Conservative Southern Values Revived: How a Brutal Strain of American Aristocrats Have Come to Rule

[HiPointDem]

79. you don't see it in europe as much because they're more populated than the us -- and because

their ruling classes own quite a bit of the open land (being older and more entrenched than the american ruling class).

i'm saying you don't see the big ostentatious houses so much (actually, a high proportion of europeans rent, and that's partly the high price of land and partly that a lot of the owners are rentier class and not about to sell) -- but europeans consume rather a lot of consumer goods.

and when they emigrate to the us, they live like americans. just as americans who emigrate to europe tend to live like europeans.

same in japan -- smaller and more populated, but they love to shop and their houses are (generally) packed to the gills with stuff, despite the stereotypical japanese aesthetic of spareness.


you *do* see it in places like australia and south africa, with similar open land v. population.

i reject most of the "we're all complicit" line of thought. i once accepted it, but that was before i started thinking about power relations.

we're not all complicit. some of us are not complicit, some of us are mildly complicit, some of us are majorly complicit, and some of us are pulling a lot of the strings to make other people dance their tune.

including strings that tell the average person: "*you're as complicit as i am -- we're all complicit". though the only power that average person has is not to buy things and join a protest, while the person telling him he's complicit is the person making bank on slave labor, degradation of the environment, etc. *That's* the person making the killing decisions, and &that's* the person who can stop making them.