/lit/ - Literature

>My dad was a solicitor so I'm forbidden from understanding and empathising with the working class.

She feels the need to appropriate another marginalized identity to prop up her intersectional oppression credibility.

>>3916221

I don't know who that boy in the pic is.

Now, if you excuse me, I'm off to read some real literature written by real writers.

>>3916224

I don't mind her trying to comment on the situation of the working class, it is the fact she likes to imagine and depict herself as being working class which annoys me.

>>3916235
Honestly, why do you care?

>>3916221
the biggest pile of dog shit I have ever read. Reading her Guardian articles is like slogging through the most retarded pre-pubescent ramblings from a 12 year old. The intellect of a gnat.

are public vs private schools a big class divide in the UK? over here in the states, private schooling (for primary/secondary education) doesn't necessarily mean anything in terms of class. for example there are lots of working class catholic families who send their kids to catholic schools which are usually very affordable and/or give loads of financial aid

>>3916244

Are you kidding? The prostitutes and rapists from the society of the badly teethed ones gave birth to you, fatsos. It is only natural that you both share the same quirks and mental deformations.

>>3916238

It's dishonest which a good journalist/commentator shouldn't be. Shows she cares more about how she presents herself than issues.

>>3916254
do you actually get riled up?
If you think about it for a good ten minutes, do you really give a shit?

>>3916244

Yeah it's a big divide between working and middle class as most private schools are quite expensive. An even bigger divide is public schools which are extremely prestigious, very expensive schools - our current prime monster and half his cabinet all went the same public school.

Catholic and religious schools also show a divide but it's more common to find working class people there though still pretty rare.

Who is he (assuming that's him in the pic)? Living in the states, I've never heard of him.

>>3916224
I'm gonna go one step further and suggest that if you aren't working class, you can't fully understand the working class. You can empathize, assume, and theorize but it's not the same as actually understanding.

The single article I've read from Laurie Penny thus far was grating as fuck and I don't think there are a lot of Marxist-feminists, as a whole, that are worth a shit. The few that I've personally known were pretty bourgeois and lacked a lot of substance but there are a couple who are actually good and do good things regardless of the dissonance that combining Marxism and contemporary feminism generally creates.

>Almost get ran over by a taxi
>Ryan Gosling saves her
>Act like an ungrateful cunt and say that people shouldn't care about it because there are wars going on

>>3916254
>>3916254
I'm with this guy. She is acting on behalf of the working class, or rather how she perceives the working class and pretends that they have something in common, when she in fact is doing all of them a disfavor, because her thoughts are poorly conceived and they most often appeal to emotion. She should be replaced with someone who comes from the working class and actually knows how to argue and what issues the working class feels are important.

One of those would for example be immigration. Which you never will see Laurie Penny argue for, except opening up the borders.

>>3916258

Not hugely but that doesn't change my criticism. My issue is that although she is well-intentioned and I'm happy for her to join the cause of defending the poor, inequality in the UK is getting worse. The chances of someone from a poor background getting to where she has with all her advantages is so small. The fact she seems to be happy to ignore this and pretend she grew up in
Peckham is part of a larger issue.

There are people in politics and journalism who care for the working class, but there are few who are from it.

>>3916283

They use the working-class perspective to push their own political agenda.

One of the oldest trick in the book.
>But Caesar it is not I that wants this law, the people demand it...

>>3916268

Issue is that you can be pro-immigration, I can understand the arguments for it. But for many people in poor areas they are extremely critical of it and immigrants. She is unable to actually engage with the working class on what should be left wing issues because she isn't in their shoes.

She may talk to poor people or know them but she doesn't have the feeling of growing up in a poor area or the knowledge one will always be stuck in a poor area.

The left may care for the poor but come across as people who know what's best for them. If they want to have any chance of engaging with them they need to change their approach and attitudes.

>>3916244
>are public vs private schools a big class divide in the UK?
A fairly large divide. There is a lot of 'class mobility' and a full spectrum of income. So while we have the terraced houses, council estates, and people on welfare, we have our largest portion in various stages of the middle class, and a small minority of multi-millionaires. There is a cut-off at upper-middle (where Laurie is) and above, and they tend to go to expensive private or boarding schools, while the rest go to state schools.

Fortunately our university system is a lot different, and class dissolves quite a bit there as everyone mingles.

>>3916300

I wouldn't say university dissolves it. I come from a poor area where 90% of people don't go to university. University only seems to as everyone there is at some varying level of middle class (including myself). You don't actually see the genuinely poor people at university.

I remember going and was shocked at how white university, the amount of people from villages and the amount of wealth people had. You don't notice the poorer people as all students tend to live fairly comfortably on government loans.

>>3916254

I agree with this post.

I hate Laurie Penny. I hate her bullshit feminism, I hate her hyper-marxism, I hate the way she talks, I hate the way she shoehorns her ideology into every thing she writes. I fundamentally hate almost everything about her, but the idea that she can't discuss or understand the working class is pure bullshit.

Someone who is raised with money and has very little intellect, someone like Paris Hilton, probably has no idea what it's like to be raised on income support. But someone with that wealth who goes out of their way to understand what it's like does. Laurie has nowhere near that wealth, rejected her parents handouts, and opted to squat in a derelict house with a bunch of dropouts just to understand what it was like to live with absolutely no money. A lot of her friends come from council housing, she associates with the working class, she's moderately intelligent, and has spent years getting into that mentality.

The idea that income, especially in modern Britain, prevents one from understanding the issues that effect the other half is absolutely ridiculous.

>>3916330

I think she understands but she's false to claim herself as working-class. She may have later rejected her parent's wealth but used it to go to private school, then Oxbridge then get herself a cushy job at the New Statesman.

>>3916330

Go to sleep Laurie.

>>3916221
she is female and there for disadvantaged.
>not my belief hers

I still have her facebook account.

>>3916318
>You don't actually see the genuinely poor people at university.

I grew up on the third floor of a council flat in Hackney, raised by a single mother on welfare. I went to a shit school, and spent the majority of my youth wishing I could have new clothes/games/toys, yet I go to uni now. But you would never know my background unless I told you.

There are quite a lot of people like me in uni, and billions of pounds in bursaries are set aside for us. Just because we're not sat in lectures swigging a 3ltr plastic bottle of cider, doesn't mean we aren't there.

>>3916339
Don't make me check your privilege, Anon. I will if I have to.

>>3916338
She doesn't ever say "I am working class." She uses subversive language to try to create a feeling of unity. She throws herself into protests and demonstrations and tries to use 'we', where the majority of other journalists are sat on the sidelines exclusively using 'they'.

Just look at the opening of this. It starts 'we all go down together'. I'm not too keen on her neo-gonzo style, but she's a fairly talented writer, and very good at what she does. You have to understand that she thinks class boundaries should be torn down, so tries to treat society as a single entity instead of adhering to a specific class. To do that she has to present herself as one of the people instead of an impartial witness.

Wealth only prevents you from empathising with other people if you use it to shield yourself from poverty. Like, by living in a gated community or just a gentrified area, moving house to make sure your kids go to the best school (or pay for private education), go to exclusive and elite gatherings, travel first class, etc.

>>3916400
>travel first class
Didn't Marx always travel first class?

>>3916401
Marx was making a statement; he believed EVERYONE should travel first class.

PROPOSAL: let's all stop talking about laurie penny, yall only care about her because you want to have sex with her but also hate women anyway, and as a result of that every conversation about her on here is completely fucking worthless

Just A Thought

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oj9dA6E3fJw

Mandatory posting.

>>3916406

Spot on. That is why he also paid for the best hookers and snorted the best coke as well.

>>3916412

Go to sleep Laurie. You aren't hot. Also, you're untalented.

Official Laurie Penny Power Rankings:

>God tier
Penny Red
Discordia

>Good tier:
Flesh Market
Film/book reviews
New Statesman articles
political essays

>Shit tier
Anything for vice
Public debates/lectures
Guardian articles

>>3916400
no, wealth sheilds you from empathizing with people in poverty because it gives you an escape hatch. It's the difference between starving and going on a diet. It's the hunger without the fear, the dread, the hopelessness. it gives you choices. Being poor is to lose a chunk of freedom, because there are a lot of risks you can't take. and a lot of small risks that look like large ones to you. In the sixties, hippies and such from wealthy families and backgrounds, right out of college used to come to "help out" on our farm sometimes. They'd work when they felt like it, get up when they felt like it, participate in any activity they enjoyed and then go back to their sleeping bags and sit around their bonfires and after eating with us, eat food like ham and cheese sandwiches and chips and Pepsi, things that we didn't see in two or three months. They'd praise our simple food and our hard working lifestyle and it all seemed noble to them because they had a fucking choice. The best of them wanted us to learn to do beter, the worst wanted us to be glad we weren't addicted to the consumerist and artificial lifestyle they were in. These guys were idiots.

wealth is a real solid advantage: it's like being bulletproof in a war. you're not going to be able to empathize with an infrantryman if you can't get killed yourself.

>>3916418
I love her eyes. They're almost as nice as cake girls eyes.

>>3916425
>degenerates

>>3916417
Oh you naughty thing,

>>3916425

Go away, you filthy pedophile.

Also, that Penny cunt, that Chihuahua's eyes are the void itself. THE VOID. You can see her desperation to be something she is not. I can picture her sucking a hobbo's cock just to demonstrate that she is chill and down with the unfortunate masses.

Fuck wannabes.

>>3916435
>Go away, you filthy pedophile.
What? How am I a pedophile?

>>3916424
>you need to be poor to empathize with poor people

Layers of retardation.

>>3916438

If your cock, that little appendix under your roll of fat, smells like powder milk formula, then you're a pedophile.

>>3916251
Hey! I happen to be a kentucky hillbilly! we're just as inbred, incestuous, ill-mannered and arrogant as your ruling class. You should worship us as gods!

>>3916440
I get what he is saying, but he's totally wrong.

>>3916386
That image is indicative of the sort of rhetoric everyone should despise or at least challenge, and it's another reason why I can't even fucking stand her.

It's "radical" drivel like that that liberals, teenagers, and dumb Trots ate up as they turned "Occupy" into the dense, embarrassing wreck it became or maybe always was.

>>3916455
>>a kentucky hillbilly

Yup, /lit/'s demographic. So?

>>3916440
No you really do. It's sort of like saying you can empathize with someone on fire because you've been really warm before. The main difference between being poor and being wealthy is that the wealthy have a way out. Put them bothin the same shack with a single blanket and a bowl of rice a day and the wealthy guy knows that if it gets to be too much or something else goes wrong he can fix it. The difference between those two apparently identical states is like the difference between lead and lightning. God himself couldn't bridge that gap of empathy.

>>3916221
she looks like a girl dj

Well, she finally wrote a decent article:

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/06/if-you-live-surveillance-state-long-enough-you-create-censor-your-head

>>3916465
You know, that's sort of right. /lit/ and /sci/ both seem to be overrun with hillbillies.I guess because we're sort of the scientific and reader sort. The love of reading and math and respect for education isn't just a stereotype: hillbillies really do tend to produce most scholars and scientists. I think it's because they are cut off from most electronic media and surrounded by nature in the raw. also, it's dark enough to see the stars.

>>3916468
>It's sort of like saying you can empathize with someone on fire because you've been really warm before.
But I can empathize with someone who's been on fire without having been on fire myself.

>>3916479
no, you can feel sorry for them. empathy is different: you can't share a pain you've never felt. You're sympathizing at best. I've you've been broke and worked or lucked out of it, then you can. Read People of the Abyss. London grasps the difference perfectly. Orwell did a good job too.

>>3916484
I don't think you know what empathy is.

>>3916484
>no, you can feel sorry for them. empathy is different: you can't share a pain you've never felt.
Yes, yes you can. I could give a thousand examples, but two fairly recent have been my first time skydiving, and my broken tibia (not related). Both were exactly as I knew they would be. Having broken my leg gives me no advantage over someone who has never broken a bone when it comes to empathising with fellow bone breakers. The throbbing pain, the itching and stink of the cast, the dull ache in the corresponding hip as you limp around on crutches; all are pretty easy to imagine.

I had never broken anything before, yet had wondered on numerous occasions what it would feel like to break a bone. My sister broke one of the bones in her forearm a few years prior, and I could empathise perfectly with her. I could accurately imagine the kind of pain she must have felt, and I discovered I was absolutely correct upon breaking mine. Skydiving was the same; it was exactly as I knew it would be after extensive research.

You don't have to experience the thing directly to know what it would be like. And as experience is subjective, you will never have the exact same experience as anyone else anyway.

>>3916515

Oh my, you're just a suburban, white, bored and spoiled brat.

Comparing poverty to a broken leg is retarded, to say the least.

Go back to your Legos, numbnuts. Allegories are way out of your intellectual capabilities.

>>3916521
>Comparing poverty to a broken leg is retarded

The subject is empathy not poverty. If you can't keep up with the discussion avoid participating in it.

>>3916221
private education is for shit. Nobody takes that shit seriously over here. The state pays for public education, so private schools are famous for taking anyone with enough money.

>>3916244

I think that having intelligent parents, or at least successful ones, who know the game and care enough to send their child to private school affords many benefits. I'm unconvinced of the inherent differences at a private school compared to a public one but discipline and knowledge to succeed seems to be a rather large factor with privately educated people and I've no doubt it stems from parents rather than pupil

Case in point, I knew a lot of private school people when I was in the better part of my teen years (from 15 through to 18). None of them were particularly intelligent - or at least few of them showed it - but as soon as exam time hit for both their GCSEs and A-Levels, they went into full-focus mode. It was like a switch which the less disciplined but more capable of my friends hadn't been taught.

I think there's a system of values which is part of a larger class spectrum, and it's very annoying.

>>3916515
So you're saying you guessed right, or believe you did. And if the next ten times you guess wrong? Or even one out of three?

You're right that experience is subjective, and to an extent all empathy is a trick of perception. But if you had had to convey the idea of breaking a leg, would you say it would be a more accurate impression before or after you broke your own?

>>3916536
>would you say it would be a more accurate impression before or after you broke your own?

My impression of a broken bone was just as accurate before and after I broke my own. As the experience was subjective, I will never know exactly what my sister felt when she broke her arm, or what anyone else experienced when they broke something. This means that all I have is a hypothetical subjective experience - which I can hone through study - and an actual experience. Neither one will ever be the pain of another, but both serve as an accurate comparison.

What I'm trying to say is that the mind isn't static, and it lets us explore the possibility of alternate scenarios, and put ourselves into the proverbial shoes of others. If this wasn't the case then a work of fiction would be impossible. I'm also trying to emphasise the importance of study and knowledge on the ability to create a decent 'map' of what a certain experience is like. A decent writer may not have first hand experience of being raped as a child, but they will be able to spend countless hours reading the accounts of others, meditating on the hypothetical experience, and create something so vivid and accurate that actual rape victims relate to it perfectly.

The first hand experience doesn't necessarily change anything, as you will never have first hand experience of someone else's perceptions,.

>>3916491
empathy is reflecting a cognitive and effective state: it's experiencing the same emotions and reactions as a person actually undergoing an experience. A person who is terrified of spiders can easily empathize with another person with the same phobia when the spiders drop on them from a rafter. It's a type of close emotional identification brought on by memory and projected association. Sympathy is a generalized form of it, where you respond to the emotion but don't entirely share it. you regret their pain but don't feel it yourself.


To an extent empathy is an illusion, and it can work both ways. In the movie "Cry of The Penguin" the protagonist is empathizing too much: he projects his own fear, hatred of the cold and isolation onto the penguins he is observing. The opposite happens when a person who has been hungry sees a man who is also hungry, but also might never have had a good meal. Or a man who works for a week in a migrant farm camp. he is close to the problem, but he understands it from his own perspective. He might resent the long hours of labor and the small pay comapred to what he is used to, and be indignant or sympathetic, or he might relish the hard exercise, the fresh air and the good spirits and the simple food and recreations and think the workers live an enviable life. But both are blind men circling the elephant of a poverty stricken life. neither of them is wrong, but neither of them have the entire picture. Their "empathy" is a phantom, colored by their personalities and their own previous perspectives.

>>3916244
>>3916244
um, catholics (and therefore their schools) are a huge minority in the US. maybe this guy is from New England or around a large latino population. it's mostly baptists where I'm from, who don't give a shit about education. private schooling is definitely a large class divide for the majority of the US. in my large metro area, all the private schools, even the catholic one, are posh as can be.

>>3916549
you have an amazing talent. I doubt there;s ever been another person on earth who could honestly say the same. You should try it with other things, such as flavors of ice cream you've never tasted, movies you've never seen, perfumes you've never smelled etc. If your initial concepts continue to match your subsequent experiences, you have a venue into the world of impossible things that very few people have ever had. You can imagine what it would be like to fly, to be in two places at once, to walk on mars or the heart of a star, even to die. if you can adequately hone your descriptive powers to the point where you can compellingly convey these things your future as a writer is assured.

>>3916527

No, spoiled brat, it is empathizing with a complex socioeconomic reality as poverty.

Grow up, faggotmaster.

>>3916565
>No, spoiled brat
Wut? There is more than one person mocking you.

>>3916565
>spoiled brat,
So, with that implication that he's richer than you -
You're attacking him for daring to try to help you on the grounds that he knows life sucks for you?
Hahah oh wow.

>>3916574

You really should stop embarrassing yourself, boy.

>>3916565
>it is empathizing with a complex socioeconomic reality as poverty.
The claim was that Laurie Penny, despite extensive study, has no idea what it's like to be working class, because only the working class could know that. This is obviously absurd.

>>3916588

Your dubs have outed you as a stormfag /pol/ mullethead. Your point is invalid.

NEXT!

>>3916587
That's my first post in this thread. Why do you keep trying to use insults or otherwise condescending terms to address the people you're arguing with? It's almost as though you're trying to win the argument that way.

>>3916588
Unless you have experience of being Laurie Penny trying to understand the working class, you can have no idea if she was successful in her attempt.

>>3916552
otm

>>3916587
protip: don't call people "boy" or "kid" like that, it just makes you come off like a smug jerk

>>3916596

I am not that anon, anon. I am another anon who is seeing how childishly you're wrestling in the mud with a troll, and you're making a fool of yourself. Have some self respect, anon.

>>3916617
I repeat, that was my first post in this thread. I'll add to it that you're a poor liar.

>>3916221
>well-intentioned
This can be said about Adolf Eichmann too. And there are several other reasons why she should annoy you apart of her gimmicks.

>>3916624

Have it your way. I just wanted to be a good bro and try to avoid you further embarrassment.

>>3916425
>cake girls eyes.
/fit/bro?

>>3916221

Oh god, I seriously hope none of you take the Guardian seriously on social issues.

Serious question to people at uni: Is the liberal arts department pretty much a left wing indoctrination/discussion centre? I know /pol/ would say it 100 % is, but is there any truth in what they say (I particularly want to know for the UK)?

I'm just asking because I saw this quote about Margaret Thatcher by a Cambridge Classics professor where I think she's insinuating that feminists have to be left-wing. I can't believe that someone at Cambridge can be this stupid, although it is liberal arts

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/the-womens-blog-with-jane-martinson/2012/jan/05/margaret-thatcher-feminist-icon

>>3916668
>I seriously hope none of you take the Guardian seriously on social issues
I take anything Charlie Brooker says as religious doctrine.

>>3916668
I did my MA in Lit. at UCL. The department is overwhelmingly left-wing, yes. There are some very militant lecturers. Seminars were a chore with a lot of them, but of course their own beliefs weren't detrimental to the scoring of my written work.

>>3916588
I agree that it's absurd. I only wanted to point out that it's nonetheless true. The absurdity of it only makes the truth more pathetic.

>>3916668

>Serious question to people at uni: Is the liberal arts department pretty much a left wing indoctrination/discussion centre?

They're not very good at encouraging voices that are enti-establishment, unless it is their particular brand of anti-establishment ideas.
That is to say people with somewhat more conservative concerns are ignored or snubbed.

I say this as a fairly left-wing person myself.

Not strictly related, but when I was at university I took a module in politics which was on ideologies. The ones focus on in the module were - Liberalism, Conservatism, Libertarianism, Marxism, Socialism, Ecologism and Feminism.
The fact the latter two were thrown in completely threw a lot of people, but they seemed to accept it rather than question why more suitable topics were excluded, like fascism, or anarchism, which can at least claim to have been espoused as governing doctrines at some point.

>>3916668

UK has different view to 'liberal arts' (term isn't really used here) to America. You don't have quite the same divide between science and non-science students.

Mainly because you're not so fucked here if you don't have a science degree. That helps with specific careers but generally having a degree has value regardless of what it is (unless it's media studies or some rubbish).

I did politics and had a professor complaining about it. Saying how it used to be you'd find Marxists and other people on the far-left 10 years ago but that is dead now. All the students and professors that are on the left-wing today are not as left-wing as they were a decade ago. Most people like the status quo with a few changes either way.

Plus, social issues is one of the few places the Guardian is actually decent on.

>>3916740
I'm always promoting globalism and consumerism too, but it's very hard to get a hearing.

>>3916740

I took a module in third year on ideologies which covered exactly the same one as those. Creepy. You didn't go Reading did you?

>>3916746

Nah, I went to a Scottish uni.
In fact thinking about it I'm not even sure libertarianism was given a separate topic and that it might have just been assumed under the bracket of "liberalism"

>>3916751
libertarianism would be under the conservative side of things, It's an economic lassiez faire, high personal liberty, small government property rights sort of idea.

>>3916759

I know that now, but liberalism and libertarianism were quite closely associated for some reason, hence why I can't distinctly remember if it was taught separately or not.

>both individualist, both hate taxes and love small gubmint
>the difference is that conservatards are also racists lol!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oj9dA6E3fJw

^ Stupidity, hypocrisy, emotional and anecdotal arguing.

She gets put in her place by a previously working class, homsexual man. Lolling at the irony.

>>3916424
Good point. I'll have to rethink my claim.

>>3916769
Those clothes and hair really don't suit her, either.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oj9dA6E3fJw

Lol, she gets put in her place by a homosexual, previously working class person, oh the irony.

She really can't debate properly, she relies on anecdotes and emotional sympathy.

One of the most annoying people ever.

>>3916766
I;'m a conservative, a Goldwater republican in fact, but I'm not racist and neither are most of my friends. I do think that a lot of racists are drawn toward conservative and libertarian positions though, because of our emphasis on the rights of the individual over the group, in terms of property, speech, law, whatever. Conservatives really only lost their way when they started taking sides based on religious things about the time of the Reagan administration. It's easy to forget that the guys standing in school doorways and marching against civil rights and integration were mostly democrats.

>>3916785
this was a response to >>3916790

>>3916531
>care enough to send their child to private school

It's reasonable and not at all blameworthy to send your children to a private school. But I do think it's a shame, and I'd rather private schools did not exist. They're extremely anathemic to social mobility and equality.

>>3916799
How did you respond to a comment before it was posted?

>>3916806
Got my homegirl Atropos on speed dial.

I posted then deleted as it had my RL name on it.

Then I re-posted.

>>3916802
>and I'd rather private schools did not exist.
They provide a better education. They best thing to do would be to abolish shitty state schools, and implement a school voucher system.

>>3916812
What, Daniel Prendergast? You know you've still got your hotmail address in the email field too, right?
>dan-doom1997@hotmail.co.uk
Doesn't that make you 16?

>>3916812
Is this you?

I'm a newfag :(

And no

>>3916819

JAHOOKIE!

>>3916819
His hotmail shows daniel.prendergast.737 on facebook.
I'm not convinced this isn't a ruse.

>>3916824
Welcome to 4chan. Here, you'll need this.

>>3916819
>>3916823

/lit/ turning into the liberal reddit task force for justice

Never thought I'd see the day. Top lel everyone, we had a nice run.

>>3916845

Nah, /lit/ is just a battleground between /pol/ and the more liberal sides of 4chan.

>>3916424

How old are you?

>>3916837

Thank you for the welcome.

>>3916847
>the more liberal sides of 4chan
That would be /lit/

>>3916847
I don't even know what is going on in this thread. I just saw someone digging up profile pics and emails so I shouted something about reddit and liberals

>>3916845

Fuck off back to >>>/pol/ mullethead.

We've got this now, asshole.

>>3916221
Vapid know-nothing cunt. Basically, cancer in human form.

>>3916221
It annoys me that privately-educated cunts like her can make a living playing up to stereotypes and writing infantile bollocks, while at the same time trying to appear as though they have depth.

>>3916892
Great post. Top notch. Excellent work. Thick, solid, tight.

>>3916880
>muh shit-tier strawman
>muh echo chamber
Lol.

>>3916904
>solid, tight.
I like to keep it streamlined, short, to the point. Thanks for noticing.

>>3916901 Hits the nail on the head as well, though a little too verbose for my tastes.

She wrote the italic parts when she was 16.

It's actually surprisingly good.

>>3916668

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHyvRHrYYBA

This documentary is specifically about American universities, but it's an interesting watch and pretty troubling. (I am a Briton myself)

>>3916916
This is much, much better, and was written by /lit/.

>>3916916

Empty rhetoric. It sounds nice but there's no substance.

>>3916244
As a small aside I went to a shit comprehensive catholic school despite being raised protestant which being from central Scotland can be seen as a bit of an oddity.

When I've spoken to others about my high school experiences I like to tell them about how girls of about the age of 13/14 that I was friends with started taking heroin and dropped out. Whilst other people stayed till the end of high school getting some of the best results in the country.

Duality is an artistic and literary theme that greatly interests me.

The divide is pretty big to answer your question but it if you go to university you get to meet people that went to private school and you learn their just kids whose parents are better off and/or made smarter decisions in life, not evil bourgeois wanks that eat swan laughing at the great unwashed.

On the other hand these people are granted better opportunity in life due to the people they know and usually they have more money which allows for people to go on unpaid year-long internships in London.

>>3916932
>not evil bourgeois wanks that eat swan laughing at the great unwashed.
I thought only the Queen was legally allowed to eat swan in Bongistan?

>>3916848
Fifty seven. is that relevant?

>>3916916
If she dropped politics and feminism, she could develop into a decent novelist. Her writing has a really nice flow to it, but it's ruined by the spite and crowbarred ideology.

>>3916943

I'm just surprised that someone who could remember the 60s is on 4chan. I tend to imagine everyone here being 18-25.

>>3916958

Me too. I treasure the mature posters. I am 37 myself and this place often makes me feel like being in a kindergarten trying to discuss serious things with little children.

>>3916968
It's the irrational kids into continental philosophy that make this place look like pre-school.

>>3916916

What is that an extract from?

>>3916999
This.

The English version is called 'Penny Red: Notes from the New Age of Dissent.'

>>3916958
what terrifies me is the number of people who think they remember the sixties because they saw it on television and read a few books. weirdly the most accurate portrayal of the actual sixties I've seen on television was an episode of Sabrina the teenage witch where she went back in time or something. The hardest thing to explain to people is that all the movies and shows and books from the sixties were done with an agenda: they were selling their side of an intense political struggle that had just about nothing to do with the day to day life. all the major changes that came out of the sixties and seventies happened despite,the struggles in the foreground and were brought about quietly by scientists and educators and market forces. You watch the people taking credit and being given credit for it now and it's just bizarre.

I can rant on, so I'll stop here. I like lit because there are a few people who read broadly here, and lots of opportunities to give them suggestions for further--and deeper--reading. The armchair philosophers are the only ones that get on my nerves. Everyone ignores the political proselytes.

>>3917034
Is /lit/ the only board you post on?

>>3917048
i post on /b/ and /sci/. On /b/ i usually just write comedy raps though. On /sci/ i answer questions about agricultural science and genetics.

>>3917052
>Captain social justice
>Game of thrones TV show

http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/laurie-penny/2012/06/game-thrones-and-good-ruler-complex

"Game of Thrones is, in short, about as much gory, horny fun as any pop-cultural artefact can be in a post-Fordist, post-crisis spectacle society which has not yet sanctioned hatchet-slashing death-matches between social outcasts and starving circus animals"

"The general awfulness of what passes for reality means we need least an hour every week where everybody gets lost in a crypto-Medieval saga of mythical beasties, heaving bosoms, court intrigue and buckets of blood. Which is probably why so many otherwise discerning liberal viewers choose to give Game of Thrones a free pass on its staggering race and gender problems and enjoy the shit out of it anyway."

>>3916265
is this where those ryan gosling memes came from?

>>3917065
The Ryan Gosling feminist thing? No, that's something else.

Laurie Penny, being English, looked the wrong way when crossing the road in NY, and Ryan Gosling grabbed her back. There was a minor media coverage saying about how she was saved, Laurie posed this, and everyone called her an ungrateful cunt:

"It is rather irritating that I have finally become tabloid-famous in the guise of a simpering damsel in distress. But my mobile phone and email went mad, and I woke up to stories about Gosling the "lifesaver" in The New York Observer, The Huffington Post and even The Washington Post. This is final proof that America has gone mad, lost all sense of perspective, and badly needs to be rescued from itself – possibly not by Ryan Gosling, decent and upstanding chap though he undoubtedly is. I was determined not to play at all, but among the reams of interview requests was one from the Ellen DeGeneres Show. I am very grateful to the dashing and meme-worthy Mr. Gosling, just as I am grateful to every other kind New Yorker who has saved me from oncoming traffic in recent weeks … making the streets of this fine city that much safer for random British writers who can’t remember to look both ways. It was a little bit like being in a cheesy film, but every day in New York is like being in a cheesy film. I’ve been here two months, and I’m still not sure this place really exists.”

>>3917090

There's nothing objectionable or ungrateful in that.

>>3917090
sounds like she likes him and is embarassed

to answer yr question >>3916221 almost all intellectuals are left-wing, (a number of them have been wealthy) i don't think we need anymore suspicion as to who is for or against us..

>>3917090
>>3917099
>>3917111
That's not the right ungrateful cunt response she gave.

>>3917124
Yeah, that's the response she gave, but the first sentence and the 'America has gone mad' bit was taken and circulated around twitter.

>>3917130
"It is rather irritating that I have finally become tabloid-famous in the guise of a simpering damsel in distress. This is final proof that America has gone mad, lost all sense of perspective, and badly needs to be rescued from itself."

>>3916221
I've watched 5-6 of her videos. My opinion? Definition of spiritually-closed pseudo-intellectual.

She is the type of Liberal who, since she has read 20-30 books, thinks that she is very smart and so she becomes resentful of "all these stupid people around me" who she thinks are inferior.

So she uses a snotty tone and pretentious language to help make herself appear competent and edgy.

>>3917143
>I've watched 5-6 of her videos. My opinion?
This is /lit/. Try reading instead of watching her awful videos.

>She is the type of Liberal who, since she has read 20-30 books
She has a degree in English from Oxford, has 4 published books, and posts reading lists of around 10 books a week. She has undoubtedly read a lot more than you.

>thinks that she is very smart and so she becomes resentful of "all these stupid people around me" who she thinks are inferior.
You gathered all of this from 5-6 videos of her being paid to argue with someone? Genius.

Do you even read?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hdVbP0YhL8

>>3917143
>I've watched a few youtube videos, so I can definitively judge her character
maybe r/atheism would be more your speed

>>3916937
>I thought only the Queen was legally allowed to eat swan in Bongistan?

The Queen is legally sovereign over all swans in Great Britain. It's an antiquated law from a previous monarch who thought swans were so majestic that they should belong to royalty. But the law still stands now, and killing a swan is still a treasonable offence.

>>3916424
Cool to see this view articulated by someone with firsthand experience. I tried explaining it to a rich friend once they couldn't really understand.

>>3917151
>She has a degree in English from Oxford, has 4 published books, and posts reading lists of around 10 books a week. She has undoubtedly read a lot more than you.

That you think these are achievements in this day and age is lol.

>>3917183
You can't possibly know what it's like to perceive the world through the eyes of a rich person.

>>3917193
>That you think these are achievements in this day and age is lol.
That you managed to misinterpret that as an implied achievement and not a statement against 'she's only read 20 books' is lol.

>>3917162
Holy Fuck 11:50. She was actually raped at university.

>>3917195
nobody can ever know what its like to perceive the world through the eyes of any other person
but, people who go to private school can still wind up as socialists/ feminists/ communists/ anarchists/ etc.
why is this even discussion

>>3917228
She was raped by based Starkey too. #rekt

>>3917281
I think you mean "she was pointed at by a useless old man with unrealistic virtues"
his argument is basically that if you don't give speeches for free, you're a charlatan
this, from someone who makes his money primarily through speaking

btw can you defend him from racism for describing the London riots by saying "the whites have become black"

>>3917281
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oj9dA6E3fJw
holy shit. #rekt is right.

>>3917281
That pointing finger is like a striking mamba. That's pretty sick.

>working class

>any indication of character or experience in one of the world's wealthiest welfare states

This is a pretty good video of Laurie. It's not a debate, so that's perhaps why.

She's just having a quiet chat about socialism with a uwotm8 in a car, and looks quite attractive too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1l2vovtjkbM

>>3917347
>and looks quite attractive too

>>3916386
>non-fascist romanticization of statism

what a boring position to take

>>3917347
>with a uwotm8
I fucking hate working class Brits. They sound so dumb.

>>3917352

>>3917351
more attractive than you, though
there was that article she had about how protesters tried showing off in front of her because she was a woman journalist, anyway

>>3917352
what the fuck are you even referring to
if you think "we're in it together" is romanticization of statism you might as well call it fascism because people are bundled together

>>3916386
>You have to understand that she thinks class boundaries should be torn down, so tries to treat society as a single entity instead of adhering to a specific class.

Jesus Christ. Sounds like a liberal Trojan horse. "Everyone should be bourgeois!!!" Idiot.

>>3917373
"Everyone should be bourgeois"
-Karl Marx

>>3917373
>Americans in charge of the word liberal.

>>3917375
Yeah, he didn't say that.

What he DID say was that the emancipation of the working class can only be carried out by the working class itself.

>>3917381
I'm British.

>>3917352
>>3917362
>>3917364
I live on the border of Texas and Mexico. Over here, if you're fed up with your life you quit your job or school or whatever and make your own way. There's plenty of work or fuffillment or whatever she's bitching about to be done with nothing to hold you back. Our state system isn't as bloated and controlling as the UKs so our struggles as a nation haven't sunk into the absurdities of european beaurocracy; our concerns are cultural or directed at shadowy elements of the government. If you got some hard-on for glory, go south and fight the cartels or volunteer for a wildlife area, if you want success, conquer the internet market while its still a free froniter.

Wannabe fiery rhetoric has no weight when you live in a rich nation of 50 year olds that need licenses to watch tv. Even the best of British youth comes across as a bunch of idealistic douchebags who at the end of the day are demanding a rediculous amount of money for doing jack shit with their lives.

>>3917391
>Yeah, he didn't say that.
Yes. That was the entire point of communism. Not to just eradicate class, but see every man as a first class citizen.

>>3917398
>Even the best of British youth comes across as a bunch of idealistic douchebags

What other British youths have you read? And why are they so much worth than the apathetic hipsters from your side of the Atlantic?

>>3917420
No, you have no idea what you're talking about.

For starters, communism is the abolition of citizenship.

>>3917423
Friends, aquaitances, chance viewings of BBC political panels. Even otherwise cool people I've discussed the difference between US and UK government services with have always ultimately concluded with "well, the backbone of the UK is civil services which make our country so great".

Well it isn't. Your system has transformed your dwindling youth into a bunch of depressed man-children and the sons of backwards immigrants who have respect for neither liberties or order. Statistics say your country will soon become a non-nation which will serve as a parasite terminal for the new trans-european demographic, and some of your own people say this is already a reality.

>>3917428
No, you have no idea what you're talking about.

For starters, the complete abolition of 'citizenship' would be anarcho-primitivism.

A citizen is a member of society; nowhere in Das Kapital or the associated texts of the LTV does it advocate dissolving society, only restructuring for citizens labour to be fiscally honoured.

Try picking up a book.

>>3917428
>communism is the abolition of citizenship

Please tell me you're just trolling...

>>3917452
>Your system has transformed your dwindling youth into a bunch of depressed man-children and the sons of backwards immigrants who have respect for neither liberties or order

This has nothing to do with the UK's 'civil services'. You see this happening everywhere in developed Western countries.

>>3917472
>>3917459
You realise what the definition of a citizen is, right?

>>3917475
Yes, it is you who appears to be struggling with the definition. Perhaps you're just misinformed about Communism, that wouldn't surprise me either.

>>3917468
I'm sorry if I didn't clarify it further, but your culture is reflected in your social policies.

Don't tell me your education and welfare system doesn't encourage these kind of things.

>>3917452
>Your system has transformed your dwindling youth into a bunch of depressed man-children and the sons of backwards immigrants who have respect for neither liberties or order.
That actually sounds like America to me. Not to bang on about your collective weight too much, but 35.9%% of your population is obese, 69.2% is overweight, and you have the highest rates of depression, anxiety, ADD, ADHD, and anything else that you can medicate for. Your culture lusts for material trinkets like an overweight magpie, your vapid consumerism, reality TV, blind nationalism, warmongering, and celebrity worship has not only collapsed your own culture and left you as obese depressed halfwits, but your mentality is also spilling out and infecting the rest of the world too. Before you lecture another country, captain America, you would do well to look at yours first. If you remove that dark shade of rose from your glasses, you might see that the foundation you stand on, the society you are festering in, is one of the worst on this planet.

>>3917319
so basically she called him out of his racism and then he called her a hypocrite because she wants to get paid for her job. #rekt indeed

>>3917481
Okay.

>A citizen is a member of society

No, a citizen is not simply a member of society. A serf would be a member of a feudal society, but he was never a citizen or even considered one. The concept of citizenship refers to a specific relationship that the individual has towards the state (political and legal rights granted in exchange for service) that was an invention of the bourgeois nation state during the early modern period and after the French Revolution. Communism, being the abolition of the state, is beyond this. Being a 'first class citizen' in a communist society is complete nonsense, since there is no concept of citizenship. The people of that society would be free from such restraints.

I'm not surprised you would have no clue about this, since:
You claimed Marx wanted everyone to be bourgeois. Complete nonsense, since the bourgeoisie as a class can only exist in relation to other classes. If everyone was bourgeois then they wouldn't be bourgeois because they wouldn't be exploiting anyone's surplus labour!
And then talking about how Das Kapital didn't say anything about xyz citizenship. Well gee, no shit, Capital is about the political economy.

>>3917452
>terminal for the new trans-european demographic
Good. I can't wait for national boundaries to break down. The United States of Europe isn't perfect, but it will be a start. Geographic segregation is such an antiquated idea. Especially in this age where I am sat having this very conversation with people from all over he world instead of my neighbours.

>>3917509
>so basically she called him out of his racism
What racism?

>>3917491
In the interest of full disclosure I'll go ahead and say i'm not from the UK but from another European country that has the same core social principles.

To answer your question, no, the system doesn't encourage that kind of behaviour. Americans have a distorted view of how it works, all it does is provide some equality (of course this is oversimplifying but in the end it's all it does). Is the system perfect and abuse free? Of course not but more often I see Americans complaining about people living off the state than Europeans.

>>3917503
I consider myself a Texan before an American; if you knew anything about the real cultural regions of the US or our national laws on state independence and how that relates to socioeconomic services, you wouldn't be using such broad, unapplicable statistics.

>Your culture lusts for material trinkets like an overweight magpie, your vapid consumerism, reality TV, blind nationalism, warmongering, and celebrity worship has not only collapsed your own culture and left you as obese depressed halfwits

I'm never one to praise the Republican Party, but at least half of the US isn't asking for handouts like all the UK does.

>>3917523
>I can't wait for national boundaries to break down.

Enjoy your foreign hordes and all that. Fences exist for a reason.

>this very conversation with people from all over he world instead of my neighbours.

Correction, only countries that allow free internet discussion.

>>3917525
starkey's. read up on the context

>>3917530

>no, the system doesn't encourage that kind of behaviour

Our own experiments with european-style unemployment/youth inactivity subsidies in the US have shown otherwise.

>>3917522
It seems you have completely missed the point. Again.

You see, when the industrial revolution hit, the prevailing economic system was capitalism. As the cities developed and locomotive connections grew, the peasants from the fields migrated to the urban areas and ended up employed mainly in factories.

Marx was dealing with a capitalist system with class distinction. When he said that he wanted everyone to be first class citizens, it was relative to, and in comparison to the capitalist system already in place. He didn't want equality by reducing everyone to the lowest class of the existing system, he wanted everyone at the top.

>>3917545
Okay, you're a troll. Well done.

>>3917544
The fact that it didn't work in the US could be attributed to a lot of different factors, I'd love some insight because I really wasn't aware of said programs and their demise. Programs like the one you mentioned have been extremely successful in some European countries and successful to some degree in others. I can't recall any recent disastrous failure but the ones that did occur were the result of poorly implemented policies or gross oversight.

>>3917553
>you're a troll
Coming from the person that think that Communism signifies the abolition of the state that's quite a statement.

>>3917559
>Programs like the one you mentioned have been extremely successful in some European countries and successful to some degree in others

I don't know by what degrees of success you are referring to, but creating a generation of parasite youth certainly isn't one of them.

The polices are flawed both in idea and mechanic; you are taking large amounts of money out of the economy, giving it to the youth; thus bypassing about the 20 years of human development and experience associated with financial security among other things

You don't think thats going to fuck a culture up psychologically and culturally?

>>3917580
An honest question. Are you high?

>>3917580
>creating a generation of parasite youth certainly isn't one of them
I don't understand where the Americans get this idea that all European youth is parasitic and leeching off the state. This only exists in your mind.

>you are taking large amounts of money out of the economy, giving it to the youth
The money isn't given to them without any obligations. If you don't meet certain requirements, like attending and succeeding at school/college your funding will be cut off.

>You don't think thats going to fuck a culture up psychologically and culturally?
No, I don't. I'd rather fund their education than have them, for example, enter a life of crime.

I'd still like to see some information about which programs failed in America, pretty it was something poorly done with no hope of actually working.

>>3916413
>you will never be so posh that you can insult people by calling them public school girls

>>3917653
Public schools in the UK are private, exclusive and very expensive.

>>3917701

fucking britbongs

>>3917468
Yeah, the young people of the western world have begun to notice that everything seems to work just fine without their input.their families don't need their labor, their countries don't need their participation, their only use to their culture as far as they can see is to consume its products, and artistically and culturally they now have to compare themselves not just to their contemporaries in the local community but to everyone else in the world in terms of anything they wish to excel in. Hiding in a basement in an artificial world of internet interactions and video games is starting to look like a viable response to them.

>>3918395
Christ, you sound bitter about life. Why don't you go out and do something?

I can't read female authors

>>3918435
This board has an 18 age restriction.

>>3917509

Yeah, there's no point in being a freedom fighter unless it pays well right.

>>3917064
>"Game of Thrones is, in short, about as much gory, horny fun as any pop-cultural artefact can be in a post-Fordist, post-crisis spectacle society which has not yet sanctioned hatchet-slashing death-matches between social outcasts and starving circus animals."

HAhahaah. I love the way she writes.

>>3918424

You know what he said wasn't invalid which is precisely why you attacked his tone and not the validity of his point.

There's a video above of Ms. Pennie doing the same thing funnily enough.

>>3918446
Lol. He/you made a sweeping inaccurate generalisation about the the kids of western society. He provided no evidence, no stats, no citations, and essentially just gave an opinion that doesn't relate to reality. I thought he came across as a very bitter jaded person through the tone he used, and gave my opinion back.

>>3918438
This board also chooses to appreciate writers who are good, not writers who are female.
It's like you don't understand that they're mutually exclusive.

>>3918454
Your post implied that you refuse to read an author unless they have a penis.

>>3918458

What's wrong with anon preferring penis?

Laurie Penny has the most uncanny ability to bring out the D&D in this shit board.

Also she's an ugly talentless dyke blogger who only gets attention because she's female.

>>3918451

I agree. He should have quantified that shit.

>>3918395
> the young people of the western world have begun to notice that everything seems to work just fine without their input.their families don't need their labor
>Hiding in a basement in an artificial world of internet interactions and video games is starting to look like a viable response to them.
"The unemployment total for young people aged between 16 and 24 is now at 958,000 - a rate of 20.7%."
"The percentage of all young people who are NEET is 15.1%"
"Just over half (53.0%) of all young people who are NEET are actively looking for work and available for work."
-Young People not in Education, Employment or Training, May 2013 Release. ONS (Office for National Statistics).

So that gives us 8% of young people who are Not in Education, Employment or Training, and not looking to be.

Your rant doesn't apply to 92% of us.

>begun to notice that everything seems to work just fine without their input
Begun?
Youth unemployment in 1984: 19.6%.
Youth unemployment 1991: 36%
Youth unemployment In 2013: 20.7%

>>3918451

>He/you made a sweeping inaccurate generalisation about the the kids of western society.

It wasn't me. I don't disagree with you either although it seems that I felt it necessary to play devil's advocate for some reason. His point was way too broad but I saw an essence of truth in it even if it probably only equates to the circumstances of the minority.

I suppose persons who find themselves in such situation could/should go out and do something about it but the beating heart of apathy rides high.

>>3918486

To which country/region are those statistics applicable?

>>3918424
Wait. I was being optimistic. Not bitter. I guess I need to learn to write more clearly. In previous generations, the discovery that you seemed to have nothing to contribute to society could ahve made people, suicidal or panicy. Now it's cause for brooding, maybe, but at least they only feel like they're wasting some small, redundant potential. They don't feel like they are betraying their families and country when they park it in the basement for a few years. I mean, when you see people bitching about being NEET, it's seldom because they wish they could help support their households or prepare for their retirement or make a lasting contribution to the welfare of the community, it's they wish they had a cute girlfriend, or "what an artist dies in me!" crap. Mosly self directed and harmless.

>>3918491
The UK.

But, "The youth unemployment rate throughout the European Union was 23.1% as of May 2013" -Eurostat, European commission. May 2013. "Youth unemployment in the US is 16.2%"

Those Euro figures are boosted by Greece and Spain, whose economies have both recently collapsed.

Remember that 'youth unemployment' is age 18 - 24, and is just used for taxation purposes. So it doesn't include those in university, just those not in full time employment and paying taxes. 'NEET' levels are much, much lower.

>>3918486
but you miss the trend: it's only going to get --I don't want to say "worse" since it's not that bad, really as you point out.--maybe "moreso". Being a consumer and having a lot of liesure won't be seen as such a vice in the future I'm betting. At worst it'll be an unfortunate circumstance, and at best it'll develop into something people accept and expect and strategies of compensation will develop. You guys are probably too young to remember the "Happy Pappies" of the Johnson years, but a lot of young guys who had gotten married recently and were basically the equivalent of NEET with kids were given city and county work to help them support their families. Something similar might work today. There wasn't really aneed for the work: it was just an excuse to give these guys money they needed and could spend to support the economy.

>tfw NEET

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAefTj7GXwQ

>>3918511
Why would you want to force people into bland employment, when it is not necessary, just to maintain some kind of 'work ethic' ideal?

Every year, improvement in automations are implemented into factories across the world. The majority of the worlds products and consumer items can be manufactured by a small fraction of people who consume them. It's not like everything is build by hand any more.

Even in areas where things are build by hand, manufacture is outsourced to SEasia. Minimum wage in Cambodia is $80 pcm for a garment worker, so companies like M&S, Topshop, H&M, and other highstreet clothing retailers outsource production. The same with the electronics industry.

We have a situation where production is outsourced, and where it's not, humans are replaced by machines, and this problem is only going to grow. As soon as 3d printers advance to ISO9001 standards, a huge chunk of the plastics industry will collapse, and printers have started being able to handle alloys too.

The majority of our products are build by 'robots', this number is rising, and it's just not needed for everyone to be employed any more.

>>3918531
Well, I agree with all this, pretty much. And the idea isn't to force them, but to give them the opportunity. A lot of people like to feel like they're contributing something, and a lot of them could if given the chance. The trick is to get them some small incentive to do it. Bland employment is going to be up to their own perspectives though: The Happy Pappies cleared ditches and drove milk runs and took old people to the stroes and put down balcktop on school roads and such. Some of them sat around in front of the courthouse and ran errands at the jail, but for the most part it was pretty diverse and lively work, not sitting in an office shuffling paper. They could have stayed home and drawn their check if they felt like it, and a lot of them did, but most people like to contribute something i think.

>>3918531
I never understood the argument for machines.

The population is growing, thus the demand of labor will decrease, thus corporations will find that machines are costly competitive compared to cheap labor, for relatively non-technical construction.

I also don't understand why garments are mentioned. Knitted clothing, that's standardized with a few cuts, and has very few changes in construction over time are easy to automate. So a T-shirt is something hasn't changed in construction in decades, requires a few cuts, and are knitted cloth. Most T-shirts today are automated. Men's dress shirts also follow the same criteria, except they require woven material, so it's a bit more difficult, but workers do stitch the pieces together by sewing machine.
Women's fashion however changes in material, design, and quite often within a turnover of a year. It's difficult to fashion machines that can mass produce in quality, different constructions, styles, and inputting different materials. (different threads/stitch per material/flexibility). The quality isn't up to par as compared to human construction.

As for the electronics industry, yes, that's easily automated. Apple prefers human assembly because it's far easier to hire people, than to re-fit/refashion assembly machines.

Most of the manufacturing today is already automated. The assembly uptowards the final product is where the human touch is required.

Again you bring up the 3D printer. The 3D printer doesn't print a gun all at once. The designer has to print each component of the weapon, then assemble the pieces to be functional. Yes so the crafting is mechanized, the assembly is not.

Think of it as an Ikea set. Everything is already built. It's far cheaper for a human to assemble own their own, than for the corporation to have some mechanized process of assembly.

>>3918578
you make valid points in terms of certain types of manufacture, but the more mechanized the process, the cheaper the cost per unit manufature almost always, so the consumer ends up with a choice: he can buy a fifty cent slip-form cold cast cup from china for fifty cents, or a hand-thrown ceramic artisan cup for eighteen. In between there are various compromises. The chinese cup is arguably of higher quality, since its componemts and materials are stabdardized to pretty rigid tolerances and tested thoroghly. The hand thrown cup has mor artistic and possibly aesthetic quality. The difference is that if you can't afford one, you can usually afford the other and they perform the same function. also, there's less pollution and impact on resources and the environment in the fifty cent cup, as refelcted in the price. The economy of scale is more efficient: one kiln can fire two thousand cheap ceramic slip cups, you'd get maybe thirty of the artisan pieces in a kiln firing.

But the huge advantage of mechanization to the manufacturer is its scalability: you have few orders, you idel a few machines. You need to retool for a new process, a technician adapts a few machine lines. In neither case do you have to pay workers to sit idle, or lay them off and have them maybe strike or, in some third world countries, damage the factory. This is one of the reasons that many "sweatshop" countries are mechanizing as fast as they can: their workforce is unpredictable.

>>3917347

Thanks for this m8. I love Artist Taxi Driver but for some reason missed this interview. His recent one with Aaron Peters was fucking class.

Also, I don't know that much about Penny at all, but I enjoyed watching her body language when Mark mentioned upskirts, she very clearly, consciously looked at the camera, and changed her face and rearranged herself to look like she was in serious mode. and again at 10:31. I don't know what this means, but I thought it was interesting fuel for the 'poser' fire.

>>3918578
>I also don't understand why garments are mentioned.
Because it impacts the job market in the west. You have every single member of that economic group buying and using the products, but none participating in the manufacture.

>Again you bring up the 3D printer. The 3D printer doesn't print a gun all at once. The designer has to print each component of the weapon, then assemble the pieces to be functional. Yes so the crafting is mechanized, the assembly is not.

I wasn't talking about a gun specifically, but your gun is a perfect example. Previously the the base material was either synthesised, cut down, or made in a foundry. The material for the component pieces was outsourced to a third party production line, where each piece was tooled by hand, went through a manual QC, then needed physical delivery to the main factory, where it went through final assy and another QC. A lot of people were involved in the process.

The next step was for the company to manufacture as much as possible in house. And now all that's left is final assembly (which could be done through automation), and a final QC (which is also being increasingly automated through various processes. Even the food industry has almost completely replaced humans with more efficient computerised QC's)

The need for labour in the west is only going to continue to reduce over the next 20 years.

>>3918612
>Aaron Peters
Is that the topless feminist bodybuilder guy?

>>3918666

Yeah, but I wouldn't exactly describe him as that.

>>3918666

>>3918652
freeing people from labor is the best trend ever in my opinion. Getting to choose what productive thing you do can be a renaissance in the making, because people will pick the thing they love and the thing they do well instead of just what they can find a ready market for. Sure there'll be a lot of people who just want to improve their gamers skills, but there'll be a lot doing other things too. Imagine everybody in their twenties in a small town getting up at nine, eating breakfast and going down to the plaza and hanging out and just talking and deciding what to do. Some of them go fishing, some help build something, some start a baseball game, people with projects come by and hire them for a day or two, everybody gets paid enough to get by from their cut of the machine economy, and anything else is up to them. Make and sell comics, strat a lemonade stand, fix bicycles. Blog, garden, give massages. We could have a bohemian paradise in another generation. I like the idea.

maybe she'd be more credible if she pulled an orwell and lived among the workers

>>3918678

Obligatory Bucky quote

I found this picture when I searched her name

>>3918678
Yeah, this is why I think socialism will be inevitable. The demand for labour, and rising unemployment will reach a crisis point, and the government will be compelled to introduce a negative income taxation to prevent rioting and economic collapse.

We will have a guaranteed minimum wage that is subsidised by the government. A full welfare state where working is optional. Subsidised unemployment will be just enough to cover the cost of living, and employment will be undertaken by ambitious entrepreneurs and people who want to earn more than the basic government income.

>>3918704
i agree this will probably happen. I wouldn't consider it socialism though. more like capitalism with a socialized basement. As long as their property and their livlihoods are garaunteed, i think most people will just pick the politics they like best. It'll become like religion, with a bunch of fascists here and a bunch of communists next door and some anarchists down the block beside the theocrats. As long as everybody enjoys the same rights and liberties, and obeys the same basic laws, then their other politics won't cause so much stress, especially as survival, success and access to resources won't be an issue anymore.

>>3918704
>negative income taxation

Did ya'll niggas say Basic Income?

I do believe the powers that be will do everything humanly possible to stop this from happening.

>>3918731
Milton Friedman came reasonably close to convincing Regan to implement a very similar policy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax

I agree that there will be a lot of resistance, but also think that it's the inevitable next step for western economics. It can be delayed, but it's ultimately unavoidable.

>>3918691
epic :)
did u know that gullible isnt in the dictionery haha

>>3918731
In America, the powers that be have been doing everything they can to slip this in the back door since the fifties. The productivity of the country can easily afford it and pretty soon the world will be able to. The american consumer is perfectly conditioned to spend every dollar he gets on something, no matter what, and all that remains to keep the ball rolloing is to find some excuse to get as many dollars into his hands as economically possible. A basic income stipend is probably the best solution, paid for out of the surplus productivity made possible by the massive advances in production capacity due to automation. The trick is making everybody think they're productive and important, when actually they're just there to consume and help regulate and define the flow of materials and energy.

>>3918739
In Australia, a negative income tax is advocated by the Liberal Democratic Party as part of their tax policy.[13]
In Slovakia, welfare and tax system reform based on NIT is proposed by classical liberal Freedom and Solidarity party.[14]
In the United States, a negative income tax was advocated by the Green Party as part of their 2010 platform.[15]

>>3918756
>>3918739

I agree it helps the problem of economies with a current slump of low demand by increasing consumer capital, but I can forsee at least two problems. One being it does nothing to address sustainability, it simply fills up capitalism's tank with gasoline and keeps the party going for a couple more decades, but the effect on the planet will still be accelerating. Secondly, it will introduce friction between states who are at different ends of the globalization orgy. While you would have Western governments effectively subsidizing consumerism on one hand, states whereby what is effectively slave labor is employed, could see migration or the price of their labor skyrocketing. It would throw the price discovery of various markets up into the air too.

I think a lot of what we need to do over the coming decades is to increase the consciousness of the global supply chain. Kids buy ipads, but how many of them use that ipad to then stream through the google glass feed of the kids in FoxConn making them? They are unaware of the vast machinery of inequality and human suffering that they enjoy which brought the product to them.

>>3918756
Exactly - this is why there have been increasing handouts for the disabled, mentally ill, etc - anybody can have themselves declared as such and it is a way of achieving the Basic Wage without needing to declare it as such.

>the Guardian people caring at all about the working class
Only those few people who still vote Labour because their parents and grandparents did.
They hate UKIP more than anything else and as populist as they can be they still embody the major issues of the UK working class.

>>3918774
I think sustainability is what's making it all feasible. We're making things cheaper and cheaper, with less and less impact on scarce resources and energy per unit. It's actually well on the way of bringing a high standard of living into the hands of everybody in the world, simply because of the --literally--inhuman efficiency and productivity that automation has given us. The Chase Reactor and the potential of hybrid food crops has also got to have a huge effect on the way things are costed. We mostly need a free or nearly free educational system now i think, and i can see a few ways of implementing that myself.

>>3918774
I agree. 13year olds are sent down mines in the Congo to collect cassiterite, and colten, and receive pocket change as a monthly wage. This is sent to FoxConn and other Asian manufactures to become PCB components and turned into consumer electronics, then sent to the west. I agree that the three tier system of global manufacture needs to be addressed and tackled. I also think an economic system like basic income/NIT has the potential to be extended on a global scale.

If you look at the economies of countries like Cambodia, Vietnam, and South Korea - the ones who sit in the middle of the production hierarchy - their GDP and export profit has seen a steady increase over the past decade. They are climbing the rungs and starting to catch up with the west.

Soon having 150 separate economies, with separate fluctuating inflation rates wont be sustainable. Sure, the west and middle east can outsource to Africa, but will either hit the same wall in another few decades, or have to artificially suppress their economic growth and effectively enslave them.

A global economy, and a global basic income would easily mitigate the problems. It would experience teething problems, but the negative economic effects would balance out the same as they would if the policy was implemented in one small geographic region. I think a global economy is a viable solution to a lot of the worlds problems.

>>3918802

>>3918802
man, can you imagine the kind of economy that might be possible with the scale productivity of western autoamtion if china and india and africa had the kind of buying power that the west has? It would be the greatest market system that has ever even been imagined. Even if we can increase the income of the third world by just tripple or quadruple, while keeping the price of raw materials and manufacturing low through advances in efficiency and energy production and distribution? Talk about a golden age! The wealth of the individual and the benefit to humanity as a whole would be unmeasurable. I hope I live to see it.

when discussing feminism or racism i'd rather be on reddit, having an identity makes you at least think twice before writing your non-sense retarded ideas

>>3919052
>implying there aren't trolls, racists and retards on reddit

Yes, the foul proof identity system used by reddit gives it an unshakeable aura of accountability and credibility.

>>3919052
>when discussing feminism or racism i'd rather be on reddit because that way i don't have to hear opinions contrary to my own

please go there and never come back.

>>3918815
>>3918802
So you two are advocating the abolition of economic nations, and replacing them with a giant mono-governmental welfare state?

>What does /lit/ think of Laurie Penny?
>248 posts and 29 image replies omitted. Click here to view.

>>3919118

>being against Negative Income Tax/Basic Income scheme

Son, time to get schooled https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolsa_Família

The one proposed by Friedman actually demolishes the enormous wasteful government welfare bureaucracies that have built up over time and replaces them with something much simpler.

>>3919118
nope. the obsolescence of the state in simple market affairs. if resources are plentiful enough, the state shouldn't be too overburdened by distributing the basically valueless resources to those that want them. If everybody has everything they need and the ability to acquire most of what they want with a little effort, then the state becomes basically only involved in maintaining order and enforcing laws. Communism, capitalism, socialism, anarchy become very similar to one another in terms of actual effects.

>>3919124
I know what basic income is. I have just never seen anyone attempt to argue for a new-world-order, mono-government just to establish basic income.

For a start, what happens if the economy fucks up and there are no other other economic nations? The global economy collapses, wars break out, and the world is a hell of a lot worse than before.

>>3919138
one world governement won't be necessary. We could literally have millions of different governments. Whatever size was the most useful under the circumstances, and even different governments included in larger ones, like wet/dry systems and the Amish are now. As long as they sahred economic interfaces that served the purpose of markets and the brorders were reasonably permeable, it should work with any number of governements.

>>3919136
>the obsolescence of the state in simple market affairs. if resources are plentiful enough, the state shouldn't be too overburdened by distributing the basically valueless resources to those that want them.

Right, but you are increasing dependence on the state. Who else is going to be taking the hard earned money from western business owners and turning it into a welfare check for some single mother in Nigeria?

Also, by doing this, you are going to have inflate prices in every third and second world country. Your scheme requires that the cost of goods, and income rate are fixed and maintained at a single global level. You won't just be helping the poor of the world, you will be hindering the west. The stock market will collapse, as will ForEx; Christ knows what will happen to the trillions in treasury bonds, and municipal bonds, and anyone who has a share portfolio. You can't keep capitalism going by doing this.

You are essentially having a socialist system that tolerates a little bit of psuedo-capitalism on top, but taxes the fuck out of them. How is one supposed to acquire assets? How do you have inflation and a variable interest rate with no borrowing? How can you keep products being made when there is a severely reduced financial incentive, and any moron who wants to start a bad business can do so because his net profit is subsidised?

The downsides of the scheme, at a global level, outweigh any potential benefit. I get the "yay, lets help the poor," but the solution is completely impractical.

Holy shit this was the ungrateful bitch that Ryan Gosling saved? I read her Guardian and Vice pieces. All privilege checking. Absolute trash.

>>3916425
>>3916659
Her eyes probably suck without those Jap contacts.

>>3919195

I don't believe there is a single serious person who would claim that it is politically feasible for such a structure to be introduced by a one world global government.

Even without the idea of a basic income the concept of a one world government falls apart the second you start to consider the state of current groups like the EU.

>>3919211
>I read her Guardian and Vice pieces

Stop.

>>3919211
>Holy shit this was the ungrateful bitch that Ryan Gosling saved?
See: >>3917090

Isn't she the girl who got #rekt by that english historian

>>3919195
the idea is to make the price of the goods so low, by making the goods so plentiful, that a single mother in nigeria can feed her family for a month with the income from ten seconds work by a machine in Beijing or a financial computer in Nairobi. The human being who's doing the work of supervising or programing these machines will be calcualting the labor it takes to feed her in microseconds.

The point is, if the essentials of life are as cheap and plentiful as air, then any sort of market system for the luxuries can be done at any local or international level without much friction.

the point is that nobody will be "hard-earning" anything. earning will be easy, aand only mechanized productivity will be taxed at all. The burden of supporting humanity will fall upon the shoulders not of the poor, but of the mechanical, which will be designed and built to do it using the labor, and the earnings of labor of the poor themselves.

>>3919195
>Right, but you are increasing dependence on the state.
There isn't a new world order, or one big government. There are different local governments. This is purely fiscal.

>Also, by doing this, you are going to have inflate prices in every third and second world country.
Yes.

>Your scheme requires that the cost of goods, and income rate are fixed and maintained at a single global level.
Yes

>The stock market will collapse, as will ForEx;
The stock market will be fine as there are still PLC's and holding companies, but the foreign exchange will be abolished.

>Christ knows what will happen to the trillions in treasury bonds, and municipal bonds,
Bonds and Gilts of all kinds will be unaffected, and it will remain down to the individual governments, banks and company owners if they want to continue with lending for rates. Local governments will have to agree on 'inflation'.

>and anyone who has a share portfolio.
You will still have share portfolios, mutual funds, and asset shares.

>You are essentially having a socialist system that tolerates a little bit of psuedo-capitalism on top, but taxes the fuck out of them.
No, not at all. Taxation above the basic income rate and in the higher brackets will look quite similar to the system we have now.

>How do you have inflation and a variable interest rate with no borrowing?
Which interest rates? Private banks can do whatever they want. They could pay 20% compounding if they wanted.

>How can you keep products being made when there is a severely reduced financial incentive,
There is no reduced incentive. In fact, with the minimum wage being abolished and wages subsidised, there is more incentive. Globally.

>and any moron who wants to start a bad business can do so because his net profit is subsidised?
No. The income he's getting already will be marked down on his balance sheet, and net income will deduct from his earnings. Like a 0 capital gains. He wont have net losses subsidised if he pisses his money away. I would rather have someone spending their welfare check on trying to start a business, than sat at home watching TV.

Any more questions?

The faggotmasters who are yapping under the light of a state vs. market dichotomy, please proceed to kill yourselves.

There is no such dichotomy. Markets are also an illusion. Hell, economics does not exist as a discipline. Adam Smith trolled you, jerks. He started from assumptions fully discredited by anthropological evidence.

Read Karl Polanyi you fucking adolescent plebs.

>>3919316

You're sure to convince people with that bad boy attitude of yours.

>>3916221
>>3916221

>thinking anyone who gets a job in the media would be working class

>>3919308
You seem to think energy is free.

It isn't.

99% of social and sci-fi circlejerking is demolished by a simple application of the good old law old law of conservation of energy.

>>3919385

>energy isn't free

What is the sun?

>>3919395
Work is required to harvest that energy.

Humans don't just absorb sunlight and shit out public works projects.

>>3917118
>almost all living intellectuals

fixed that for you. Let's not forget that most living intellectuals truly have nothing important to say and will hardly be remembered 100 years from now.

>>3919396

But you said energy not public works projects. What the fuck are you talking about

>>3916221
Could they by any chance be related?
I think we should be told.

>>3919400
As in, humans need a shitton of additional nonrenewable resources and work to extract energy from the sun whether thats through farming or solar.

>>3919323

My cock is a bad boy. Chuck in it.

It's about to be. That's why all this is possible. Chase's reactor will see to that. And his isn't the only one. there are three others on the same timeline using similar processes.

http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-934454

>>3919405
Windfarms require very little manual maintenance. One guy can meet the energy needs of thousands of people.

>>3919413

>Fusion
>anything other than always 30 years out of our grasp

Keep believing that it will happen. Just hold onto that belief like the singularityfags.

>not getting all the power you need from Farnsworth's adapted Polywell designs

Stay pleb.

>>3919425
Check out the research. It's not that tricky to understand. Tell you what: lets restart this thread in six years and see who's right. It's not that long: no reason to make up our minds now.

>>3919439

I've been cautiously on the fusion train for a few years now, I hope something will come of it, Anon. But I am fully expecting disappointment.

>>3919445
this one looks good. Lockheed has a rep for secrecy and they've never failed to deliver in the past. If Chase says he'll have a prototype in five years he's probably got a working model now, and is working out the kinks in the thing.

>>3919425
>singularityfags.
Please tell me you are the retard who keeps spamming 'robojesus', then gets his ass handed to him.

>>3919461

Not him unfortunately.

There are people on youtube who are far more intelligent and insightful than Laurie penny but who will never get even a fraction of the attention that she does.

>>3919531

links, quit holding out on us, faggot

>>3919538
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyzN2AHcKek

>>3919540

>>3919538
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tB48AFbY8T0

Watch this video and then all his videos provided in the description. You won't be disappointed.

>>3917301
>>3917509
>idiots actually trying to defend this vapid cunt's destruction at the hands of based Starkey.
>muh racism
Lol'd.

>>3916593
>buzzwords are a counter-response
Nope. Next.

>>3917509
Words such as "racism" are purely empty bags as descriptors.

It rarely means "this person harbors racial hatred," nor does it need to for its use to have the same affect on all accounts. It is a way of artificially 1uping a conversation by not fully explaining what you mean.

>>3916593
only on /lit/ is this type of cognitive dissonance deemed acceptable. I sometimes wonder if you post only as a means to make /pol/ look good in comparison.

>>3918445
> I love the way she writes.
Over-wrought and lacking real substance?

>>3918704
Sounds absolutely horrifying.

>>3919316
>He started from assumptions fully discredited by anthropological evidence.
which?

mfw my daddy was making $500k when I was growing up and I went to an extremely progressive private highschool to study Marxism but can't use any of it to help you guys in the working class :(

>What does /lit/ think of Laurie Penny?

Well she's a woman so you should know the answer already

>>3919657
>destruction
>got shouted at by some mincing poof purveyor of soap opera history because she made him look ridiculous in public

>>3919749
really shouldn't yell and point like, looks like an angry child

>>3919749
I love how self-righteous these "self-made" men get.
>hurr I used to be poor then I got rich so fuck the rest of the poor why don't they just do what I did? How dare you empathise with them, you were born into a family with money!

>>3919765
You believe the poor are being held down yet see it as " self-righteous" of those poor to take pride in being able to, even through such said oppression, rise above the rest.

You make it clear that you don't care about "equality" but wish for all forms of pride based off of the struggle to succeed to be demonized, as if you're trying to cope with your own failures in life.

>>3916922
wow that was surprising


i've been in american universities and i didn't realize it was that bad, jesus

>>3919671
>"this person harbors racial hatred,"
lol that isn't what racism means you stupid cracker.
>I can't be homophobic, I have a gay friend

>>3916759
Libertarianism is more closely related to classical liberalism, but not the modern concept of liberalism.

>>3919101
>implying anonyminity doesn't encourage people to be edgier