@Argus Neomarxist idiots think everything in society is based on power, which is why they're neomarxist idiots.
I'm sure you didn't choose to read this book because the people who wrote it were powerful, you chose to read it because you thought it was going to be interesting or insightful.
The other part of looking at the world through this lens of "Everything is power" is you end up with bigoted ideas like there being one group or another that has a monopoly on power and all other groups are oppressed -- prejudged and convicted without any further thought on the matter. That dangerous prejudice is right now leading to oppressive power dynamics.
History tells us that every group that ends up ruling has a mythology that explains why they're the chosen people. Kings explained why they were descended from Gods or heroes. Religious orders explained why their head priests are anointed by God to lead. White Christians explained that black people were "sons of Ham", descended from a cursed forebear and thus were lesser than white people. The right thing is to nip this in the bud now before it blossoms into entire peoples thinking their hatred and dehumanization of someone else is justified.
I'm sure you didn't choose to read this book because the people who wrote it were powerful, you chose to read it because you thought it was going to be interesting or insightful.
The other part of looking at the world through this lens of "Everything is power" is you end up with bigoted ideas like there being one group or another that has a monopoly on power and all other groups are oppressed -- prejudged and convicted without any further thought on the matter. That dangerous prejudice is right now leading to oppressive power dynamics.
History tells us that every group that ends up ruling has a mythology that explains why they're the chosen people. Kings explained why they were descended from Gods or heroes. Religious orders explained why their head priests are anointed by God to lead. White Christians explained that black people were "sons of Ham", descended from a cursed forebear and thus were lesser than white people. The right thing is to nip this in the bud now before it blossoms into entire peoples thinking their hatred and dehumanization of someone else is justified.
@Argus I tend to agree with the assertion that the way they look at GDP is unhealthy.
It's a truism in management that once you start measuring something and once you start making that thing a KPI, you no longer have the same measurement. Just by making it a KPI and making it something you're trying to measure performance against you change the way people behave in order to maximize their perceived performance.
You also get things where you take bad actions that lead to the intended outcome. Keynes talked about absurd tasks like paying someone to dig a ditch only to fill it in as something you can do to keep GDP growing during periods of a shrinking economy, imagine things even more useless than that, and you're doing it while burning the world's limited resources to do it.
We're on the leading edge of a period of massive suffering that will be caused in large part by the need to keep the number going up at all costs. Taxes will skyrocket, government services will collapse, and bankers will be smiling.
It's a truism in management that once you start measuring something and once you start making that thing a KPI, you no longer have the same measurement. Just by making it a KPI and making it something you're trying to measure performance against you change the way people behave in order to maximize their perceived performance.
You also get things where you take bad actions that lead to the intended outcome. Keynes talked about absurd tasks like paying someone to dig a ditch only to fill it in as something you can do to keep GDP growing during periods of a shrinking economy, imagine things even more useless than that, and you're doing it while burning the world's limited resources to do it.
We're on the leading edge of a period of massive suffering that will be caused in large part by the need to keep the number going up at all costs. Taxes will skyrocket, government services will collapse, and bankers will be smiling.
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