With respect to placating the jobless, I think what we are seeing in the U.S. and Europe is actually a different strategy: shift the blame away from the real reasons to one or more groups of people. In the US, the Republican party, large corporations through legislative capture, and the conservative media, have at least half of the population convinced that poor people, immigrants (legal or illegal), and liberals are to blame for their situation. A story in the NY Times today just pointed out that profits have skyrocketed, businesses are having trouble hiring, consumer prices (across the board, but especially for healthcare and education) are on the rise, yet worker income has barely budged. It is worth noting that many of the big tech companies (FANG) spoke out against many things that the Trump administration proposed, but not the huge corporate tax cut. At a time when we really should demand that these companies do more to support the countries they sell in, they are doing everything to amass and concentrate their wealth. Look at Amazon shopping for deals from cities for its second headquarters. Of course, the tax cuts comes at the expense of social programs and infrastructure spending at exactly the time when more and more people need those programs. All the democratic party seems to be able to do is keep saying "Bad Trump." I see no attempt by them to actually clarify and address the real problems. My hope is that technology such as crypto and steemit will help here, but we clearly need a lot more experimentation with what works and doesn't work. At the same time, major corporate and political powers will definitely move to ban, limit, and then ultimately exploit and distort the new platforms so that they can hold on to power.
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So much of what you say I agree with. But it's not up to the Democrats. In most cases, as we saw in the last election, they represent powerful interests that want to keep control. They distract us with cultural wars--use Trump as a cartoon arch enemy, as he uses guns and religion (also immigrants and the poor).
I do place my hopes in crypto and Steemit to bypass power centers. Also place hope in the free expression that is allowed to flow here. Increasingly, censorship prevails on other platforms. We need decentralized sources of information so people can decide for themselves which ideas are valuable, and what information is "fake". We really do need to grow these sorts of alternative news sources. It's not a coincidence that every autocracy, as soon as it is established, curbs speech.