Update

capitalism.md

@@ -14,7 +14,7 @@ Capitali$m is the worst socioeconomic system we've yet seen in [history](history
 
 Even though nowadays quite a lot of time has passed since times of [Marx](marx.md) and capitalism has evolved to a stage with countless disastrous issues Marx couldn't even foresee, it is useful to mention one of the basic and earliest issues identified by Marx, which is that economically capitalism is based on **stealing the [surplus](surplus.md) value**, i.e. abuse of workers and consumers by owners of the means of production (factories, tools, machines etc.) -- a capitalist basically takes money for doing nothing, just for letting workers use tools he proclaims to own (a capitalist will proclaim to "own" land that he never even visited, machines he didn't make as they were developed over centuries, nowadays he even claims to own [information and ideas](intellectual_property.md)) -- as [Kropotkin](kropotkin.md) put it: the working man cannot purchase with his wage the wealth he has produced. This allows a capitalist oppressor to make exponentially more money for nothing and enables existence of monstrously rich and powerful individuals in a world where millions are starving -- consider for example that nowadays there are people who own hundreds of buildings and cars plus a handful of private planes and a few private islands. It is not possible for any single human to work an equivalent of effort that's needed to produce what such an individual owns, even if he worked 24 hours a day for his whole life, he wouldn't get even close to matching the kind of effort that's needed to build the hundreds of buildings he owns -- any such great wealth is always stolen from countless workers whose salary is less than what's adequate for their work and also from consumers who pay more than it really costs to manufacture the goods they buy. Millions of people are giving their money (resources) for free to someone who just proclaims to "own" tools and even natural resources that have been there for billions of years. The difference in wealth and privileges this wealth provides divides society into antagonist classes that are constantly at war -- traditionally these classes are said to be the **[bourgeoisie](bourgeoisie.md)** (business owners, the upper class) and the **[proletariat](proletariat.md)** (workers, the lower class), though under modern capitalism the division of society is not so simple anymore -- there are more classes (for example small businesses work for larger businesses) but they are still all at war.
 
-Nowadays **capitalism is NOT JUST an economic system** anymore. Technically perhaps, however in reality it takes over society to such a degree that it starts to redefine very basic social and moral values to the point of taking the role of a [religion](religion.md), or better said a brainwashing cult in which people are since childhood taught (e.g. by constant daily exposure to private media) to worship economy, brands, engage in cults of personalities (see myths about godlike entrepreneurs) and [productivity](productivity.md) (i.e. not usefulness, morality, efficiency or similar values, just the pure ability to produce something for its own sake). Close minded people will try to counter argue in shallow ways such as "but religion has to have some supernatural entity called God" etc. Again, technically speaking this may be correct, but if we don't limit our views by arbitrary definitions of words, we see that the effects of capitalism on society are [de facto](de_facto.md) of the same or even greater scale than those of religion, and they are certainly more negative. Capitalism itself works towards suppressing traditional religions (showing it is really competing with them and therefore aspiring for the same role) and their values and trying to replace them with worship of money, success and self interest, it permeates society to the deepest levels by making every single area of society a subject of business and acting on the minds of all people in the society every single day which is an enormously strong pressure that strongly shapes mentality of people, again mostly negatively towards a war mentality (constant competition with others), egoism, materialism, fascism, pure pursuit of profit etc. **Capitalism in a society ultimately leaves place for nothing but capitalism**, it seizes every place for itself, just like cancer, it will eventually smother religion, ethics, art, science, technology, culture, ... whatever it is you love you will have to give up to capitalism that in the end will only be making money for the sake of being able to make money; so a capitalist can really only be that who is either too stupid to see this or just loves the purely self serving existence of money more than existence of anything else.
+Nowadays **capitalism is NOT JUST an economic system** anymore. Technically perhaps, however in reality it takes over society to such a degree that it starts to redefine very basic social and moral values to the point of taking the role of a **[religion](religion.md)**, or better said a brainwashing cult in which people are since childhood taught (e.g. by constant daily exposure to private media) to worship economy, brands, performance, and to engage in cults of personalities (see myths about godlike entrepreneurs) and [productivity](productivity.md) (i.e. not usefulness, morality, efficiency or similar values, just the pure ability to produce something for its own sake). Close minded people will try to counter argue in shallow ways such as "but religion has to have some supernatural entity called God" etc. Indeed, capitalism has its own Gods (money, the successful entrepreneurs, corporations, brands, ...), fairy tales, myths and invisible entities (economy, the invisible hand, ...), rituals (entrepreneurs in expensive suits giving stage speeches like preachers, people making sacrifices for the economy, ...) and completely irrational beliefs (if you try hard enough you try hard enough you can achieve anything! listen to this tape before sleep to unlock the secret power of your brain that leads to success!). Indeed, if one tries to come up with a definition of religion that technically won't fit capitalism because he doesn't want capitalism to be a religion, he can probably do it, but it has all attributes of a religion and if we don't limit our views by arbitrary definitions of words, we see that the effects of capitalism on society are [de facto](de_facto.md) of the same or even greater scale than those of a religion, and they are certainly more negative. Capitalism itself works towards suppressing traditional religions (showing it is really competing with them and therefore aspiring for the same role) and their values and trying to replace them with worship of money, success and self interest, it permeates society to the deepest levels by making every single area of society a subject of business and acting on the minds of all people in the society every single day which is an enormously strong pressure that strongly shapes mentality of people, again mostly negatively towards a war mentality (constant competition with others), egoism, materialism, fascism, pure pursuit of profit etc. **Capitalism in a society ultimately leaves place for nothing but capitalism**, it seizes every place for itself, just like cancer, it will eventually smother religion, ethics, art, science, technology, culture, ... whatever it is you love you will have to give up to capitalism that in the end will only be making money for the sake of being able to make money; so a capitalist can really only be that who is either too stupid to see this or just loves the purely self serving existence of money more than existence of anything else. { Reading the Trash Magic manifesto, the author also sees capitalism as a religion, confirming this view is not just my own. ~drummyfish }
 
 From a certain point of view capitalism is not really a traditional socioeconomic system, it is **the failure to establish one** -- capitalism is the failure to prevent the establishment of capitalism, and it is also the punishment for this failure. It is the continuation of the jungle to the age when technology for mass production, mass surveillance etc. has sufficiently advanced -- capitalism will arise with technological progress unless we prevent it, just as cancer will grow unless we treat it in very early stages. This is what people mean when they say that capitalism [simply works](just_werks.md) or that it's *natural* -- it's the least effort option, one that simply lets people behave like animals, except that these animals are now equipped with weapons of mass destruction, tools for implementing slavery, world wide surveillance etc. It is natural in the same way in which wars, murders, bullying and deadly diseases are. It is the most primitive system imaginable, it is uncontrolled, leads to suffering and self-destruction.
 
@@ -42,7 +42,7 @@ The following is a list of just SOME attributes of capitalism -- note that not a
   - **artificial crippling of technology**: It is nowadays the norm to create a high tier product, such as a CPU or a car, and then artificially cripple some of the manufactured units (limit car engine power by software, burn parts of the CPU, ...) so as to sell them as a lower tier of that product. It is cheaper than to separately invent several tiers of the product. So it costs the same (actually less) to create a high end CPU as the low end one -- we could all be using high end CPUs, but the poorer of us are forced to use the forcefully crippled versions, because "capitalism".
   - **purposeful incompatibility in technology**: In market competition products of one company will often be incompatible with products of the competition on purpose, so as to discourage consumers from buying it. Technology corporations create their own "ecosystems" for consumers into which they are trying to lock them.
   - **[bullshit jobs](bullshit_job.md), invention of bullshit products/needs**: As automatization takes people's jobs, people try to keep jobs by creating artificial bullshit, e.g. "lack of women in tech" leads to creation of "diversity departments", politicians try to *create more jobs* by increasing bureaucracy etc. This is of course in direct conflict with the base goal of civilization itself of eliminating the need for human work. One online company even successfully sold literal excrement (which had no actual use, it was just marketed as "funny and cool").
-  - **preventing progress, sustaining status quo**: Capitalism is extremely hostile towards social progress (more leisure time, more social security, ...), i.e. the main kind of progress (all progress should eventually serve well being of people, otherwise it's just artificial self-serving burden). It is also, contrary to popular belief, against technological progress -- the established corporations want to perpetuate their established businesses and will attack and destroy new ideas that endanger it (i.e. electric cars vs fuel powered cars, food corporations vs the solution of world hunger etc.). Capitalism prevents realization of any idea that's physically possible but which is **economically impossible**, ruling out e.g. many solutions to global heating etc.
+  - **preventing progress, sustaining status quo**: Capitalism is extremely hostile towards social progress (more leisure time, more social security, ...), i.e. the main kind of progress (all progress should eventually serve well being of people, otherwise it's just artificial self-serving burden). It is also, contrary to popular belief, against technological progress -- the established corporations want to perpetuate their established businesses and will attack and destroy new ideas that endanger it (i.e. electric cars vs fuel powered cars, food corporations vs the solution of world hunger etc.). Capitalism prevents realization of any idea that's physically possible but which is **economically impossible**, ruling out e.g. many solutions to global heating etc. { In Trash Magic manifesto the author, a professional scientist, also shares his view that capitalism prevents innovation. ~drummyfish }
   - ...
 - **[fascism](fascism.md)**: Capitalism is based on fascism, i.e. extreme hierarchy and "tribes" of which each fights to death for its own self interest. This fight happens between companies themselves, between state and companies, different departments inside companies, between workers and employers, between brands on the market etc. Capitalism is a constant war against everyone else -- not even jungle has this much conflict.
 - **no long term planning, irresponsibility**: Companies need to make immediate profit, managers hired to new positions are expected to immediately increase profits and they don't come to stay for long, they have no responsibility, so they simply do whatever it takes to create immediate profit without considering any long term consequence such as pollution etc.
@@ -63,7 +63,7 @@ The following is a list of just SOME attributes of capitalism -- note that not a
 - **[censorship](censorship.md)**: One kind of capitalist censorship is so called [intellectual property](intellectual_property.md) (allowing "ownership" of ideas, art etc.), but there are many more, e.g. so called [moderation](moderation.md) of social media which censors specific political views (deemed "politically incorrect" and hence "dangerous" for the advertising potential or brand of the platform) or sharing of certain facts (e.g. those revealing unethical practice of the platform itself, negative reviews of its products etc.). Privately owned media lawfully censor and manipulate information so as to manipulate people in whichever way they see will bring them most profit. While "intellectual property" is marketed as "protecting intellectual workers", in practice it serves corporations and states to do whatever they want, from political censorship, deception and implementing surveillance (justified by "anti[piracy](piracy.md)") to legal bullying and implementing artificial scarcity ("no, you can't grow this type of food on your field as the plant is patented; only we can grow it and you have to buy it from us in order to live").
 - **[surveillance](surveillance.md)**: Companies want to analyze behavior of people, manipulate them, target ads, spam, train neural networks on their data etc., so there is a huge interest in applying surveillance. Indeed, this is exactly what we see in practice -- this is not even a conspiracy theory, cases of revealed mass surveillance are almost daily news.
 - **extreme [brainwashing](brainwashing.md) and propaganda**: [Marketing](marketing.md) reaches extreme levels in capitalism, utilizing advanced psychological tricks and repetition to the point of becoming a torture, with the goal of teaching people brand loyalty, consumerist behavior etc. Application of this brainwashing even on children has already been normalized. Entrepreneurs create cults of personalities. There is now even a "legit" job called an [influencer](influencer.md) whose sole purpose is in spreading corporate propaganda on the Internet.
-- **criminality**: This is a direct consequence of poverty, horrible working conditions, [fight culture](fight_culture.md) and overall diminishing morality. Poor people (the absolute majority in the system) become desperate and do desperate things -- of course, all blame is put on them, not on those who are responsible for their poverty.
+- **criminality**: This is a direct consequence of poverty, awful working conditions, [fight culture](fight_culture.md) and overall diminishing morality. Poor people (the absolute majority in the system) become desperate and do desperate things -- of course, all blame is put on them, not on those who are responsible for their poverty.
 - **instability**: Lack of long term planning, extreme interdependence, monopolies over essential resources, fragility of the market, increasing wealth gap, pushing workers to poverty while taking away social security, eliminating self sufficiency, extreme waste and other phenomena pose great dangers of market collapses, violent strikes and revolutions, running out of resources, destruction of living environment and other disasters and even societal [collapse](collapse.md).
 - **need for extremely complex market control and laws, burdening society**: As corporations are absolutely unethical and pursue evil goals such as enslaving workers and abuse of consumers, there have to be an extremely complex set of constantly evolving laws and bureaucracy just to somehow "make corporations behave". However laws are imperfect and corporations work 24/7 on bypassing them as well as on attacking and eliminating the laws themselves via lobbyist etc. This creates a constant, extremely expensive legal war-like game in which everyone has to take part, which is completely arbitrary and unnecessary and which eventually corporations will likely win.
 - **uncontrolled growth**: Capitalism is likened to [cancer](cancer.md) as it requires a constant uncontrolled growth which on a planet of limited resources inevitably leads to a catastrophic scenario.