Quote:
Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop
|
Yeah, but do we actually have Capitalism? On the left coast you have titans of industry admitting their model is to create monopolies for themselves:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/peter-t...ers-1410535536
On the other coast, you have a finance industry using a largely rentier model.
It's better than socialism, no doubt. But it's also highly dysfunctional and leaves a majority of people (an overwhelming majority, according to polls) feeling like disposable cogs in a new gilded age system.
A country controlled in large part by speculators providing little if any value and monopolists (who do provide value, but at cost of eliminating competition) isn't exactly a stable or desirable situation.
So while the comic is funny, it also kinda misstates the critiques of the current system offered by the would-be "socialists." Which is understandable, as most of the people who think the system is fucked up can't concisely articulate why they think that themselves. If I were able to speak for them, I'd state the critique like this:
People are increasingly compelled to deal with more and more complex transactions and interactions as a result of: (1) rentiers compelling them to engage in new economic events that create fees and novel/enhanced income for these actors (FIRE and HC industries most notably); (2) a government that, rather than control these actors, aids them in creation of further complexities via legislation intended to go good but which actually just effects barriers to entry (hence, the decrease in new business formation); and, (3) being forced to work at jobs that provide no satisfaction and which in many cases workers loathe and only perform out of necessity and lack of options.
Even the winners in this economy don't really like it. It's brutally competitive, which can be invigorating when the result is satisfying. But I'd suggest that very little of what is done by most of the people doing well in this economy is satisfying personally or emotionally.
And if you're a loser in the system, well, you exist in world in perpetual disruption and anxiety. You're in debt, and the rentiers are drowning you a little more each month with increases in the cost of everything from which they can extract their rents. Neither you nor the winners are actually really, truly free, but you're quite literally a serf.
Who can claim this sort of existence is optimal for anyone outside the .00001%? It's a lunatic way to live. If one takes Keynes' prediction that as tech improved, we'd work less, down to 15 hours a week by the turn of the century, as rational, we're possibly the most irrational society on earth.
And UBI apparently won't fix it. We've had "UBI-lite" for the past two years and all it's done is create inflation.
