this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2025
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Late Stage Capitalism
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Wherever there is great property there is great inequality. For one very rich man there must be at least five hundred poor, and the affluence of the few supposes the indigence of the many. The affluence of the rich excites the indignation of the poor, who are often both driven by want, and prompted by envy, to invade his possessions.
~Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
Okay so now we're right back to 'why?'.
Because you need poor desperate people to sell their labor for less than it's worth, so a rich guy can take this surplus (difference between value produced and wage given) and use that money to buy even more raw materials and labor to repeat the cycle but bigger.
And then you get debt, what you can give to the less fortunate so you can demand they pay back more so you create new desperate people that sell their labor.
And... Why do we keep doing this, again?
Because the owner class will undercut the cottage industry that people depend on to opt out of that system. See also Luddite protests and how that went down.
And you can't go to just live of the land because all land is owned by someone, so the violence inherent in the system will make you leave. Even if you own your land, there is usually tax to be paid on that land and that forced you to earn money, so that's back to that cottage industry thing.
There's also no new system yet that can replace the current one where people can opt in and get a reasonably good standard off living.
This ownership stuff feels real suspicious. What and why? This is getting increasingly unconvincing the further down we go.
It's a holdover from the middle ages. Kings owned the country and if someone disagreed you better have an army to make a good argument. Land was then doled out to lords and lesser tenants in exchange for services and goods. That got gradually turned into a state guaranteeing ownership by force and a market system. Overthrowing it ends up giving a temporary reprieve and just replacing the figure head.
Other systems exist but they got crushed by the current system. Cryptocurrency and other ways of ownership seem to evolve to a digital lords owning the majority so long term not making a big difference.
How do you know what overthrowing it does, again?
Centuries of wars, revolutions and protests around here.
Oh. And when was it overthrown?
What do you mean? We had countries splitting, merging, changing government types, wars, angry mobs burning down factories and in the end the same rich families are still in control.
Oh damn, so nobody ever really got rid of a few rich families? That seems like quite the oversight.
Angry mobs don't check the books to see who bought the politicians, they just go after the politicians.
Seems like you know why it failed and how to fix it.
What if we just stopped doing... All of that? It seems pretty god damn silly, and I don't see why i should.
Most people don't because of a few basic questions. Where are we going to live, how do we keep warm, what will we eat next month and how to stay healthy? Solve that and people will stop playing the silly games.
Because of sea lions.