The human species has essentially been transformed into a giant machine to generate profit for corporations.
Under capitalism, humanity exists to serve the interests of the corporation. We are all livestock; beasts of burden used to carry margin expansion forward from quarterly statement to quarterly statement. Enjoyment of life has no value other than the extent to which it can be used to increase the net worth of the shareholders.
That’s why everyone’s so unhappy. We’re not living with purpose. We’re not working together to build a better world and a better future, we’re just pulling levers to turn gears to make the arrow line go up on the graph in the conference room. It’s a hollow, pointless way for people to live.
It makes our whole culture vapid and soulless.
Crosspost from https://news.abolish.capital/post/56355
I feel like the only way we could ever escape this is by going back to trading with actual goods. Money is the root issue. Because it isn’t worth anything by itself, except maybe fire tinder or goat feed, everyone and everything always needs to generate profit in order to do anything else than work, e.g. eat. And the profit part is also the issue. Everyone cannot make a profit, unless you create new money, which will make it worth less, and your profit margins need to keep increasing, which, again, everyone can’t do, and the cycle continues.
It’s just a flawed system in general, even if you use precious metal coins or something, those things don’t really have any inherent value to a human being. You can’t eat it for nutrients, can’t really use it as building material (debatable I guess).
We need to have goods for goods, and goods for services.
Life will be a lot more boring, but we’ll escape this hamster wheel, perhaps.
Or it will just bring us other problems. 🤷♂️
Edit: this also means we need to get rid of the profession of being a trader. Because they inherently only work to make a profit. As they pay for things, they need to pay under value and sell over value, because they produce nothing but profit for themselves. Everyone has to produce something or be entirely self-sufficient. It’s very difficult.
Having a monetary trading unit is not the problem. Trading goods for goods is not always an option because you might need goods or services from someone who has no interest in the goods or services which you produce. The main problem is when this monetary trading unit inherently and intentionally devaluates over time. Therefore if we just used gold we would be far better off.
Gold makes no difference because it’s the same as money. You need to make a profit of gold as well. It’s the same as being a trader. They add nothing except inflate the price of things for the service of being a middleman. It’s the exact same issue as money. And I know gold is a finite resource but it still doesn’t change the fact that you need to make a profit in order to live.
This is exactly the purpose of money, from the start. It’s something people attribute value onto, because it’s pretty (gold, that is) and whatnot. But it has backfired.
I think what I’m actually saying is that we need to be more self-sufficient, and limit our need for trading at all.
everything except communism
Sorry, I just woke up. It’s this answering a question or something? 😅
Let’s do a communist gift economy
What’s that? How does that work? 🙂
It’s how the economy worked in Australia before colonisation. It was explained to Me by an Elder from the central desert. Before colonisation, there was no word for work. There was a word for sweat. You put sweat into helping your community because you loved your community. Karl Marx explained it a little differently; he said: From each according to ability, to each according to need.
David Graeber wrote this book called Bullshit Jobs. A bullshit job is a job so pointless, even the person doing it believes it has no purpose. Some people with bullshit jobs don’t even have to do any work. They just sit in an office all day browsing Reddit and pretending to work. Graeber thought these people would be happiest, but they’re not. They’re depressed and unhappy. Turns out, humans have a psychological need to contribute valuable work to society. They need to help others.
A gift economy is the natural and proper state of humanity. Trading work for currency tokens is a dangerous aberration. Groups who live and work together don’t need to barter in order to cooperate. If you take people out of the capitalist mind prison, a gift economy is just what makes sense. We already have communism for children; we give them food, housing, clothes, and an education for free. But it takes a village to raise a child. So imagine if everyone in your community just helped each other the way we help kids. That’s communism.
I love it. Sign me up. I wanna go back.
I think we’re gonna have to have a revolution first. The capitalist state forces us to engage with the whole money system. We need to tear down the state.
Step 1 is to spread more knowledge of communism through your community. Step 2 is to use direct action and mutual aid to build a revolutionary group who see and practice the benefits. Step 3 is going to have to be a coup of the government by the people, where we smash apart the machinery of government.
Read theory
Excuse me, I’m trying to have an interhuman interaction here, would you mind?
Actually, I’m otherkin. I don’t identify as human, so it’s not an interhuman interaction
Ah, neat, I identify as a garbage truck, so therefore I am one.
😐
I know you’re being a sarcastic asshole, but I’ve put a user note on you in My client so I can remember that you identify as a garbage truck and respect your identity. Rducto ad absurdum doesn’t work on people who have consistent beliefs, and I consistently believe in treating people with kindness, so if you say you’re a garbage truck, I choose to believe you.
😆 I love it, I deserved that!
So if you go to the doctor with some kind of ailment, what do you say to them when they ask you about maybe your organs and stuff? Do you just say “are you a doctor for humans? I think I need a specialist.” Or do you concede that you are in fact a human being and let them help you?
Also not sure what you thought would “work on you” with your “consistent” beliefs. I’m telling you I identify as something I’m clearly not. Why is mine different from yours? Why is mine absurd and yours isn’t?
That’s a wild take. Profit isn’t the issue. Exorbitant profit is. Who gets the profit and how its used is. When workers are the state and own the means of production, profits can be planned and used to keep production lines running, decrease hours while increasing wages, paying more taxes for basic human rights such as clean food, air, water, quality housing, quality healthcare, quality education, reduction of waste and emissions, r&d of better ways to produce, better medicine, and more!
Profit is entirely the issue, profit is undue costs on goods and services above production requirements.
Profit is exploitation commodified.
With that line of thinking, no one would get a raise or improved quality of life. This is not a binary issue, unless you are talking about socialist production vs capitalism/fascism.
Like what was already said, life would be a lot more boring. But at least we’d be free of the hamster wheel.
And yeah, no, you wouldn’t get a raise, because there’d be no money. You can’t get a raise if you can’t make a profit, very correct.
Look, imagine these initial conditions: start with 100 people in a moneyless society. Give each person 100 coins. Now ask everyone to make a profit.
That means creating money out of thin air.
The system is b-r-o-k-e-n.
The current Western system is working as designed. Do you imagine a fantastical leap forward without any sort of transitioning steps from here to there? I’m working hard to understand you.
I know it’s working as designed — working against us.
I’m not imagining a leap forward, I’m imagining a leap backwards, to freedom before there was money. Sorry if this has been unclear all along…
Would you be so kind as to elucidate in some detail?I didn’t realize who you were until I scrolled up. Barter is cumbersome and greatly limits mobility. Do you propose means to overcome that?
I do not. Like I said, again, life will be a lot more boring and cumbersome. Trade-off.
Which is why ditching a capitalist system is also required. One should not have personal profits, one should have basic needs met.
Every dollar of profit is taken from the back of a worker further down the line.
Here you go: >When workers are the state and own the means of production, profits can be planned and used to keep production lines running, decrease hours while increasing wages, paying more taxes for basic human rights such as clean food, air, water, quality housing, quality healthcare, quality education, reduction of waste and emissions, r&d of better ways to produce, better medicine, and more!
Bolding added, here
State capitalism is still capitalism. It still works on the exploitation of those down the line at some degree, profit is not generated from thin air, it is taken from others earning less than their fair share or paying more than something is worth.
There is no ethical capitalism, be that private or state (states are also not the people) owned.
https://lemmygrad.ml/post/11887529
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/the-anarchist-faq-editorial-collective-an-anarchist-faq-full
It’s not state capitalism. If you’re interested in an understanding that differs from your preferred narrative, they are abundant on grad. If you can stomach it.
Did… you actually read the comment to which you originally replied?
If “socialist” production has profit, it is capitalistic.
Not wild at all. It isn’t even a “take”, just basic facts and logic. Everyone cannot make a profit. That’s just not possible.
Your scenario of workers owning the means of production and all that, they’d still be participating in the grand world scheme of paying for things with money. It doesn’t make a difference.
What sort of circumlocution is this? You are arguing against nothing I said.
I’m saying everything you said is irrelevant to the point I’m making. Sorry if that was unclear.
What fucking bullshit.
Profit is a goddamn lie. It’s MY FUCKING LABOR, anything bit returned to me and the crew after operating costs are covered is stolen wages.
Profit IS rent seeking, and requires that actual progress of the community be violently suppressed. People with an honest desire to help the community are forced to accept exploitative conditions that enable this theft, otherwise you starve and die.
Nothing good has ever, or will ever, come from the system you describe, since it CAUSES every god damn problem that it supposedly fixes. resulting in a vicious cycle of pain and more pain and nothing else.
It seemed to work in AES states well enough.