Identity Dixie: 4 Horseman of the Economic Apocalypse

I’ve been snippy with Identity Dixie for the last two months.

This is mainly due to their libertarian background in the Austrian School of Economics which I reject as a Right-Hegelian populist and nationalist in favor of the German Historical School of Economics. We share the same loyalties, interests and goals though of defending the South and today they republished a very good article from The American Sun which I shall share here as well:

Identity Dixie:

“According to the Brookings Institution, the inflation-adjusted median wage of Americans has only increased 10% from 1973, while the price of a Ford Mustang has risen by 60%. Tucker Carlson reports the wages for white males has declined by 11% since 1990, and for British Millenials born 1981-84, the growth in median pay is zero.

In his book Men Without Work, demographer Nicholas Eberstadt notes the stark contrast in official ‘unemployment’ numbers (4%) with the staggeringly low work participation rate (60%), worse than the Great Depression, and the crushing effect it is having on the psyche of the nation. “Unlike the dead soldiers in Roman antiquity,” he writes, “our decimated men still live and walk among us, though in an existence without productive economic purpose. We might say those many millions of men without work constitute a sort of invisible army, ghost soldiers lost in an overlooked, modern-day depression.”

In the months ahead, we’re going to walk through all of these topics: the furniture industry in North Carolina, the textile mills in the Piedmont, the iron and steel industry in Birmingham, the rise of the foreign automobile plants in the South, the tech sector in North Carolina and Texas, etc. How did the Southern economy change in the 20th century? How will it change again the 21st century?

Since the 1960s, there has been a massive, endless tidal wave of foreign illegal and legal immigration that has changed the demographic makeup of the South while silently devastating both the White and black working class and the middle class too in any number of professions.

There has been the rise of feminism and the entry of women into the workforce. There has been financial deregulation of the American economy. There has been the demise of unions, the automation of manufacturing and services, free-trade and the globalization of the world economy and the stagnation of real wages for decades. There has been the failure to invest in a 21st century infrastructure. There has been a swelling of the bank accounts of the wealthy and the upper middle class.

I could continue … the list goes on, and on, but we need to look at how our economy has changed and continues to change in a historical context. Specifically, we need to start with developments in technology like, say, the tractor and mechanical cotton picker, or household appliances like the dryer, washing machine and dishwasher, and how labor saving devices and/or the exploitation of new sources of labor has changed the economy which has in turn changed the culture and social structure.

Looming over this discussion is the million dollar question: how will the new technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution transform the Southern economy and social order in the 21st century? The rise of deep learning AI (a technology the equivalent of electricity), robotics and automation is projected to be many times more swift and disruptive than the previous three Industrial Revolutions.

Suppose we choose the first option.

In such a world, wealth generated by a race of machine slave laborers would be redistributed more equitably, no one would have to work and the question then would be what to do with our leisure time. Every ideology would become obsolete in the absence of wage slavery. The world would unscramble naturally as people moved around to resort themselves in a variety of ways that are more satisfying and homogeneous than the world they previously lived under during free-market capitalism. The only issues left to resolve would be “social issues” like how to repair our shredded cultures.

This could be a full time job. Just look at all the YouTubers whose job it is to explain to people who are already living in a post-scarcity world at the supermarket how not to get obese and die from diabetes or heart disease by making healthier and intelligent choices rather than impulsive ones.