27 lines
10 KiB
Markdown
27 lines
10 KiB
Markdown
# Capitalism
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*"Capitalism is the astonishing belief that the most evil among men will for the nastiest motives work for the benefit of all."*
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Capitalism is the worst economic system we've yet seen in the history,^[source](logic.md) literally based on pure greed and artificially sustained conflict between people (so called [competition](competition.md)), abandoning all morals and putting money and profit (so called [capital](capital.md)) above everything else including preservation of life itself, capitalism fuels the worst in people and forces them to compete and suffer for basic resources. Capitalism goes against progress (see e.g. [antivirus paradox](antivirus_paradox.md)), [good technology](lrs.md), freedom, it supports immense waste of resources, wars, abuse of people, destruction of environment, decline of morals, invention of [bullshit](bullshit.md) (bullshit jobs, bullshit laws, ...), [torture](marketing.md) of people and animals and much more. Nevertheless, it's been truthfully stated that "it is now easier to imagine the end of all life than any substantial change in capitalism."
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Capitalism produces the [worst imaginable technology](capitalist_software.md) and rewards people for [being cruel to each other](entrepreneur.md). It points the direction of society towards a [collapse](collapse.md) and may very likely be the [great filter](great_filter.md) of civilizations; in capitalism people de-facto own nothing and become wholly dependent on corporations which exploit this fact to abuse them as much as possible. This is achieved by [slowly boiling the frog](slowly_boiling_the_frog.md). No one owns anything, products become services (your car won't drive without Internet connection and permission from its manufacturer), all independency and decentralization is lost in favor of a highly fragile and interdependent economy and infrastructure of services. Then only a slight break in the chain is enough to bring the whole civilization down.
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**The underlying issue of capitalism is [competition](competition.md)** -- competition is the root of all evil in any social system, however capitalism is the 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 system with **Darwinian evolution** 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. 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.
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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 evolved -- 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 given tools such as weapons of mass destruction, tools for implementing slavery etc. It is natural in the same way in which wars, murders, bullying and deadly diseases are natural. It is the most primitive system imaginable, it is uncontrolled, leads to suffering and self-destruction.
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## How It Works
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Capitalism newly instated in a society kind of **works for a short time**, but it never lasts. Initially when more or less everyone is at the same start line, when there are no highly evolved corporations with their advanced methods of oppression, small businesses grow and take their small shares of the market, there appears true innovation, businesses compete by true quality of products, people are relatively free and it all feels natural because it is, it's the system of the jungle, i.e. as has been said, capitalism is the failure to establish a controlled socioeconomic system rather than a presence of a purposefully designed one. Its benefits for the people are at this point only a side effect, people see it as good and continue to support it. However the system has other goals of its own, and that is the development and constant growth that's meant to create a higher organism just like smaller living cells formed us, multi cell organisms. The system will start being less and less beneficial to the people who will only become cells in a higher organism to which they'll become slaves. A cell isn't supposed to be happy, it is supposed to sacrifice its life for the good of the higher organism.
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{ This initial prosperous stage appeared e.g. in Czechoslovakia, where I lived, in the 90s, after the fall of the totalitarian regime. Everything was beautiful, sadly it didn't last longer than 10-20 years at most. ~drummyfish }
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Slowly medium sized businesses will grow and become [corporations](corporation.md). These are the first higher order entities that have an intelligence of their own, they are composed of humans and technology who together work solely for the corporation's further growth. A corporation has a super human intelligence but has no human emotion or conscience, it is basically the rogue [AI](ai.md) we read about in sci-fi horror movies. Corporation selects only the worst of humans for the management positions and has further mechanisms to eliminate any effects of human conscience and tendency for ethical behavior; for example it works on the principle of ["I'm just doing my job"](just_doing_my_job.md): everyone is just doing a small part of what the whole company is doing so that no one feels responsible for the whole or sometimes doesn't even know what he's part of. If anyone protests, he's replaced with a new hire.
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Corporations make calculated decisions to eliminate any competition, they devour or kill smaller businesses with unfair practices, more marketing and by other means, both legal and illegal. They develop advanced psychological methods and extort extreme pressure such as brainwashing by ads to the population to create an immensely powerful propaganda that bends any natural human thinking. With this corporations no longer need to satisfy the demand, they **create the demand** arbitrarily. They create artificial scarcity, manipulate the market, manipulate the people. At this point they've broken the system, it no longer works as before, they can do almost anything they want.
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This is a system with [Darwinian evolution](evolution.md) in which the fitness function is simply the capital. Entities involved in the market are simply chosen by natural selection to be the ones that best make profit, i.e. who are best at circumventing laws, brainwashing, hiding illegal activities etc. Ethical behavior is a disadvantage that leads to elimination; if a business decides to behave ethically, it is outrun by the one who doesn't have this weakness.
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The unfair, unethical behavior of corporations is still supposed to be controlled by the [state](state.md), however corporations become stronger and bigger than states. States are the only force left supposed to protect people from this pure evil, but they are too weak; a single organization of relatively few people who are, quite importantly, often corporation managers, won't compete against a plethora of the best warriors selected by the extremely efficient system of free market. States slowly turn to serving corporations, becoming their tools and then slowly dissolve (see how small role the US government already plays). This leads to "[anarcho capitalism](ancap.md)", the worst stage of capitalism where there is no state, no entity supposed to protect the people, there is only one rule and that is the unlimited rule of the strongest.
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Here the strongest corporation takes over the world and starts becoming the higher order organism of the whole Earth. It doesn't have to pretend anything at this point, it can simply hire an army, it can use physical force, chemical weapons, torture, unlimited surveillance, anything to achieve further seize of remaining bits of power. We can only guess what will happen here, a [collapse](collapse.md) due to instability or destruction of environment is possible, which would at least save the civilization from the horrendous fate of being eternally tortured. If the system survives, humans will be probably genetically engineered to be more submissive, killing any hope of a possible revolt, surveillance chips will be implanted to everyone, reproduction will be controlled precisely and finally perhaps the system will be able, thanks to an advanced [AI](ai.md), to exist and work more efficiently without humans completely, so they will be eliminated. This is how the mankind ends. |