Update

capitalism.md

@@ -12,7 +12,7 @@ Capitali$m is the worst socioeconomic system we've yet seen in [history](history
 
 **The underlying issue of capitalism is [competition](competition.md)** and conflict -- competition is the root of all evil in any social system, however capitalism is the absolute glorification of competition, amplification of this evil to maximum. It is implemented by setting and supporting a very stupid idea that **everyone's primary and only goal is to be self-benefit**, i.e. maximization of capital. This is combined with the fact that the environment of [free market](free_market.md) is a an **[evolutionary system](evolution.md)** which through natural selection extremely effectively and quickly optimizes the organisms (corporations) for achieving this given goal, i.e. generating maximum profit, on the detriment of all other values such as wellbeing of people, sustainability or morality. In other words capitalism has never promised a good society, it literally only states that everyone should try to benefit oneself as much as possible, i.e. defines the [fitness function](fitness_function.md) purely as the ability to seize as many resources as possible, and then selects and rewards those who best implement this function, i.e. those we would call sociopaths or "dicks", and to those is given the power in society. Yes, this is how nature works, but it must NOT be how a technologically advanced civilization with unlimited power of destruction should work. In other words we simply get what we set to achieve: find entities that are best at making profit at any cost. The inevitable decline of society can not possibly be prevented by laws, any effort of trying to stop evolution by inventing artificial rules on the go is a battle against nature itself and is extremely naive, the immense power of the evolutionary system that's constantly at work to find ways to bypass or cancel laws in the way of profit and abuse of others will prevails just as life will always find its way to survive and thrive even in the worst conditions on Earth. Trying to stop corporations with laws is like trying to stop a train by throwing sticks in its path. The problem is not that "people are dicks", it is that we choose to put in place a system that rewards the dicks, a system that fuels the worst in people and smothers the best in them.
 
-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.
+Even though by now a good few years have already gone by since the times of [Marx](marx.md)/Engels and capitalism has meanwhile reached yet a next level stage with countless disastrous issues Marx couldn't even have foreseen, it is useful to remind ourselves of one of the basic and earliest features 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 essentially 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, 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 }
 
@@ -47,7 +47,7 @@ Proceeding with the valid analogy between capitalism and [cancer](cancer.md), we
 
 **In capitalism only [idiots](npc.md) survive** because idots are those who capitalism can exploit and therefore those it protects (so that it can keep abusing them and making them miserable). Idiots are the conformists, those who accept lifelong slavery and misery, take loans, consume and don't cause trouble -- for that they are allowed to have kids, get healthcare, food etc. The smart do not survive in capitalism as those are not wanted.
 
-**On capitalism and [Jews](jew.md)**: rightists believe the issues caused by capitalism are really caused by Jews and that somehow getting rid of Jews will fix society -- actually this is not entirely accurate; white rightists want to remove Jews so that they (the white [race](race.md)) can take their place in ruling the society, so they don't actually want to fix or remove capitalism (on the contrary, they love its presence and its mechanisms), they just want to became the masters instead of slaves. It is definitely true Jews are overrepresented in high positions of a capitalist society, but that's just because Jews as a race really developped the best "skills" to succeed in capitalism as they historically bet on the right cards (focus on trade and money, decentralization of business, spread across the world and globalization, ...) and really evolved to the race best suited for the winners of the capitalist game. So while the rightist may be correct in the observation that Jews are winning the game, [we](lrs.md) of course cannot agree with their supposed "fix" -- we do not want to remove the slave masters and replace them with different ones, we want to get rid of capitalism, the unethical system itself which enables slavery in the first place.
+**On capitalism and [Jews](jew.md)**: rightists believe the problems seen in capitalism are really caused by Jews and that somehow getting rid of Jews will fix society -- actually this is not entirely accurate; white rightists want to remove Jews so that they (the white [race](race.md)) can replace them in ruling the society, so they don't actually want to fix or remove capitalism (on the contrary, they love its presence and its mechanisms), they just want to became the masters instead of slaves. It is definitely true Jews are overrepresented in high positions of a capitalist society, but that's just because Jews as a race really developed the best "skills" to succeed in capitalism as they historically bet on the right cards (focus on trade and money, decentralization of business, spread across the world and globalization, ...) and really evolved to the race best suited for the winners of the capitalist game. So while the rightist may be correct in the observation that Jews are winning the game, [we](lrs.md) of course cannot agree with their supposed "fix" -- we do not want to remove the slave masters and replace them with different ones, we want to get rid of capitalism, the unethical system itself which enables slavery in the first place.
 
 { There is a famous 1988 movie called *They Live* which, while being a funny alines'n'stuff B movie, actually deeply analyzes and criticizes capitalism and for its accurate predictions of the future we now live in became a cult classic. It's been famously said that *They Live* is rather a documentary. I highly recommend giving it a watch. Also the 1985 movie Brazil is excellent. ~drummyfish }
 
@@ -153,6 +153,7 @@ At this point basically anything else is better. But we here advocate [less reta
 
 ## See Also
 
+- [money](money.md)
 - [the great trap](great_trap.md)
 - [dystopia](dystopia.md)
 - [fascism](fascism.md)