Was reading up on the term Hikikomori on wikipedia just cause that was the first result that came up in search and noticed how it mentioned neoliberalism like once and other than that it had this tone of like “this is such a hard problem, there are various factors involved.”

Reformists always act like these things are super hard to figure out, but somehow fail to compare the system of power to societies where the issue doesn’t tend to occur. That’s the actually weird phenomenon, the feigned ignorance of anything that exists outside the status quo, not some people ending up as dependent recluses because capitalist society literally does not want to have a place for everyone and introduces scarcity on purpose; the fact that the daily operations of capitalism do not miss the presence of these people is a feature, not a bug. And in not missing them, it becomes very easy for them to exist apart from society. Society is not even meeting them halfway. Capitalists build a society based on “winners” and “losers”, where “winner” is synonymous with material success/power and “loser” is synonymous with material failure/isolation, and then act confused that some people exist in the “loser” category. As if they didn’t build the system to create and reproduce that dynamic.

But they need the feigned confusion because admitting that society is rigged to screw over a bunch of people means it also isn’t the fault of the people being screwed over. As long as they keep the confusion narrative going, they can point and say “I guess it’s a you problem.”