The Dark Side of Capitalism
I can't believe I am writing an article like this one but really the cognitive dissonances in my head have piled up to a level that it really had became obvious to me that I had some contradictory beliefs in my head, which is unhealthy. I had to rethink my beliefs and political positions, economics and my general social view of the world.
Now first of all I am not a Socialist/Marxist/Communist or anything like that (which would be really funny for my username), so it's not like I have jumped to the other side of the fence, which would be pretty stupid, I will explain why. But sort of this "Ultra-Capitalist" mentality that you see on /r/Anarcho-Capitalism (or actually these days you see Neo-Nazis there openly advocating for throwing people out of helicopters) just doesn't seem to resonate with me anymore for a very simple reason:
CENTRALIZATION OF POWER
My biggest problem with Anarcho-Capitalism is the centralization of power aspect. In fact most of the history of Capitalism revolved around this. This so obvious fact I couldn't ignore any longer. And I am just disgusted by centralized power, totally, the cryptocurrency phenomena made this clear to me as it is so much better when things are decentralized.
So the least power a person can hold the better, it won’t be equal, but it should not be way more than the average or we are dealing with a dictator there.
Of course this immediately throws our Socialism/Marxism/Communism out of the window as well.
- Communism can't exist naturally, thus you have to give an overwhelming authority to a State to make everyone "equal", like equally enslaved in a Gulag or equally starving to death in Venezuela.
- Marxism is too theoretic, any practical application of it would be exactly like how the Soviets or other Red Factions did it.
- And Socialism is just nothing more than Mafias controlling factories and behaving exactly like that (no wonder in the USA all labor unions got taken over by mobsters in the 20th century, it's ironic)
So the Left is just as guilty here if not more, because Capitalism at least can give some freedoms initially for people to make money, but which get's taken away as soon as the Monopolists get a hold of the State.
So the biggest issue is CENTRALIZED POWER whether it's a State or a Corporation, it doesn't matter, in fact most Corporate board members were past politicians or vice versa. There is just a huge intermingling between giant Corporations and the State, which is disgusting, especially if it's at the detriment of your average people.
CORPORATE CAPITALISM
So let's take it one by one, you have a Corporation which is a legal entity incorporated into the State, so it's literally a part of the State. It not just obey's it's laws (or not if they have connections) but it is even used to enforce laws. Because let's face it, it's impossible to enforce unpopular laws, there are not enough cops in the world to do that.
So you have a little bit of PRISM here a little bit of Censorship there, a little bit of Labor Camps here, a little bit of more Surveillance there, and it's almost like you are living in comrade Stalin's Soviet Union, but wrapped in pink ribbons instead that you paid for with your "UltraSuperMegaHyperShopCard™".
In fact in most cases the corporations don't even resist the tyranny, which they could very well do since they could challenge it in the courts, they have the money, and it would be a good prestige move, but they don't since they are probably paid off well to do it.
Of course you also have the usual suspects, the:
- Banksters of 2008 robbing you
- Pollution Cartel polluting you
- Big Pharma tied to Nazis, poisoning you
- GMO monopolists, poisoning you
- ISP monopolists throttling your connection
- Searcn Engine monopolists filtering reality for you
- Social Media monopolists desocializing and censoring you
- IP Law monopolists literallly making you pay for using words
- And the latest addition: Bitcoin, the Corporately controlled coin which is under banking control now, costs 40$ to send a transaction, and all platforms heavily censored
It doesn't take to be a genius to figure out that the Corporate system is not there to help people, and I knew this, I just thought that maybe if they would be criticized enough, they would change their behavior.
Well that didn’t happen, and now you can’t criticize them since they pull off people from all communication platforms, this woke me up massively, plus they might use bogus IP law claims to shut people down.
I mean literally these people are trademarking fruit names and other common English words, so you can’t even speak about them badly or they’ll sue you. Yeah talking about freedom of speech.
ANARCHO CAPITALISM
Well I don’t think the Corporate Capitalists would let it happen. Chomsky explained this perfectly, he said that the existing corporations profit just so massively from State Intervention and subsidies that they will never allow any kind of Voluntary Capitalism to exist.
I am not sure how Mises and Rothbard viewed big corporations, I don’t think they were practically against them.
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
Rothbard was somewhat against IP laws, Mises wasn’t. Rothbard was a good guy, I think he was just confused about some things, and can’t blame Mises either he just grew up in an aristocratic environment, but he still did good deeds in the economics field. I was feeling that perhaps some IP laws were invasive but I wasn’t really sure what to believe as illustrated in this article.
Now I am totally against it, and I fail to see how an Ancap society would “enforce” IP laws without a Big Government. I mean you literally have to go to the other part of the world and sent tanks to their houses to arrest them for nonviolent copyright infringement. Also note that most recent Ancaps are very much pro IP even though it is literally being used to censor people now.
There is nothing that stops people from changing their business model, if you are worried that somebody is pirating your book or your music, have the price lowered for fuck sake. I have literally seen engineering books being sold for 400$, for 400$ you can buy an entire lab set to reinvent the knowledge for fuck sake. Have your books or music sold for 2-3$, and make sure you accept cryptocurrency like Dash or Monero (not BTC because the fees there are 40$ already) since most payment processors suck so people are not incentivized to buy stuff online. Plus get rid of these fucking protectionist border policies where the import duties are high and stuff is regularly being stolen at the border by corrupt border guards, there needs to be a decentralized method for delivering stuff to people.
Otherwise subscription models are decent too, you can release your songs one by one to your subscribers, and if they leak, no big deal, you make a new song soon anyway. Hey you can’t be a world known famous music star but who the hell wants to be that anyway, they are spoiled by the fame anyway and have all sorts of psychological issues afterwards.
SO WHAT NOW?
So what should I believe now? The thing I noticed is that Leftists are State worshippers. I am not. They get disgusted by monopolist corporations and they immediately start worshipping the centralized State as their savior that will save them from the corps. Well if they are intermingling and CEO’s are running for political offices back and forth, then that doesn’t look like a savior to me. Plus politicians can be corrupted anyway, so it doesn’t even matter.
But really, who will save people from the monopolies? Is it going to be a big “trust-buster” like Teddy Roosevelt?
Leftists are really stuck in that paradigm, that maybe some Socialist like Bernie Sanders or Teddy Roosevelt will save them, but it probably ain’t gonna happen.
But it’s literally a horribly dichotomy if they think those are the 2 solutions, either worship the State or the Corporations, which are pretty much the same thing. There is another solution though, which is the real solution, but neither party promotes is because it’s not about gaining power by promising goodies, but about losing power, which quite frankly, nobody wants.
DECENTRALIZATION OF POWER
The REAL solution is to decentralize power, quite simply. Now I don’t know what political landscape this would manifest itself in.
Probably the closest thing would be some sort of direct democracy at the local level, but it’s hard to do it, because opportunists would always stand in line to grab power locally and be a “mayor” , “town leader” , “village leader”, etc…
I mean I guess the Socialists believe that this is possible, but I don’t. So it has to be totally decentralized and trustless, probably some kind of blockchain based voting system, sort of like a Decentralized Online Government. Or multiple ones for any kind of project or location.
A DAO would come closest to it, putting aside the 1st one's bad reputation, a well built DAO could do all of this. It could form a community based around a currency of their own, and provide all social services for it’s members.
So it doesn’t have to be corporate healthcare (which is pretty shady) neither Government socialized healthcare (which is a joke), but it could be a voluntary community oriented system.
Sort of like the friendly societies were doing, but instead digitally, transparently, and voluntarily.
So make no mistake about it, I am still a Voluntarist, but it has became my belief now that Voluntarism is based on decentralization of power, and not on the abolishment of violence.
Because let’s face it, there will always be violence, it’s human nature, the only thing can be done is to just keep people away from the “ring of power” so that the damage they can cause would be minimal.
People are always corrupt no matter what, so it would do a great service to both them and to society if their bad habits are kept in check. Neither by a monolithic State nor by an Oligarchy, nor through any other coercive means, but by people interacting with eachother in a friendly and informative way.
BUSINESS IN THE DECENTRALIZED PARADIGM
So I am not against business, in fact I encourage it, but free businesses, not monopolies. A business really shouldn’t grow above a certain size. Certainly not to the size where it controls nearly the entire internet Google does through Youtube, Google Search, Google Analytics (even when I login to Steemit some Google stuff is loaded, they are literally everywhere now), Ads, CDN, etc…
At least with Facebook, which I don’t use, you could say that it’s voluntary, though they still track people through cookies from Like buttons that are almost everywhere. But Google is not even voluntary, it’s forced on us, why the hell must be I subjected to Google if I want to use Steemit. On Bitcointalk they just added a ReCaptcha, so you can’t even login there now without filling that in every time. Same with many other websites that either use Google, Cloudfare or any other 3rd party CDN to load in the background. So annoying!
Normally there would be competition, but either the capital requirements make it hard to found or raise capital to such a company (thanks to Securities Laws), or they outright use IP law or other regulations to keep people out like with Taxi Monopolies and other dirty stuff.
So family businesses, small businesses with 10-20 employees, those are cool, and even some large businesses aren’t bad either if they are constantly kept under rigorous criticism and transparency checks (which most of the time is not tolerated, but outright censored).
You can’t escape it, after things grow above a certain size, they stop being beneficial and they start becoming a pain in the ass to the world.
“Oh but if you don’t like it leave” kind of argument still comes up often. Well I would but there is nowhere to go. The Internet is controlled by giant corporations, creating a 2nd Internet platform requires tons of capital which you can’t raise without the Securities Regulator’s approval, and the Meshnet is heavily regulated by RF frequency regulations. So you are fucked. Not to mention as soon as some Meshnet within legal channel limits would pop up the ISP cartels would probably lobby for their ban.
What the fuck are people supposed to do? The control grid by 2017 is just so deep that there is no way to escape it, you can’t even live in the woods now, it’s illegal. So the only thing is left to change it.
A peaceful revolution of decentralization of power. This can be achieved, and must be achieved without violence, that is the whole point. It’s not about coercion, but undoing coercion, all kinds of coercions.
It started with Bitcoin, but unfortunately Bitcoin had fallen back into the web of control, and you can already see a massive opposition to this from the Bitcoin Cash crowd, it’s not perfect, but it’s a voluntary choice to hold accountable the corruption that has been going on with BTC.
This is the beauty of a decentralized community, it instantly corrects itself, which would result in an instant fixing of the problem, if not for the censorship and propaganda tactics that keeps in power the corrupt ones.
So this is not Socialism nor Marxism nor “Traditional” Capitalism, this is a 3rd Path, I think it’s the path towards the real truth that has been hidden away by the power grabbers. It is just simply Decentralization, what form it will take that doesn’t matter afterwards.
Sources:
https://pixabay.com
@profitgenerator!
Hey I have always been pro-business but only moral business, what these big corporations are doing is very immoral. I have had always a philosophical leaning and in philosophy you can't bullshit. You have to go and find truth. So if that means a little bit of compromize and criticism of things then be it. Nothing is sacred and everything should be criticized.
An amazing article.
You just summed up the insanity of the right/left debate. Those who are mired in it do not realize that they are both arguing for the same thing...just different masters. I realize a few years ago how absurd the entire political spectrum/debate was. Why did nothing change? Because the right/left dichotomy is nothing but a show...window dressing meant to keep the general population occupied.
The right doesnt run the show nor does the left. It is the bankers who run the sow. They control the currency, they own the majority of the largest corporations, the politicians, hence the government, is in their pockets, and the school curriculum provides the indoctrination they need.
Free market people want to espouse the virtues of capitalism like it is nirvana. Perhaps what we are witnessing is the true end result of capitalism. It might take decades or even centuries, but maybe the true outcome of capitalism is an environment where the few control most of the means. They win the game of monopoly while others fail.
How many take the time to consider this?
You can't even blame the banksters, they haven't existed 1000 years ago but it was still the same thing going on under the Church.
Yeah as soon as the Church lost most of it's power, suddently it's not as threatening anymore.
So Decentralization is imperative if we want to live in a free world, centralized power is literally like cancer.
No I don't think you understand it, I think it is a dynamic cycle of life & death sort of like how easter philosophers, Buddhists viewed the world.
Things have to constantly change for us to have freedom. Whenever you "settle" for any ideology, it eventually corrupts itself and it becomes too comfortable and entrenched with itself. I don't think that is a good thing.
Not many, only people who genuinely want to see the truth. And it takes integrity to admit if you are wrong which I did, so I don't have to live with contradictions in my head anymore.
It takes courage too. Going against deeply held beliefs is not easy. We often have a part of our identity tied up into that belief system. I understand where you are coming from. ...I had the same "talk" with myself a couple years ago about my political outlook which was derived in large part to my upbringing. Like you I didnt suddenly jump into the other camp but stepped back and question the entire system.
I didn't went from deeply held beliefs to something else. I already knew this, I just tried to rationalize and lump together 2 contradictory things. I should have been critical and selective about certain items. Perhaps that is the propaganda, to try to put something evil in the good basket to mask itself.
It's also a psychological barrier in some way. People feel they have a vested interest in being right and in a social context not losing face.
Way to express your doubts and look for answers. A few comments to consider:
How do you know that crony-capitalism isnt a part of capitalism?
Perhaps it is the natural outcome of a capitalistic system.
No it's an outcome of all systems that are centralized. Capitalism is just an excuse or perhaps a mask for these Monopolists (that is what they really are) to seize total power.
So they mix their Violent Monopoly Businesses with innocent Mom & Pops Stores and call it Capitalism. I think a distinction has to be made.
Didnt most of the monopolies/major corps you allude to start as mom and pops before they started eating up everyone around them.
WalMart, Home Depot, HP, Google, hell even AT&T......
So who created the excuse or mask for the monopolies if they didnt start out as that?
Yes but they would not have grown to that size if there would have been proper competition between them.
They either got in bed with the political class or they were connected before that. If you really do your research, you can easily see how most of these elite people are connected. Your uncle is a bureaucrat at X office, your grandpa is a politician at Z office and your cousin is a bureaucrat at Y office, how hard it is for you to become successful now?
Why would they not love the State?
So a real truth seeker must analyze whether Big Corporations are really voluntary?
2] Yes, but unfortunately most Ancaps today that I have talked about are Pro-IP. Plus they also don't understand the consequences of it, this would also reveal other dirty things if people go down this road.
Chomsky does describe a possible outcome where corporations do build their own armies and become powerful entities. The first caution is that breaking the non-aggression principle is no longer anarcho-capitalism. There is also nothing wrong with a company becoming enormous. Companies become large because consumers value their products and they are rewarded for that. The bulletins you make are government creations - not capitalism.
It is definitely a hot topic. I agree that people do not understand the consequences - the violence involved to regulate IP is enormous. As you put it, you'd have to police the world (which is being tried)
And that is exactly what would happen. They can easily create their own mercenary armies and even make other people pay for it as "services"
As if they would care, since they don't return the bailouts and subsidies that they were given either on the grounds that taxes are theft.
Of course there is, it stifles innovation and it entrenches, possibly corrupts, the entity.
So did I thought for long time, but it's literally statistically impossible to grow to such enormous sizes without government regulation. If there would be no governments possibly only small businesses would exist. Now some of them would strive for more power, and that would be dangerous since that could start some kind of turf war or power intermingling, so it has to be made sure that things are well decentralized and businesses only operate in their area of activity.
Yes it is Government, but the corporations gladly like it, and even support it.
It's even bigger, the intrusion from IP is astonishing. They are now even talking about implementing DRM in HTML, the backbone of the internet to sort of filter out copyrighted stuff as if that can't be abused by hackers. There are also plenty of DRM involved in all sorts of linked technology, it's very invasive and pretty Orwellian too if you think about it.
The state you live in today, is the monopoly that resulted from a failure to establish anarcho-capitalism. As I've said many times, the confusion we have over what is meant by government is very destructive here. By "government" many ancaps simply mean "the state", which I absolutely agree is flawed thinking.
This is pretty much how I see it. "Decentralized" might have to be discussed at lenght at some point, but in general this is how most anarcho-capitalists see society being constructed
I have already wrote a few articles about it, so I have a general feeling how it would look like, but I still haven't figured out every detail. I guess that is how evolution is done, people figure it out on the way.
I wish ancaps would view it this way, but I think you are just conflating your own view with theirs. Most of the ancap community that I have seen is pro-corporatist , pro IP enforcement and in some way even pro State. They are mostly Libertarians who just want low taxes, but they haven't exactly figured out the nature of the State yet.
Depending on how new you are to the community, you may have seen a big change as of these last few years. It's not anarcho capitalism that's changed, well not for the worse anyway. It's a mix of people changing, but also both cultural and political fascists outright trying to infiltrate the movement. I've said before that it's getting very ugly currently. People pick sides over both satirical and more serious memes etc. The fascist trolls love it.
There have been a few breakout attempts here and there to restart somewhere fresh, but it's impossible to keep the real ancaps separated from the non-ancaps unless it's a closed off space with serious vetting.
I originally come from the far left many years ago and have a lot of experience with the ideological divides. But consistent anarcho-capitalists are not actually "right wing" - as obviously the left, but also ancaps often claim when an entirely different spectrum is used for meassure - and would have to be voluntaryists.
It's always hard to be convincing in a comment section on the internet. Although I've discussed this a lot over the years, I see the reward diminish all the time. Hell the monarchists often outnumber the anarcho-capitalists in communities such as on Reddit and Facebook. So I'm not going to use the ancap label unless absolutely necessary from now on. All it does is prevent me from speaking with other center-libertarians that disown the concept.
Another excellent post, and yes - decentralization is the way forward.
I for one is not a fan of any political ideologies as everything has its setbacks. Capitalism is unhealthy for one as the power and wealth distribution is concentrated. The elites are the ones who are able to have easier access and they gain most than the 99 per cent. Meanwhile, countries like China is adhering on communism but it has also lead for those who are under poverty line to be poorer. Corruption has prevailed allowing millionaires to become billionaires. I have learned this as I was reading some academic journals online.
Yes so these "isms" are just an illusion. The real problem is the centralized power.
All "isms" are essentially imposed centrally with all kinds of pundits and opportunists lining up to them in hopes of gaining some power.
Thanks for sharing your honest thoughts.
I don't agree on everything, but that's okay.
I do have to add one thing;
I would call myself a leftist, but I'm a Communalist, and don't believe in state power.
Most leftists that I know and have met, are not believers in state power at all, but they are just viewing capitalism, (what you might call crony capitalism or cronyism) as a bigger threat to freedom and prosperity. For instance in supporting free healthcare provided by the state, which works really well in practice.
So for me, leftist means something generally positive. But I would never support any attempt at a political solution involving more state power.
I agree on the goal of decentralization, I think it's essential.
Upvoted and resteemed.
This is why I feel inclined to use the term anarcho-capitalism much less as of late and why I prefer "voluntaryism" more and more. ("Center-libertarianism" works to explain how I'm not right wing, but still leaves a lot open in terms of power given or not given to the state.)
People have increasingly started thinking that we don't mind having a society of poverty and unlimited power to sociopaths. Now even racists, monarchists and both cultural and political fascists are starting to infiltrate discussion groups on social media. Many outright claim that "anarcho-capitalism will not be practical until we have an all-white nation".
This all saddens me. I was sure that the best course of action was to take back the term "capitalism", but considering how it's now successfully being painted as everything we should oppose - not only by the left, but because of a resurging right - I may have to rethink my strategy in that department.
I'm not giving up and I'm not changing my main convictions of course. But I will have to give this new situation some extra consideration.
This is why I dont associate myself with ancaps anymore. The ancap philosophy is just a too big tent philosophy and it doesnt even have any clear stances on issues, and it has conflicting positions on some issues. So of course you will have communist and nazi infiltrators trying to steer it in their own direction.
Perhaps the stance should be no initiation of force, and then the racist will then define it as some races are more prominent to crime than others, therefore they have to get rid of to have a voluntary society. Now this is totally flawed, most of those statistics are biased anyway. But they don't realize that by "physical removal" they imply much greater use of force than the victims would have used anyway. Which means that it's the racist that is the real aggressor.
So the only question that really matters is who has the power? And if you give power to a centralized body be that communist or nazi, it will do exactly that same kind of atrocities as we saw in the 20th century, with whatever justification they come up with.
If nobody has power, or the power is very limited and distributed, then we don't have to worry about any systematic agression. It's just that simple.
I see you have come to the conclusion that capitalism leads to oligarchy. Communism is already oligarchy. I remember reading in the 1990s, the news paper writers were being apologists for the Soviet's communism. They said "capitalists' and communists want the same thing". Oligarchs can wear both hats: government or business. Decentralize everything
As for books, there comes a time when the price is so high, people will simply photocopy it and otherwise not buy it. Where I live there is little enforcement people often want to borrow (paper) books from me to photocopy. E-books are so easy to copy also. This is why Harry Potter is only available as a paper book.
Steemit gives authors a chance to make money with votes. Steemfiles gives the user a chance to pay authors for the downloads.
It does if the potential competitors are always kept oppressed, which happens all the time, even without a government. See BTC vs BCH.
No communism is a fictional theretical goal of making everyone equal, but any practical implementations of it creates exactly the opposite, a totalitarian state with omnipotent powers.
Those were heavy propaganda pices, if you research into it ,most of those reporters were paid shills
Yes and there is 1 more thing to copyright. People should not have unrealistic goals as a content producer. Now everyone will be a Michael Jackson.
I mean literally everyone wants to be a world famous star nowadays, which is just totally irrational greed. And most artists become psychological wrecks anyway. Most stars become drug addict psychos eventually.
So really if you are a local singer or some book writer who is only known in a region, it's much better to stay there than to go for more, otherwise the negative consequences will pile up too.
So if they have to sell their books for 2-3$, no big deal, if they get just 5000 readers, they can alredy pay the bills, and they can write a book every 6 months.
@profitgenerator, I am @bahagia-arbi from Indonesia and I found your blog from searching in google about Steemit. Nice to meet a superhero like you in Steemit. I have followed you and I hope we can be a good friend.
have a nice day.
Regard from Indonesia.