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(I wrote this as a series of responses to questions a friend of mine asked me about politics a year or two ago.
The questions were about the US military and whether or not a compassionate capitalist utopia could exist in sci-fi.
It needs to be edited but here's the raw version of it for now, just so it continues to exist *somewhere*)
The questions were about the US military and whether or not a compassionate capitalist utopia could exist in sci-fi.
It needs to be edited but here's the raw version of it for now, just so it continues to exist *somewhere*)
1) Do you know how Augusto Pinochet replaced Salvador Allende in Chile?
1) No.
Salvador Allende was a beloved, democratically elected socialist leader in Chile whose success threatened the US idea that socialism could only fail. The US had him assassinated and replaced with the unelected capitalist dictator Augusto Pinochet to prove capitalist superiority.
2) Do you know what caused the Cuban embargo and what its effects have been on the Cuban people?
2) No.
Cuba was a communist country that didn't have wealth as a possible social reward but where everyone at least had what they needed to live. The US felt that its success threatened capitalist supremacy, so they blocked all trade and humanitarian aid to Cuba. That's why Cuban cigars were illegal for so long. A lot of people in need didn't get the help they needed for someone to prove that sharing is bad and hoarding is good.
3) Do you know how Osama Bin Laden received the weapons he used on 9/11?
3) Your guess of the American military is correct! :) It was not an "inside job," they just sold him the rope to hang them with, so to speak. He had a different mission back then, but he kept the weapons afterwards, and went his own way with them.
4) Did you know 9/11 was retaliation for a similar attack against two towers in the Middle East that most Americans didn't even remember?
4) I wasn't paying attention to the news until 9/11 happened either, I was about 20, I'm about 40 now. I didn't pay attention to the news for half my life! Even now, I can't remember which Middle Eastern country it was specifically or the details of the attack without looking it up. It seemed telling.
5) Do you know how Saddam Hussein got into power in Iraq in the first place?
5) All I knew about Saddam's installation was that he was set up as a secular dictator to replace the fanatic warlords that ruled the area before, but I wasn't sure which president in fact! Reagan or Bush might make sense, but I'd have to look it up. More fanatics filled his power vacuum.
6) Do you know what the implications of the US support of Israel against the Palestinian people are, how it followed from Jewish relocation after World War 2?
6) No. Leaving the Muslims out is not an accident. After WWII, the Jews persecuted by Hitler were "relocated" by Americans to Palestine. Now, the Palestinians never agreed to this! The US sold the displaced Jews land that didn't belong to them. They fund Israel's military because it gives them access to local resources and political influence. What the US and Israel are doing to the Palestinians has been counted as genocide. Yes, there are losses on both sides, but when you look at the figures, those of Israel are vanishingly small, and those among Palestinians are astronomical. Israel is fighting with tanks and rocket launchers. Palestine is fighting back with sticks and stones. Apex of Islamophobia worldwide.
7) Do you know how the US keeping Guantanamo Bay open looks from an international perspective?
7) Warlords/slavers/big bullies is close enough, you get this one. XD It's true that it's for dangerous prisoners of war. Basically it operates a lot of interrogation and punishment through torture, against the Geneva convention. So it technically makes the US international war criminals.
8) Do you remember what ended up happening with the search for Weapons of Mass Destruction during the Iraq war?
8) No idea. Kept or sold to Russia or China? Pentagon bunker? This is a trick question. :) After a thorough search, it turned out that there were no Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq at all. The threat had been completely manufactured by politicians to justify invading, unrelated to Osama.
9) Do you know how it's seen by most of the world that the US went to war with Iraq against a UN resolution condemning it?
9) No, didn't know the UN said anything about it. House on an oil spot is also correct! Going to war against a UN resolution is also a war crime.
10) Did you know that millions of public funds are funneled into military spending while they never "have enough money" for social programs at home?
10) Yes. Props! It makes sense you'd have run into this. I'm appreciating how much you're engaging with the questions so far btw.
11) Did you know the People for a New American Century already had a Middle East invasion plan ready for America years before 9/11 happened?
11) No. Christian organization? Yes and no. The Bushes and a few rich powerful people like Bill Kristol and Paul Wolfowitz. Again, I'm not saying they "did 9/11," just that 9/11 gave them the most readily available version of an opportunity that they'd already been looking for in the first place.
12) Did you know that a lot of refugees that come to the United States are escaping from countries that the US bombed themselves to end up trapped or rejected?
12) No, never really thought about it. Odd, why would they want to come here? They could go elsewhere? Finland maybe? Doesn't make sense. Well, a lot of them come from countries where their access to information is limited. Until Trump, the international image of the US was all "give us your poor, tired, huddled masses," especially in some less informed areas. Sometimes they may also not get as much choice about where they're going as they might like.
13) Did you know that when the military has to spend as much of the money that it asked for to justify its spending, giving them an incentive to look for targets?
13) I phrased that question wrong, that's my fault. XP I lost track halfway through. It's true that Google doesn't help with a lot of it. I just meant, let's say they buy 10 bombs. If the quarter ends and they set off 5 bombs, some banker somewhere is going to be all like "Next time you ask for 10, you get 5, you liar!" So if it's a few days from the end of the quarter they're like "damn we better blow some shit up!" >.>
14) Did you know that the military often gets used domestically against First Nations protesters who are standing up against environmental destruction?
14) Makes sense, Minnesota/Michigan pipelines, POC protest/rally, big guns. I don't remember the specific location offhand either but it was definitely in one of those. We had more than our fair share of First Nations VS pipeline protests up here, I hasten to add, and our military/police was no better than the US. Another risk is that the police is becoming more and more militarized, declaring war against the American population.
15) Did you know that American soldiers often rape and torture enemy soldiers, taking pictures with them like hunting trophies, and never face any repercussions?
15) Yes. Blue wall & green wall is a very accurate comparison in fact. I never saw the movie but you're making me want to.
16) Did you know that, rather than noble Spartan side-by-side combat, most US warfare is now carpet bombing civilians from planes without ever seeing them?
16) This one was just me being kind of a douche, I don't think it was some of my best work. I do understand the ideal as you describe it. I'm never trying to devalue the lives of the people who were conscripted or drafted or pushed by economic circumstances to enlist. So many social factors are geared toward creating this funnel to the military! The fact that they don't invest in education and social programs isn't an accident. They want people poor and - though they may be smart - without the opportunity of education so that they'll have no choice but to enlist. It's an investment.
What I do get is, often, people do the best they can to be the best person they can be - no pun intended - within their own framework.
I don't doubt that a lot of individual soldiers were not necessarily bad people the way we understand it - but I don't doubt that war is a bad thing.
Thank you for being patient with me! Again, we're all working from our own subjective perspective, if you think I'm full of shit tell me! I'll listen.
I will say this at 4 minutes in - under capitalism, here on Earth, it's important to understand that no homeless person is an accident or a mistake. They're not only victims of intentional violence by the State, but the State uses them as weapons against the rest of us to make us scared and obedient. They assume - correctly - that one one would obey them if they weren't forced to at the barrel of a gun. "Capitalism but with compassion" seems like, well, *socialism*. The cruelty is the *point*. It's a *feature*, not a bug, working *exactly* as intended. But! Let me see where you're going with this though :)
I *am* seeing parallels with the "alternative" Ferengi approach with how Rom and Ishka acted to be sure, but that *also* took a few "creative liberties" with the concept of capitalism, even though it was still money-based (note that money also sometimes exists in communist or socialist settings, it's just used differently). I also remember its part in the situational ethics around women's liberation in the Middle East by Irshad Manji for example (who I named Irshad after, incidentally). There are definitely better *versions* of capitalism that are possible, I mean, Canada is *technically* capitalist, but it's sort of a mixed system, and it's best known for its socialist *elements*. Note that some people use capitalism and democracy interchangeably, assuming that democracy wouldn't exist in socialist or communist countries because it hasn't in a few high profile cases. Meanwhile when a socialist *is* democratically elected they get assassinated by the CIA to maintain the illusion of that equivalence. And capitalists are *definitely* looking for a way to have capitalism *without* democracy these days, especially in the States unfortunately :P
On some level corporations *can* be ironically a little more "democratic" than governments. Some governments make more of a pretense of listening to people because they only need to get elected every four years, if that - the rest of the time they do whatever they want. Now corporations do give more *sway* to the rich than poor, which is a *huge* problem *but*, it can be just as easy for a rich person to buy a government as a corporation. At least on a surface level corporations have to act in a way that makes people *want* to buy their stuff. It's not true morality because it's self-interested, but like the Democratic party, it's a long-term imperative for an *appearance* of justice. In theory there's supposed to be the threat of a better company beating you if you don't. Of course, in practice there are often oligarchies or mergers that make more and more of the money go to the same *places* - but of course the entire work of utopia (or heterotopia?) is to imagine a world where the *implications* are different because the *parameters* are different.
Corporations need us in the same way that parasites can't kill their hosts. They might be taking advantage of us, but they need us to live, so if they're not stupid, they won't want us dead outright.
I do remember His Dark Materials! I'm also reminded of car racers and other athletes who wear corporate logos all over like walking advertisements
On a basic level, a corporation not being a person means it can't be held accountable - so it should never make a management decision XD
I don't remember who but a famous sex worker once said "We're all selling our bodies, some of us are just more honest about it."
I mean if I could end capitalism outright now I'd definitely *prefer* it, but it's also not an excuse not to try to soften its blows for *now*. There are a lot of small things in the way things are which could change without a complete overhaul, or at least *before* one. *We* need to abolish money, but it's not wrong to give money to a homeless person *now*. I wouldn't want a "softer" capitalism to become an excuse that keeps us trapped in it - but it could also very well serve as "training wheels" that show us we don't need its harshness to be at our best at *all*. This is just what's popping into my head as I go! I'll totally listen if you think I'm wrong I'm just trying to throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks if that makes sense
I'm realizing there's so much hypocrisy in capitalism *in practice* - for example, the way competition is supposed to keep things healthy but someone's always ready to "nerf" it every time it comes up. We almost don't know what capitalism that *does* keep its promises would look like. You could *almost* say - as people say about communism and quite rightly so - that capitalism has "never been attempted." :P
I *really* want to send you a book by Krishnamurti sometimes! I'm reminded of how he used to talk about how the point of education should be so much *more* than to turn us into workers, that it was so sad this was all we saw it as. It's kind of like the job tests from Futurama with the chips in their hands, if you'll forgive my analogy!
At the same time, it's *so* hard to find work - if there *was* suddenly a system that actually *helped* me get a damn job instead of blaming me for "not wanting one" because it's not *accessible*. There was the idea of a caregiving, organizing "overmind" in the Iain Banks "Culture" series I think!
I don't think that robots would necessarily be *better* than people, although I get the appeal of that. Robots are often *programmed* by people, *but* - it's easier to program a robot with your ideals than to pass them on to another person, if you're thinking in "legacy" terms, for what it's worth.
The Laws of Robotics open up a whole *other* conundrum as an aside but I'm with you so far :)
Technically a lot of Respawn is based around presenting a "negative version" of communism, which is a system I *do* believe in. I wanted to explore one of the ways it can go wrong if it's not approached in the "right" spirit, or with parameters that force us proles to deny our fundamental humanity. I didn't do that to shoot it *down* but like, since that *is* what we want, we should think about the things that can go wrong with it *before*, so we can see them coming and *stop* them. It occurs to me imagining a "positive version" of capitalism is almost a corresponding challenge philosophically, just without a one-to-one equivalency that maps right *onto* it.
It might be better to *start* with small cosmetic "fixes" to capitalism when we're able to simply because it's so resistant to change. Don't get me wrong, I kind of think that like... When capitalism stops killing people, it needs to be called something else, because that's just what it *is*: a belief that might makes right and that some people deserve to live more than others. But! I don't mean that in a way to discourage you from exploring your idea. It's definitely thought-provoking! It forces outside-the-box thinking. I mean you're imagining a whole different society *around* it. A lot of their tech and social forces would have to be different around it in ways that seem unimaginable to us *too*. If capitalism was about competing for *luxuries* but people's basic *needs* were accounted for, well, that's sort of the Canadian/Scandinavian "hybrid" system of capitalism with socialist elements at work. It's definitely not "fuck-you libertarianism" for what it's worth.
A question that occurs to me about your work with this idea: if people within the system you describe accept it and take it for granted, what becomes the source of the conflict in the story? Would it be an interpersonal conflict about something else that simply has this society as a *backdrop*? Because that can totally work mind you! I'm just curious. If no one's fighting the system, is anyone fighting *anything*? Of course the "necessity" of conflict in narrative is *also* a capitalist idea - "slice of life" stories can be just as valid. You could also showcase people competing for luxuries that are *meaningful* to them, tied to their personal histories and personality in some way, where the reader would become invested in who would Get The Thing.
So much of it comes down to how smart the people in charge are! I can't help but think of anarchy specifically because it *minimizes* the amount of people who are in charge, but there's no "clean" way to it with the way things are for now. We'd have had to build society differently in the first place, which is part of why envisioning a whole society from head to toe can prove so engaging.
All the corporations in Pokemon are so *friendly*. They all seem so invested in how well you're doing! It always strikes me how much it's not like real life, but like, I *like* it. It's not always bad to imagine.
I can see this is starting at a deeper level - you're looking for a way to exist as *part* of capitalism in *your* life, because you don't *have* long-term solutions handy, and you need to be able to find a way to make a living in *your* lifetime. I don't blame you! Peggy would be the first to tell you there's no shame in making a living
I wish I could get a real job myself tbh :( I just have so much to do every day I can't even imagine having enough time to have a job and still do it all somehow *headshakes*
An element of darkness and conflict doesn't hurt either mind you, and can even help make the lighter parts stand out. Moreover, they can hang lanterns on some parts of the "imagined" that don't fit with the "real" the way we expect. On paper a strictly literal Christian could be a super nice person! Some of them *are*. It's just that with things the way they are society and History make that concept uniquely situated in an inescapable *way*. You're trying to *disarticulate* those concepts, to see if it can be *done*. Maybe then capitalism won't be quite as mean to *you*. A lot of short stories that showcase the worldbuilding sounds like a perfect framework!
It makes me think about how conservatives and progressives often don't even agree on the terms of the *debate*. Some conservatives will say even small measures to help people in the States are "socialism" so we should reject them, but when they want to deny that socialism is *working* for Canada, measures we have to help people way *more* suddenly become "not socialist enough to count." Or if they say we *are* socialists they have to explain why we're "failing" in some important way they've determined. We're Schroedinger's socialists - we are and are not socialists at the same time, depending on how it serves or doesn't serve the point that they're trying to make *at the time*.
If a more "compassionate" version of capitalism existed you'd have to expect conservatives from our world to reject it as too socialist and progressives from our world to reject it too - either because it's "not socialist enough" or because it's too compassionate to still "count" as capitalism, conversely. You'd have to present a convincing case for why it can be seen as an authentic merger of both concepts that would satisfy honest readers - and accept that no amount of "doing it just right" would convince people going in with a vested interest. Maybe you can learn something writing it too! I don't know what people buy honestly - if I did I'd have sold more than a dozen books over the last seven years :P But you'd be the first person I'd tell!
I mean on a basic level I try to support you and other writers in your writing as an *expression* of my anarchist, socialist principles. If I were what I see as a capitalist I would want others to *fail*, because capitalism teaches us that everything is like pie, and the more others have, the less is left over for *you*. It's all the subtle, insidious ways in which it *trains* us to be our most selfish selves by rewarding us for selfishness and punishing us for altruism. I question our ability to form real connections with others without a profound rejection of what those ideas entail. It's only natural that you'd want to - and *deserve* to - be forgiven for being "a little selfish" when the system in place has already taken so *much* from you. That desire isn't the same as that of our oppressor. Your place in the system is the *result* of *other people's* selfishness, you know?
Knowing the end result of failure under capitalism isn't death or destitution might give people a considerably *better* sense of humor about what *their* place in it, though. That's the thing. The winners could have everything they want and *still* leave enough for everyone else - but they've been conditioned to believe they got where they are because they understood there was no reason for them to *do* that. :P
Capitalism as it is seems like an expression of the belief that kindness makes us *weak*. For there to be significant measures to allow for kindness *in* it, someone, somewhere, in the history of the world you're building, would have had to have both had powers over the Way Things Are, and to have had a strong personal motivation to make that modification *to* it. You don't have to know what that is going *in* mind you, as a writer I mean, but it can be something as simple as a vibe, an unspoken understanding that permeates things somehow. Some factors that encourage corporations to think in the short term and ignore the long term would have to be absent, to make it in their *interest* to have us as "long-lived hosts."
Take everything I said with a huge helping of salt XD
The main reason the rich don't want to "fix" capitalism is they think it's working wonderfully. It gave them everything they want and stops everyone less human than they see themselves as from reaching them to *do* anything about it. Capitalism punishes the poor *by* taking those means away. To negotiate you have to have something the other person *wants*. That's something that makes union negotiations particularly difficult: it's an attempt to get the rich to admit that money for labor is an *exchange*, not something that "would just happen anyway." But they're like "If we recognize it about *this* we'd have to recognize it about *everything*!" And they *would* but like, they *should*. When the poor stop cooperating with the rich and start cooperating with each other en masse, they lose interest in negotiation - which the rich may then start finding interesting again all of a sudden :P
They don't see us as people they're *failing* to take care of. They see us as weights they've *successfully* thrown off their hot air balloon so they can rise *without* us. Capitalism exists to *weed us out*, but *also* depends on our labor, so it's like... eating its own tail. A "fair" capitalism would have to be one that has systems in place to make CEOs accountable for their actions in a way in which our system does *not*. It'd have to *force* them to do the right thing, in just the way in which libertarians reject regulations *today*.
Have you ever seen The Corporation? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
If there was a mechanism in place to hold *shareholders* accountable for the ethical practices of the company they *invest* in, they might suddenly start caring a lot about that too!
A factor that makes this difficult with the way things are is the lack of proper international laws. Corporations are in a sense more "dangerous" than governments because they can use differences in national laws to their advantage. For example, they can go to Eastern countries where people have no money or labor standards, so that's where they have their stuff *made*, then they go back to America to sell to people with money - and labor standards. Now, America went to war with Iraq even though it was *illegal*. The UN literally said they weren't *allowed* to do it, so they were like "fuck you we're doing it anyway." Imagine how hard it could be to *change* recognized international law *on that scale* at the *expense* of the rich in *charge* of that decision. But! That didn't *have* to be the way things are. You're dealing with a whole alternate society! They may not even *have* countries. If it's a one-world government they *could* have regulations that apply *across the board*. If *their* whole society was already "built like that," they might not question that *either*. It *would* be a forced "equalizing factor." Which brings us to religion!
If you look at textual Christianity, they say rich people *can't get into heaven*. Now, the rich usually *pretend* to "buy" Christianity in the West because it tells the poor to be *subservient* and not to question the established order. If they *really* believed this, though, they'd never *stay* rich, or maybe never even *become* rich in the first place. We also take it for granted the children of the rich will inherit all their stuff. If there was a law forcing them to give their children a normal inheritance and donating the rest to charity, it would still let them have their ridiculous privileges *in* their lives without keeping their money "trapped" in their family for generations (and corresponding generations of poverty elsewhere). Communism *and* Objectivism were *both* supposed to be "atheistic," but people have tried adding religion to both in South America and North America respectively. It occurs to me that the embrace or rejection of religion *and* what it consists of could be totally different in *your* world. You wouldn't even have to take an *existing* one, you could *make one up*. People's spirituality or lack thereof is often tied to their process for how they imagine that their actions have consequences in *general*. It was usually used as a negative social control in *practice*, but is that an intrinsic quality or a design choice? I'm honestly not sure, but imagining new economics seems like it can't fully go around imagining new beliefs about what's valuable and what we should do about it. Fortunately that's an area you've already read about for longer than politics, as far as I can tell!
As much as possible I'm trying to work *within* the parameters you've defined, that is, I'm trying to come up with things that still "count" as capitalism. You can hybridize if you *choose* to, but for now I'm trying to meet the challenge of not "cheating" by having socialism come to the rescue. For example, the government should nationalize as little as possible, if at all. I mean health care is literally life or death and people *do* call it socialism if *it's* paid for. I admit that's a toughie! You run into so many things we take for granted but don't have to, trying to deconstruct and remake a system like this. I definitely think stories can be worth telling even if a misinterpretation of them is "possible," or I'd have never written anything *myself*. It *is* something I try to think about - to a *point*.
I mean, the Federation sets up genetic engineering as "evil," but then we run into the Denobulans and the Ilyrians - a lot of science-fiction is about exploring "edge cases" that don't quite fit the *paradigm* as which we *understand* things like that.
Capitalism rests on a lot of unspoken assumptions and could appear radically different if those *assumptions* were different. It just leaves the question open of at which point it becomes different enough to be something else entirely. :)
I never got around to reading the "Culture" novels they're huge! A lot of them does rest on imagining a "theoretical" capitalism that would "work" like that. I also see the starting point of it in some of the better Quark speeches. On some level, trading something is still better than just killing and taking. ... Of course Quark also does end up an arms dealer mind you, but not for long :P Everyone may have a price, but everyone also has *limits*
And those limits don't always translate to numbers. But it also points to how "wild," unregulated capitalism will almost always take you in a self-destructive direction, if you follow it far enough
When Bill Watterson had Calvin say that "becoming walking billboards for corporations is the American way to express individuality," he meant it as a *crushing indictment*. I used to know someone who sees himself as "collared" by the company he works for. He turned out to be a child molester
and a transphobe XD
Let's take Nintendo! I *loved* Nintendo when I was a child. Today Nintendo *characters* will still always be important to me *but*, I understand Nintendo doesn't *embody* the values those characters *represent* to me. Creatives often clash with marketers and decision-makers as part of the creative *process*. On a mass scale that means a lot of stories are being sold by people who don't care about their content at *all*. Marvel's CEO is a conservative! In the real world, Nintendo goes after fan stuff hard and have questionable labor practices. But like, Link and Mario would *never do that*. Sega died, but Sonic lived. A corporation will never be a person, but you also can't kill an *idea*. Fan work like yours is important specifically *because* it represents a *refusal* to let the corporation and its interests define what those characters *mean* to us. So well - *thank* you! <3
You can be critical of the person on top who claims they own something simply because they paid someone else to do it, while still honoring your connection to the spirit of the creative people they *exploited*
When making a "deal" with a "real" corporation, it's best to keep a smile on your face and a knife behind your back. Be as nice as you can for as long as possible to make them match you *until* it stops working. You're dealing with the Fey. They're capable of extraordinary rewards and terrible punishments, capricious and unpredictable, living by rules only they fully understand. Oh God I have to talk to you about Angel season 5! It's exactly about how demonic pacts and corporate dealings share the same logic
Trying to imagine "unfucked capitalism" feels like a useful exercise exactly because it forces you to think about the whole chain of events that had to go wrong for it to become the way it is in the first place XD
Capitalism gaslights us so thoroughly that many of us experience its direct abuse as misguided assistance :/
Like I'm telling you what I believe because I figure that's what you're *asking* me for but like, I should emphasize my friendship to you isn't conditional on agreement! This is just the point I've reached as part of a dynamic, ongoing process of thinking about these issues. :)
I remember when LiveJournal felt like a confidant itself almost. It helped me come out and was a hotbed of queer organizing. After 5, maybe 10 years on it, it was sold and bought by the Russian government. Russia which, for those of us who may not know or forgot, doesn't just *kill* people for *being* gay. They force gay people's *family members* to kill them, to encourage them to police their relatives' sexualities in the first place. I had a lot of thoughts about what it means to be "betrayed" by a corporation after that. People are already too good at breaking our hearts. We shouldn't give that power to corporations - they're not even people.
I hope it's coming across I'm excited about your project idea! It's challenging but interesting. That I'm skeptical of the idea of ethical capitalism in practice shouldn't be read as critical of your project is what I mean. I do find it impossible but science-fiction *asks* us to imagine the impossible. Respawn has an ethical law enforcement officer! And I'm dubious about how aspects of the end of Surface could be interpreted from the hindsight of today, but that's been an ongoing problem with it from the *start*
Sorry, this is all reminding me of when a Ferengi quotes to Nog the Rule of Acquisition that "females and finances don't mix" and Nog says "Yes, but that can be interpreted in many different ways!" XD
I'll admit I own a shirt with the Crush logo! I'm not emotionally invested in it at all but like, I wear it. I'm not "logo-free." It gives off a warm, refreshing vibe, it's comfortable, but I had to stop wearing it because there's a stain on it, which feels like a metaphor for *something*. o.O At the same time, the irony of *giving* a corporation *my* money to *become* an advertisement *for* them, when that's something *they* usually pay for, does not escape me.
Two decades ago, during the No Logo era (hi Klein!), there was a widespread belief in activist circles that corporations could be convinced to do right by exposing their negative behavior to people. Surely if people knew what evil they did, they wouldn't support them? And it worked, partly, for a while. The problem is that, increasingly, if *every* corporation that brings you something you need does something horrible, you still need to get it, so you bite the bullet. People *didn't* boycott corporations for their evil behavior. In the end, the truth proved a poor antidote to people's simple apathy. They *knew* what was going on. They just didn't *care*.
"Who do you think made your clothes?" (Doctor Who to Donna Noble, Planet of the Ood)
A good activist strategy became to find a way to force the most high-profile company in a whole field to fix its shit. The moment you get *one* to do it, if it's strong enough, *all* others have to fall in line - or become "the company that doesn't do the thing," and that's not much of a selling point. It's *forcing* the competition of capitalism to work as "intended," hijacking its rules for our own purposes.
If people can get things ethically *and* cheaply, they often *will*. The idea that human nature is irretrievably bad always comes back to being a conservative impetus for social control. They restrict options *then* manufacture consent as a false conclusion to the chain of events they caused in the first place.
America was *founded* on the principle of getting labor out of people without giving them anything, and it never looked back :P I mean, I know I don't need to tell *you* but, you know what I mean :)
I mean, I don't believe in the idea of a meritocracy because it's not "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need." But! That said, someone who thinks we *should* live in a meritocracy is still a much better person than someone who thinks we *do* live in one. It's more just.
On a basic level, if you're resisting the idea that other people's suffering for your convenience is acceptable, you're resisting capitalism, in your way. "There's no ethical consumption under capitalism" may not be an excuse, but it's definitely an explanation. At one extreme people shrug and use it to mean "I can't win so why even try?" At the other extreme, people will blame you for taking what you need from a system you didn't create, which is equally preposterous. It's okay to use the means at our disposal to try to create a better world, you know? Sometimes the master's tools are all we *have*.
I can't tell if "soft capitalism" is just harm reduction or a gateway drug from Big Capitalism to sell you more capitalism. I'm trying to figure it out by writing all this out to you right now honestly XD
There are literally Americans who call *libraries* socialism o.O
There is something vaguely vaporware about "compassionate capitalism" - it's something that "could've been but wasn't," to a point.
An unrealized reality
Elric of Melnibone is interesting because it's another "What if" science-fantasy book series about a scenario that "shouldn't be but is." Elric is the "benevolent dictator" who exists as the "anti-Conan" in the Conan the Barbarian universe, written by Michael Moorcock. I only read the first two sometime during the mid-to-late aughts but there's more. Now in the real world there's no such *thing* as a benevolent dictator and like, it's *important* to remember that, and to remember *why*. *Every* dictator wants to be seen as that, and to rob people of free will is to rob them of dignity on a basic level. But like, Elric *is* presented as *contextually* heroic, and he *does* make a convincing anti-hero, as opposed to a full-on villain. Moorcock talks about American politics in interviews and is smart about what's going on in the world, doesn't let people off the hook or buy any of the bullshit. Elric's enemies are all *gleefully* cruel, whereas he only is so grudgingly. He knows if he shows too much "weakness," his enemies will take over his land, and inflict *their* cruelty on his subjects *gleefully*. We have access to his internal monologue and regret over what he has to do in a way that's impossible with a real person. Elric kills 5 today so someone else won't kill 50 tomorrow. Where Conan is young, Elric is so old he needs magic, technology, and sacrifices to stay alive. Where Conan hates magic, Elric is the most powerful sorcerer in his world. Where Conan is uncompromising in his heroism, Elric represents the tragic, twisted heroism of the "necessary evil," an attempt to understand, if not to justify either.
If a sentient computer overmind capable of emotion were somehow theoretically programmed to think of the citizens of the planet it oversees as its "children" by someone with a healthy conception of what that is (however unlikely that may be or not in the real world *practice*), it could - again in theory - do everything it can to try to guarantee their long-term interest, even. That would alter the way concepts like money and jobs affect people's lived experiences significantly
"Aliens can do almost anything."
Planned obsolescence would be something you could make a decision about how you'd approach, if you chose to. In "as is" capitalism, corporations deliberately make products more breakable and shorter-lasting to force people to keep buying the same thing over and over, creating more waste. In "compassionate" capitalism, you'd need an incentive to stop corporations from doing that, or a disincentive to punish them when they do - or both. It could still have, like, have money and jobs, be capitalism on *paper*, but conservatives might choose to describe it as communistic because it's not the *free market* capitalism that libertarians dream of. Regulations are an ongoing point of contention in those spheres. A lot of it depends how far you can get people to accept to *stretch* their definition of capitalism or not is what I mean. There's a wide definition and a narrower one, depending on the situation. I hope I'm making sense!
It's a complex question, I'm trying to not give a half-assed answer, you know?
The "Bond sleeps with Russian spy" trope is definitely related to how the "personal" can be "political" in capitalist vs communist terms. Communism was about "sharing," the vague threat of foreign polyamory vs Western monogamy/individualism, about refusing to be "owned." From the "Bond" perspective, though, the "Bond girl" becomes another disposable product in his search for his own "enlightened self-interest" as part of *his* capitalist ideology, applied to human dynamics. The irony of that arrangement has always been that, because they each encode and decode the underlying meaning differently, each party believes *they're* converting the *other* one.
A dozen years ago Google's motto used to be "Don't be evil." It's almost impossible to remember days like that *today*. We often trust corporations, until we don't
When you're reading a fantasy story or playing D&D or Zelda and it's time to go to the "church" in the game to save or get healed or whatever the church does, it suddenly becomes totally possible to imagine a "church" that *is* the version of it they brought us up to believe was true. Even knowing the Church wasn't like that in real life, these "fantasy churches" become like a little mental haven from the harshness of the real world, extending the fantasy. I can picture how your science-fiction "soft capitalism" could function in a similar fashion for some people.
I think often conservatives can't tell the difference between fiction and reality, and that's a *central* breaking point in their way of thinking about the world
The thing with how Starlink affected the Ukraine/Russia war because of Elon's stupidity is a perfect example of corporations trying to have more power than governments, but he *is* getting sued over it for what it's worth
Capitalism trains both the customer and the boss to be impatient to the worker. The worker is expected to always do everything as fast as possible. It's seen as "more efficient" but like, a lot of the time, it doesn't take the point of diminishing returns into account.
That's why the Western mind is so unprepared to encounter actual Yoga. The idea that taking the longest possible amount of time to do something is the best way to do it is just *incomprehensible* to us. We're not *prepared* for it, in some way, you know?
In Undertale there's a race between four snails and you can make bets with others about which snail is going to win
"It may be the warriors who get the glory, but it's the engineers who build societies." (B'elanna Torres, Voyager 7.10 Flesh And Blood)
I'm also curious about the role of taxes and unions in a system like this, if any
Did I ever talk to you about Brooklyn Nine Nine?
There's a "vaporwave" element to the show you could say in a similar way. It's made by progressives to imagine what a squad of actual good cops would look like. It's a dramedy, slightly more comedic than dramatic, but it was smartly made for what it was. Their leader is a gay black man named Holt. They were trying to dare cops to live up to it in a way. Eventually, they canceled the show because they were worried it'd be hijacked as copaganda - that cops would point to it and say "That's what we're like!" That it'd be used for reform instead of abolition. Cake used to love it. They had a pet named after the main character. It was a legit good show overall tbh.
I mean, to be fair, if corporations already had suitable worker's rights in place, unions would be *unnecessary*. That's one utopia option
The main character's gimmick was that he used to take things people said around him out of context then say "Name of your sex tape!" An early episode had him meet his childhood hero who wrote the cop novels that made him become a cop. Then he finds out the writer is a sexist, racist homophobe and ends up punching his lights out *himself*
Quark is an example in fact! He eventually promises to agree to all of his workers' demands - as long as they don't *form* a union XD
He maintains the letter of the law of capitalism by sacrificing its spirit
You know, if you make money with something you work on, I'm never going to like tell you you sold out or something, just so you know! You don’t need to worry about that, if you have been. The issue with capitalism is more how difficult it tends to make it to actually do so in practice!
Ooh, Jimmy James from News Radio would be a relevant figure to this conversation probably! He's very much an "idealized capitalist" character who's supposed to be better than any real rich guy would be. He justifies it with pseudo-capitalist ideology, but his immediate employees are like his family. They're utter fools but ultimately he'd do anything to protect them.
He buys all of his employees hats for Christmas because he's too disconnected from reality to realize that, from a rich guy, it's an insulting gift. So when he does, he buys them all cars
He has this whole speech about the importance of advertising - I should find it for you maybe :)
The rich invented racism because they were scared of the poor
One of my favorite movies, Ghost Dog, is about a black samurai who lives on a rooftop and uses carrier pigeons. If you stop and think about it, for the vast majority of human History, pigeons *were* humankind's chief telecommunications network. All the wars and treaties and trade we picture back then were all *unimaginable* without the carrier pigeon. They carried humankind of their *backs* for centuries, for thousands of years. First, what a powerful symbol that is for someone who *studies* communications (translation, linguistics, journalism, media analysis, and so on and so forth). Then, there's how cruelly pigeons were *abandoned* after all that. Their entire way of thinking and living and expecting and adapting *transformed* itself, mentally and physiologically, to respond to human demands for all this time. Suddenly we have "better" and we no longer need them, so they become "street trash," "rats with wings." Without them we wouldn't even *have* the cities they scavenge in. In Ghost Dog with the narrative connection of blackness it doubles as a reference to how America was built by black slaves which were then abandoned on the streets to fend for themselves. They'd been transformed for someone else's needs, then when those needs changed, their own needs suddenly no longer mattered. This can be extended to any labor or emotional connection that changes us for someone who takes it for granted, to the importance of *recognizing* that. The dove is "peace" and the raven is "death" but the pigeon is just *life*. The pigeon survives, against all odds - it remembers everything we owe it, walking down the street with its head bobbing. It was around when that statue was made to that guy, they saw him in action when he was alive. That's *why* they shit all over it.
With the arrival of AI there is another powerful symbol for the organic roots of something that's being replaced, the forgotten core that made something possible. If we are all "replaced" we will *all* become as the pigeons are. We should see them as the canary in the coal mine they were.
"You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed."
