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The Black Mirror episode “Fifteen Million Merits” makes this point in a (typically) very chilling way.
Create a problem then sell the solution. Simple as
Infinite growth in a finite system is the definition of cancer. And like a cancer it will keep poisoning us, and must be cut out and eradicated.
I’ve always believed that capitalism is the default state of human exchange and the opposite of capitalism which I define tersely as empathy at scale takes effort.
Capitalism ≠ commerce
Not the greatest dude, but had a sick quote that sums up this post:
“The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them” - Vladimir Lenin
“A film like Wall-E exemplifies what Robert Pfaller has called ‘interpassivity’: the film performs our anti-capitalism for us, allowing us to continue to consume with impunity. The role of capitalist ideology is not to make an explicit case for something in the way that propaganda does, but to conceal the fact that the operations of capital do not depend on any sort of subjectively assumed belief. It is impossible to conceive of fascism or Stalinism without propaganda - capitalism can proceed perfectly well, in some ways better, without anyone making a case for it.”
– Capitalist Realism, Mark Fisher
Drag doesn’t believe in money. What’s capital gonna do about that?
ROFL imagine thinking punk rock is striking against the system.
If a system needs constant growth to survive it will eventually collapse.
Finally YOLO makes sense. Yes, capitalism indeed only lives once. It will have its lifetime, and then it will collapse and be done with. It will not come back, it will not be reborn.
Oh i know so many people who are into vanity. Everything goes as long as there’s no point in it.
This is why talking about things like government services just wash over conservatives. I was talking about transit and a common reply I get is “it’s not even profitable!”. It’s intrinsically linked that if it doesn’t make money, it’s valueless… it doesn’t matter if people use it, or if people need it, if it breaks even, or even if it’s designed to run at a slight loss because it’s value is more important than profit. People have lost the ability to understand that profit is not always the goal.
The view that public transport is not profitable because it does not directly turn a profit also completely misses the bigger picture. Imagine in a city where public transport operates at a loss, but provides transportation to and from work for loads of people. Without public transport, they’d have to switch to something like cars, causing congestion, causing delays, causing loss of profit for the city as a whole. Not to mention less time spend with your family or your hobbies, causing unhappiness, decreasing people’s desire to work to the best of their abilities etc etc. I could probably go in quite a while listing things public transport provides that indirectly works in favor of capitalism.
Not to mention the expenses that cities waste on the consequences of cars, like crashes and infrastructure maintenance.
“Capital has the ability to subsume all critiques into itself. Even those who would ‘critique’ capital end up ‘reinforcing’ it instead…”
very true detective
How do you fight against it?
My personal take:
No thanks! is the most powerful thing you can say. Don’t engage, stop buying endless toys and distractions, build a local community, hang out with real people in reality, share stuff and be kind. Maybe blow up a pipeline too.Edit: I didn’t see the comment below, it’s much better!
depends on where you live
On a larger scale? Through organizing and engaging in communities, politics and unions. No one can stop it alone.
On a personal scale?
Stop consuming more than you need. Maintain what you already own. Don’t buy it because it’s better than what you have, if what you have is already good enough. Buy second hand when you can. Lend and loan with friends when it comes to seldomly used tools.Buy maintainable stuff instead of the cheap copy that has no repairability (Think of the boots theory and don’t get tricked into spending more in the long term just to spend less now).
And the hardest bit would be to stop comparing yourself and your life with that of those around you, I think that the rat race is the main driver of consumption together with all that wealth peacocking.
Well put! And please go vegan. Exploiting and murdering sentient beings by the billions in an industry too gruesome to look at because you are accustomed to a taste is peak capitalist cynicism.
Buy my anti-capitalism book
And my anti-capitalism axe
How much?
Wait. Before you read their anti-capitalism book, you need to read my ‘How to Read Anti-capitalism Books’ book. If you act quickly we can get a BOGO offer with both books for only 3 easy payments of $19.95.
When you commodify all the people’s wants and needs, you commodify the people.
What are we to them capitalists but (wage) slaves?
See how in the US we wait to potty train until 3,4,5 years old, while most other countries potty train earlier. Gotta sell those pull-ups!
What? No we don’t.
Who does that? Most kids are potty trained by 3
Most, but the age has been steadily raising since the introduction of disposable diapers.
Many other countries have their kids potty trained by six months, as we used to.
i see 18 months, not 3 years.
6 months is absurd. Do you have children?
0% at 4 years; so I’m curious where “3,4,5” came from.
His claim was about the age at which potty training was successfully completed. Your chart is about the age at which potty training started. They’re not comparable unless you provide some additional data about how long the training takes.
4 & 5 from anecdotal data - friends/relatives in day care. Those are outliers but they do fit the trend.
Around 6 months is extremely common in places which use “elimination communication.” The article I linked described this.
I don’t have children but consider myself both an academic and personal stakeholder - ie, I’ve changed a fair amount of diapers and I have taught parents how to parent to reasonable success.
I personally was potty trained at 4 - as in, I have episodic memory of getting Pokémon stickers as a reward for shitting.
There’s been severe regression related to COVID too. The school district I worked at had to send out reminders to parents that potty training was a pre-requisite for preschool - and many parents put it off until the need to send the kid to school forces the issue.
