Before you all get your panties in a twist, I know it's technically not true.
this post was submitted on 16 Nov 2023
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That link is an unsourced opinion piece on a site belonging to something called the Adam Smith Institute. I'm gonna need something a bit more credible before I believe it tbh.
The Adam smith institute is a right wing free market think tank with likely very questionable donors. wiki It likely doesn't really do research but takes sources that support their preexisting believes and retells them.
Certainly it was at least very hard to make the capitalist exploitation of the worker so all encompassing before the invention of the mechanical watch (Although there was likely a ton of housework and the general situation was garbage what with feudal lords and all that) . It then likely exploded with the industrial revolution and at least in places where the working class managed to emancipate themselves got somewhat cut back. Now especially for countries outside of the west and increasingly also the US and parts of EU it's likely getting worse, especially with multi employment and precarious employment(gig work, semi self employment, 0h contracts, mechanical turk ...).
Generally i feel work where you or your peers get to keep the total output of your work isn't really a problem, it's a problem when your work gets appropriated into this terrible machine and as a result you are alienated from the work.
I always find it kinda funny when the right turns to Adam Smith. Smith thought that the free market would free us from the monopolistic tendencies of the mercantile system. (Although he wouldn't have written it as such, as the term 'monopoly' wasn't nearly as taxonomically precise as it is now.) If he was alive today, he'd probably be rather dismayed at the failures of capitalism.
But then again, I guess that's the right's shtick: coopt any idea that they can and pervert it to benefit the ultra-wealthy.
Anyways, here's Smith:
There's also the materialist take on capitalism that it's a stage between feudalism and a more socialist or communist organization of society.
It would be funny if it weren't so sad. As much as reading and understanding smith and other philosophy is important for the individual, think tanks unfortunately seem necessary in a modern context aiming to transform, often quite unreadable, as your excerpt demonstrates, philosophical learning, into applicable law/policy.
As with everything this process is utterly captured by right wing and market fundamentalist interests. Just sort this list by Bias/Affiliation and skim some of the descriptions it's a bit horrific, but it also might save you from reading an old school stochastic parrot with an inhumane agenda. Or if you actually find one you can agree with it might give you a reasonable first source.
Lol yeah, it's definitely the "funny-because-that's-how-I-cope-with-the-absurdity" funny, not the "I'm-actually-having-fun" funny.
Here's my Luke warm take: It's kinda a self fulfilling prophecy that think tanks are so "necessary". They prop up modern thought because our education is so filled with practicality and specialization that there's not enough time for proper philosophical education, which every person should be offered. And further, that is by design to maintain the status quo.
You certainly don't get much hat tipping to the early greats, many of whom said in some form or other that the study of philosophy was one of the most important pursuits a person can have in order to live a good life and build a healthy society.
Warm take, because the corpus of human philosophy really is insanely massive, and realistically we do in fact need food and doctors and house builders and whatnot, and there's too little time and too much to be done for everyone to get a B.A. equivalent in philosophy. Probably. Maybe a think tank has studied the idea.
Yeah this whole thing a bit maximized might be neatly wrapped up in this Hegelian insight rephrased in 2014 found on the wiki
In this way if not even the greats can do it how could a modern person or a think tank but at the same time does this not imply we currently need all three of them.
Also is the modern YouTube video essay channel sort of a think tank for terminally online people ? Maybe food for thought, maybe a joke who knows really.
Is there any think tank on earth that if all the members suddenly got heart attacks the world would be a worse place?
I think about all the people who I deal with daily and if any single one of them died things would be so much worse for me. They have value and you can see the value they add. How does the Adam Smith institute or CATO do jack shit for anyone? And if we can't answer that, than why are the people on these committees being paid so well for what isn't eben a full time job? And why the fuck are they tax exemption!?
Well I might look at this Rosa Luxemburg Foundation or perhaps this Heinrich Böll Foundation if I were in need to peddle some specific policy to someone that both cares and is powerful. It's in many ways the same prisoners dilemma as with all of advertisement.
So yes if they were all gone it'd be better for everyone but as we unfortunately live in the system we live in I'd rather have the few that might actually represent me exist beside all of the garbage. Same with the political parties they are associated with as well.
The time was very different. Most people lived and worked in the country, not in cities, so de facto they couldn't control them however they liked. Christian Church was also imposing morality over everything, which means they couldn't enslave people as easily as today.
We are living in neo-feudalism. Your boss is a lord, and your only freedom is to choose a lord, provided this lord accept you.
Christendom was basically like the church was the structure of society, when you were baptized as an infant and written in the books that was like social security today. The anabaptists weren't just so radical because they opposed theology, but because they protested the fundamental structure of how society was organized.
Also religion back then was like entertainment as well, people actually loved going to see preachers and they'd talk about them in the same way we talk about shows or movies now. It had that function in the society as sort of a language for discussing fundamental truths and life experience that people loved engaging in. They didn't have a notion of a political or national identity, but they had a soul and all the stuff to do with that.
If that's ok too, I have read a book by an anthropologist who claims the opposite (that in fact people in the past had more leisure than today). I can look up a good quote tomorrow. For the claim in the post, I'm afraid, there ain't no good sources, as for most alternative facts.
I mean it seems like the sort of thing people are just ready to believe because "we have technology now so we must have better lives" despite loads of that technology being turned towards controlling us.
As for the book, it wouldn't be Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber, would it?
It was the first book I read by Graeber but not the last one. He mentioned it in other books too but yes, I was about to quote from Bullshit Jobs
Anyone wanting to read it can do so for free: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/david-graeber-bullshit-jobs
The official version I think is better formatted, but this one is functional if you can't access the official one for some reason.
It's historical consensus. Your quality of life is still better because you have civil rights and access to medical care that actually works.
If it's consensus then there must be sources somewhere.
You got it the wrong way around: If it's consensus, no one questions it anymore so you don't need a source. If you start to question commonly hold beliefs, you will have to unlearn the whole field of economics. Do you want that?
This entire quote is actually a perfect encapsulation of orthodox economics, said with absolutely no self awareness.
It's the system I've lived with my entire life!! How could it be anything but correct?! I'm a smart guy, I'm sure I'd have noticed if something were amiss.
Plus look at all these high-paid people who agree with me! Surely they wouldn't be so rich if they were telling lies!
Economics is less accurate than astrology because at least if you are an astrologist who gets things wrong you stop getting paid. Sure it is cold reading and Barnum statements but it is still more accurate.
In order to reach a consensus like that, you have to have supporting evidence that it's true. Otherwise that consensus should absolutely be challenged.
It happens in all kind of scientific fields that things that feel logical and common sense, are taken for granted. I think SciShow made a video about it but I can't find it right now.
We're talking about anthropology/history here. People spend their entire careers researching things like this and publishing papers on it.
To make a claim like this requires evidence. Historical records would exist that some person at some point gathered together and published a peer reviewed article on.
If no sources or peer reviewed articles exist on the topic other than a few blog posts, then it's extremely likely it's a pile of horse shit.
I don't think you got my point at all. My point is that even natural science, which is "hard science" and much easier falsifiable, this also happens. I found the video if you're interested (It's by Be Smart, I was wrong about the channel).
There is also a video about the history of work that is more on topic. If you don't want to watch the video, you can just read the sources in the description.
But talking about anthropologists: here is a quote from David Graeber's book Bullshit Jobs:
He is an anthropologist who devoted his whole career debunking such claims and published a book together with a historian who does the same. It's called "the dawn of everything" by David Graeber and David Wengrow (2021). You should check it out. I could look up more anthropologists to back my claim but I don't want to spend too much time for people who talk down on me (none of these are block posts, surprised?) and you are yet to come up with all the anthropologists and historians (not economics, they don't count) who support your claim.
Thank you for finding a source.
I didn't make any claim one way or another, I was just saying that any consensus in academia is going to be backed up by some sort of research and evidence.
And anything you inferred as talking down to you was a misinterpretation on your part.
Do you also ask for sources when people contend that Julius Caesar was a real person, or that the world is round? Go to JSTOR and start building your case if you're so keen to display your ignorance about common knowledge, or do you need a SOURCE to tell you that JSTOR actually exists and isn't a modern fiction?
You could turn down your douchebag levels quite a lot and still make a point.
It'll make you look much less like an asshole when you're wrong, which you are.
Don't be belligerent and you won't get the door slammed on you, being upset about tone of a message to the point of it overriding your ability to accept its content is overly emotional and extremely childish.
UHHH SOURCE?!?! SOURCE????????
I'm not the person asking for a source, but good job proving that you're an asshole.
We have coins with his face on it.
It's not historical consensus. It's a claim made by some historians that went viral online.
It seems very emotionally important to you that you believe that. Best of luck.
Is it? Okay.
no it isn't.
Oh ok