43

The Economist - 10/03/11

The West’s long run as top dog may be ending. But the values that made it great, consumerism included, have been sold on to the rest of the world.

Article continues ...

Post by **kenneal - lagger** » 11 Mar 2011, 16:59

Aurora wrote:
The Economist - 10/03/11

The West’s long run as top dog may be ending. But the values that made it great, consumerism included, have been sold on to the rest of the world.

Article continues ...

The economist with a small "e" is jumping to the protection of the system in the first paragraph.

Broadly speaking, he is more successful in explaining the West’s triumph than in forecasting its fate.

Mr Ferguson is almost gleeful when he argues that the consumer society, butt of the bien pensant left, was the cog in the industrial machine that communism overlooked. “Capitalists”, he writes, “understood what Marx missed: that workers were also consumers. It therefore made no sense to try to grind their wages down to subsistence levels.” By contrast, although Soviet Russia could produce fighter jets and H-bombs, its jeans were rubbish.

Oh the irony! Can't the reviewer see that's exactly the situation we have in the west now. Western workers have been ground down so much that they can't afford to buy all the consumer stuff/tat that is available and needs to be bought to fuel cancer, sorry growth. Capitalists have lost that understanding in their greed for "Loadsa money!"

Whereas a handful of Western countries were once at it, a whole planet has started to join in. More likely than the end of civilisation—and more boring—is that the West will just cease to be special.

The reviewer has obviously not read "Limits to Growth" and doesn't understand why everyone else having what the west has is a problem.

featherstick · Post by **featherstick** » 11 Mar 2011, 23:15

There's a compelling theory that the Soviet Union was delivering better social outcomes than the USA in the 1950s, and as a result the USA ratchetted up the arms race to eventually bankrupt the Soviet Union.

Post by **kenneal - lagger** » 12 Mar 2011, 03:16

featherstick wrote:There's a compelling theory that the Soviet Union was delivering better social outcomes than the USA in the 1950s,

With the help of the Gulag?

That theory is probably spread by the Socialist Workers Party or their friends.

The fifties were probably the height of the good times for workers in the US when their disposable income was at its greatest.

Lord Beria3 · Post by **Lord Beria3** » 12 Mar 2011, 09:30

kenneal wrote:
featherstick wrote:There's a compelling theory that the Soviet Union was delivering better social outcomes than the USA in the 1950s,
With the help of the Gulag?

That theory is probably spread by the Socialist Workers Party or their friends.

The fifties were probably the height of the good times for workers in the US when their disposable income was at its greatest.

What a load of nonsense! As somebody who has read dozens of books on the Soviet Union, I can assure that that the Soviet Union was not a good place to live in the fifties.

Ludwig · Post by **Ludwig** » 12 Mar 2011, 14:20

featherstick wrote:There's a compelling theory that the Soviet Union was delivering better social outcomes than the USA in the 1950s, and as a result the USA ratchetted up the arms race to eventually bankrupt the Soviet Union.

That may have been a factor, but I think it was the fear that the USSR might eventually achieve better social outcomes that was behind the drive to bankrupt it. I don't think that fear was justified, but the gloves were off in that period, and all possibilities for defeat were being taken seriously.

In many ways it was a fair battle: Russia would have bankrupted the West if it had been able.

The 1950s were a prosperous and happy time in America.

featherstick · Post by **featherstick** » 12 Mar 2011, 17:08

I shoould perhaps have written a more full reply:

There's a theory that the SU was delivering better social outcomes in housing, ante- and post-natal care, education, and medicine, than the USA in the fifties, and this was why the USA upped the arms race.

This is borne out by circumstancial evidence as well as statistical. Walking around Russia you can't help but notice how many really big guys there are who are aged 50 and above, and how many much smaller people aged 35 and below. The 50 year olds had better early care and nutrition than their kids. I am often privileged to talk to retired doctors, teachers, and engineers in the course of my work and some of the stories of progress they tell are astonishing.

This of course does not imply that life was fine and dandy for poets, Jewish doctors, GULAG inmates, jazz fans, intellectuals and people who'd ever met a foreigner.

Of course the GULAG was the SU's cheap labour pool, the functional equivalent of the manual labour class, immigrants, outsourced offshore labour, slave labour and all the other means that the West has used to exploit cheap labour pools in the ocurse of its development.

RenewableCandy · Post by **RenewableCandy** » 12 Mar 2011, 17:33

They had ice-cool heart surgery before we did and all.

nexus · Post by **nexus** » 12 Mar 2011, 18:29

Also see that nice Mr Orlov for views on the Soviet Union vs United States.

http://www.DODGY TAX AVOIDERS.co.uk/Reinventing-Col ... =8-1-fkmr0

and his rather good 'club Orlov' blog

Tawney · Post by **Tawney** » 12 Mar 2011, 19:53

nexus wrote:Also see that nice Mr Orlov for views on the Soviet Union vs United States.

http://www.DODGY TAX AVOIDERS.co.uk/Reinventing-Col ... =8-1-fkmr0

and his rather good 'club Orlov' blog

+1

Catweazle · Post by **Catweazle** » 13 Mar 2011, 23:06

featherstick wrote:Walking around Russia you can't help but notice how many really big guys there are who are aged 50 and above, and how many much smaller people aged 35 and below. The 50 year olds had better early care and nutrition than their kids.

That's an interesting benchmark, and one that seems to bear scrutiny. I have noticed a definite difference in size in people from affluent and poor areas in the UK. Sometimes these areas are very close together.

For example, I have a workshop in Bermondsey, London, and it's surprising how many very short people are living near there. On a more local basis, my sons and their friends are mostly pretty tall, my lads are 6'4" and 6'6" and they're not the tallest in their peer group. In contrast, most of the lads of the same age from a deprived area close by are a fair bit shorter than me ( 5'11" ). I have heard the kids from the poor areas referred to as "rat boys" because they are so much smaller.

It's awful that there can be such an obvious division in this age, I don't remember such a difference when I was in my early twenties.

Ludwig · Post by **Ludwig** » 13 Mar 2011, 23:40

Catweazle wrote: It's awful that there can be such an obvious division in this age, I don't remember such a difference when I was in my early twenties.

Being below average height is not a really great burden in the overall scheme of things.

Still, that said, it's been shown that tall people tend to do better in business. Therefore, on average, tall parents will be richer and so children in affluent areas will on average be taller.