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diff --git a/content/entry/extreme-capitalism-ruins-everything.md b/content/entry/extreme-capitalism-ruins-everything.md index d3503fc..6c167de 100644 --- a/content/entry/extreme-capitalism-ruins-everything.md +++ b/content/entry/extreme-capitalism-ruins-everything.md @@ -2,17 +2,16 @@ title: "Extreme Capitalism Ruins Everything" date: 2022-06-18T00:00:00 draft: false -makerefs: false --- # Why Can't America Fix Any of its Problems? -I talk about a lot of different issues on this journal: everything ranging from beastiality[1] to transgender athletes[2] to private online shopping[3]. On some of these issues, especially cultural issues, there exists legitimate disagreement. But on many there is a broad consensus, at least here in Burgerland. We're only made to believe there isn't because that's what's in the interests of the very rich and powerful. +I talk about a lot of different issues on this journal: everything ranging from [beastiality](/2022/04/18/is-beastiality-immoral/) to [transgender athletes](/2022/03/27/on-transgender-athletes/) to [private online shopping](/2021/05/12/private-online-shopping/). On some of these issues, especially cultural issues, there exists legitimate disagreement. But on many there is a broad consensus, at least here in Burgerland. We're only made to believe there isn't because that's what's in the interests of the very rich and powerful. -Why is it that policies which poll well among most Americans either never come to fruition or fall under attack? To take just one statistic from a Gallup poll, 70% of Americans have supported the legality of abortion in at least some circumstances since 1975.[4] So how can the U.S. supreme court release a draft opinion to overturn a woman's right to an abortion? Most Americans are concerned about global heating[5], but we never see any political will to act on it. The list goes on. +Why is it that policies which poll well among most Americans either never come to fruition or fall under attack? To take just one statistic from a Gallup poll, [70% of Americans have supported the legality of abortion in at least some circumstances since 1975](https://news.gallup.com/poll/1576/abortion.aspx). So how can the U.S. supreme court release a draft opinion to overturn a woman's right to an abortion? Most Americans are concerned about [global heating](/glossary/), but we never see any political will to act on it. The list goes on. The reason for this is America has been steadily moving towards plutocracy for about half a century now. Plutocracy is an illegitimate form of government where the wealthy dictate politics and the will of the majority is ignored. # Money in Politics -Robert Reich's main preoccupation in life is to spread awareness on the issues of inequality, money in politics, and plutocracy. He's the former U.S. Secretary of Labor and political commentator who does a lot of important work on these issues and should be promoted. He has a website[6], Youtube channel[7], and Twitter[8]. He has made podcasts and written articles and books about these subjects which you can find on the media outlet he founded, Inequality Media[9]. +Robert Reich's main preoccupation in life is to spread awareness on the issues of inequality, money in politics, and plutocracy. He's the former U.S. Secretary of Labor and political commentator who does a lot of important work on these issues and should be promoted. He has a [website](https://robertreich.org/), [Youtube channel](https://yewtu.be/channel/UCuDv5p8E-evaRSh542hDV5g?dark_mode=true), and [Twitter](https://nitter.net/rbreich). He has made podcasts and written articles and books about these subjects which you can find on the media outlet he founded, [Inequality Media](https://www.inequalitymedia.org/). I'd like to include his latest tweet: @@ -20,7 +19,7 @@ I'd like to include his latest tweet: > The oil industry buys off Congress. No action on climate. > Insurance companies buy off Congress. No action on health care. > Pharma buys off Congress. No action on drug prices. -> Money in politics is the root of our dysfunction." - Robert Reich[10] +> Money in politics is the root of our dysfunction." - [Robert Reich](https://nitter.net/RBReich/status/1532412155667984384#m) He's right. It doesn't matter what else we push for politically. If we can't get money out of politics, we won't see any change as long as it's against the interests of the wealthy. You can learn a lot more about inequality from him than me, since he has basically dedicated his life to it. I highly recommend checking him out. @@ -34,18 +33,18 @@ We hear about universal healthcare and free college tuition in other countries, ## The Transcontinental Commercial Cesspool For example, most Americans are not used to hearing that they live in a transcontinental commercial cesspool. I point it out and they just brush me off or say that's "just the way it is". Resist the urge to make excuses for a moment and consider it. We have advertisements on television, ads on the radio, ads along the freeway, ads at fuel pumps, ads in airplanes, ads at the movie theater, ads on public transportation, ads on store windows, ads on major U.S. social media and streaming services, logos on clothes, and more. People living in urban centers see thousands of ads per day. Does that seem reasonable? -Since I use free software[11] almost exclusively with ad blockers, I'm insulated from online advertising. But when I go out into the world, I still see ads. When I get in a car and the radio comes on, I hear them. When I drive anywhere, they're in my peripheral vision. If I didn't want to see any ads, I'd probably have to gouge my eyes and ears out. I only buy what I need, so ads have no relevance to me. I've only bought maybe one two things I saw in ads in my entire life, yet I'm sure I've seen thousands of ads. So they're just an annoying waste of my attention. Advertising was not always this pervasive. +Since I use [free software](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html) almost exclusively with ad blockers, I'm insulated from online advertising. But when I go out into the world, I still see ads. When I get in a car and the radio comes on, I hear them. When I drive anywhere, they're in my peripheral vision. If I didn't want to see any ads, I'd probably have to gouge my eyes and ears out. I only buy what I need, so ads have no relevance to me. I've only bought maybe one two things I saw in ads in my entire life, yet I'm sure I've seen thousands of ads. So they're just an annoying waste of my attention. Advertising was not always this pervasive. I can't even get many Americans to acknowledge the problem at all. They think they've learned to tune out the ads, but the ads are still subconsciously influencing them. When you accept the dogma of extreme capitalism, you make excuses for the ads and to refute them I'd have to get into all the implications of it, but that's for another entry. For now I'll just point out there was a time in the past when advertising wasn't so pervasive and nothing bad happened. So we have to make it easier for people not to consume product by getting rid of all these ads and helping industries that rely heavily on advertising to find a different business model. And here's an idea: if an industry or a business can't exist without intrusive advertising, for instance telemarketing, then it shouldn't exist at all. If all telemarketing suddenly stopped, would anybody except telemarketers care? Why is nobody talking about how bad advertising has gotten? We need legal limits on advertising. ## No Right to Repair -Then there's the right to repair. See Louis Rossman[12] about this one. In the past, goods shipped with guides on how to repair them yourself with detailed diagrams. Companies didn't treat their customers like idiots who are too stupid to be allowed to fix their own stuff. +Then there's the right to repair. See [Louis Rossman](https://yewtu.be/channel/UCl2mFZoRqjw_ELax4Yisf6w?dark_mode=true) about this one. In the past, goods shipped with guides on how to repair them yourself with detailed diagrams. Companies didn't treat their customers like idiots who are too stupid to be allowed to fix their own stuff. Is it not insane that the newer vehicles produced today including cars, trucks, and John Deere tractors can't be repaired by their owners? You used to be able to work on your own vehicles, but not any more! Now you have to take it to the car dealership because only they have the tools to fix it. If you actually want to repair your own vehicle, you have to buy the old models. -It's the same in tech as well. Wanna fix your new laptop? Well you better take it to the laptop repair store because good luck taking it apart. Modern repairable laptops are still pretty niche.[13] If you want something you can actually repair, you have to research what you're buying first and most people aren't going to do that. You should be able to go to your local Best Buy and anything you buy should be repairable, but no. Instead we're stuck paying a quarter of the price of the laptop for a few replacement keys for the keyboard. +It's the same in tech as well. Wanna fix your new laptop? Well you better take it to the laptop repair store because good luck taking it apart. [Modern repairable laptops are still pretty niche.](https://frame.work) If you want something you can actually repair, you have to research what you're buying first and most people aren't going to do that. You should be able to go to your local Best Buy and anything you buy should be repairable, but no. Instead we're stuck paying a quarter of the price of the laptop for a few replacement keys for the keyboard. But companies are forgetting one thing: Once we buy something, it's ours! If we want take the risk of trying to fix something ourselves, then damn it we should be able to! It should be illegal to make products purposely hard to repair. The customer should have all the same information and tools the company repair technicians have. @@ -55,7 +54,7 @@ Thanks to extreme capitalism, we also have an obesity epidemic here in Burgerlan If you want to actually eat anything healthy, you have to stick to the edges of the supermarkets and resist all the temptation in the middle. People don't like to hear this, but the truth is some X% of the population is not going to be able to resist that junk food enough of the time not to be overweight and no amount of imaginary willpower is going to fix the fact. ## The End of Focused Attention -The same thing is happening with focused attention all over the world. Johann Hari's book Stolen Focus[14] is a fantastic analysis of why people are having so much trouble paying attention these days. We all know social media and technology are personalized to be maximally addictive in a way no previous media platforms were able to be. And, like food, we know that X% of the population just isn't going to be able to resist doom scrolling no matter what. And that X seems scarily high. +The same thing is happening with focused attention all over the world. Johann Hari's book [Stolen Focus](https://stolenfocusbook.com/) is a fantastic analysis of why people are having so much trouble paying attention these days. We all know social media and technology are personalized to be maximally addictive in a way no previous media platforms were able to be. And, like food, we know that X% of the population just isn't going to be able to resist doom scrolling no matter what. And that X seems scarily high. Whenever I see very young children playing on Ipads all day, giving their childhood to these huge companies that profit off of them, it depresses me. It's wrecking their brains. The thousands of engineers at Google and Netflix and Facebook have figured out how to hijack the brain's reward system and profit off of it. We are puppets pulling our own strings and we have no idea the long term implications of this on mental health. @@ -68,11 +67,11 @@ So extreme capitalism is literally incompatible with the ability to pay focused We have to make it easier for people to pay focused attention not by shaming them for "lacking willpower", but by removing the environmental factors that caused the problems in attention to begin with. To expect individual "willpower" to prevail on the whole over a systemic society-level problem is a strategy that will always fail. Should individuals still do everything they can? Absolutely. But we shouldn't be so focused on individual actions that we forget the true cause of the problem, which demands a collective solution. ## Bullshit Jobs -Extreme capitalism also means an unthinkable amount of human intelligence and creativity go to waste performing bullshit jobs[15] that either harm society or don't provide any real value. If you do find some job which uses your intelligence and creativity, then it might still be for evil purposes. For example, if you're a Google engineer tasked with making Youtube even more addictive to children. +Extreme capitalism also means an unthinkable amount of human intelligence and creativity go to waste performing [bullshit jobs](/2022/01/22/automation-bullshit-jobs-and-work/) that either harm society or don't provide any real value. If you do find some job which uses your intelligence and creativity, then it might still be for evil purposes. For example, if you're a Google engineer tasked with making Youtube even more addictive to children. When your population is drowning in student debt and medical debt they can never get out from under and paying sky high rent because of zoning laws and because there's no low income housing, you force intelligent creative people who would otherwise be helping society to do demeaning bullshit clerical and administrative work which doesn't really need done. -If you're in Burgerland, you won't necessarily get any benefits either. No paid vacation time. No maternity leave. No union membership to help you collectively bargain. Undemocratic workplaces where the decisions all come from the top down, not from the bottom up. No right to disconnect[16] so you're always on call ready to be interrupted at any moment of the day. Workers are subjugated while CEOs make record profits. +If you're in Burgerland, you won't necessarily get any benefits either. No paid vacation time. No maternity leave. No union membership to help you collectively bargain. Undemocratic workplaces where the decisions all come from the top down, not from the bottom up. No [right to disconnect](https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_disconnect) so you're always on call ready to be interrupted at any moment of the day. Workers are subjugated while CEOs make record profits. What's the alternative to this? Socialism. A society where nobody falls through the cracks, where intelligent people aren't forced to work bullshit jobs just to survive. A society where you would be expected to contribute back if able, but if you decided not to work because your job was evil or pointless or you weren't able to work, you wouldn't starve. You'd have the free time to do what you thought was important and contribute to society in your own way rather than taking orders from a superior. @@ -95,22 +94,3 @@ I am not against business or competition. But business is not more important tha # Conclusion I'm not advocating anything radical. I'm not advocating getting rid of capitalism, only extreme capitalism. Extreme capitalism will be humanity's downfall. It is not this magical engine of equal prosperity that libertarians and conservatives like to make it out to be and it has to be reigned in by a democratic (not plutocratic) government and replaced with socialism. That's my two cents. - - -Links: -[1: Is Beastiality Immoral?](/2022/04/18/is-beastiality-immoral/) -[2: On Transgender Athletes](/2022/03/27/on-transgender-athletes/) -[3: Private Online Shopping](/2021/05/12/private-online-shopping/) -[4: Abortion Gallup Poll](https://news.gallup.com/poll/1576/abortion.aspx) -[5: Glossary: Global Heating](/glossary/) -[6: Robert Reich](https://robertreich.org/) -[7: Robert Reich on Youtube](https://yewtu.be/channel/UCuDv5p8E-evaRSh542hDV5g?dark_mode=true) -[8: Robert Reich on Twitter](https://nitter.net/rbreich) -[9: Inequality Media](https://www.inequalitymedia.org/) -[10: Robert Reich Tweet](https://nitter.net/RBReich/status/1532412155667984384#m) -[11: Free Software](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html) -[12: Louis Rossman](https://yewtu.be/channel/UCl2mFZoRqjw_ELax4Yisf6w?dark_mode=true) -[13: Framework Laptop](https://frame.work) -[14: Stolen Focus Book](https://stolenfocusbook.com/) -[15: Automation, Bullshit Jobs, And Work](/2022/01/22/automation-bullshit-jobs-and-work/) -[16: Right to Disconnect](https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_disconnect) |