Comments on: Spin Cycle – Brink Lindsey’s Age of Abundance

By: Club Troppo » Richard Nixon and the mystery of the “extraordinarily, unbelievably, stunningly gorgeous” Russian women

Tue, 05 Feb 2008 07:28:08 +0000

[...] in makeup and hairdos. In 1959 the United States opened a new front in the Cold War by staging a spectacular display of American consumerism in the political heart of the Soviet empire. In one pavilion visitors were treated to [...]

By: Patrick

Patrick — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 07:12:49 +0000

er, DD, wasn’t that exactly Clive Hamilton’s theme? At least when I saw him he was whingeing (ludicrously) about supermarkets, ‘delocalisation’ and ready made meals – basically, poor people not having to actually ‘make’, as opposed to just buy and heat, their dinners (poor souls – love to see the useless bugger himself ‘make’ dinner after just one real day’s work).

By: derrida derider

derrida derider — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 01:23:54 +0000

I don’t think any but a few reactionary hippies and god-botherers would deny that material prosperity has given us better mental as well as physical health (in fact I get really angry at people who believe ‘poverty is good for the soul’ – it’s not).

But Lindsey is a ‘small government’ person. How can he then reject the idea of taxation and redistribution that reduces the level of average material prosperity a little in order to make sure that all share in it? Unless he takes the (deeply dishonest, IMO) view that redistribution causespoverty.

By: Patrick

Patrick — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 00:00:59 +0000

I think Lindsey’s argument sounds like one that is so commensense my mother has been expounding it for decades, namely, that probably just about everything modern secular lefties and righties hold dearest was created by capitalism’s mass prosperity. You can go further than that little list and probably include vegetarianism, human rights and more – the richer people are, the far likelier they are to give a rat’s arse what’s happening to some poor stranger somewhere.

I should add that I don’t really mean to distinguish between people earning $40 and $400k here, but between people earning either of those capitalist salaries and people earning $5 or $15k).

The only exception, really, are the traditionally religious (I don’t bother counting all those ‘spiritual’ people) who hold dearest their God, who comfortable predates mass prosperity.

So yes, it is boring and predictable as Ken Lovell thinks – unfortunately, I suspect that the targets are far too popular to be dismissed as mere straw men.

By: Ken Lovell

Ken Lovell — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 22:30:03 +0000

I suppose I should read the book before commenting but if, as the NYT review closes, its main message is that ‘material abundance has been, on balance, good for us’, I don’t think I’ll bother. It sounds like one more heroic charge at an army of straw men.

I do however have to observe that if Lindsey regards the ‘civil rights movement and the sexual revolution, environmentalism and feminism, the fitness and health-care boom and the opening of the gay closet, the withering of censorship’ as evidence of ‘spiritual yearning’, he’s got a weird idea of spirituality. Maybe the pope should just forget all that bells and smells stuff and go for a workout in the gym.

And the idea that knowledge workers constitute a ‘creative class’? That will come as a surprise to the hundreds of thousands of workers in call centres.