I was going to comment on your use of arrant, but others have used it AND they have used it correctly (as you also did). But you are in a select group of persons deploying the phrase "arrant nonsense". It's not the coveted "Congratulations! You are the first person to use 'arrant' on The Philosophy Forum!", but it's better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.

'Rubbish' and 'total rubbish' are also used quite a bit. "Total" seems to function as an intensifier. Rubbish is rubbish, but total rubbish is more so. Much like 'fucked' and 'totally fucked'.

Is it possible that capitalism may largely contribute to solving the problem? — Jack Foreman

Not so.

Capital is largely responsible (it's the key) CAUSE OF THE PROBLEM. Why? The reason is that capitalism is, by its nature, based on exploitation of resources, growth, expansion, and profitability. Corporations are compelled by their charters, their raisons d'être, to behave the way they do, and can not do otherwise. Exxon has no reason under the sun to not pump as much oil as it can, driving out competitors, and maximizing profits.

On earth we have thousands of corporations pursuing their chartered purpose for existence, and industry requires unlimited energy--coal, oil, gas, and nuclear (and a tiny fraction of wind & solar). Thus we rush to over-run the 2ºC average temperature goal, with CO2 levels currently at 407 ppm (57 ppm above the safe level of 350).

Most of the people who populate corporations are not individually evil people. They don't have to be obsessed by greed; they might love the natural world (a major personal contradiction). They may, in their hearts, care about the future of the world. It doesn't matter. They are not at their jobs to worry about vanishing species; they are there to make money -- which is the only purpose corporations have for existing--make stuff and sell it at a profit.

What could capitalism do? Nothing, really. Our best option to enhance survival is to immediately and sharply reduce consumption of goods--everything from clothing to cars, gasoline to cheese curds. Consumption of stuff accounts to about 70% of the GDP. Why does cutting consumption help? Reduced consumption = reduced production = reduced output of CO2 and methane.

We don't have a lot of time. The world (including capitalists) has known about the threat to the world for at least 30 years (1988-present) and has so far accomplished virtually nothing towards reducing CO2 output.

Very possible I would think. Capitalism is very adaptive. — Brett

Indeed. When Standard Oil (or Exxon) scientists discovered that CO2 levels were rising as a result of burning fossil fuels, the corporation considered the problem, and made the logical choice for an adaptable corporation: they buried the research and embarked on a program of confusing the public about global warming with the same methods tobacco companies used to confuse the public about the harms of smoking their product.

Under what rock does your economics professor live? Here we are in the beginning of the possibly terminal climate crisis and he's theorizing about so much production that our need for output would be saturated.

There is no such thing as a free lunch, and maximized productive output will demand more energy than can be provided by wind and solar generation -- at least for quite some time. Here's the crucial point: By "quite some time" we will have burned through another mountain of coal and petroleum and disrupted the climate so much, we won't be worried about maximized production, We'll be worried about barely surviving the various aspects of the climate crisis -- high wet bulb temperatures that make it impossible to do agricultural work; massive flooding; unprecedented storms; highly irregular weather events that will interfere with agricultural production; massive migrations; clean water shortages; enormous ecological disruptions which will affect us severely and directly; droughts; and so on and so forth.

Tell your professor to wake the fuck up.

Tastes and preferences will radically change. Marx epitomized this in saying,

From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs — Wallows

Ability and need is different than tastes and preferences, even if they radically change. I might experience a radical change from Haydn to hip hop, and you might switch your philosophical preference from Wittgenstein to St. Thomas Aquinas. That isn't going to help you with your abilities or needs.

My philosophical or biological view is that human beings have innate characteristics over which we have little control. Our problem is captured in the vulgarism that "a hard cock has no ethics" and applies equally to men and women (who of course, don't have one). With respect to global warming, we have a raging hard on for stuff. We are quite short sighted. We rarely look for long term consequences for any behavior. Our behavior is partially composed of very persistent habits. We like what we like without subjecting "likes" to rational analysis. People who "like elephant tusks and rhino horns" fuel a market that is close to destroying both. There are few innocent people in the First World. (Poor people are not better; they just don't have the means to be as guilty as us.).

"What we are, we are." Descended from a common ancestor, we are closely related to the big primates like Pan Troglodytes (chimps and bonobos). The other primates don't have our problems because they are not quite smart enough. We have become smart enough, and acquired a lot of technology that enables our reach to exceed our grasp.

We are the sorcerer's apprentice: we cast a spell, the spell is causing problems, and we can't bring ourselves to undo the spell (we could, but we apparently won't) because we kind of like what the spell is doing.

We could save our world. You know, we really should do that. Will we? Probably not. The consequences of global warming are not quite as vivid in our minds as the consequences of behaving like responsible, prudent, thrifty human beings who can well imagine that the minor horror of not consuming so much stuff is trivial compared to the gross horror that billions of people now alive will witness.

I was wondering why we were discussing ends and means again. Lenin supposedly said, "If the ends do not justify the means, what in god's name does?"

Glad you brought up Huxley, there.

Ends are always constituted of the means whereby they are achieved. — Pantagruel

Which explains why things turned out so poorly under Lenin and his immediate successor, Stalin, a committed "achieve the ends or else, never mind the means" kind of dictator.

fantasies of infinite economic growth — Mark Dennis

That's the problem, all right, and it is a fantasy. It's a sort of magical thinking.

In WWII, US production was reorganized for war production, whether the corporations owning the factories liked it or not. Rationing of staples (flour, sugar, butter, meat, oils and fats, gasoline, clothing, etc. was imposed. There was no automobile manufacture. There were "fat drives" (like bacon grease or lard, useful for making explosives), metal drives, and paper drives. Public transit (buses and trains) were very crowded because of the heavy use by 3-shift production schedules and troop transport. In the event of infectious diseases (TB, Influenza, Polio) quarantines were sometimes used; small pox vaccinations were not optional. The same thing happened in most other industrial countries.

Yes, people were frustrated at times by limited or no goods at all, There were strikes for higher wages, and the usual bitching and carping. None the less, hundred of millions of people around the world resolved to do what was necessary. It worked because the existential threat and the necessary preventive actions were clearly stated. Patriots grew some food in the back yard and reduced their consumption. In some countries, rationing lasted from 1939 to 1947 (and longer in some places).

I think that there are a 2 or 3 billion people who, if told the truth about global warming and if given clear behavioral options (like wearing shoes completely out before replacing them, buying a very limited number of clothing items per year, not eating meat, not flying, not driving, and so on) they would rise to the occasion

There are another 2 billion people, give or take, who are already effectively doing what we should all be doing because they are too poor to do otherwise. and maybe there are a couple of billion people whose reductions in lifestyle would be more limited.

People need to be told that rainforests like the Amazon, Central African, SE Asian, or NW American temperate rainforests are vital; that they are in danger of dying from destruction negative cascading effects; that they are being destroyed to grow palm for oil and soybeans to feed animals for meat. Dead rainforests produce very little oxygen, which we need to breathe. We can live without meat and palm oil (at least for a while).

People do make adjustments. Most toilets are far more efficient these days, whether people like the way they flush or not. People are much better at turning off unused lights than they used to be (individually and institutionally). They will make more changes and faster changes if they are told the truth about what will happen if they don't.

This sermon preached to the choir is now over.

You might dare, but don't anyway.

Economic recovery would have most people employed in a probably radically reorganized system of production ad distribution. It would, of necessity, be organized for low CO2 output. So people would be working, basic needs would be met. The volume of economic activity would likely be much lower than it is now.

I think it would be worse than China. But if we want to brake CO2 emissions, it certainly can NOT be accomplished through slight efforts. I'm not enthusiastic about giving up my luxury-carnivore-comfortable lifestyle, but... what else can we do? Serious question: "What else can we do that achieve immediate reductions in CO2/methane, etc. output?"

We've pissed away 40 or 50 years of time that we could have been reducing our CO2/methane output and weren't. We don't seem to have another 40 or 50 years to screw around trying to decide what to do.

There is a lot of magical thinking going on. Oh, they will plant 25 trees to compensate for this flight to New York. How big do people think those trees are? 50 feet high? More like 1 or 2 feet high. It will take at least a decade before a successful tree will be big enough to absorb a significant amount of CO2.

Yes -- climate change is slower but more thorough. However, in a carbon-reduced economy, it would be quite a while before most people experienced an economic recovery. The reason that economic recessions were short in the past is that the economy was expanding. In a shrinking economy (a permanent recession) there wouldn't be a recovery.

Only when we had devised a new low-carbon regime could the economy expand. It wouldn't be as robust an recovery as we have seen in the last couple of centuries.

Just what sort of consumption reductions would be necessary?

We would switch to a vegan diet, or at least a largely vegetarian diet. Meat/fish/crustaceans would rarely appear on the table.

We would stop traveling farther than we needed to get to work (if we still had a job) and back. We would use our feet, bicycles, or public transit to get there. We would forego leisure travel beyond the distance we could get to on our own two feet or by bike. Forego air and auto travel altogether.

We would buy no new clothing, shoes, furniture, gadgets, cars, houses, appliances, etc. We would buy food and an occasional replacement item for clothing that was too ragged to use (not just too familiar--too worn out).

We would live in warmer (in hot zones) or cooler (in cold zones) houses, within the limits of safety.

ETc.

I assume you are not being serious, but the idea is floating around out there (certainly in SciFi--which regardless of the science part, is F I C T I O N) that we could live on the moon or Mars. I submit that if we were able to figure out how to enable 100,000 people to live on the moon or Mars (in the relative near future), then it is well within our operational capabilities to sharply reduce CO2/methane output on earth.

I am sorrowfully leaning toward the view that we are totally screwed. We are screwed because we are descendants and close relatives of primates without god-like abilities. We stumble into our graves.

Capitalism, generally, is required to grow, expand, enlarge, continue forward IF at all possible. That's not an altogether bad thing (it's not altogether good either). The coal, gas, petroleum, automobile and concrete industries are the most problematic industries, of course, and we are all its customers, one way or another.

In short radical de-growth. But radical de-growth is not going to happen because no one wants it, including you and me. — Janus

The bitter truth is this: IF we are (or were) to succeed in limiting Global warming to 1.5ºC or 2.0ºC, we affluent people would have to relinquish our lifestyles, lock stock and barrel. We affluent consumers shrinking our consumption and CO2/methane et al by even 10% to 20 % (to pick a figure out of thin air) would be an immediate economic catastrophe which would have cascading consequences. A big drop in consumption would produce widespread unemployment and (probably) increase social instability. Yes, a transition to a low consumption could be made, but we don't have time to do it in a leisurely manner. We need now, and will need in the future, to do it very rapidly - like overnight (practically speaking).

A hard braking on consumption will be personally and collectively painful, if not fatal for some.

No leader, no national congress, no political party--nobody--wants to propose a totally demoralizing policy which will have literally painful consequences. Individuals are prone to continue forward

The economic catastrophe would be shorter and less drastic than global overheating, but it would have to be deliberately engaged.

Philosophers will be as overheated as everybody else, so it's in our best interests to think about what can, can not, should, should not, will, will not... be done.

Well, for a long time (a millennium minimum) State and Church has been allied. The alliance bound the church to the preservation of whatever-ruling-class-status-quo prevailed. At the same time, there has always been (some, not a lot) resistance to this alliance. Other historical rivers flow into this question: the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the rise of Capitalism, the Industrial Revolution, and so on and so forth. Ebb and flow, action and reaction

The revolutionary Jesus was screwed early on by his success in the Roman Empire. Once a bunch of Christians (just like anybody else anywhere on earth) got a chance at power, they hung onto it. Doom. Holy Mother Church just isn't good soil for nurturing Marxists.

The revolutionary Jesus has been screwed and re-screwed many times over the succeeding centuries, as the church and individual Christians followed their preferential option to attach themselves to the rich and powerful.

Since about the 1850s, small groups of Catholic sisters (mostly Sisters of St Joseph) have provided low cost education and health care for remote communities where there was insufficient public education or healthcare available. — Possibility

A similar development took place in the United States, particularly in New England, the Upper Midwest, and Northwest, secular and religious culture produced large religious and non-profit social service, education, and medical establishments. The St. Joseph sisters (several varieties) were a part of this. So were Methodists, Lutherans, Jews, et al.

To a large extent, that legacy has withered. After the 1960s exodus of church membership across the church (Protestant and Catholic both), and the abrupt shrinkage of the lay orders, the churches began to lose the economic/membership base that had supported their work.

St. Joseph Carondelet nuns, for instance, were forced to sell their group of hospitals as they shrank and aged out of the capacity to continue on. Actually, the religious & non-profit hospitals were a high-water mark in both cost effectiveness and quality of delivered services.

The constitution can't be suspended. Were he to order the DOJ or the military to arrest and jail Pelosi and Schiff, I expect that officials (who didn't have a gun pointed at their head, and maybe not even then) would quite properly refuse.

Trump can disregard the facts because he is a liar who has no respect for what is true or real. You know, some people are liars. They lie. Or thieves, knaves, and scoundrels. They tend to behave in an immoral manner.

The congress could, if they were not hogtied by partisan divide, withdraw funding from White House operations.

Yes but 'everything is fucked anyway' is hardly an answer??? — Wayfarer

I commend the Democrats' efforts toward impeachment. (Remember, impeachment, to be effective, has to be followed by a conviction and removal from office--quite unlikely, given the Republican controlled Senate). The Democrats happen to not be at fault on the question of manipulating the Ukrainians into investigating Bidens Jr. and Sr., but they haven't caught fire and fought fiercely on other issues where they should have, were they a "real" opposition. Everything isn't fucked. What is fucked is the the Two-Wingéd Unitary Beast that colludes to facilitate all sorts of corruption and bad policy.

The United States does not have a viable third party. Third parties there have been, oppositional groups there are, but up against a united front of political and corporate power, they have not had, do not have, and, as far as most oppositional analysis sees it, will not have a chance much better than NIL.

A third, militantly progressive oppositional party would have to arise from the electorate; While there may be 10% (arbitrary number picked out of thin air) of the electorate who could be militantly progressive and oppositional, it would take quite some time for such a new, rapidly growing party, even given plurality and majority election numbers, to win in the 50 states, elect a majority oppositional party in both houses, win the White House, and repeal reams worth of regressive legislation and go on to achieve real change. Meanwhile, the Two-Wingéd Unitary Beast would not have died. It would fight like hell to maintain its prerogatives and privileges.

Trump was never a suitable possibility for POTUS, and the Republican Party, had they had, at last, some decency, would not have selected him as their standard bearer. There were other, better (even as Republicans) choices. As always, "the problem" is stacked up several layers deep.

"Trump" is an exemplar of a much larger problem. So is the Republican Party. But then, so is the Democratic Party, and so is Wall Street, Capitalism, and more!

Your smarter than that Bitter Creek — Brett

Maybe not, but I think the quote is quite apropos.

Any society has to decide how it will do business ("business" not automatically capitalism), and when nations form (as they have been doing for a while now) it is "the government's task" to decide how business will be conducted. There are major differences from nation to nation.

China's ground rules for doing business were and are quite different than South Korea's and Japan's. Saudi Arabia's rules for doing business are not the same as Nigeria's. The USSR's methods of doing business were different than China's. The American way of doing business is different than both China's, the USSR's, and Russia. In different ways, entrepreneurship has been favored by China, the US, and Russia. Different ground rules = different results.

Both, and not just in a manner of speaking.

The legal system is organized to support private property and entrepreneurial activity. For instance, one can organize a corporation, borrow money from an investment banker, do business, go broke, and have no personal liability. At every step of business, rules governing business elements like depreciation, capital investment, and so on are in place. It isn't just the final tax on income or estate taxes that aids the rich getting richer.

If Joe Blow, factory worker, borrows money to fix his car so he can keep getting to work, and the car is still unreliable, he'll lose his job and will still be fully liable for the loan. True, he could file bankruptcy, but that might not help him.

Now, it is true that the ability to get rich and stay rich is one of the reasons remarkable innovation and aggressive expansion occurs. Michael Bloomberg made his huge fortune by supplying financial operators with something they very much needed: up to date financial information in ready-to-use forms through the Bloomberg Terminal. It was a high end financial data delivery service.

He didn't just become worth $58 billion dollars by delivering newspapers. He was a partner at Salomon Investment Banking, and as a partner accumulated $10,000,000 which he used to start his new business.

Fortunes require a foundation of money, from somewhere. You might be broke, but if you have a simply fabulous idea that will turn a profit, some investment banker might risk a few million bucks om you, and if everything goes well, you end up quite well off. If it doesn't go well, you don't. It went really well for Bloomberg.

Bill Gates didn't become the richest mortal to walk the earth on the basis of how wonderful his Disk Operating System (DOS) was. Dos and several other Microsoft products were rammed down the throats of consumers by highly anti-completive methods. I don't know if you remember this, but once upon a time when you bought a PC it would ALWAYS have Microsoft software on it, pre-installed. Later, it would have Windows, then Internet Explorer, something you couldn't get rid of for love or money. It was crappy software, but that's whaat was in the bundle.

Deals were made with equipment manufacturers. That why people had to put up with generally crappy Microsoft products (some of which, like Word and Excel, were good). If you didn't want Microsoft, you pretty much had to buy an Apple, which was more expensive.

Once you bridge the gap between poor and rich your money makes it's own money and your taxes are often times non existent, and if you do so happen to pay taxes it doesn't matter because you make enough money off of the backs of other people who never see a fraction of your wealth and are just supposed to accept that your life is more valuable than theirs because you came up with the idea and you had the connections, and usually the money to make it work in the first place. — Lif3r

Exactly.

"Government is a committee to tilt the playing field in favor of big business." (A paraphrase of Karl Marx's statement, "government is a committee to organize the affairs of the bourgeoisie".)

The US is very vigilant about consumer protection. — Wallows

What that means is manufactures try to avoid class action lawsuits. IF the US was "very vigilant" about consumer protection, we would be moving heaven and earth to lower our CO2 output. Global heating will kill the consumer and producer together.

The rich and the powerful versus the meek and the poor. Is this phenomenon not a cycle? — Lif3r

The "great cycle" of economic expansion is very long. The Roman Empire was one period of economic expansion, wealth getting, and building. The stretch between the Romans and the Industrial Revolution was around 1200 years, during which there was little economic growth. The comparatively trivial waves of the "business cycle" are maybe a decade or two long. In the business cycle there is rapid expansion, saturation, then contraction. Rinse and repeat.

Wealth is built from the bottom up, the poor being on the bottom, the rich being on top. The principle that separates the two is accumulation. For most of the "modern" human history (the last 10,000 years) accumulation was relatively limited. The best way to accumulate was through force: seizing wealth (military campaigns) or peonage--forcing the peasants to work for the resident lords

It has been suggested by some archeologists - anthropologists that agriculture was invented as a way of making people work for somebody else, but that is speculative. If so, it worked. The poor clod hoppers gathered in the grain which made the local elite rich.

The capitalist/industrial revolution was and is accumulation and exploitation on steroids--hell on wheels for the poor, a gravy train for the rich.

there's simply a structural advantage to being rich — Wallows

The structural advantages you reference greatly assist the rich in obtaining their status in the first place.

I'm an old (literally) practitioner of shallow, pseudo-cynical blasé attitudes, so I understand their pleasures and satisfactions. But I'm a little confused by your reaction to what I wrote. Your beginning post seemed in earnest. Then you switched.

What good will your shallow pseudo-cynical blasé attitude do you in any case?

These social arrangements no doubt have some grand function. — Enrique

Well sure, like running the world, running the country. Ruling. Look, I disapprove of the ruling class and the Uber-rich. I am interested in how they are organized and how they operate -- the better to make up lists of whose property to seize, and who to send to political re-educate camps after the revolution.

Who are you addressing here? and What are you trying to say?

I am a commodity, first of all, and a commodity fetishist to boot. I was junked as a laboring commodity when I grew too old. But I am still consuming (thank you, SSA). I belong to the "L" Tribe of men's clothing -- LL Bean, Lands End, and Lee. I eat Quaker Oats (rather than artesian rolled oats produced in a mill powered by falling water or tired mules) and Green Giant rather than the local farmers market (the growing season just isn't long enough here).

I get my hair cut at Great Clips, I buy my shoes from Aesics, I prefer up-market Calvin Klein underwear (always bought at deep discount from Marshalls) to down-market Fruit of the Loom, discounted or not. I shop at Target (certainly not Walmart, God forbid!!!) Amazon or Macys, (except to go slumming at Penney's). K-mart is beneath me. I've never set foot in a Dollar General store and sorry, I don't like Aldi either. I yack on an Apple iPhone, and read on an Apple iPad. Music is still delivered on the go from an aging Apple iPod. I surf and write on an Apple iComp. I ride Lyft when a bus or bike won't do.

I am a disgrace.

There are 7,000,000,000+ people in the world (too damned many) and 320,000,000 people in the United States (also too damned many). I don't see how the bare needs of even the 5 million people living in my state, or the 627,180 people living in Vermont--Go Bernie) could meet their minimal needs through pre-commodified interpersonal production and consumption. I don't know anyone who can make a pair of shoes out of the skin of a dead cow, or out of a dead tree. I don't know anyone who spins wool or linen and weaves it into cloth for leggings and a tunic (the minimum clothing). I do know people who raise apples, carrots and kale (first grown as cattle feed--disgusting stuff), and who can make butter and cheese with the help of a live cow. They could furnish me with some food once in a while, but soon I would have starved to death.

London once had water sellers -- people selling slightly less murky liquid that than what the people could get out of a bad well or the Thames. That was a nice person to person business. I prefer the commodity relationship of centralized water treatment facilities. A little more chlorine, please?

Ale? There is a passage in The Tunning of Elynour Rummyng (1550) describing the wench's ale, which was brewed in a barrel over which her chickens roosted. It's a long raucous poem written by English poet John Skelton and presents disgusting images of rural drinking and drunkenness. I was shocked! Shocked! See, they didn't have a commodity relationship to their alehouse. I prefer sanitary, bottled and branded ale that I can count on to not have chicken shit as a flavoring agent.

Our commodity status and relationships are so essential to our lives (and have been for, oh, maybe 150 years) that we no longer see them, and have forgotten (or never knew) anything about the downside of artesian production -- like starvation in the spring, freezing in the winter, dying from bad water in the summer, or having to gather acorns, walnuts, apples, chestnuts, mushrooms, bits of cereal, berries, and what not at harvest time and somehow keeping the stuff from spoiling or being eaten by vermin. Life for us lumpen proles was tough before commodity relationships came to the rescue. (Not too tough, or we wouldn't be here today; most of us did not descend from well-fed, richly clothed, palace-housed royals.)

The person-to-person non-commodified pre-fetishized economy has been fading away for quite a while in different parts of the world. It hasn't disappeared, but to reinstate it as a more humane, less alienating market relationship would be extraordinarily difficult.

You can find a handy sampling of the ruling class by looking at a list of the Fortune 500 -- a listing of the 500 largest corporations in the United States--surprisingly published by Fortune Magazine. It isn't the workers at these companies, it's the top brass. Also, look for a listing of the 100, or 500, or 1000 -- whatever -- richest people in the United States.

Another stat: Less than two dozen people in the world hold more wealth than 1/3 of the world's population. When you have that much money, you can call a lot of shots.

what distinguishes these professional policy-makers from the ruling class? — Enrique

The ruling class is distinguished by the amount of power they have. In any nation, the ruling class has at least tacit support of the population, but they also have the explicit support of business, military, religion, and so on. The power of the ruling class is not imaginary, symbolic, or figurative. Their power is literal, but (at least in democracies) is not crudely displayed.

Who is in the American Ruling Class (ARC)? They who own the largest block of the economy--people like Warren Buffett (Berkshire Hathaway, which includes businesses from Dairy Queen to the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad system), major stockholders of corporations, the ultra rich who, like Bill Gates have huge stakes in major corporations, and so on. The boards of directors of corporations -- everything from Wells Fargo, Consolidated Edison, Proctor & Gamble, General Motors, etc. (They are on these boards because they hold a large stake in the corporations.). The top management of the military; the heads of central government agencies like Treasury, State Department, Interior, Defense, etc. How many people? Certainly less than 1,000,000 -- or about 1/3 of 1%, counting those at the tip.

What level of continuity does the upper class have that would give it a sustained, multi-generational and cohesive agenda? — Enrique

G. William Domhoff has analyzed the ruling class. Domhoff (and other authors) show how ruling class families have been, are, and (in all likelihood) will continue to be very deliberate about maintaining multigenerational class continuity. Who marries whom? No matter how hot he or she might be, the private's son or daughter will almost certainly NOT marry the 5-star general's child. Similarly, the lowly teller is not going to marry the son of the chair of Morgan Chase Bank. Not going to happen. Money and power marry money and power.

Where do the children go to school? Summer camp? Youth clubs? College? The children of the rich and powerful do not attend public schools, or run of the mill private schools, either. They attend elite schools from the cradle through whatever terminal degree they earn (at Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Berkeley, etc.). At these elite institutions they learn which class they belong to, what its interests are, and (eventually) how to keep things that way.

Most people do not mix with the ruling class because the ruling class is an exclusive club.

Here is a web site for Who Rules America -- G. William Domhoff's research: Well worth checking out.

what is the mechanism of real control? It seems like you're suggesting money might be the mode of influence, but what is the relationship between financing and cultural organization? — Enrique

In short, it's the Golden Rule: Them with the gold make the rules.

"Cultural organization" or what Marx called the reproduction of society, takes money. Some cultural organizations, like public schools, are broadly financed from local taxes. Other institutions, like elite universities, cultivate donor relationships with the upper class of people who have lots of money. Harvard's $40 billion endowment wasn't accumulated by begging on Boston Commons with tin cups. They gathered their endowment by the truck load.

Across the country, major cultural organizations -- schools, orchestras, museums, theaters, and so forth are kept afloat by major gifts, and the major gifts definitely influence what the institutions will do. Whether orchestras play Bach or Philip Glass doesn't matter all that much, maybe, but what is taught in schools (K - post doctoral studies) does matter. Finding major funding for an new arts magazine would be a breeze compared to finding major funding for magazines featuring socialism, anarchism, trans issues, poor men's rights, and so on. You practically have to rob a bank to get money for these sorts of cultural projects. Take two very minor magazines which were really very interesting and lively and covered significant issues -- Processed World (dealt with temporary workers) and Diseased Pariah News (dealt with people who were HIV+ and suffering from AIDS). Both operated on a shoe string.

Are politics no longer a part of public life? — Enrique

If, and only if the governed decide to roll over and play dead.

I'll get in touch with my inner Socrates. What is an upper class, how can we define it? An upper class isn't simply people with lots of power... — Enrique

People with lots of power are called "the ruling class". They rule because they have lots of power.

There are 3 basic classes are divided up on the basis of how they get an income.

Working class (the majority) = people who depend on their ability to labor for a daily, weekly, or monthly wage. They are also called "wage slaves" because they are dependent on their wage.
Middle class (a minority) = people who are small to medium-sized entrepreneurs and highly trained professionals. They are an employing class.
Upper class (quite small minority) are people who are in a position to live off the income of investments. They may actively be involved in various companies, but generally they stay involved in order to maximize returns.
Ruling class = people with an extraordinary amount of wealth who are in a position to shape policy.

There are perhaps 2% of the population who is or could be in the ruling class. Working FOR the ruling class may give one some power and prestige, but those are only on loan.

He'd be right, of course.

Aristotle might die on the spot from the shock of having the light switched on.

Socrates might say, "2500 years later this is the best we can do?"

"I always said that nothing straight was ever built with the crooked timber of humanity. How right I was!!! Immanuel Kant

Hegel said "'the rational alone is real' and this is REALLY AWFUL".

Camus immediately pulled out his pistol and shot himself.

He just sits there with his thoughts and memories of perception. Out of nowhere, a masked man steals the mans wallet, punches him in his face and has sex with the mans wife in front of him. — Mark Dennis

Maybe the masked bandit would be thoughtful enough to have sex with the guy who doesn't have many opportunities to feel pleasure. It would work for me, but never mind.

Of course a wrong would be done. A person has rights that can be attacked without one being aware of it. If a bank officer swindles you out of your money, you have been swindled before you find out about it. A comatose person (however we define 'coma') has rights too. That's why we don't just start cutting them up for spare parts when they've been unconscious for a couple of weeks. "Awareness of a wrong" isn't required for a wrong to exist.

You might not suffer from being swindled until you know about it; you might not suffer from pain inflicted that you can not feel, but that is another issue separate from a wrong done.

True: a little controversy never hurt anyone. Actually, quite a bit of controversy never hurt anyone either.

If we compare 21st century realities to the historical myths of an earlier time when politics were vital and the citizenry were engaged, then it seems like our wonderful democratic republic has fallen into deep decay. The hard core truth of the matter is that the political deck was stacked against the average citizen from the very beginning.

We began our national history (early 1600s) as elite-governed and elite-serving provinces of an empire in which the average person had little say. The black slaves, of course, had no say in anything, but the "white trash" who made up a good share of the population had no say either. (Good source: White Trash : The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America by Nancy Isenberg. 2016.).

After the Revolution of 1776, a local elite was either in place or arose. You know their names -- the familiar founding fathers. Over time, decade after decade of economic, geographical, political, and military expansion the elite's power waxed. It wasn't a conspiracy -- this is just the way most societies work: the many are governed or managed by the few.

I don't want to exaggerate, however. Being an American was a good deal for a lot of ordinary folk who came here from Europe (voluntarily) and prospered in agriculture and trade. Upward mobility was more available here than in Europe, for the most part. Suffrage was expanded (grudgingly) until by 1920 both ordinary men and women could vote. Blacks were openly and greatly hindered every step of the way after emancipation.

So, here we are, the product of the usually complicated history.

The Ruling Class composed of the very wealthy and their ranks of political and economic servants down the line pretty much run things for their own benefit and convenience. Their historical rule is echoed in the last lines of a popular hymn, "Holy, Holy, Holy": which wert and which art, and ever more shall be.

Theoretically we could overthrow the ruling class and establish an economic democracy. People have tried hard to float this idea. Damned if I know how to do it.

Just here to mark my dismay at the loss of yet another long time poster. — VagabondSpectre

It is sad.

What is causing veteran posters to lose their cool all of a sudden? — VagabondSpectre

We live in an age of diminishing returns. Those who have been here longest have seen the returns diminish the most.