like I went to taco bell and they didn’t even have napkins out. they had the other stuff just no napkins, I assume because some fucking ghoul noticed people liked taking them for their cars so now we just don’t get napkins! so they can save $100 per quarter rather than provide the barest minimum quality of life features.
That’s the end result of a capitalist system once corporations have superseded governments in power. It will only get worse.
Yeah, we may be at checkmate. Unlike the end of the age of the robber barons, when we reformed capitalism in the late 1800s / early 1900s in the US… this time the capitalists have purchased enough politicians to stop reform completely and forever.
What’s funny is that this is entirely unsustainable. If they were in any way a real “capitalist” they would realize that the creeping authoritarianism they’re pushing destroys economies long-term. They’re laughing all the way to the bank right now because they’re not concerned with the future.
However, they should be, because this House of Cards can easily collapse with the right push. They literally can’t see past the profits at the end of the next quarter.
They literally can’t imagine that all of them choosing to undermine capitalist principles at the same time will result in capitalism failing completely. The only reason it even functioned as well as it did for so long was 1. regulation and 2. raping the third world for resources.
I mean, I’m a fucking leftist, and it makes me feel like I’m taking crazy pills that things are so far gone that I’m actually arguing “if we’re going to do capitalism, we may as well do it in a way that it actually functions properly” as if that is a fucking fringe idea here.
The wheels are about to fly off this fuckin turkey.
Unfortunately their house of cards is built on a foundation of wealth…and not just fuck you money, but literal centuries of fuck you money.
The fortune 50 I worked for could literally stop doing all business and maintain their current spend for a century and still be solvent.
This isn’t unstable at all…it’s built to last for 100s of years…the current leaders to their grandkids will be safe.
To further that…the 1% have private armies and well stocked bunkers to ride out any social uprising. That’s the really scary stuff.
We are all fucked though. Enjoy the hunger games.
I mean, hypothetically. That is the end result of the neoliberal, or late capitalism economic philosophy if applied on a model. But economic systems in practice are never the philosophy, and are only there in the first place to support the governance of a nation state. I spend half my time in Italy, for example, where the laws protect both the big international brands and the mom and pop shops.
My point is that we are the citizens that make up the government that designs the governance rules for our nation-state. Capitalism is not a government, or people, or the entire story when it comes to commerce and trade systems. We can shape it and use it, like any other framework.
Likewise, regardless of your economic system, greedy people will try to accumulate power, bend the rules to benefit themselves, and extend those benefits across borders if they can. Powerful egos will warp people and rules around them like gravity. All governance systems that strive to be just, collaborative and promote the quality of life of all its citizens have to both put strong rules in place to check the power-hungry, and constantly monitor and adapt to keep them in check.
“…we are the citizens that make up the government that designs the governance rules for our nation-state.”
No we’re not. We only have the illusion of control where we are allowed to vote on how to tinker with the outer edges of a system that is in reality controlled by 0.1% of the population.