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If it can be sold and used as a tool for subjugation humans will quickly determine and optimize the ways in which to do so. That's the beauty of capitalism--or

If it can be sold and used as a tool for subjugation humans will quickly determine and optimize the ways in which to do so. That's the beauty of capitalism--or possibly even economics in general--it acknowledges and respects nothing that falls outside of its own scope. No matter how ancient, sophisticated, sacred, or meaningful a practice may have been--no matter what reverence our ancestral betters may have applied to it, capitalism will find the most effective way to utilize it as a strictly economic material and convert it into profit. For the true capitalist there is no extra or supra-capitalism. Capitalism envelops the world. It swallows and defuses all meaning and translates it into the small subset of meanings it understands. All is reduced to pure economic terms--it is no longer a question of interfacing with the practices of your ancestors, respecting history or engaging in spiritual practice--the meditation is only understood and useful insofar as it has an assignable quantity related to productive increase or related directly to profit. I can at least take some comfort in the fact that articles like this still crop up and call the beast into question.

Chardok 9y ago
Well said. Its hard to quantify it in an objective context, but there is something just viscerally disgusting about taking something so old and spiritually significant to humans and perverting it into a tool for efficiency.
Interfacelabs 9y ago
Very well said indeed.
Consultant32452 9y ago
>For the true capitalist What percentage of the US population do you believe falls into this category?
- voidhorse 9y ago
  None. I mean it less a concrete instantiation and more as an abstract type that rises as a side effect of the system. Jeff Bezos, to unfairly use him as an example, I doubt has any desire to efface the significance of historical human practice. I doubt he has a vendetta against the subtle social dynamics and sphere of relationships that are established between localized mom and pop shops and customers and that often begin to humanize, at least to a minimum extent, the otherwise emotionless and inhuman process of transaction--bartering, recollection of past trades and successes, allowing a purchase on one's word, trust--all of these cultural (an instance where we can still find something identifiable as human in capitalist practice) dynamics are snuffed by Amazon's enterprise. Amazon's mission is not to kill off this whole space of human practice--its simply dedicated to the capitalist game, and once Jeff is playing there's really no way for him to stop--abiding as he is to the logic of capitalism--the rules of the game. It is a logic that reduces all to one vector--profit. So long as increased profit is the result of an action it is encouraged by capitalism--capitalism itself provides no moral system--it selects a single quantity and hopes to maximize it abstracted from all the details and context--worse, it is assumed justified as natural human behavior (this is the sinister underside of Adam Smith's "Invisible Hand"--there's no need to worry about economy because it will "regulate itself" because it is predicated on trade a "natural phenomena" and set of behaviors--all of a sudden the argument for capitalism turns to putting it forward as a naturalism and not the construct and theory that it is--nothing in nature says that man has to maximize his profits, aka his excess--nature only needs you to break even--it only demands you survive. Capitalists would rather have you believe the will to excess is natural because now the system suddenly has some outside justification). Luckily living breathing human beings aren't influenced only by capitalism--other stuff has stuck around, which curbs anyone from becoming the 'true capitalist' which is just a manifestation of a capitalist system operating at full efficiency and only under its own logic--i.e. other value judgments don't mix in, as they do with actual human beings--giving pause to what would be the logical solution for increased profits in the capitalist game (i.e. not giving a damn about the shuttering local store and all the people and relationships this closure displaces, not giving a damn about environmental side effects, etc. etc.). Capitalism lends itself to a sort of Machiavellianism in the name of profit--the reason this is something that's dangerous and that we ought to pay attention to is because, like all dangerous phenomena, it is subtle. People buy into systemic structures without fighting against them because the scale is nigh insurmountable, especially once the phenomena reaches a global level, and sometimes people don't even realize they are participants. Jeff Bezos for instance, is not going to stop the Amazon gravy train just because a few thousands if not millions of other people have been negatively impacted by Amazon. Not only the economic sense, but the social and cultural effects too--death of the small shop owner, death of local shop apprenticeships, death of plurality(suggestions from different employees at your local store are changed into the one monolithic suggestion feed of amazon--polyphonic and eclectic curation and division of tastes decays, individuals transform into collectives, fans into fanbases, group think develops)--in general the gradual reduction of types of relationships to those only manageable and congenial to the notion of exchange, and furthermore, exchange that can be mediated or enhanced through the use of technology.
  - ue_ 9y ago
    >Adam Smith's "Invisible Hand"--there's no need to worry about economy because it will "regulate itself" because it is predicated on trade a "natural phenomena" The great part about this is that Smith himself, never mind his contemporaries and critics of his political economy (Marx and Engels) was concerned: "Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all." (From Smith's The Wealth of Nations) Great misconceptions you mentioned indeed exist - this idea that capitalism is "people buying and selling", that capitalism is "natural", and that because it is "natural" it is therefore desirable or good. This view generally depends on ignorance of various historical developments (such as enclosure in Western Europe) and what distinguishes capitalism from other earlier modes of production. I've thought it strange that one might compare Smith's "invisible hand" to Hegel's "world spirit/geist", and lead to very different conclusions even by considering a force figured to be supernatural but effected through the agency of humans.
  - Consultant32452 9y ago
    The capitalism that you deride with the Amazon/Bezos example is the same exact capitalism that allowed the mom and pop place to have ever sold anything in the first place. So you will need to expand your argument to be in opposition of them too. Capitalism (and relatively free trade) is the only mechanism in history to have ever pulled large quantities of people out of grinding poverty. You lament the loss of the (capitalist) mom and pop shop, where's your lament for the loss of having to plow your own field just to avoid starvation? Where's your lament for having to dig coal out of the ground with a shovel and pick just to burn to keep your home warm in the winter? I agree that we've lost a lot of social worth in the form of our real life social networks, but the primary culprit there is government. Government guarantees you a retirement fund, savings rates plummet, and people don't bother to have enough kids to make sure they're taken care of. Government guarantees your parents an income, so you don't have to take care of them. Government feeds the poor, so there's no need for you to be involved in your community to aid your neighbor. Government destroyed the family by subsidizing divorce and single motherhood, creating broken homes which are factories for poverty and misery. But sure, the real problem is Jeff Bezos is part of the machine that is improving the standard of living for all humanity.
Florin_Andrei 9y ago
> it acknowledges and respects nothing that falls outside of its own scope I would like to point out that this is a truism. To a hammer, everything is a nail. To an earthworm, everything is dirt. To gray goo, everything is prime material for making more gray goo. To capitalism, everything is whatever capitalism needs to consume in order to make more and more of whatever it is it wants to produce. Systems of not-infinite scope are, well, limited.
- voidhorse 9y ago
  You are correct. Jean Baudrillard wrote a book about this called Impossible Exchange, that I recommend. The issue I find with capitalism is that it attempts to swallow all other systems. For instance, consider another system religion--it is not uncommon for this system to have, overlaying it, a role in the capitalist system--the capitalist system's operation and the religious system's willingness to participate becomes prerequisite to the religious systems being able to operate or function at in the first place--just as the earthworms continual existence is secured only in so far as the dirt isn't suddenly translatable into economic value and consumed for profit. It's like capitalism is an unconscious dogmatism that everyone participates in because...and that why remains fuzzy. I just don't appreciate the way capitalism, when interfacing with other domains, effaces all their values and meaning--though I suppose you could levy such criticism against any system, i.e. a closed religious system presumably wouldn't read any meaning into your available capital (ah, but so many of them do!), just as capitalism wouldn't read any value or meaning into your practiced religion. Though of course these things are not clearly demarcated and manipulate each other. Thanks for pointing this out. It has helped me consider this further--as always, surprise surprise, things are more complicated than I'd first thought.
  - Florin_Andrei 9y ago
    > The issue I find with capitalism is that it attempts to swallow all other systems. Don't mean to be "that guy", but that's also pretty common with most automata, including living organisms. Run the code till the wheels fall off, and then either find a different thing to consume, or adapt to the new situation, or die. > It's like capitalism is an unconscious dogmatism that everyone participates in because... Because it's the current dominant paradigm. Back in the day, the dominant paradigm was pharaohs ruling the realm from giant stone palaces, and armies of slaves raising monuments for the glory of the god-emperor. Everyone participated in it, like it or not, because there was no real choice. Same now. You could play within the system, or you could go off dancing with wolves. Or you could try to change it, but that in reality is orders of magnitude harder than it seems - unless you happen to be the unwitting or semi-witting agent of the great currents of history.
davemp 9y ago
So corporations find that mentally healthy employees are more productive/valuable so they promote mental fortitude. Somehow anti-capitalists spin even that into some deep evil. Ridiculous.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- 49531 9y ago
  The point is that corporations encourage mental health only inasmuch as it promotes their own ends.
  - yters 9y ago
    At least they're promoting mental health! If there is a natural law then what is in the best interest of the worker is in the best interest of lawful business. And since anything that goes against the natural law ultimately destroys itself, as Aquinas explains, a lawful business is the only kind of business you want.
    - bpchaps 9y ago
      Sorry, but that's total bullshit. The promotion of mental health stretches only to those with mostly-good mental health. A true focus on mental health is severely deprioritized in the workplace for legitimate mental health problems. Which, go figure - only makes mental health issues even worse.
      - yters 9y ago
        Yes, perhaps this result can pave the way for a broader focus.
    - whiteandnerdy 9y ago
      I totally agree that capitalism can be a powerful force for positive change, and agree that if it makes businesses care about mental health, that's to be celebrated. However I also think it's important to acknowledge that there's no universal law connecting employee wellbeing and profit - right now that might be functionally the case but there's no reason the scales couldn't tip the other way, and so it's dangerous to unquestioningly embrace capitalism as an inherently positive model. SlateStarCodex's excellent post "Meditations on Moloch", (http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/) says it way better than I could so I hope you'll forgive a slightly lengthy quote: " [M]any of the most important competitions / optimization processes in modern civilization are optimizing for human values. You win at capitalism partly by satisfying customers’ values. You win at democracy partly by satisfying voters’ values. Suppose there’s a coffee plantation somewhere in Ethiopia that employs Ethiopians to grow coffee beans that get sold to the United States. Maybe it’s locked in a life-and-death struggle with other coffee plantations and wants to throw as many values under the bus as it can to pick up a slight advantage. But it can’t sacrifice quality of coffee produced too much, or else the Americans won’t buy it. And it can’t sacrifice wages or working conditions too much, or else the Ethiopians won’t work there. And in fact, part of its competition-optimization process is finding the best ways to attract workers and customers that it can, as long as it doesn’t cost them too much money. So this is very promising. But it’s important to remember exactly how fragile this beneficial equilibrium is. Suppose the coffee plantations discover a toxic pesticide that will increase their yield but make their customers sick. But their customers don’t know about the pesticide, and the government hasn’t caught up to regulating it yet. Now there’s a tiny uncoupling between “selling to Americans” and “satisfying Americans’ values”, and so of course Americans’ values get thrown under the bus. Or suppose that there’s a baby boom in Ethiopia and suddenly there are five workers competing for each job. Now the company can afford to lower wages and implement cruel working conditions down to whatever the physical limits are. As soon as there’s an uncoupling between “getting Ethiopians to work here” and “satisfying Ethiopian values”, it doesn’t look too good for Ethiopian values either. Or suppose someone invents a robot that can pick coffee better and cheaper than a human. The company fires all its laborers and throws them onto the street to die. As soon as the utility of the Ethiopians is no longer necessary for profit, all pressure to maintain it disappears. "

Chardok 9y ago

Well said. Its hard to quantify it in an objective context, but there is something just viscerally disgusting about taking something so old and spiritually significant to humans and perverting it into a tool for efficiency.

Interfacelabs 9y ago

Very well said indeed.

Consultant32452 9y ago

>For the true capitalist What percentage of the US population do you believe falls into this category?

voidhorse 9y ago
None. I mean it less a concrete instantiation and more as an abstract type that rises as a side effect of the system. Jeff Bezos, to unfairly use him as an example, I doubt has any desire to efface the significance of historical human practice. I doubt he has a vendetta against the subtle social dynamics and sphere of relationships that are established between localized mom and pop shops and customers and that often begin to humanize, at least to a minimum extent, the otherwise emotionless and inhuman process of transaction--bartering, recollection of past trades and successes, allowing a purchase on one's word, trust--all of these cultural (an instance where we can still find something identifiable as human in capitalist practice) dynamics are snuffed by Amazon's enterprise. Amazon's mission is not to kill off this whole space of human practice--its simply dedicated to the capitalist game, and once Jeff is playing there's really no way for him to stop--abiding as he is to the logic of capitalism--the rules of the game. It is a logic that reduces all to one vector--profit. So long as increased profit is the result of an action it is encouraged by capitalism--capitalism itself provides no moral system--it selects a single quantity and hopes to maximize it abstracted from all the details and context--worse, it is assumed justified as natural human behavior (this is the sinister underside of Adam Smith's "Invisible Hand"--there's no need to worry about economy because it will "regulate itself" because it is predicated on trade a "natural phenomena" and set of behaviors--all of a sudden the argument for capitalism turns to putting it forward as a naturalism and not the construct and theory that it is--nothing in nature says that man has to maximize his profits, aka his excess--nature only needs you to break even--it only demands you survive. Capitalists would rather have you believe the will to excess is natural because now the system suddenly has some outside justification). Luckily living breathing human beings aren't influenced only by capitalism--other stuff has stuck around, which curbs anyone from becoming the 'true capitalist' which is just a manifestation of a capitalist system operating at full efficiency and only under its own logic--i.e. other value judgments don't mix in, as they do with actual human beings--giving pause to what would be the logical solution for increased profits in the capitalist game (i.e. not giving a damn about the shuttering local store and all the people and relationships this closure displaces, not giving a damn about environmental side effects, etc. etc.). Capitalism lends itself to a sort of Machiavellianism in the name of profit--the reason this is something that's dangerous and that we ought to pay attention to is because, like all dangerous phenomena, it is subtle. People buy into systemic structures without fighting against them because the scale is nigh insurmountable, especially once the phenomena reaches a global level, and sometimes people don't even realize they are participants. Jeff Bezos for instance, is not going to stop the Amazon gravy train just because a few thousands if not millions of other people have been negatively impacted by Amazon. Not only the economic sense, but the social and cultural effects too--death of the small shop owner, death of local shop apprenticeships, death of plurality(suggestions from different employees at your local store are changed into the one monolithic suggestion feed of amazon--polyphonic and eclectic curation and division of tastes decays, individuals transform into collectives, fans into fanbases, group think develops)--in general the gradual reduction of types of relationships to those only manageable and congenial to the notion of exchange, and furthermore, exchange that can be mediated or enhanced through the use of technology.
- ue_ 9y ago
  >Adam Smith's "Invisible Hand"--there's no need to worry about economy because it will "regulate itself" because it is predicated on trade a "natural phenomena" The great part about this is that Smith himself, never mind his contemporaries and critics of his political economy (Marx and Engels) was concerned: "Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all." (From Smith's The Wealth of Nations) Great misconceptions you mentioned indeed exist - this idea that capitalism is "people buying and selling", that capitalism is "natural", and that because it is "natural" it is therefore desirable or good. This view generally depends on ignorance of various historical developments (such as enclosure in Western Europe) and what distinguishes capitalism from other earlier modes of production. I've thought it strange that one might compare Smith's "invisible hand" to Hegel's "world spirit/geist", and lead to very different conclusions even by considering a force figured to be supernatural but effected through the agency of humans.
- Consultant32452 9y ago
  The capitalism that you deride with the Amazon/Bezos example is the same exact capitalism that allowed the mom and pop place to have ever sold anything in the first place. So you will need to expand your argument to be in opposition of them too. Capitalism (and relatively free trade) is the only mechanism in history to have ever pulled large quantities of people out of grinding poverty. You lament the loss of the (capitalist) mom and pop shop, where's your lament for the loss of having to plow your own field just to avoid starvation? Where's your lament for having to dig coal out of the ground with a shovel and pick just to burn to keep your home warm in the winter? I agree that we've lost a lot of social worth in the form of our real life social networks, but the primary culprit there is government. Government guarantees you a retirement fund, savings rates plummet, and people don't bother to have enough kids to make sure they're taken care of. Government guarantees your parents an income, so you don't have to take care of them. Government feeds the poor, so there's no need for you to be involved in your community to aid your neighbor. Government destroyed the family by subsidizing divorce and single motherhood, creating broken homes which are factories for poverty and misery. But sure, the real problem is Jeff Bezos is part of the machine that is improving the standard of living for all humanity.

Florin_Andrei 9y ago

> it acknowledges and respects nothing that falls outside of its own scope I would like to point out that this is a truism. To a hammer, everything is a nail. To an earthworm, everything is dirt. To gray goo, everything is prime material for making more gray goo. To capitalism, everything is whatever capitalism needs to consume in order to make more and more of whatever it is it wants to produce. Systems of not-infinite scope are, well, limited.

voidhorse 9y ago
You are correct. Jean Baudrillard wrote a book about this called Impossible Exchange, that I recommend. The issue I find with capitalism is that it attempts to swallow all other systems. For instance, consider another system religion--it is not uncommon for this system to have, overlaying it, a role in the capitalist system--the capitalist system's operation and the religious system's willingness to participate becomes prerequisite to the religious systems being able to operate or function at in the first place--just as the earthworms continual existence is secured only in so far as the dirt isn't suddenly translatable into economic value and consumed for profit. It's like capitalism is an unconscious dogmatism that everyone participates in because...and that why remains fuzzy. I just don't appreciate the way capitalism, when interfacing with other domains, effaces all their values and meaning--though I suppose you could levy such criticism against any system, i.e. a closed religious system presumably wouldn't read any meaning into your available capital (ah, but so many of them do!), just as capitalism wouldn't read any value or meaning into your practiced religion. Though of course these things are not clearly demarcated and manipulate each other. Thanks for pointing this out. It has helped me consider this further--as always, surprise surprise, things are more complicated than I'd first thought.
- Florin_Andrei 9y ago
  > The issue I find with capitalism is that it attempts to swallow all other systems. Don't mean to be "that guy", but that's also pretty common with most automata, including living organisms. Run the code till the wheels fall off, and then either find a different thing to consume, or adapt to the new situation, or die. > It's like capitalism is an unconscious dogmatism that everyone participates in because... Because it's the current dominant paradigm. Back in the day, the dominant paradigm was pharaohs ruling the realm from giant stone palaces, and armies of slaves raising monuments for the glory of the god-emperor. Everyone participated in it, like it or not, because there was no real choice. Same now. You could play within the system, or you could go off dancing with wolves. Or you could try to change it, but that in reality is orders of magnitude harder than it seems - unless you happen to be the unwitting or semi-witting agent of the great currents of history.

davemp 9y ago

So corporations find that mentally healthy employees are more productive/valuable so they promote mental fortitude. Somehow anti-capitalists spin even that into some deep evil. Ridiculous.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
49531 9y ago
The point is that corporations encourage mental health only inasmuch as it promotes their own ends.
- yters 9y ago
  At least they're promoting mental health! If there is a natural law then what is in the best interest of the worker is in the best interest of lawful business. And since anything that goes against the natural law ultimately destroys itself, as Aquinas explains, a lawful business is the only kind of business you want.
  - bpchaps 9y ago
    Sorry, but that's total bullshit. The promotion of mental health stretches only to those with mostly-good mental health. A true focus on mental health is severely deprioritized in the workplace for legitimate mental health problems. Which, go figure - only makes mental health issues even worse.
    - yters 9y ago
      Yes, perhaps this result can pave the way for a broader focus.
  - whiteandnerdy 9y ago
    I totally agree that capitalism can be a powerful force for positive change, and agree that if it makes businesses care about mental health, that's to be celebrated. However I also think it's important to acknowledge that there's no universal law connecting employee wellbeing and profit - right now that might be functionally the case but there's no reason the scales couldn't tip the other way, and so it's dangerous to unquestioningly embrace capitalism as an inherently positive model. SlateStarCodex's excellent post "Meditations on Moloch", (http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/) says it way better than I could so I hope you'll forgive a slightly lengthy quote: " [M]any of the most important competitions / optimization processes in modern civilization are optimizing for human values. You win at capitalism partly by satisfying customers’ values. You win at democracy partly by satisfying voters’ values. Suppose there’s a coffee plantation somewhere in Ethiopia that employs Ethiopians to grow coffee beans that get sold to the United States. Maybe it’s locked in a life-and-death struggle with other coffee plantations and wants to throw as many values under the bus as it can to pick up a slight advantage. But it can’t sacrifice quality of coffee produced too much, or else the Americans won’t buy it. And it can’t sacrifice wages or working conditions too much, or else the Ethiopians won’t work there. And in fact, part of its competition-optimization process is finding the best ways to attract workers and customers that it can, as long as it doesn’t cost them too much money. So this is very promising. But it’s important to remember exactly how fragile this beneficial equilibrium is. Suppose the coffee plantations discover a toxic pesticide that will increase their yield but make their customers sick. But their customers don’t know about the pesticide, and the government hasn’t caught up to regulating it yet. Now there’s a tiny uncoupling between “selling to Americans” and “satisfying Americans’ values”, and so of course Americans’ values get thrown under the bus. Or suppose that there’s a baby boom in Ethiopia and suddenly there are five workers competing for each job. Now the company can afford to lower wages and implement cruel working conditions down to whatever the physical limits are. As soon as there’s an uncoupling between “getting Ethiopians to work here” and “satisfying Ethiopian values”, it doesn’t look too good for Ethiopian values either. Or suppose someone invents a robot that can pick coffee better and cheaper than a human. The company fires all its laborers and throws them onto the street to die. As soon as the utility of the Ethiopians is no longer necessary for profit, all pressure to maintain it disappears. "