It’s a frightening thought, but it may be that the only thing that saves us from Trump’s dictatorship is fucking Capitalism.
Capitalism is an amoral, all-consuming force that if it can will eat the whole world to “make number go up”…
And it’s still better than the Right.
Or…Capitalism offers money to people who will make things happen that make the rest of society feel more happy, safe, and satisfied. While most would be willing to do this, without so much remuneration, most would try to work by themselves. The economic incentive pushes them to collaborate and work together. And among those who would never work to help others, they’re suddenly interested and come to the table.
While not perfect, overall, you see a general trend towards improvement in our technologies and workstyles that makes everything easier, less dangerous, and more pleasant.
Assholes were assholes before. They’re still assholes, but instead of whipping you for a failure to obey, they offer you bonuses for extra effort and you’re free to shop around your skills to other bosses who are less assholish.
It’s only the worst system, until you consider all of the other alternatives that are worse.
And now it’s been removed:
A U.S. Park Police spokesperson told Washingtonian Magazine that the force assisted the National Park Service in removing the statue Wednesday at 5:30 a.m., “due to it not being in compliance with the permit.”
I’m sure that’s the reason - why would they lie to us? /s
Very strange, but:
(Looks at world)
Nope, that’s not it.
One might note the distinction between “people who will make things happen” and “the rest of society”.
Shouldn’t that be:
Or you know, the 19th century as a whole.
Unrestrained capitalism does not make the rest of society happier, safer, or more satisfied. It was some restraints - child labor laws, safety laws, overtime laws, minimum wages, progressive taxation, etc - that were imposed externally that allowed capitalism to really flourish.
Of course, many of the same things are getting dismantled now. And somehow, people feel less safe, happy, satisfied while the relative few capitalists on top of the heap are quite happy. Funny how that works.
It is. Doesn’t the parks department have some sort of review committee or something? It would never had been approved in the first place (I’m fine with it, as Joe Friday said, ‘Just the facts’)
Which was possible because there were enough people sitting around with the free time and access to information to review, deliberate, and refine the norms of society.
A bunch of individuals, each toiling over a quarter acre of land, trying to subsist from their own labor is nothing but a target for those who are willing to use force to bring people under their control one by one.
History is tens of thousands of years of everyone being treated as a slave. Over the last 200, that system has been slowly broken down and discarded. Some of that is thanks to electoral, republican government. But some is also due to the time and wealth that has empowered the average person to swing weight around. And that latter is a significant part of what lead to the former.
And now they can happily toil in a cubicle farm or the service sector for wages that barely cover their costs by folks that no longer need to use force to bring people under their control one by one while living lives that merely decades ago were the fantasies of kings and robber barons.
Which is in spite of capitalism, not because of it; the natural end goal of capitalism is a handful of ultrarich lording it over chattel slaves and enforcers. It takes the threat of force for there to be any other result.
I guess that’s one way of looking at it.
But history shows a lot of labor riots and the increasing popularity of socialism. It’s well and good to pretend there was reasoned debate and so forth, but fire and pitchforks are closer to the mark. And each of those changes was fought hard by wealthy capitalists and only grudgingly accepted when defeat became clear. Important to remember that.
Unfortunately, modern revisionists have forgotten this or at least think they can do it better this time around. I would have thought they’d be smart enough to remember and try to avoid a repeat of history. But expecting people to avoid the mistakes of the past would be too much.
Just remember: A Democratic socialist is still a capitalist. It’s just that Democratic socialists believe the economy should be run democratically to meet human needs, and not just to make profits for the very few.
I mean, sure?
But I meant actual socialism was increasingly popular in the 19th century and that led the West to adopting a lot of reforms to curtail that influence. Basically adopting some of it to avoid adopting all of it.
Or, that’s wrong and actually those reforms came organically because people with free time to sit around and think about society came up them independently and not because they were afraid of a mass socialist-inspired revolt by society at large.
What changed things was this,
Just in case, or, as they’re more affectionately known, The Wobblies.
Unions.
You can’t feed leopards with bare skulls, you horrible person!
Uh, hellooo, the leopard already finished eating, obviously. Too bad there’s no toothpick emoji.
Or maybe I could have done this, both to show the symbolic chain of events while making a meta-commentary on the state of MAGA nation…
You have to leave the skulls in or… they wouldn’t be crunchy.