this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2024

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The insurmountable momentum of the systems we have in place will lead us to ruin. (lemmy.zip)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 59 points 1 month ago (4 children)

Not even this, it's increase profits next quarter.

Corporate behavior would be ridiculously different if they weren't so short term.

[–] Croquette 3 points 1 month ago

Corporate behaviour would be different if they were treated like the citizen they claim to be.

The prison would be filled to the brim, and we could release people that were imprisoned for smoking pot or something to make place for people destroying the planet.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

Where companies will sacrifice the next 2 years for a good "next quarter".

[–] [email protected] 54 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It's easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism.

[+] [email protected] -23 points 1 month ago (2 children)

The system we have right now isn't accurately described by "capitalism", and reusing the same word that describes the industrialization process is really tone-deaf.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

How is this not capitalism? It may not be free market capitalism since an increasingly small bunch of rich people at the top have way too much power over everything, but that's just what happens when the game of Monopoly nears its inevitable end.

[+] [email protected] -14 points 1 month ago (1 children)

For any reasonable measure, capitalism died at the 20th century. The thing around right now is a completely different organization than what existed from the 17th to the 19th one.

Just for a start, making a lot of stuff won't make you rich. If you just get capital, invest in some random production, and go to market, you'll almost certainly fail.

But also, the state hands capital down everywhere; freedom of initiative is severely restricted everywhere; most of what we call "capital" isn't past produced value. The last one hints at calling the current system "rentism".

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

"Rentism" is just the end state of that same game of Monopoly. Some own everything and everyone else just goes around spending what little they have on rent. The game didn't change name just because some people already won and it wasn't us. We sell our labour to the capitalists to buy the necessities of life from them, while they enjoy the surplus value generated by our labour. That's straight up the marxist definitions of working class and capitalist.

Just for a start, making a lot of stuff won’t make you rich. If you just get capital, invest in some random production, and go to market, you’ll almost certainly fail.

I fail to see how this isn't a feature of capitalism. Just "making a lot of stuff" never worked even in the haydays of capitalism. You need a valid business case and customers etc..

But also, the state hands capital down everywhere

That's the money you get every time you pass the starting square. It exists solely to keep the system functioning without the need for dramatic reform. If the tenants have no money to pay with, the landlords don't get their profits.

freedom of initiative is severely restricted everywhere

That's because the capitalists (people who own the means of production) have no intention to share their positions of power with the plebeians. Doing so would be against their rational self-interest. The state is a tool among many they use to perpetuate the status quo. Lobbyists and campaign funding are the most direct examples of this, but it goes a lot deeper than that.

most of what we call “capital” isn’t past produced value

Anything that can be traded for money counts as capital when even money itself can be used to manipulate the markets to generate even more money. Yeah it may well be some NFT or other such scam, but scamming is just a profitable business among others. To stick with the allegory about tenants and landlords: Owning a house is a profitable endeavour that generates passive income. The money generator box has some person inside who may at times complain about a kitchen appliance not working, but most of the time the thing just keeps generating capital for you despite the annoying whining noise coming from within. You may then invest this capital, for example in purchasing additional money generator boxes.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

People like to imagine "capitalism" as some machine entity that we can disassemble.

It's people.

People who either inherited or earned too much money through various means, nefarious or otherwise. They in turn have enough money to buy other people's decisions who are in a place to make these laws but also want more money themselves so they in turn can do the same.

The only way to change capitalism is a full system reset, and to enable restrictions on net worth. Every single position from president all the way down to the smallest assistant needs a full re-roll, no exceptions.

[–] weker01 1 points 1 month ago

It's easier imagining the end of the world than a full system reset.

[–] [email protected] 51 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Don't forget:

The problem is not that they choose to do this, it's that they're allowed to do it.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 month ago (2 children)

It's not that CEOs just happened to be evil. It's a material conditions problem. Anyone who becomes a CEO has tremendous pressure to become evil. You could even argue that the steps you would have to take to become a CEO are morally problematic. So the pressure to become evil starts early. As soon as you enter the job market.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Same for high politics btw.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago

Yes, but the difference is with politics things are more transparent and we have a choice. We can vote. With CEOs, we don't get a choice and no one really knows what goes on up there.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

Yeah, it's a 'trade'.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

The hand fits the glove

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago

More than allowed! The system (society at large, capitalism, etc...) forces them to think this way!

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago

Ed Zitron's podcast, Better Offline, has been discussing the rot economy for multiple episodes. The idea of "number go up" being the only metric that matters makes a lot of sense for how we got here.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago (1 children)

"If the customers are buying and the money multiplying and the PR people lying and the lawyers are denying, who cares if some things are dying!"

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

That song went too hard for Illumination Entertainment to greenlight it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

great title btw

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Or, y'know... Vote Democrat and have a chance to save your children from climate Armageddon.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago

I feel like "Vote Democrat" is 0.5 step forwards while "Vote GOP" is 50 steps backwards. Really wish we had ranked choice voting and a handful of viable other viable parties like other democracies around the world!

[+] [email protected] -15 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

Sure...we are not at all at fault. Our demand for disposable tech junk and cheap Chinese trinkets is the corporations fault. Tech corporations made cryptocurrency and set up crypto farms?

I'll give you oil corps all day long, but most of the rest is on us. We did it. We fucked ourselves. We demanded that the planet burn while we meme about climate change on Twitter, as it single handedly eats enough power to run a town.

Let the downvotes commence. Lie to yourselves all you want, but that doesn't makes us less guilty.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 month ago (2 children)

A lot of this can be attributed to corporations and the (b/m)illionaire class forcing us all into a position where we too have to try and find a way forward, and a way to get wealthy. Those needs lead to things like people working multiple gig jobs like Uber Eats; trying to monetize crypto or basically any hobby we can think of; distracting ourselves with junk because we can’t come to terms with the fact that our lives are all lacking because the ruling class is constantly draining us dry.

There is always a link back to the ruling class with these things.

Why are minority neighborhoods fucked? Because the ruling class doesn’t see them as profitable; because the landlord class sees their land as a commodity and drives them out, or takes over and continues to gentrify.

Why can’t anyone afford rent? Because the landlord class drives prices up simply because they can. What do people in desperate times like this do? They seek out what they consider “easy money” such as crypto, selling hobbies, etc. Drop-shipping junk on Etsy and even buying it for themselves.

We live in a country that forces downward pressure on everyone that isn’t swimming in money.

“But what about people in tech that get paid well?” — they are still trying to seek their own shortest way out due to constant burnout because of layoffs and “line go up” pressure. Yet again, the ruling class is at the root of the problem.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

For your last part in tech jobs being paid well. You might wanna mention how the tech companies worked with each other to keep salaries down by not hiring other companies ex-employees.

I would post a reference but I can't find the news article I read, this was sometime in the 90s and 00s. I'm sure there is some fuckery still going on. Google has really gone downhill since I can't even find it.....I used to be revered at my old job for my "Google Fu" and now I feel lost...

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

I’m in tech myself and am curious to check that out. It’s really become a rough and chaotic field. I was laid off myself for 3 months and have had to deal with all kinds of wild fuckery.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I don't disagree with that at all. What I dislike is when people try to fully "pass the buck" and play the victim when they are also part of the problem. Ultimately we agree at the core level. As I said, the problem are not corporations, the problem is the core concept of capitalism that puts us in a rat race and in desperate need for something, anything, to make us feel better about a miserable existence, as well as the oppression of a ruling class who's only interests are their own.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago

I understand your point. But I also feel that it needs to be taken in the wider context that our consumerist lifestyles were manufactured by those same corporations in order to sell more stuff. A good article about this. The individual can always try to consume as little as possible, but to truly break this vicious cycle at the societal scale, drastic measures would have to be taken in order to limit advertising (which is quite literally just propaganda to convince the masses to consume more) and other forces perpetuating the current situation. People can live without consumer capitalism, most corporations cannot. That's why they're hell bent on keeping the populace thirsty for their products through whatever means necessary.

[–] Croquette 1 points 1 month ago

The companies selling you junk are using psychology to make you buy their products. They have boiled down what makes you consume more, and what doesn't to a science.

You are bombarded 24/7 with ads and pressured to buy shit you don't need all the time so that the profits keep growing. This is 100% the corporations' fault

This is why nowadays, you see the same budget for marketing as the development of a product or service.

Remove the ads everywhere, and you will see consumption decrease.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago

Our demand for disposable tech junk and cheap Chinese trinkets is the corporations fault.

Yes, it is. With wages being paid by corporations so low and absolute necessities such as food, shelter, and medicine so expensive, most of us can't afford anything better.

Tech corporations made cryptocurrency and set up crypto farms?

They literally did, yes.

most of the rest is on us. We did it. We fucked ourselves

It's not every day you see delusions of grandeur, victim blaming and a mea culpa in the same sentence. Probably because that's ridiculous.

We demanded that the planet burn

[Citation needed]

we meme about climate change on Twitter, as it single handedly eats enough power to run a town.

Nope. No real person uses "enough power to run a town" to meme. That's corporations and billionaires you're thinking of.

Lie to yourselves all you want

Nah, no need. We have you for that.

[+] [email protected] -16 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Magical thinking peaks somewhere around blaming natural disasters on the profit motive.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Magical thinking peaks somewhere around blaming natural disasters on the profit motive.

Does it? We’ve pumped so much carbon and methane and other worse substances into the atmosphere (or into the earth, in the case of fracking) in pursuit of that profit and that’s directly affecting the severity and frequency of some of those natural disasters. Obviously natural disasters exist anyway, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t demonstrably making the situation worse.

[+] [email protected] -8 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Was the soviet union also pursuing profit? If we stopped having profit seeking, would that mean less carbon and other pollution?

If so, how do you figure? Do you not think economic activity would have happened if we’d been doing all our stuff from the goodness of our altruistic hearts?

Like, what kind of economic system doesn’t pollute?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago

The soviets were constantly trying to grow their economy to stay competitive with the US and to demonstrate affluence. They switched out the old capitalist factory owners for the new class of government bureaucrats and party elite, who then carried on running the system for themselves. The state owned the means of production. They pretended that everyone owned the state, but we know this wasn't the case. The soviet union was a state capitalist system.

If we stopped seeking profit, our economies would stop growing and subsequently our emissions would as well. Our system is built to rely on infinite growth. No bank gives out a loan without expecting that money to grow with interest. Infinite growth is incompatible with the material reality of a finite planet. What we would need to do now, would involve purposeful economic degrowth. I have no hope that this will ever happen since it would require a lot of people to consume less and we are used to a lot of bread and circuses. Whatever you define as "economic activity" is secondary to the survival of the species.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Are you sure? Think critically.