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Tag: economics

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    Distancing sanctimony

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    1–2 minutes

    Freddie deBoer discusses the moral sanctimony of claiming to be on the side of the poor, disenfranchised, and mentally ill by asking for money for them.

    Consider money and social status as a feel-good distancing mechanism: write the check or post online rather than physically, personally engage with (or take responsibility for) those suffering.

    The reality is difficult but not complex: ill people do not make rational, normative decisions, but declaring their lifestyle as a choice or unique expression of their autonomy is another clever avoidance of responsibility/reality wrapped in the rhetoric of individualist freedom.

    By requesting funds without participatory understanding layered with evermore attenuated disclaimers about autonomy and agency, we are left to surround problems with resources: we encircle difficulties with money and abstract empathy, like walling off an invader or parasite, yelling our care over the barrier we created.

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    Loyalty as payment

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    1–2 minutes

    Loyalty pays, but you pay for it.

    Becoming loyal guarantees special treatment, but it often requires a long process of paying in and self-abnegation/abasement in return.

    The fealty of the knight (structured with obligations) or the love of a parent (unearned, irrational gift) is different: loyalty can be gained or lost, becoming fickle and transactional, but it is based on a subjective interpretation of the value you have put in versus the return you are given.

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    Beyond capital: algorithms

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    1–2 minutes

    Algorithms are lauded as new processes in capitalism’s arsenal. While traditional capitalism dealt in heavy metals such as gold, machines, production, and labor to move assets, the new model is a light extractive filter sitting atop a tangled web of connected network traffic, siphoning off the nectar.

    While increasing efficiency and value creation, an algorithm sits atop an already exploitative digital economy (harvesting of personal data and clicks), much as traditional capital set atop early civilizations (militarized states protect merchants and allow factories and supply chains). This additional layering offers benefits yet increasingly attenuates production from the physical into the abstract and speculative.

    Arguably, the reliance on coordinated, cooperative networks provides stability beyond material reality until chaos ensues, at which point the revenge of the real reduces artificial systemic complexity very rapidly: algorithms are not capital but pleasant parasites easily swatted.

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    the attention economy

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    1–2 minutes

    To be awake today is to be sold something.

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    Capitalism requires hope

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    1–2 minutes

    In capitalism, economic salvation is a promise occasionally made good: some small percent miraculously gets rich. For most, it is an illusory pretense, a propagandistic dogma, that hard work will pay off, lifting the poverty-stricken to grace.

    There is a slim chance that it is better than the strict feudal/caste system, except psychologically, where capitalism internalizes the master’s whip: our striving and failures are our faults, our shame. In feudal systems and caste systems, it is systemic fate, not personal failure, that lands you in poverty or wealth.

    The promise of possible wealth (economic salvation) moderates the volatility of a system that also ruins people. Hope fuels the winners, and when it fails, it creates the losers. Either way, hope is an essential fuel for the populace to accept the system and believe its goods outweigh its ills.

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    Money as Stress

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    1–2 minutes

    Think about money as stress, both an accumulation and an expenditure.
    To become proficient in something, one must undergo stressful learning, after which it seems easier, and people pay you so that they do not have to stress (experience difficulty) outside of their subject of expertise.

    Equally, as you gain responsibility, more stress and risk are placed on you, and you are paid more. To offload home stresses, you can then afford better entertainment, services, and safer communities.

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    Priorities as a marketplace

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    1–2 minutes

    Notice that you can respond immediately, altering your plans, when a priority calls: be a person, value, or object. It is instinctual to jump into action without pondering emotional weight when a pet or friend is in distress or when a glass breaks.
    However, when you have time to consider your priorities, they become a marketplace of bidding values linked to emotional states: over time, pleasure beats out responsibility, or guilt wins out over comfort and transforms into duty.

    The trick, as usual, is balancing between the ‘should’ and ‘must,’ the personal welfare and communal bond.
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    What would you do if…

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    1–2 minutes

    A popular hypothetical: what would you do if no one was looking? What would you do if money was no object?
    These hypotheticals break us from wisely implemented restraints: to shun the panopticon of socialization and squander capital resources is currently fool-hardy and not worth consideration. Both questions dismiss survival imperatives (to find your tribe and defend against uncertainty) for passionate fantasy.

    Yet, they can also reveal something, such as what you want people to see and why you make money, which are probably entangled.

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    the communal self disrupted by capitalism

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    1–2 minutes

    The competitive nature of the capitalist economic struggle, while it produces progress in products and raises the overall quality of life, also converts humans into individuated consumers, themselves produced and desires manipulated.

    To know yourself as an individual (sovereign, autonomous) is to not know yourself as part of a community with reliant ties. You cease to know yourself as we once did, as a piece of a whole in which your identity is integral and there is no desire to differentiate or stive out of it.

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    We sell ourselves on emotions

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    1–2 minutes

    Macroeconomics is unfalsifiable. As a pseudo-science, it has much in common with astrology or prophecy: it is a politicized sales pitch. Once we have a theory, we strengthen it with belief, restricting our view to one story.
    Microeconomics, on the other hand, can be falsified and show where processes provide deviation.

    However, humans’ micro-moments are heuristics or feelings that fluctuate daily. To convert them into micro-behavioral economics, we must balance against reality by consistent reflection.
    Rather than retrofitting observations to align with ideology (working backward from predefined values), work forward from minute details, building your potential so you can effect change, not letting change affect you.

    Continue to dream or be outraged, but don’t sell yourself on it; don’t con yourself with theory or belief.