Posts Tagged ‘capitalism’

What is the stock market? A central marketplace to buy and sell stock. The NYSE dates back to 1792. It was likely never explicitly stated that it’s a private club. Because of the term publicly traded company, many people probably assume the public interest is being served or that the stock exchange is a public place. It is not.

10% of the populated owns nearly 93% of the stock market. As the late, great George Carlin used to say “it’s a big club, and you ain’t in it”.

10% of the population…wow, and the government gave them how much bailout money in 2008?

I wonder how the public could have benefited from that money? Healthcare, pot hole repair, college debt forgiveness, homeless sheltering, food banks, community gardens, jobs programs, etc. But that’s going into fantasy land. A fantasy where the rich don’t get richer.

Is there a middle ground where the poor don’t have to get poorer?

It is something to see so much data and evidence pile up that America is living in a capitalist controlled oligarchy. The illusion of direct democracy fades for all but the heavily propagandized. Unfortunately the heavily propagandized is still the majority of the civilian population of America.

The evidence of that fact shows up every election season. Red vs blue, republicans vs democrats, neighbor vs neighbor. Tribalism weaponized to keep the unwashed masses fighting amongst themselves rather than looking upwards and their oppressors.

That third parties are still relegated to joke status because the duopoly has people convinced lock, stock, and barrel that they need to vote between the lesser of two evils OR ELSE, is also really something to behold every election season.

How many billions need to be spent on war and corporate welfare each year before something changes? Is there a number? Is there a flash point? Is there a turning point? Do we as a people have it in us?

It is easier to just get by. Take less and be lead. Settle on the sidelines and complain through small talk or comment sections.

However, it is also getting harder to deny reality. Even in a time of compounding misinformation and infinite propaganda, a study that shows that 10% own 93% of the stock market comes out. The same stock market that is used by every mainstream news source as the indicator of whether the economy is doing good or bad for the whole country.

So if 10% are doing good we’re all doing good? No. But every news anchor and every politician in America talks about how good or bad the economy is doing based on how the stock market is doing. So what does it mean if the stock market is doing good, 10% of the population are doing good, the media and politicians all in unison say we are doing good as a whole, but the vast majority are experiencing the toughest times of the past century?

Wage slaves with Stockholm Syndrome that wrongly identify themselves as capitalists love to use theory as a defense to the practical horrors and injustices of late stage capitalism that we’re currently living in.

The most frequent meme of this is when they use pictures or scenes from capitalist economies as a visual aide to show the theoretical horrors of socialism.

Those types also like to ignore the socialized aspects of many developed, first world countries throughout Europe and South America. They play dumb when you bring up Universal Basic Income and the results of the studies and trial programs that have been enacted over the past decade. They play dumber when you ask them about tax cuts and bailouts for billionaires and corporations.

What’s the difference between feudalism and historic income inequality and wealth gaps under capitalism?

Technology.

Humanity posses the technology to ease the burden of work of the individual so they may devote more of their life to things other than “earning a living”.

Yet the small minority of people with the greatest concentration of wealth, resources, and therefore power choose to use this technology as a weapon against the masses rather than an aide by forcing competition amongst the people and the technology that can do their jobs better, faster, and cheaper.

What of the people at direct risk of homelessness and starvation because of technology being weaponized against them rather than being put to use for their benefit? Well I guess there’s always prison. And prison labor is the cheapest labor of all.

There are so many things in life that we just don’t think about.

So many physical things that exist that we don’t think about. So many phrases in our language that we don’t think about.

Cost of Living.

The term implies that we don’t deserve to live. We don’t deserve to be alive. So much for the pro-choice crowd. Once the fetus is born, its on its own.

Self help gurus and the toxic positivity crowd like to talk about what a statistical miracle it is to be alive. Good for content, great for someone whose doing well in life to feel even better about themselves. That concept smacks into a brick wall of the externally, measurable, physical reality of any capitalist controlled civilization.

The paramedic will save your life and tell you that it was a miracle, then the clerk sends you a bill that puts you into medical bankruptcy. The politician tells you it’s a miracle to be alive in the richest country in the history of the world, then votes against universal healthcare.

Cost of living. Trade ⅔ of your life in the service of being to survive the other ⅓ while you’re not working. Five days on for two days off. Fifty weeks on for two weeks off. If you’re a worker with a white collar maybe. What is a weekend? What is a holiday? Sick days? Suck it up and turn your gear on the machine plebe.

Cost of living. You mean the mental and emotional toll that simply existing, maintaining sanity and decorum takes on us? You mean the unanswerable questions about existence? What is consciousness? What happens when we die?

The consequences of the body decaying as we get older as the positive alternative to dying young? The feeling of being alone in rooms full of strangers? Wondering if anyone will ever really get us? Not knowing who we can actually trust? Why do bad things happen to good people? Why does absolute power corrupt absolutely? What does living up to my potential mean? Are we alone in the universe? Isn’t there a risk of dying at any moment? That cost of living?

No, not the immaterial cost of living. The other one. The material cost of living. The one that says if you don’t trade your time for money often enough, for enough quantity, you’ll be left to die of dehydration and starvation on the streets. That cost of living.

Why does it seem like climate change is only getting worse?

Why do the institutions, organizations, and countries that can have the greatest impact only pay lip service to combatting climate change?

Why is that even regular everyday people who aren’t skeptics seem apathetic to the prospects of positively reversing climate change?

Capitalism.

Profit motive > anything & everything

Until the many are able to unite against the few, things are only moving in one direction.

Getting people to understand that countries and cultures that are completely identified with capitalism are not going to change positively because the changes required to change would require a temporary loss in profits in large amounts for large quantities of current beneficiaries of the capitalist system.

And we know how we human can justify doing the wrong thing if it benefits us. Every human being has done it at some point in their life. An action either on purpose or on accident that negatively impacts another person or thing. But we believe we’re a good person, we didn’t mean it, we deserve better, etc.

Just scale that up to that of communities, countries, civilizations and corporations.

An aspect of human nature that works in our favor on tackling climate change is the inner drive humans have to help each other. You see it all the time when disaster strikes. There are always helpers. People helping people.

There is no benefit to losing faith in humanity. There are enough of us who want to help each other on a mass scale by helping the planet. There are enough people on the wrong side of capitalist policies to unite and drive change forward. That is where my hope lays.

I am regularly around people not from America. I enjoy it. I enjoy different perspectives and experiences and perceptions and opinions.

One of my favorite things about regularly being around foreigners is their reactions when they see American political advertising aka campaign commercials. Which is common because election season in America never ends now, since it’s a set it and forget it emotional trigger and decisiveness tool for the unwashed masses.

After they see one or two…dozen…political ads in an hour, they’ll inevitably start asking the people around them what they think of politics, what they think of democracy, what they are thinking about the upcoming election, etc.

If/when they ask me, my answer is a sloppy version of the following; American politics is theater for the capitalist oligarchy and the military industrial complex to give the masses the illusion of choice, control and influence.

If I’m talking to a European, they quickly understand what I’m talking about. If it’s an Australian or South American, there is usually an explanation of what an oligarchy is and that the MIC is and how they are the shadow authoritarian government and have been for a minimum of half a century.

Any doubt or skepticism towards that can be directed towards the 2008 bank bailouts, 2020 TARP bailouts, the volume of assassinations of anti-war organizers in the 1960s, and of course the never ending wars we have never ending money for while homelessness and wealth inequality reach all time highs in the richest country in the history of the planet.

I remember in the 90’s when Jessie Ventura became governor of Minnesota as an independent. When asked why he was an independent he said that the only difference between a democrat and a republican is the speed at which their knees hit the ground when their donors walk into the room.

Those who would say that America is a democracy and isn’t a corporate captured, authoritarian state; would also openly admit how corrupt Washington is. They would call me a conspiracy theorist, and then complain about how nothing ever seems to get done in Washington. Drain the swamp! But we live in a direct democracy. What does duopoly mean anyways?!

As long as we’re blaming the rank and file voters of the opposite party, obsessing over pronouns, or thinking an ex billionaire game show host is to blame for all of our problems, then we certainly won’t have the mental capacity to comprehend the people who control the currency, the land, the bombs and the resources are the ones controlling the government and that the combination of the two controls our lives.

Because then we would have to admit that we aren’t free, we own nothing, we have no rights. And I know from repeated experience, that ignorance…is…bliss.