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As quoted in A Short History of Progress (2004) by Ronald Wright: > John Steinbeck once said that socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires. This helps explain why American culture is so hostile to the idea of limits, why voters during the last energy shortage rejected the sweater-wearing Jimmy Carter and elected Ronald Reagan who told them it was still “morning in America.” Nowhere does the myth of progress have more fervent believers.
At some point of course a lot of people are gonna think a 0.001% to become a millionnaire and 99.99% chance to stay a wage slave all your life is better than great chances to be detained, mutilated or assassinated by the police or a militia.
So in large parts of the world organised labour annually takes part in demonstrations as a direct result of the commitment of US unions.
That said there were some pretty goods discussions following the walkout at Blizzard/Activation where this implicit downranking didn’t happen. I want to see more of that.
1: https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented#implic...