I'll take capitalism over any other "ism" any day. At least in that system, I have a chance to support myself in the manner I choose. Capitalism looks like a failed system until you realize it has been corrupted to the point of becoming more socialist. That is the greedy, arrogant few stealing all the wealth. Materialism is a disease that feeds upon itself if you do not have limits. If the last thing didn't do it for you, it's doubtful that the next thing will.
I only own a handful of things that are of import. My small library of indie books, my laptop, and my clothes. I only replace things when they've broken and I can't fix them. When I get my car paid for, I'll own it for the next 20 years, if not longer.
Anyone who believes that Capitalism is in and of itself bad, or worse than Socialism and or Communism, needs to watch Milton Friedman and Prager U videos on the subject. But they probably won’t! 🙏🇺🇸🙏
I think I can tell when the attempt at consciousness shift began. This was where I noticed it in my life. It was when Hollyweird turned "Greed is Good" into a mantra. Followed by the Kartrashian entrance and the onset of "Reality teevee". This was ALL about product placement. Shallow vlalues and ignorance went from there.
There's no such thing as capitalism it has never existed it does not exist it never will exist you can't have capitalism if you have a central bank you can't have capitalism if you have public property you can't have capitalism if you have public schools you can have capitalism if you have tariffs you can't have capitalism if you have borders you can't have capitalism if you have regulations you can't have capitalism if you have traffic laws you can't have capitalism if you have a so-called income tax there's probably another million reasons good luck with that. Capitalism is like Sasquatch it's everywhere and nowhere at the same time
We absolutely can, if we want, stop buying things. To say you can’t, is saying you have no control over your life. Some people like to be told what to do all of the time. My family isn’t that type. We only buy when we need, and then only after finding the best deal available.
Monsters yesterday. And yesterday, today. We seem to be thinking along parallel lines. Your well thought out ideas pair well with my wtf was that thinking ❤️👻
Maybe watching Adam Curtis' "Century of the Self" would give you food for thought. Pretending this is all one side or the other is far too glib a response. Yes, we have personal responsibility. But to view it as solely that is letting the power structure and their huge expenditure to create and develop want in us is leting them off the hook, and also ignoring the actual historical record.
Any discussion of how we consume that ignores the work of Gustav Le Bon or Edward Bernays is sadly missing the mark by quite some margin.
Yes but you see and we all see, indeed we must be controlled it seems. Morality, Community, Family, Fathers, reputation, religion, personal violence between men over Honor, the sense of something sacred all held us in “Freedom” from Force, always the last resort. Laws and Force should be the penultimate means , Force ultima ratio…
… except if everything, certainly every American mainstream church for example is for sale..
… then force it is…
You may say count me out if you’ll restrict human freedom…
Oh very well, the people see chaos and will demand order, and they’ll get it. This being usually how democracy ends, and here we are… crying for a Caesar, so desperate we paint his face on a PT Barnum , aka Orange Man.
A proper one will come to follow our comic Gracchus.
As for the market and its amorality, it seems we’ve had enough of that too.
Materialism is part of the search for happiness. That's how I see it and always have. The right to life, liberty and what was termed happiness is in many places been interpreted to mean property. And it is a PURSUIT. Most folks who gain much riches find that it didn't make them happy. So then they turn to the sordid pursuits. I know that if I were as rich as someone like Elon Musk, I'd have a full time job being a guy who would give gifts to people like walk up when I saw a family buying groceries in Walmart, pay their grocery bill. I've done that in restaurants. Saw a family sitting there with a few children and paid their bill for them and they never new it until they went to check out. It's actually fun and makes me happy.
This is a simple and elegantly argued takedown of castigating K-isms critics. But we live in such a moralistic society for literally everything, it stands to reason that people will put a moral judgement on our materialism. But in every case, where there is economic freedom, social freedom and freedom from government follows. So people who value centralized planning and power (to create utopia) will naturally push the belief that a free market is to be treated with disdain.
Read the original Free Market works. It assumes that it is immoral to place borders on movements of people. Immoral to stop the importation of goods, or the exportation of factories. Immoral to stop monopolies. Immoral to stop anything that would hinder the businessman from making the most money - capitalism.
So, what would you do if your freedom means you don’t have any choices BUT to buy the cheap plastic goods, with whatever wages you can earn, with whatever job is left over after they deported all the factories to overseas and imported all the cheap labor they could?
This is all in Adam Smith and Ricardo. It’s ALL RIGHT THERE in the founding stuff, and it WRECKED revolutionary France, causing multiple bread riots.
So, when China starts enacting bans against high frequency trading at the beginning and end of the day, and putting limits on short selling… With the point to limit how much market makers with AI can screw over the plebs… And people with Capitalism!(TM) yay! in their heads start screaming about how China is communist…
I just scratch my head and wonder what planet they’re on, when China isn’t communist, and is just trying to look out for their common man as far as I can tell. With -regulated- markets.
Technology is an expression of our human-predator agency; we enjoy, we destroy. Not guilt-tripping. We like comfort & we like things that make our lives more enjoyable & meaningful.
I'll take capitalism over any other "ism" any day. At least in that system, I have a chance to support myself in the manner I choose. Capitalism looks like a failed system until you realize it has been corrupted to the point of becoming more socialist. That is the greedy, arrogant few stealing all the wealth. Materialism is a disease that feeds upon itself if you do not have limits. If the last thing didn't do it for you, it's doubtful that the next thing will.
I only own a handful of things that are of import. My small library of indie books, my laptop, and my clothes. I only replace things when they've broken and I can't fix them. When I get my car paid for, I'll own it for the next 20 years, if not longer.
There aren't many things I want, or need.
This an excellent piece, and I agree with your assessments across the board.
As to this line...
"Markets come in two flavors: those that are regulated and controlled by a central power, and those that aren’t."
I would say that any time you have a fiat, usury-based currency, controlled by central bankers? That is the very definition of the first 'flavor.'
Thus, we have not had true 'capitalism' here in America since 1913. Humble opinion, natch...
Anyone who believes that Capitalism is in and of itself bad, or worse than Socialism and or Communism, needs to watch Milton Friedman and Prager U videos on the subject. But they probably won’t! 🙏🇺🇸🙏
I think I can tell when the attempt at consciousness shift began. This was where I noticed it in my life. It was when Hollyweird turned "Greed is Good" into a mantra. Followed by the Kartrashian entrance and the onset of "Reality teevee". This was ALL about product placement. Shallow vlalues and ignorance went from there.
There's no such thing as capitalism it has never existed it does not exist it never will exist you can't have capitalism if you have a central bank you can't have capitalism if you have public property you can't have capitalism if you have public schools you can have capitalism if you have tariffs you can't have capitalism if you have borders you can't have capitalism if you have regulations you can't have capitalism if you have traffic laws you can't have capitalism if you have a so-called income tax there's probably another million reasons good luck with that. Capitalism is like Sasquatch it's everywhere and nowhere at the same time
We absolutely can, if we want, stop buying things. To say you can’t, is saying you have no control over your life. Some people like to be told what to do all of the time. My family isn’t that type. We only buy when we need, and then only after finding the best deal available.
Monsters yesterday. And yesterday, today. We seem to be thinking along parallel lines. Your well thought out ideas pair well with my wtf was that thinking ❤️👻
Maybe watching Adam Curtis' "Century of the Self" would give you food for thought. Pretending this is all one side or the other is far too glib a response. Yes, we have personal responsibility. But to view it as solely that is letting the power structure and their huge expenditure to create and develop want in us is leting them off the hook, and also ignoring the actual historical record.
Any discussion of how we consume that ignores the work of Gustav Le Bon or Edward Bernays is sadly missing the mark by quite some margin.
Yes but you see and we all see, indeed we must be controlled it seems. Morality, Community, Family, Fathers, reputation, religion, personal violence between men over Honor, the sense of something sacred all held us in “Freedom” from Force, always the last resort. Laws and Force should be the penultimate means , Force ultima ratio…
… except if everything, certainly every American mainstream church for example is for sale..
… then force it is…
You may say count me out if you’ll restrict human freedom…
Oh very well, the people see chaos and will demand order, and they’ll get it. This being usually how democracy ends, and here we are… crying for a Caesar, so desperate we paint his face on a PT Barnum , aka Orange Man.
A proper one will come to follow our comic Gracchus.
As for the market and its amorality, it seems we’ve had enough of that too.
Amorality it seems is not enough.
Here is your market value;
Mene , Mekel, Tekel <
Parsin. Weighed in the balance and found wanting.
The Shattering
It has begun
The smashing of old paradigms
Some that have been the foundation
For hundreds of years
Others that have held
For thousands of years
are being challenged
To prove they have any value at all
Or are they just chains
That many have proudly worn
For so many lifetimes
But we cannot fall back 12 thousand years
New paradigms cry out to be born
It is now
The Shattering
The Rebirth
Materialism is part of the search for happiness. That's how I see it and always have. The right to life, liberty and what was termed happiness is in many places been interpreted to mean property. And it is a PURSUIT. Most folks who gain much riches find that it didn't make them happy. So then they turn to the sordid pursuits. I know that if I were as rich as someone like Elon Musk, I'd have a full time job being a guy who would give gifts to people like walk up when I saw a family buying groceries in Walmart, pay their grocery bill. I've done that in restaurants. Saw a family sitting there with a few children and paid their bill for them and they never new it until they went to check out. It's actually fun and makes me happy.
This is a simple and elegantly argued takedown of castigating K-isms critics. But we live in such a moralistic society for literally everything, it stands to reason that people will put a moral judgement on our materialism. But in every case, where there is economic freedom, social freedom and freedom from government follows. So people who value centralized planning and power (to create utopia) will naturally push the belief that a free market is to be treated with disdain.
Read the original Free Market works. It assumes that it is immoral to place borders on movements of people. Immoral to stop the importation of goods, or the exportation of factories. Immoral to stop monopolies. Immoral to stop anything that would hinder the businessman from making the most money - capitalism.
So, what would you do if your freedom means you don’t have any choices BUT to buy the cheap plastic goods, with whatever wages you can earn, with whatever job is left over after they deported all the factories to overseas and imported all the cheap labor they could?
This is all in Adam Smith and Ricardo. It’s ALL RIGHT THERE in the founding stuff, and it WRECKED revolutionary France, causing multiple bread riots.
So, when China starts enacting bans against high frequency trading at the beginning and end of the day, and putting limits on short selling… With the point to limit how much market makers with AI can screw over the plebs… And people with Capitalism!(TM) yay! in their heads start screaming about how China is communist…
I just scratch my head and wonder what planet they’re on, when China isn’t communist, and is just trying to look out for their common man as far as I can tell. With -regulated- markets.
Technology is an expression of our human-predator agency; we enjoy, we destroy. Not guilt-tripping. We like comfort & we like things that make our lives more enjoyable & meaningful.
"...this argument is really saying is that freedom and political equality are to blame..."
In a 2021 survey one-third of Democratic voters (34%) said Americans have “too much freedom.”
But leftists don't believe that per se. They claim that as a reason to take away more of our freedom, and have more control over us.