What the hell is wrong with you people? or "wait, you're seriously going out to eat at Chile's?" (an anecdotal rant)

Alright, I do enjoy Chile’s. I don’t, however, enjoy the possibility I might cause others to die.

I think drives my aligning in sentiment with anyone proclaiming “eat the rich.” Between certain populations of people in the United States – at least it seems to me, my close friends (socialist by nature or Socialist by nurture) – there stands a divide that falls on the notion that others should serve to enrich us.

As a rule, I don’t keep close friends who believe others should serve to enrich us.

“Greed” as a social good

You see, the system we favor – Capitalism – is two things: recursive and reifying. It’s recursive because Capitalism values people as objects for nothing more than its own expansion: The object creates value driving the market which then demands the object create value which drives the market which…just look up ‘recursive’. It also requires these objects’ social interactions and values be made into objects (this is ‘reification‘). Rather than remaining individuals capable of autonomy, Capitalism parses from them their actions, making these actions measurable as means of contributing to and expanding Capital.

To work properly, Capitalism depends on folks accepting it as a general “good” we practice this objectification. This objectification then justifies behind an effective greed – you recognize it when someone spouts “greed is good” or “cream, get the money,” or does whatever the fuck went on here. Building on some notion of greed as a ‘good’, it follows the Capitalist must squeeze all she can from objects reproducing to ensure Capital’s exponential growth. To ensure this growth, the Capitalist must attain the most value for any given commodity. One way to ensure the most value of a given commodity is for the Capitalist to diminish the value of labor while maintaining its productivity. Once the Capitalist objectifies labor, she, among other things, separates the human from her labor output. When she separates the human from her labor output, the Capitalist dehumanizes the laborer. Once dehumanized, it becomes easy to distinguish the laborer using any number of artificial categorizations.

Of course, if you’re thinking hard about this, this ‘distinguishing’ is counterintuitive to any notions put forth by the United States of America; a country claiming itself as a beacon for all, or as the ultimate arbiter of “virtue” and “good” in the world. Yet, the United States’ willingness to subject people in the name of that “good” is well-documented – it isn’t counterfactual (a fancy word for a ‘what if’ situation) that we possibly objectify people, it’s standard practice. And its ills are intrinsically tied to the United States’ Capitalist ethos. The fact is the pride with which a great multitude act in carrying water for Capitalism as currently practiced in these United States is evil when we profess to hold some specific self-evident truths (I mean, it’s evil even if we don’t hold these truths…but, I won’t take you down that road).

That previous sentiment is loaded: first, it is indeed polemic – I state it to distinguish myself as standing on an extreme and opposing-Capitalism side in most arguments surrounding Capitalism. Second, it isn’t a dichotomy; I don’t divide those who defend Capitalism into being completely wrong or completely right in their “carrying water.” There are plenty of people who question whether Capitalism does enough while still maintaining its merits.

However, this doesn’t mean I cannot criticize the thinking behind the latter.

We build on a system that purposefully classifies people according to how much they benefit us. Take for example, the argument around immigration.

Contemporary conventional wisdom demands that before she is a person, we objectify the immigrant, separating her from her humanity by categorizing her: she is beneficial or a burden; the right-kind-of-immigrant or the wrong-kind-of-immigrant. She is legitimate: legal rather than illegal, or qualifies as a ‘people’ rather than a ‘non-people‘.

In other words, we otherize her. Once otherized, she serves a purpose. Only after she serves a purpose, can we even acknowledge our seeing the immigrant. At the point we finally see her, she’s nothing more than a tool to further our needs. To her persecutors, she is an existential threat to “Americanism.” Meanwhile her defenders, defend her because her persecution threatens their livelihood.

The immigrant’s role, at least according to the United States polis, seems to be that of servant. Regardless of category, the immigrant holds the fundamental definition of a less-than ‘other’ whose autonomous purpose (her own purpose) in coming to the United States defers to her serving a purpose outside of her own autonomy; she holds no intrinsic human value other than duties she performs for other humans. She must pay her dues before holding as anything besides value as an object. Furthermore, her ‘paying dues’ doesn’t guarantee the immigrant her humanity because to ‘guarantee humanity’, the residing U.S. citizen subjects the immigrant to the oppression derivative of the ‘American’ ethos; oppression deriving from Capitalism.

She, the immigrant, is, and always has been, an object for labor through which the Capitalist in the United States of America enriched herself.

From Immigration to the Novel Coronavirus

Because we base our social systems on Capitalist ideology, the ideals put forth in the Declaration of Independence skew. Instead of people having the Right to live flourishing lives, Capitalism steps in as an intermediary and tweaks that Right from ones Right to flourish to the Right to a chance to flourish. Prior to the last two weeks, there’s been few chances to test this theory. Thanks to a Pandemic combined with the absolute incompetence of the political leadership in handling it, we don’t have to depend on counterfactuals (remember that word from earlier?).

The society we know as the United States of America is grinding to a halt thanks to the Novel Coronavirus Pandemic. Because the Pandemic is live and not an exercise, we can see in realtime the precarious nature of unfettered (unrestrained…but I really like that word) Capitalism in the following two points:

1. The priority shown in propping up the market through an injection of, at least, one trillion Dollars does not correlate remotely to any effort to immediately address the physical well-being of people. The effort to get critical medical supplies manufactured without tying a profit to that manufacturing proves that political leadership is unserious about its efforts. This may result in the type of large-scale social failures that are possible (predicted, in one case, here) if significant measures aren’t taken. At the very least, it already stretches our health system to its limit. This results in, among other things, a depreciation of the idea that the United States has its shit together; a sentiment very much active in the view other country’s have of ours and our Government’s official handling of this crisis.
2. Because the tools used to prop up the market drive from the Capitalist class, the Capitalist determines the fate of the laborer. While the discussion of how much should be spent on aid rages in congress, April 1st looms: this means rents and mortgages are coming due for millions of suddenly unemployed people. For a country who, per this report, has 80% of its population living paycheck-to-paycheck, the next week is grim. If there aren’t measures in place to protect people who suffer economically from this Pandemic, millions could be displaced thanks to landlord evictions or bank foreclosures. When the market stunts Capitalist expansion, the people hurt the most are those whom the Capitalist exploits in the name of that expansion. In this case, those hurt will be those the Capitalist deemed expendable.

I’m one of those who will be hurt. I work for a Capitalist who I’ve heard profess his love for Gordon Gekko and his “greed is good” mantra. I hold two “director” titles at this company and I make less per hour than my parents did as managers in their jobs at one of Ma Bell’s deregulated step-children in the 1980s. As far as I can tell, my Capitalist boss is on cloud nine due to the extreme growth our company’s seen in the last week. The food runs millions of Americans are making on a daily basis caused a 170% increase in our monthly numbers, and our factory is working seven days a week to meet this new need. I am not holding my breath that I or any of the other workers in our factory will see an increase in pay for our efforts by March 31st. Yet, we’ll still need to pay our rents and mortgages on April 1st despite having lost additional income – whether that income stopped because significant others needed to stay home to watch children no longer allowed to go to school or other means of income shut down due to the Pandemic.

Finally, I’m finishing this up!

Look, you’ve read this far (I mean, thanks for reading this far!). I hope that following me through my meandering, you can at least start to think about who we are as a country and why all of the answers proposed by the powers that be during the most devastating era in our lives take their cues from Socialism (or at least the crude Socialism we see as interpreted by the U.S. Capitalist). I’m really not trying to convince you of anything – I’d like you to think about what I’m saying and at least consider the possibility that we’re simply born into a situation with boundary conditions preventing us from willingly questioning our beliefs (a boundary condition is a condition with which you are bound – you cannot know what lies outside of your boundaries because you’re boundaries limit what it is you can know – don’t make me break out my Kant notes). If you can question how your own beliefs affect the beliefs of others, maybe you can go a step further and work towards something better for all.

Thanks for coming to my talk. Bootleg more Tommy Boy era De La Soul.