Complex Numbers

Come the Revolution...

For various reasons, I decided to get completely drunk yesterday. Then I came home and passed out; hence the relatively late entry today.

https://www.fastcompany.com/40467032/the-end-of-capitalism-is-already-starting-i...

The End Of Capitalism Is Already Starting–If You Know Where To Look
One of America’s foremost Marxist economists has never felt so optimistic in his 50-year career.

Americans like to think everything is binary. You're either an alcoholic or a teetotaler. Anyone who's not vegan is a murderer. If you're not a Republican conservative, you're a liberal Democrat. That sort of thing. But reality isn't binary; it's spectrum - so the choice isn't "capitalism" or "socialism" but any number of in-betweens.

Over the summer, inequality experts Jason Hickel and Martin Kirk launched a conversation on this site when they posed the theory that capitalism is at the core of the many crises gripping our world today.

Actually the core of the many crises gripping our world is that there's too many people on it. But every time someone points that out, someone else goes, "So go ahead and kill yourself, then." If enough people urge me to do so, I probably will, so I'm not going to dwell on the too-many-people hypothesis.

“Americans are getting closer and closer to understanding that they live in an economic system that is not working for them, and will not work for their kids,” Wolff says. Growing awareness that wages have been unable to keep up with inflated costs of living have left younger generations particularly disillusioned with capitalism’s ability to support their livelihoods, Wolff says, and with CEOs out-earning employees by sometimes as much as 800 to 1, it makes sense that public interest should be swinging toward a workplace model that encapsulates shared ownership, consensus-based decision making, and democratized wages.

Which is one reason I didn't have kids.

Also, I mean, that has been completely obvious to me for a long time, so obvious that it went without saying: instead of "management" and "unions," why not have workers with a stake in the company? Again, non-binary.

“The image of the transition from feudalism to capitalism was the French Revolution, and that was part of it,” Wolff says, “but it wasn’t the whole story. The actual transition was much slower, and not cataclysmic, and found in these serfs that ran away and set up something new.”

A friend of mine is fond of sending me gifs of guillotines whenever some super-rich capitalist shithead does something to fuck the rest of us over. While I owe my existence and all of my luxuries and luck in life to capitalism, I can't say I disagree.

Anyway, I didn't link this article because I agree or disagree with it; again, life isn't binary, and I don't feel the need to fling myself to one side or the other. As with science, I just find it fascinating and worth watching. It's something to think about, especially if you're trying to find a decent job and health insurance in today's "booming" economy.