The Great Rap music consipiracy...

[BobbyK]

Is the rap music industry in fact a conspiracy by the private prison industry to keep their facilities full?

http://www.hiphopisread.com/2012/04/sec ... music.html

I think it's more than a bit out there, but what the hell. I'm bored this morning.

[Jericho941]

Yeeeah, rap ain't what it used to be.

ETA: Anyway, from the same blog...

[Greg]

...And so the the circle turns into a spiral, and people become more and more scared and paranoid, and we lose more and more freedom, and get more and more police, and prisons; and spend more and more money...

No conspiracy required.

Decriminalize drug use in this country, and tens of thousands of people would be out of a job... possibly hundreds of thousands.

Yep. It's not the only institutional bloat spiral we face, either.

Sometimes I wonder what things would be like if we didn't allocate so much of our surplus into providing "jobs" for parasites - mind you, I'm not even talking about the dole, I'm just talking about people with "jobs" where those jobs are essentially fiction willed into existence by abuse of legislation, that contribute nothing to society or actively make things worse (like members of all the various compliance industries).

I wonder what we'd find to do with all those resources?

[Jericho941]

I wonder what we'd find to do with all those resources?

Open up a lot of soup kitchens.

[Greg]

I wonder what we'd find to do with all those resources?

Open up a lot of soup kitchens.

That's a common sort of belief. But being common doesn't keep it from being ignorant, or wrong, or even bloody dangerous. That's the sort of things the Luddite-types say every time technology and/or efficiency improvements do away with a "job". Well there's nothing magic about "jobs" in and of themselves - a job is just someone who has a productive use for your labor paying you to provide it to him. And if say, that "job" isn't really productive to anyone, if it's just digging a hole and filling it back in... the fact that that digger has a "job" doesn't mean he's not useless overhead (if not an out and out parasite) and his pay would be better off going elsewhere.

Surpluses in one place free resources (especially labor, always labor) for use elsewhere. Surpluses from improvements in agriculture have allowed crafts and then real manufacturing to develop. Recently surpluses from improvements in manufacturing have allowed any number of potential new developments (we call it the service economy). Imagine if some of those services were *desirable*, instead of tax prep, or HR, or DMV clerks, or school administrators (as opposed to actual teachers) or diversity outreach coordinators, or tenure track positions in [pseudointellectual wanking] Studies.

[Jericho941]

If you can show me a service economy that isn't 90% bureaucracy and useless fluff, you're showing me something that isn't a service economy.

[Yogimus]

If you can show me a service economy that isn't 90% bureaucracy and useless fluff, you're showing me something that isn't a service economy.

you do something for me that i did not want to do. That is value, in my book.

[Greg]

If you can show me a service economy that isn't 90% bureaucracy and useless fluff, you're showing me something that isn't a service economy.

Been a little busy, but I got here eventually. Yeah this is too close to the way it works in the real world.

When you only need ~2% of the population employed in agriculture to feed everyone, and some small percentage employed in resource extraction and manufacturing to supply everyone's need for stuff, you really do run into the problems of what to do with all the other workers and their labor, and how to divide up the loot.

Mind you, "service" is a broad term. Someone who mows your lawn for pay is providing a service. Or cutting your hair, or washing your car, or hauling your shit when you move, or painting your house, or setting up your computer, or catering your meals, or walking your dog - most anything you could do yourself buy pay someone else to do (for whatever reason) fits. Some of that is purely silly shit, but some of it really makes your life better - you could pay someone to do something for you better than you could do it yourself, or if there's some task you particularly hate then paying someone to do it (ideally someone who doesn't mind it as much as you do) is definitely a good thing.

An economy where people try to find ways to use their skills and talents to improve the lives of their fellows - and get paid for it (and the best at it get rich- why do you think mass-media-enabled entertainers of various types make so much money?) - can be very interesting and appealing. You see the more pure form in fiction occasionally, Larry Niven has toyed with the idea.

In the real world, after a country industrializes and there's suddenly a lot of surplus it all tends to get sucked up by the gov't and various rent seekers who use the gov't to enable their rent seeking. So you get lots of people enjoying really nice livings, who do absolutely nobody any good in any capacity.

My first post was kind of idle and wistful. I didn't think it was that hard to understand.

[Aglifter]

If we could ditch the Reds, its only once only a fraction of your population is dedicated to the basics of energy and food production that there's a potential for real progress in a civilization.

I think we are nearing an inflection point. Either Socialism finally dies, or it will succeed in collapsing civilization - both on a global scale.