Spatchcock wrote on Mar 10
th, 2019 at 2:57pm:
freediver wrote on Mar 10
th, 2019 at 7:22am:
This is not some kind of parochialism. You can see the great wealth that our capitalist economy has produced. The theory reflects people's efforts to understand what they see, but will convince no-one by itself.
All I can see, without going in to economic theory is that:
In order to pay for goods and services, such as food, accommodation, utilities, leisure, you need to have a mutually agreed exchange for goods and services. We use money. In order to get money, you must provide a service or product and exchange that for money. Therefore you must work to survive.
This does not mean capitalism works, it means you need money to survive, and the only way to get money and survive is to work.
And it only works for some. The capitalist system is exploitative by nature. However without an incentive to work such as salary or an increased salary to make life more comfortable by being able to afford more luxury goods, people will not work. Therefore, again, people are exploited by being enticed with things such as luxury goods and social status and facebook bragging rights that are impossible to obtain without dedication and effort. So we have a false "social economy" that is fully geared by peer pressure that demands for social inclusion you get the best job you can and buy the most expensive car you can, so that you have a higher status in society which is determined by how you feel others view you.
Your entire social outlook is warped and manipulated to sustain the economy. You are exploited from birth. Work is a competition to succeed. It is not life. Your life is for the sustainment of the system. It is not for you. And if you don't sacrifice your life for the system, the system will chew you up and spit you out and you will be reliant on welfare and food vans.
So in order to have a comfortable, or even adequate life, you have to sacrifice your life for the economic system.
Further, the further you go, as in the more you earn and the more you buy, the more exploitative you are.
For example, you go out and buy a $300 pair of shoes. You wear them on your feet. A $80 pair of shoes would work the same. But you can demonstrate your social worth as a person by this extravagance. At the same time, the person making or selling your shoes in the store is working minimum wage to pay the rent, and not always on time.
So you are exploiting their entire life, their existence as a human, to wear expensive shoes and eat expensive food and drive expensive cars, to tell everyone how great this is when you go out once every six months and put photos on facebook, and that they need to have similar irrelevant items to succeed in life.
This is what you are doing to people. Making them feel worthless and forcing them to prove their worth as a human by participating in this charade.
Sure, Spatchcock, but as you rightly point out, capitalism is a
system. Being a good exploiter is hardly a moral flaw within capitalism, it's rewarded.
Zuckerberg, for example, didn't start Facebook as a way to sell more stuff. Originally, he didn't want ads at all. But he got investment to grow, and companies joined up, and before long, Facebook became successful because it integrated into the system. Within capitalism, CEOs
must make decisions based on profit.
Zuckerberg did not support the work of Cambridge Analytica, but Facebook quietly granted it access to users' data. I doubt Murdoch supports South Park, but it's screened on Fox.
It is possible to exploit the system, but not if you don't turn a profit in the long run.
News Ltd, for example,
loses money on its print circulation, particularly its conservative broadsheets. The Australian costs News millions each year. These losses are made up by the TV arm of the company, which bail out the broadsheets. This is only possible with News Ltd's share structure, which gives Murdoch the majority vote. Otherwise, the board would get rid of unprofitable ventures like the Australian.
Murdoch, of course, uses print as a strategy. He uses it to get his choice of political candidate elected. Beholden to Murdoch, leaders then favour him in media policy. Fox News in the US does the same. Murdoch can't do this with Sky in Britain or Australia because the electronic media there is regulated. Print isn't. Murdoch is happy to make losses on the broadsheets to get politicians on side. This is how News works in a nutshell. It's a strategy designed to achieve a media monopoly.
This demonstrates the role of the media within capitalism. It
must support capitalism itself. Shareholders simply won't allow messages that sabotage their investments. The same is true of social media, which only agreed to self-regulate recently when it was shown that they were in danger of becoming a propaganda tool for extremists.
Extremists are able to exploit social media by turning a profit. The more extreme the message, the more views it generates. There are a number of companies re-spinning news to make it fit a far-right or far-left agenda. Some are even run by the same company. They then target their respective audience to generate ad revenue.
This is capitalism in action - generating any old propaganda to reach a market. Often, those writing the stories are politically indifferent. Even extremism is exploited within capitalism.
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