Ann Archy
I break things. Then I put them back together. Then I break them again. Just to show I mean business.
- 0 Posts
- 23 Comments
I spent January and February of 2020 in a state park living in a two man summer tent that I had used twenty years prior and stowed away in the attic in the weird case I would ever become homeless. I was very proud of myself when I discovered that, good thinking. It didn’t do much against the half meter snow, but I did get to see a beaver. Have you seen a beaver?
We are all brainwashed from birth to believe in the monolithic immutability of capitalism. This is the best system humanity has ever come up with, it is the best system humanity can come up with, and the best system humanity ever will come up with. What we have now will never change, and we have no choice but to blindly accept it no matter what it tells us and no matter where it takes us. This is what we are told day and night.
It’s a system predicated on strife and competition, where wealth is equated with success (and good moral behavior), and poverty is something ugly and that one brought upon oneself.
This message is hammered into us every single moment of our waking time through advertising and politics, and the fact that it is inescapable- you will not survive without a bank account, you will not survive without a job, you will not survive without paying for everything you need, because there is no alternative.
Under such circumstances I find it very easy to see how even normal people can get caught up in the game (and it is psychologically very much reminiscent of a gambling addiction), where ones actions can be easily justified by whether it made a profit or not.
Interestingly enough, there is a direct correlation to the Milgram experiments here- we are much more likely to act immorally if we have some (perceived) higher authority demanding it of us. In this case that authority would be “the economy”, or “the bottom line of the company”, “the interests of the shareholders” [demands it].
I don’t think they are amoral, they follow a rudimentary set of moral principles as in the question “what is good behavior for a company?” can be answered with “to make profit” in any capitalist structure.
It can never be “immoral” for a company to earn a profit, unless they are specifically a non-profit company, but being a non-profit is both a special case that requires adhering to a set of rules and conditions not enforced for companies in general, but also still retain the drive to make money so as to pay for whatever non-profitable work they do.
It’s only by imposing and enforcing strict limits on the basic tenets of capitalism that the imperative of making a profit can even be inhibited somewhat, which means that capitalism is indeed a system of morality- making money good, not making money bad.
Which is completely fucked up and supersedes all human agency, but here we are…
Surely you mean Brahmin poop!
Makes for the best jenkem.