capitalism

"Capital has the ability to subsume all critiques into itself. Even those who would 'critique' capital end up 'reinforcing' it instead..."

very true detective

This is why talking about things like government services just wash over conservatives. I was talking about transit and a common reply I get is "it's not even profitable!". It's intrinsically linked that if it doesn't make money, it's valueless.. it doesn't matter if people use it, or if people need it, if it breaks even, or even if it's designed to run at a slight loss because it's value is more important than profit. People have lost the ability to understand that profit is not always the goal.

The view that public transport is not profitable because it does not directly turn a profit also completely misses the bigger picture. Imagine in a city where public transport operates at a loss, but provides transportation to and from work for loads of people. Without public transport, they'd have to switch to something like cars, causing congestion, causing delays, causing loss of profit for the city as a whole. Not to mention less time spend with your family or your hobbies, causing unhappiness, decreasing people's desire to work to the best of their abilities etc etc. I could probably go on quite a while listing things public transport provides that indirectly works in favor of capitalism.
- Not to mention the expenses that cities waste on the consequences of cars, like crashes and infrastructure maintenance.
It's because they're convinced, through their own experience, there isn't enough money to go around so we have to make more instead of use what we have wisely.

Aka send a plumber to the billionaires
if it breaks even, or even if it’s designed to run at a slight loss because it’s value is more important than profit.

If it breaks even it can sustain itself in a market economy (anything where revenue >= costs can). If it operates at a loss, then someone other than the user is having to pay for it, and that's usually where you lose them (because generally the answer is that you're expecting them to pay for it in part, usually through taxes).

This is also why they get so grumpy about things like welfare (especially the ones who are working class and barely getting by) - they actively dislike the idea that they should have to pay for their own food/shelter/etc and also help pay for your food/shelter/etc when things are tight and they're destroying their work/life balance just to get by and life would be meaningfully easier for them if they weren't paying as much in taxes (and they grossly overestimate how much tax money goes to SNAP/TANF/etc).
- Oh I know that, and the last point is what I try to drive home. That things like transit and food benefits are a fraction of a percentage of their taxes. I did amtrak for someone and realized it was less than 2 dollars a year that the person paid for amtrak, but them talking about it sounded like it was sending them right to the poor house. The military, on the other hand...

don't buy into the illusion that capitalism is so self-organizing and organic. it requires the direct protection and supervision of a nationwide military and a police force -multiple police forces actually - to protect capital.

I guess I tend to think that police, and power structures in general, are organic and will pop into existence spontaneously.

(I actually think power structures are going to be important to maintain a socialist society too, just not ones that serve the few at the cost of the many.)

"Oh, you're expecting capitalism to collapse into anarchy? Better BUY lots of food and antibiotics to stockpile for the collapse!"

Grinch smirk

Not the greatest dude, but had a sick quote that sums up this post:

"The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them" - Vladimir Lenin

To piggyback off your comment, a thread from Existential Comics:

If you want to make sense of the current political moment, and why electoral politics under capitalism can never, and will never, serve anyone but the wealthy capitalists, look no further than the most influential political theorist of the 20th century: Vladimir Lenin. A thread.

I highly recommend reading this thread. If you want an intro Marxist-Leninist reading list, I made one you can check out here.
I also like "My death comes by a thousand cuts, and I paid for the knife" - Dopamine by The Arcadian Wild

"A film like Wall-E exemplifies what Robert Pfaller has called 'interpassivity': the film performs our anti-capitalism for us, allowing us to continue to consume with impunity. The role of capitalist ideology is not to make an explicit case for something in the way that propaganda does, but to conceal the fact that the operations of capital do not depend on any sort of subjectively assumed belief. It is impossible to conceive of fascism or Stalinism without propaganda - capitalism can proceed perfectly well, in some ways better, without anyone making a case for it."

-- Capitalist Realism, Mark Fisher

Drag doesn't believe in money. What's capital gonna do about that?

If a system needs constant growth to survive it will eventually collapse.

Finally YOLO makes sense. Yes, capitalism indeed only lives once. It will have its lifetime, and then it will collapse and be done with. It will not come back, it will not be reborn.
- So long as we stick with our distinctions of "Mine" and "Thine", we will fall into a different sort of capitalism later down the road. In order to keep it away we need to stop looking at wealth as a virtue, but as something to give away.

Well, things would exist whether you're in a capitalist economic system or not. People would make music and label their genre. People would write books and want to sell them. The real difference is who gets the profits.

It's also how driven the profits are. All the choices on the way, are they directed for maximum profit or for good. And many things that are made didn't need to be made, and wouldn't if people didn't care to buy them. The effort instead could have gone into good things.
Sure, sort of. Commodity production, ie the production of goods purely in order to sell and make a profit, likely won't last forever, especially as the rate of profit trends towards 0.
I mean without capitalism they wouldn't have the concept of selling, so probably not.
- I love how you take the definition of relationship to labour, and make it about market places that have existed long before capitalism has.

When you commodify all the people’s wants and needs, you commodify the people.

What are we to them capitalists but (wage) slaves?
If we are being technical, people were already commodified with the origin of Capitalism. Capitalism requires Labor-Power to be bought and sold as a commodity on the open market, that's where surplus value extraction comes from.
Or, to look at it the other way round:

When you commodify people, you will commodify all their wants and needs.

The Black Mirror episode "Fifteen Million Merits" makes this point in a (typically) very chilling way.

Imagine watching that episode then going to a desk/office/cubicle job 5 days a week without going insane. Must take a shit ton of cognitive dissonance and shamelessness to voluntarily work for capitalists.

How do you fight against it?

Buy my anti-capitalism book
- And my anti-capitalism axe
- How much?
On a larger scale? Through organizing and engaging in communities, politics and unions. No one can stop it alone.

On a personal scale?
Stop consuming more than you need. Maintain what you already own. Don't buy it because it's better than what you have, if what you have is already good enough. Buy second hand when you can. Lend and loan with friends when it comes to seldomly used tools.

Buy maintainable stuff instead of the cheap copy that has no repairability (Think of the boots theory and don't get tricked into spending more in the long term just to spend less now).

And the hardest bit would be to stop comparing yourself and your life with that of those around you, I think that the rat race is the main driver of consumption together with all that wealth peacocking.
- Well put! And please go vegan. Exploiting and murdering sentient beings by the billions in an industry too gruesome to look at because you are accustomed to a taste is peak capitalist cynicism.
Organizing. The working class's greatest strength is that production under Capitalism readily makes the working class familiar with how to run society and organize even without a ruling class. Reading theory helps greatly as well, If you want an intro Marxist-Leninist reading list, I made one you can check out here.
My personal take:
No thanks! is the most powerful thing you can say. Don't engage, stop buying endless toys and distractions, build a local community, hang out with real people in reality, share stuff and be kind. Maybe blow up a pipeline too.

Edit: I didn't see the comment below, it's much better!
depends on where you live

This ties into the notion of interpassivity. This is when a piece of media perform an action for you (think interactivity, but exactly the opposite). An example is the laugh track on sitcoms. Another is the series or film performing your environmental or anti-capital activism for you. Frequently the bad guy is some big polluting corp, or some evil rich guy who wants to bulldoze the community center to put his Luxury Resort there. You watch the movie, feel all rebellious and sympathetic with the main characters, and go home feeling like you've done something, when in fact all you've done is feed Disney some more money. See also movies like triangle of sadness and the glass onion or whatever.

Mark Fischer's capitalist realism explores this and similar ideas in a much more comprehensive and eloquent manner than I ever could. Give it a read, it's quite short!

Thanks, I've been trying to remember this term and where I saw this concept for like 2 weeks!

Also, a related concept is recuperation:

The process by which ideas and actions deemed ‘radical’ or oppositional become commodified or absorbed into mainstream society and culture.

Think of the sterile critique of capitalism from the Fallout series (produced by Amazon).

"But capitalism is so efficient at growing!"

Yeah, but now capitalism has grown out of control:

Capitalism is the most efficient way to push wealth and power to the top

Well, we're leaving capitalism behind and switching back to feudalism. So I guess no more capitalism.

meta-capitalist game show idea:

you could do this in about any format. video, podcast, maybe even sets of still images.

The core concept is a bunch of ad reads for your sponsors. the sponsors are the contestants.

you use really good production values, but you get progressively edgier and more hostile to them as the season goes on. the prize is a free ad campaign for the last one to drop out/denounce you.

edit: alternatively, you create a weird contract, and use some sort of auction structure, where they each bid to the others to be the one who can drop out that episode. highest bidder wins and gets off the show, they all (along with some cut for the house, of course) split the money.

I...actually would enjoy that for a month. But I feel like whoever did it would eventually get lazy and comfortable from their riches, and so the advertisers would know what they're getting into. Alternatively, the person making would NOT get lazy, and would go for really really controversial topics, like holocaust-denial, or promoting child-rape. So either way, viewers would leave. I don't see a good middle-ground where it actually works.
- okay, I edited in an alternate structure that might fix this. tell me you wouldn't watch that, with stressed brand managers panicking over what they've gotten each other into?
- like holocaust denial, or child-rape
  
  yeah but nobody advertises to any sort of lefty, so those aren't controversial among basically every company's target market. I might be more likely to go for "glock: protecting trans kids since [year they were founded]" if I were trying to cause a problem for them.
  
  but you don't start off with that. you start off each season with stuff that's on the edge side of what a company would actual buy from an ad agency. then you get more and more. until it's paramilitaries marching blindfolded factory workers out into the jungle, then shooting them in the head, with full gore and horror and maybe one begging for their life. then a coca cola logo. coca cola: an american tradition.

Create a problem then sell the solution. Simple as

Sell the revolution.

How much would people pay for communism, how much for other forms of government?

Infinite growth in a finite system is the definition of cancer. And like a cancer it will keep poisoning us, and must be cut out and eradicated.

Capitalism made a treatment for the cancer.
- Capitalism took cancer research, funded by taxpayers and performed by graduate students and post docs for no profit, slapped a hefty price tag on it for the public, then called it "innovation" to justify the insane amount of money they were able to extract from the masses (the same masses that originally funded that research).

How much of this is capitalism, and how much of it is just trade?

Bazaars go back 5000 years, about 5000 years before capitalism. If you've ever been to a bazaar or a street market in a developing country, you know they'll try to sell you anything and everything.

Climate Change really picked up with the Industrial Revolution, alongside Capitalism. The M-C-M' circuit of continuous money growth and rapid expansion of industry was the driving factor, not people simple trading. The obsession with commodifying things previously produced for use, rather than exchange, has had wide-reaching impact.
- Would the industrial revolution not have happened without capitalism?
  
  Would the world be a better place if it hadn't happened? Would we be as technologically advanced as we are now? Would the internet be a thing already? Would all the science breakthroughs that happened at a greatly increased rate after trains across Europe improved (enabling better collaboration) have happened?
  
  Yes, climate change is a huge problem, and yes, it probably wouldn't be a thing if we still were limited to 18th century technology & lifestyle. But I doubt the world would be better this way.
Control of media and governments is a feature of capitalism/corporatism

Bazaar folks can only sell when you're physically there. The form of propaganda this post is referring to is more insidious.

I’ve been really interested in learning how to grow vegetables in my back garden. Somehow I just have this feeling that learning how to care about plants to make food (and not just because it flowers and looks pretty) will open my eyes to thinking about nature and the environment

At the moment, climate collapse is a conceptual issue to me in that “sure the days get warmer every year but it’s actually quite nice for me right now”, but I’m not as in tune with my environment to really notice how it’s impacting us.

Growing veg also feels like it has a higher pay off than just the cost price of a single unit of veg. There’s probably some nutritional benefit to it, knowledge etc that does beyond the price of buying an onion from the shop. I think getting in touch with this principle is the key to getting out of the ruthless capitalism structure

Basically, if we all just stopped buying shit and learnt how to fix and make shit ourselves our experiences of the things we attach ourselves to would be so much more authentic

You don’t have to buy doc martens because you feel like a rebel.

Punk Rock itself is not a product of capitalism.
Album and ticket sales are.

Kid named Guy Debord:

I think capitalism falls neatly into the concept of Moloch.

A lot of the commentators say Moloch represents capitalism. This is definitely a piece of it, even a big piece. But it doesn’t quite fit. Capitalism, whose fate is a cloud of sexless hydrogen? Capitalism in whom I am a consciousness without a body? Capitalism, therefore granite cocks?

I love SSC.

Well it can't commodify me! Oh wait.

Sorry, I got myself worked up.

do you sell your labor on the job market?
- Grr

minimalism is so funny to me.

Like you're buying shit so you can not buy things? Yeah ok buddy.

That is fake minimalism. Minimalism in practice is donating stuff you don't need and not buying stuff unless you truly need it and will use it.
- yeah but people still call it minimalism, so is it minimalism, or is it minimalism. who fucking knows.
That is one side of it that people fall into. But another side is sometimes buying something additional will simplify your life then it makes sense. Not everyone is one pair clothing and everything fits in a bag. Something as simple as you and your SO deciding on the same shampoo to only have one bottle in the bathroom. This allows you to buy in bulk the ONE shampoo you need. Also one less item to keep track of, need shampoo? which kind?

Same with food storage containers. Might be best to throw away all the different kinds you have and buy ones where all the tops are the same. Yeah, I bought something additional it now takes "minimal" effort to find something to store food it. It's more of an overall mindset to most people. It's the constant asking yourself "Do I need this in my life?" as you start to figure out all your shit starts to own you. Organization (a lot of money spent here) is key to this as if you can't find something in your home......do you really have it? Minimalists want streamlined processes or "OCD with purpose" as I like to call it. lol
- at what point do you start hyper optimizing, and instead of buying normal shampoo, you buy in bulk, for like salons or something, but for your own personal use, or would that count as something other than minimalism?
  
  Organization (a lot of money spent here) is key to this as if you can’t find something in your home…do you really have it? Minimalists want streamlined processes or “OCD with purpose” as I like to call it. lol
  
  personally i'm not a minimalist, but i'm super big into effective organization and optimizing your workflow around yourself, a bit ADHD pilled perhaps, but i don't necessarily think it's minimalist, just optimalist i guess.
  
  IDK the line of minimalism i think is heavily blurred these days, it's not really clear where it begins, and where it ends.

See how in the US we wait to potty train until 3,4,5 years old, while most other countries potty train earlier. Gotta sell those pull-ups!

What? No we don't.
Who does that? Most kids are potty trained by 3
- Most, but the age has been steadily raising since the introduction of disposable diapers.
  
  Many other countries have their kids potty trained by six months, as we used to.

All is capital.

Capital is all.

someone read adorno

This is why I became comfort not owning things

Jokes on you, capitalism made you not want things!
- If only I could sell this idea of not owning things.
  
  (Enter overpriced minimalist products)

When capitalism has commodified everything, then all ingrediences for a revolution can be bought.

commodity production

Oh i know so many people who are into vanity. Everything goes as long as there's no point in it.

ROFL imagine thinking punk rock is striking against the system.

I’ve always believed that capitalism is the default state of human exchange and the opposite of capitalism which I define tersely as empathy at scale takes effort.

Capitalism ≠ commerce
- But capitalism is basically greed refined by scientific logic.
Capitalism is only a few hundred years old. Trade predates Capitalism. It doesn't have an "opposite," rather it's just another Mode of Production, of which there have been many and there will be more to supercede it.

You realise capitolism isnt the boogey man right, if you see problems with it then your problem lies with the consumer, nothing is sold until its bought.

Let me ask you, what mode of commerce should we all ascribe to?

Do you understand the difference between capitalism and commerce? Using money for trade isn't what makes capitalism what it is. Capitalism is, from wikipedia, "An economic system in which the means of production and distribution are privately or corporately owned and development occurs through the accumulation and reinvestment of profits gained in a free market" Capitalism means that I can own something I have nothing to do with and you have to pay me for the privilege of using it. When that thing is housing or food or medicine then I own you unless you want to die.

Capitalism means taking from the worker and giving to the 'owner'. The problem is that work is real and ownership is a made up concept.

The more you learn about it the more you'll understand how evil it is, I promise.
- I think your whole first paragraph is just posturing, maybe i did speak incorrectly, i dont care.
  
  In your economic system, if I make a machine that makes something, and sell it to a guy, what happens to that machine if what it makes is important or valuable?
Blaming victims existing within a system for the problems with the system is deflection, not a solution. The answer is socialism, ie gradually working towards a fully publicly owned and planned economy after a period of revolution.

Moreover, Capitalism isn't just "markets."
- It wont work, but good luck.
Read this article, dude:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism