ysabetwordsmith | How to Starve Capitalism to Death

People have talked about how much they hate capitalism and want to destroy it. Okay, I get that capitalism is toxic; see "The Green Frog Skin" story. I'm also aware that all the bad things communists predicted about capitalism came true, just all the bad things capitalists predicted about communism came true. (They all would've done better to listen to each other and fix the flaws, but none of them were having any of that.) However, destroying capitalism is risky business.

I favor walking away and creating alternatives. Turn on, tune in, drop out! It is not necessarily required to destroy capitalism. It does a lot of that to itself. Use everything from communes to co-ops to swaps and giveaways to take energy away from capitalism. Starve it to death until it is weak enough to drown in a bathtub.

Mostly capitalism relies on making people want things. There is a very limited amount that it can force people to buy before either they revolt or they simply don't have the money to pay up no matter how much they are hurt for not having it. So it can pretty much be starved to death. Here are some ways ...

Study different economic systems so you know what you're working toward and against. If you want to replace capitalism, you need to pick a replacement. Consider your values and ethics in making this choice. Work on it until you can frame your personal economic stance in a sentence or two. Seek other people who share your perspective and goals. LOTS of people are disgusted with capitalism. It's a big driver of humanity destroying the Earth. Healthy societies, and their economic systems, do not saw off the branch they're standing on. Try to be smarter than a cartoon character.

Distinguish between wants and needs. Wants are things it's nice to have but not necessary. Needs cause negative consequences if you don't have them. Practice unwanting things. The less you want, the harder it becomes for people to manipulate you. Learn how to meet your own survival needs as much as possible.

Read about credit unions. Find a credit union.

Explore food co-ops. Find a food co-op. Learn how to start a food co-op.

Learn about community-supported agriculture. Find community-supported agriculture, farmer's markets, or U-pick farms. You can start your own CSA. You should at least know how to grow your own food.

Read about intentional communities and intentional neighboring. Find an intentional community. Learn how to start your own intentional community or sharehouse.

Explore community currencies. See a list of community currencies. Learn how to start a community currency.

Find a barter exchange network online. This list has barter and swap networks. Learn how to start a barter club.

Practice giveaways. Host a potluck instead of eating at a restaurant, and remember the history of the potlatch.

Explore sewing, knitting, and crochet. Know how to alter and repair your own clothes. The more you make and maintain, the less you have to buy as expensive finished products.

Learn about home repairs. You can fix many things yourself. Start with easy repairs.

Know how to build, repair, and upcycle furniture.

Create your own entertainment. Explore free or cheap hobbies. Learn to sing or dance. Rise Up Singing is helpful for groups. Play games that need no equipment.

Appreciate friends and family. Spend more time with them.

Practice solitude and amuse yourself alone.

Save people. It tends to create loyalty. Do it any way you like -- feed them, loan them a room, jumpstart their car -- according to your skills and resources. Model a noncapitalist way of life. Most people will try to offer you money. Decline it politely but firmly with a statement regarding your perspective on ethical economics. If they keep pushing, direct them to pay it forward instead. You will often encounter opportunities to save people, because capitalism has little or no interest in that, and it creates a lot of human wreckage. View that as an opportunity, watch for it, and be prepared to act.

Current Mood: busy
Crossposts: https://ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com/6289159.html

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From:

frith

Planned obsolescence. Since the '30's, things have been built to break down and require replacing. You can get 10,000 hour light bulbs but 1,000 hour light bulbs are more common. My house insurance won't cover water damage now that my water heater is over ten years old (I'll be damned if I'm going to throw it out). I've had work pants that tore after _one week_ of regular use. LED lights are designed to _fail_ after 20,000 hours (IIRC), which is _very_ short for an LED.

Recyclable product fairy tale. Case in point, the triangle with the number inside on plastic products. This was a boon for the plastics manufacturers because it promotes the illusion that it's OK to wrap _everything_ in plastic. Now we ban straws and plastic shopping bags, plastic problem solved? Nope.

It's cheaper to replace than it is to repair or upgrade. Cel phones are good for about 18 months before they are no longer apt to run new software? My Northern Telecom second-hand land line phone is over 30 years old. It works great. Gets better reception than a cel phone and doesn't drop calls. Cutting edge tech.

DMCA is used to impede the installation of secondary market replacement parts (like with printer cartridges) or to repair things (like with some car engines).

All these pressures accelerate the rate at which people are 'encouraged' to throw out and replace just about everything. The replacements tend to need yet more rare/polluting resources: rare earths, metals, power, transportation, somewhere to dump the waste at every stage from mining to trash heap. Light pollution from 'efficient' bulbs is getting worse all the time. Plastic microfibers are _everywhere_.

But we are fed the folly that recycling will save the day, that our castaways will be collected, sorted and be reused ad infinitum in new products or in thrift stores, that nothing will go to waste. All the more reason to buy more new stuff, throw out the 5 year old sofa, the ten year old mattress, rip out and replace the cupboards and counters, buy a car for every member of the family. Stuff is cheap, new is good, garbage is somebody else's problem.

We're doomed.

From:

dewline

I think I've been using the same cell phone for about five years, minimum, now.

As for DMCA, Biden's been making positive noises about "right to repair" doctrine. How to translate that into a push to amend the DMCA (and its counterparts in other nations)?

No, recycling - by itself - will not save the day. But it's one of the many things we still need to do more of.

Edited Date: 2021-07-28 02:39 pm (UTC)

From:

ysabetwordsmith

>> As for DMCA, Biden's been making positive noises about "right to repair" doctrine. <<

\o/

>> How to translate that into a push to amend the DMCA (and its counterparts in other nations)? <<

Well, as President, he could put in trade agreements that corporations who want to import products into America (e.g. cars, computers) have to support the right to repair. If they don't, either they can't import at all or must pay a high tariff that goes to promoting right to repair. He could also set people to developing American-made, repairable alternatives to all the foreign stuff that isn't. But he should start by guaranteeing the right to repair all American-made goods, which will be hard enough.

>> No, recycling - by itself - will not save the day. But it's one of the many things we still need to do more of. <<

It's better than nothing, but it's often a distraction. Glass is pretty much infinitely recyclable. Some things, like plastic, we really need to use less of.

From:

frith

Oh my yes! More glass please! Silicon Dioxide. It's just clear rocks. I think high quality silicon for wafers, fiber optics and solar panels might be problematic, seeing as supply has fallen short recently.

Shredded Wheat cereal _still_ comes in a paper liner in a cardboard box, but it's the only cereal that I can think of that does so. Otherwise, it's plastics everywhere. Even spice bottles now! It's insane.

From:

ysabetwordsmith

I agree. It's maddening that so many things come in plastic that don't need to, and that people use so many layers of it when one would do.

From:

frith

Corry Doctorow ( https://doctorow-feed.dreamwidth.org/ ) has been writing about DMCA legislation. I hope Biden's push will succeed because at the state level corporate will has succeeded in squashing Right to Repair again and again.

5 years is good! But I've been using a Nortel phone from the '80's and it works great. Doesn't drop calls, great reception, never needs an update. Doesn't bug me when I'm out of the house either. ^_^

From: (Anonymous)

>>Now we ban straws and plastic shopping bags, plastic problem solved? Nope.<<

I know someone who uses plastic straws as medical equipment. Making them illegal (or even more expensive) would cause problems. And I really don't think there'll be medical exemptions for any ban or tax.

From:

dewline

Yeah, we need to address that. Many people have that legitimate need, and we've got to keep serving it.

From: (Anonymous)

Yeah, that's why I mentioned it for consideration here.

From:

ysabetwordsmith

Yes, that's a problem. I really don't like legislating people's personal choices. It causes more problems than it solves. Better solutions:

* Subsidize alternative straws, such as reusable or other material ones, to make them cheaper than disposable plastic straws.

* Stop putting straws in restaurant glasses. They're completely unnecessary there, except for individual reasons. Keep them available for people to request if needed.

* Provide alternative access methods besides straws. Many reusable and some styles of disposable lid have a sippy hole.

* Stop giving straws away for free. Most people who can afford to buy a drink can afford 5 cents extra for a straw, but it'll make them think twice about whether they really need or want one.

These would reduce the overuse of unnecessary straws, without infringing on people's personal needs or freedoms.

From: (Anonymous)

[Same anonymous commenter as above]

The person I am thinking of can't drink from a regular cup at all. Metal and glass straws don't really work well for hot drinks. (I think there might be concerns about keeping bamboo straws clean enough.)

Plus cleaning individual straws adds another thing to an exhaustively long list of caregiving and general life maintenance tasks.

That said, this list is a good one!

And I'm reminded of the Black Bear Cafe, in The Cat Who... books, whose proprietor charges five cents for a paper napkin.

From:

ysabetwordsmith

Agreed. Medical exceptions apply, and disabilities make life hard enough already without adding more. But it's not like modern America cares. They routinely kill people for failure to be pleasing.

From: (Anonymous)

When people complain about my favoring [elements of] socialism, I point out that by pure capitalism gives us slavery, robber barons, and a world where it is 'better' to pay for a series of cheap pine boxes than to actually make workplaces safe*. (Indeed, these are considered 'ethical,' because they concentrate weath.)

*In the 1800s, railway brakeman, in modern times, bigwigs taking bets on who will die of plague in factories.

I don't want a purely socialist society, but I don't want to live in a purely capitalist one either.

>>If you want to replace capitalism, you need to pick a replacement.<<

Emotional labor and economy of favors naturally fit as a sort of gift economy. This would also be easy to spot into places where no-one has any money.

>>You should at least know how to grow your own food.<<

Learn about permaculture and food forests. Also, grow natural forage foods or famine foods, just in case. (And yes, famine foods include things like encouraging bees and worms to live in your yard.)

Also, if you grow stuff most people don't think of as food a) they are less likely to whine about it and b) they are less likely to steal it (even if "manure happens.")

>>Find a barter exchange network online.<<
Not a barter thing, but start more stores like this:
http://www.repurposeproject.org/the-reuse-art-store/
This store is wonderrful; unfortunately they don't have one closer to where I currently live.

>>Learn about home repairs. You can fix many things yourself. Start with easy repairs.

Know how to build, repair, and upcycle furniture.<<

Also, have backup plans. How will you do laundry, dry laundry, cook, travel, go to the bathroom, etc if your tech is broken or unfeaseable for whatever reason?

There's a reason I tend to collect laundry drying racks...and why I've made a backup bucket washing machine. Just in case.

>>Save people. It tends to create loyalty.<<

I keep being surprised that people like me when I do this. And while I may express Opinions about manners ("Okay, you can't say that to people...") I try to be careful about netting personal benefits, as it feels dodgy and not all of these relationships are purely social ones [so some different rules].

>>Appreciate friends and family. Spend more time with them.<<

This one gets complicated if loved ones live far away...or with Current Events where we are all supposed to self-isolate. (I'm good by myself for about two months of no dedicated social time before I start needing other people.)

>>Most people will try to offer you money.<<

I often get offered food (because culture, and the people I help don't have much money.)

I have joked that if people want me to help, it is free, but if they want me to do the work for them, we get:
[Me, joking] "Okay, give me money. "
[Person, laughing] "But I don't have money!"
[Me, joking & slight Mom Voice] "Well, sit down and help me with this paperwork, then."

Helping is free. Doing it for someone...well, are health benefits offered with the job? [Makes silly face]

From:

dewline

Well-regulated capitalism has a useful place. Unregulated, we get all kinds of bad-crazy such as you list at the top.

From: (Anonymous)

I object to pure socialism _and_ pure capitalism.

And I do not like zealots who ignore problems with their chosen ideology, be they religious or not.

From:

ysabetwordsmith

>> I object to pure socialism _and_ pure capitalism.<<

The most functional systems I have seen blend communal and individual features.

One is Turtle Island's traditional gift economy. It was entirely possible to amass considerable wealth, but the more you had, the more you were expected to distribute to those with less. So mostly what people aimed for was gathering lots of stuff so they could host their culture's version of a giveaway. All the wealth was thus kept in rapid circulation.

Another is that many countries in Europe have a mixed socialist-capitalist system with generous social safety nets and a lively for-profit economy. Some of them, especially the Scandinavian ones, are close to my ideal of "socialized needs, privatized wants."

>> And I do not like zealots who ignore problems with their chosen ideology, be they religious or not. <<

Agreed.

From: (Anonymous)

The Scandinavian one seems the most likely to work as a cash-based economy in America.

However the gift economy model fits well for emotional labor, trading favors, and dispersing surplus material wealth (i.e
donations).

Furthermore, I suspect that gift economies will be more popular in places with less cash wealth, and capitalist-socialist would be favored in places with more money to invest.

From:

ysabetwordsmith

I would say that well-regulated capitalism can curb some problems due to excess or chicanery. It can't make up for the fact that capitalism isn't the right tool for every job; you need something else to address the public good, because capitalism can only cover what is profitable and a lot of important things either are not or are harmed by attaching money to them.

From: (Anonymous)

From the one of the articles:

"As Harvard happiness expert, Daniel Gilbert explains: “We are happy when we have family, we are happy when we have friends and almost all the other things we think make us happy are actually just ways of getting more family and friends.” "

Yup.

Conversely, if we expect to not have social relationships...well, everything else feels kind of pointless, doesn't it?

Also, one day I intend to write a story with an interclass friendship, where one person is a very wealthy capitalist, and the other is a wealthy /gift economist/... so:

a) they are both dirt poor by /each other's/ standards,

b) they can actually throw a bit of their respective wealth to help out each other. Think paying a bit towards medical bills vs intense social networking to get out of a jam, (like talking someone out of mugging you, or salvaging someone's reputation.)

c) and I want at least one instance of the gift economist friend (or her poor gift economist community in the slums) being so sad that the rich friend is so insecure as to live all alone in her big house...much to the rich friend's frustration/confusion. ("I'm not poor! I'm important, and rich, and famous! More that /you!/ STOP PITYING ME!")

d) having everyone get a headache from trying to explain each other's respective economic systems would be hilarious too. ("Congratulations, you've gotten a headache from the economics discussion with Sue and you didn't yell at anyone; now you're officially one of us. Here, have an aspirin and go lie down for awhile.")

$mdlbear: blue fractal bear with text "since 2002" (Default)$

From:

mdlbear

I really want to read that story!

From: (Anonymous)

Thanks for the encouragement!

It's a fanfic idea, with some worldbuilding added on what was originally a kids story with a (good) aesop, but didn't have the level of worldbuilding depth that I usually like.

I'd explore:

- cultural differences and prejudices (between cultures, subcultures, different classes and different genders) and how to work through them,

- how normal is different for different people (and sometimes that's really scary),

- that working through trauma or differences is hard, but can be worth it,

- that relationships with people different than yourself can be very hard and stressful at times but if it is worthwhile you will both put in the effort,

- that people in power need to have really good listening skills if they don't want to hurt folks,

- that trauma sometimes doesn't break you so much as teach you what is and isn't worth the stress and hassle of fighting about,

- that sometimes we need a Magical _Majority_ Person to step in and say "Yo, dude, you seem kind of frustrated, how about we talk about it over here without yelling and scaring folks, yeah?"

- that what you don't know and can't plan for is usually what will come back and bite you (and also, listen to the experts),

- that people make dumb mistakes, and sometimes you need to plan for and accept that and try to understand why before you can make progress,

- and that travel usually takes planning, so randomly abducting a bunch of people for your Evil Plan will usually result in some medical drama, broken plumbing, dietary issues and really stupid arguments over really stupid things (like who you can kiss or how you can dress in public or if you can sleep on a park bench somewhere without getting arrested), largely because no-one was actually /prepared/.

From:

redsixwing

I also REALLY want to read that story. \o/

From: (Anonymous)

Thanks.

Now if only my skills can live up to my ambition...

From:

ysabetwordsmith

You gain skills by writing mass quantities of stuff. You may as well do that with something you love, and that other people are clamoring for.

From: (Anonymous)

Maybe I should get an account on here...but it would be good to have at least /one/ finished thing to put up first.

From:

ysabetwordsmith

>> Maybe I should get an account on here... <<

I heartily encourage you to get a Dreamwidth account. The basic version is free. I use polls, so I have a paid account for that.

>> but it would be good to have at least /one/ finished thing to put up first. <<

Many people get an account just to comment! That's totally okay.

As for finishing things, if you write a post, you finished something. If you hold out for finishing a big fiction project, you might not get around to it.

I have a list of recurring post ideas to help people get started blogging with minimal effort. Plenty of folks make "work in progress" posts that can be pretty popular.

From: (Anonymous)

>>The basic version is free.<<

And upgrades can be done later.

>>Many people get an account just to comment! That's totally okay.<<

I think I'm actually happier doing anonymous commenting. So there's not really a need for an account unless I'm posting or linking to some sort of content.

Once I get an account, I might comment using it, but...

From:

ysabetwordsmith

Anonymity is fine, but has drawbacks:

* You have to remember to check every comment you make to see if there are replies, and sometimes people don't reply for days. If you had an account, DW could send you notifications if you wanted. I do that.

* Several people regularly comment on my blog as Anonymous, without leaving a nickname. Then I can't tell them apart. So if I get 6 Anonymous prompt comments in a fishbowl, I usually count them as 1 person.

From: (Anonymous)

I think at the moment, being an anonymous commentor suits me, but if my needs or circumstances change, it is an easy enough thing to alter.

>>You have to remember to check every comment you make to see if there are replies, and sometimes people don't reply for days. If you had an account, DW could send you notifications if you wanted. I do that.<<

I tend to think of these as conversations - no activity from /anyone/ for 24ish hours usually means people are bored and want to talk about something else. I'll check back more often if I'm /really/ invested in the conversation, or I'm expecting a reply. Plus, that's still more drawn out than meatspace conversations, which are usually measured in minutes, not days.

>>Several people regularly comment on my blog as Anonymous, without leaving a nickname.<<

But if I reply as a specific person, than I'd worry more about saying silly things or upsetting people. (Memories fade, computers are forever.)

>>So if I get 6 Anonymous prompt comments in a fishbowl, I usually count them as 1 person.<<

So use a nickname or account on Fishbowl days, if I want to be remembered as an individual.

From:

erulisse

Something that is a constant frustration to me is that on the one hand capitalism makes it very easy to get certain of my needs met in a way that isn't actually healthy and next to impossible to meet in ways that are.

Food is the main thing that comes to mind. I have multiple disabilities that add up to the fact that it is next to impossible for me to cook and manage a kitchen. I can go and get fast food on pretty much every block but getting decently balanced meals that don't cost an arm and a leg is next to impossible.

Those same disabilities also make it really tricky for me to arrange/navigate social situations to get community care or other noncapitalist solutions.

The one really good workaround that I found was while I was working at a certain upscale grocery store. They have a by weight food bar and I could usually get decent meals at decent prices that way (especially with the employee discount).

Another workaround is to get preprepared meals from a grocery store or meal delivery service. This gets spendy and isn't the healthiest but is better than trying to live off tv dinners and fast food.

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