Hourglass society
That means, enough with the middle class myth.
Look at what is happening nowadays, it’d be lying to say the good old middle class is still going to sustain the materialistic modern civilization as well. No more mediocre blue-collar jobs for the college graduates. As we are trapped in the money ouroboros, there’s going to be more and more smart fellas diving into the virtual business like finance, software etc. This transforms the western society into a hourglass-shaped structure. While lots of people are drifting upwards to become ferociously rich, more people simply could not adapt to the transition and get squeezed down to the bottom.
The worst part is, the group in the lower part of the hourglass thinks they should be in charge of hourglass, just as much as the upper part group thinks. But in reality they would never do. So here comes the social conflicts. Not to forget the third world countries are still non-stop supplying new babies to the lower part group (most of them). Maybe they will occasionally win the battles and some of them would have the chance to be upgraded into the upper group. But the transformation trend persists.
How do I see the future? Human masters in an electronic robotic automation. Of course the pre-assumption is that current modern civilization would be undisturbed by any drastic social turmoil that put an end to scientific advancement. Well, what ends up in the Occident I see the chance for the Orient to continue at least. Of course I hope all smart fellas end up well in the end. Need a piece of inspiration? Check out the creepy robots.
I don’t think that the middle class is a myth – it’s a process. When a society modernizes, a middle class is created. However, the freedom of transportation and association, as well as the access to higher education, causes cognitive stratification to occur. I think that this article does a good job of describing the process http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/22/AR2010102202873.html
The middle class will stick around for a while. It’ll outlive us. But bit by bit, it’ll be whittled away as people either move up into the cognitive elite or move down into the underclass. The smart and rich will get smarter and richer, the poor will get dumber and more helpless.
So the middle class was never meant to last forever. It is temporary by nature. But that’s not necessarily cause for despair – if you’re not a moron, you and your children probably have a great future.
Thanks a for great comment RVT! What you were talking about here is exactly what I mean in the post. I was referring that the persistent existence of middle class as the middle class myth. you are right on the track. Eventually it would be nibbled out in the end.
I think the most fundamental action for the good of society is to fight lumpen prole values.
We will get to a point where there will be a lot fewer jobs for the lower half. This is historically unprecedented. For the first time, technology has gotten to a point where the lower half of the population are increasing becoming surplus. Yet, the enormous wealth that we have today and tomorrow means that these guys are able to outbreed the smart. Not a thing for our future. In a demacratic society such as ours, the stupid still has the same vote as the smart. Care to speculate what a society would look like under this scenario?
Idiocracy/Marching Morons…. But chances are this will be self correcting.
@With the thoughts you’d be thinkin:
“I think the most fundamental action for the good of society is to fight lumpen prole values.”
I agree, but the thing is those lumpen prole values are eminent at the moment and it is not easy to find them. I think some damage must be present to awaken the majority for effective actions. Until that day comes, it won’t have the window of opportunity to revert the tide.
@John:
“Care to speculate what a society would look like under this scenario?”
That’s a doomsday scenario. We have an old saying in Chinese: “If you don’t fight back in the darkness you would perish in the darkness.” As far as I can see, the sky is getting darker as we speak and the momentum for counter-actions is indeed rising as well. That’s as much optimistic as I could get here.
@Thoughts: “But chances are this will be self correcting.” and TLE “the momentum for counter-actions is indeed rising as well”
I am not at all optimistic. based on the numbers, we will get to a majority moron state in just a few decades. If other societies which have gone through this is any guide(think Brazil), the dysgenic trend will accelerate once this happens. The cognitive elite, being the ever decreasing minority, will have to go through ever greater lengths to appease the majority. This will have the effect of wealth re-distribution which will make Obama look like a rapid capitalist. At that point, HBD will be even suppressed more brutally to keep social order(Try talking to people about HBD in Indonesia and see how far you get). The dysgenic trend will be upheld due to the tyranny of the majority. I just don’t see any mechanism where this will be reversed.
Alas, a sad image. But how can we spread around the truth and awaken more people? Gotta have something we could do to makethe situation better…
I did not say it was going to self correct peacfully. We will likely see resurgences in natiotionalist/populists/religious views.
nationalism is dying in the west. I’d say religion or populism might have a chance.
That’s if you assume that a society with a class of geniuses on the top and a legion of morons on the bottom is going to be at all democratic. I suspect that the cognitive elite will have little trouble controlling the underclass.
That last comment was directed at John.
RVT,
Yes, if you look at these societies that I mentioned, the elite do have disproportional controls over the underclass. That does not mean that they will stop the dysgenic trend. Part of the control and appeasement and wealth transfer. Nowadays, the cost of survival and reproduction is so small compared to the wealth that our society collectively created, it does not take much to keep this trend going. In a so called democratic state like ours, the cognitive elite can subvert the system, but they must do so by buying votes. I don’t see how that would not involve massive wealth transfer into the moron class.
Gotta kill Christian do-gooders lest their aid keeps producing another billion of proles.
Eugenics is a-coming.
Lol… Christians. What about those hard core liberal leftists?
Atheist Christians.
I’ve heard that prior to industrialization that skilled labor was more demanding (middle to high IQ) and was the dominant mode of production, as opposed to the hobbyhorse of wealthy consumers as it is today. Technology erased this middle position and split the labor into 2 groups, a large number of low intelligence assembly line jobs and a relatively smaller brain group of engineers and scientists.
Well, i’d hope technology advances a bit more to eliminate all those menial low-skilled labors. But that’d cause another problem, as described in 1984 and Brave New World, all many smart people together is not something good either. But the point is to avert the empowering of stupid breeds in the society, that’s awfully damaging to the civilization, which is what leftism brings unintentionally from its egalitarian propaganda.