People want something for nothing: capitalist advertising preaches instant gratification and delivers rapidly obsolete baubles and consumer debt. People want to believe they are secure: capitalism terrifies the people with terrorist monsters then sells them -- for a trillion dollars a year -- a security-industrial complex that spies on everybody and blows up suspicious-looking foreigners. People are insecure about their physical appearance and self-worth: capitalism sells them plastic boobs and buttocks, a mega$billions per year cosmetics-industrial complex, and triumphantly advertises a dog's breakfast of useless products whose possession will surely make them the envy of their peers.
Every human weakness, fear, anxiety, shortcoming, is expertly manipulated by psychologically sophisticated advertisers who brainwash people into solving their existential angst by buying sh*t. That is how capitalism governs the economic life of the masses: by deceiving and fleecing them.
Is that the Tao of good government? I think not. But I'm not a mindwashed addict of consumer excess, nor have I made my way in the world by selling worthless junk to brainwashed suckers. I'm neither a sheep nor a wolf. So maybe I'm biased.
Maybe "The American System" of corporate capitalism really delivers the consumer Paradise that capitalism advertises and humanity craves in its heart of hearts. Maybe that's the highest ambition humanity can realistically strive toward and attain. I don't believe that. But as a "sovereign consumer" you can believe it if you want, because you're paying for it with the days of your life.
Capitalists rule opaquely, occultly, by pretending they are not ruling at all but are rather free market victims of "the government". American capitalists own and operate the US political process and government as their private property. An oligopoly of capitalist-owned mass media spins the emotional hot button distractions -- sex and petty crime -- that pass for democratic debate.
Congress sometimes passes high-sounding legislation in service to the people's (manufactured) beliefs as to what their "interests" are. Then the lawyers go to work engineering wording that castrates the legislation of any potency to produce the outcomes that are stated as its aims. If the stated aim is to loosen some corporate cabal's oligopoly on agriculture or pharmaceuticals or health care provision, the law's final wording will serve to intensify the cabal's monopoly in their field of endeavor.
When corporate lawyers write the laws that regulate their industry, the legislation will serve to prevent rather than foster free market competition that is the bane of monopoly profits and market control by the planning system. The economy becomes dominated by corporations whose control of the state's legislative, regulatory and enforcement processes enshrine corporations as feudal lords of financial, commercial and industrial fiefdoms. The capitalist corporations become the feudal government of "the economy" that produces and distributes the people's material necessities of life.
Meanwhile, capitalism's priesthood of "free market" economists preaches a world of tinkers, tailors and candlestick makers struggling against the yoke of oppressive government. The priests incite the masses against democratic government, and spin a utopian vision of free market businesses meekly competing against each other for the privilege of serving the demands of the sovereign consumer. Millions of consumers issue their demands; hundreds of thousands of independent free market businesses spring into action seeking to serve those demands. A Darwinian struggle for survival motivates businesses to cut their prices and improve the quality of their goods in order to win favor with (and sales to) the sovereign consumer. The sovereign consumer enjoys a cornucopia of the best possible goods at the lowest possible prices.
Would that it were so.
Outside the proselytizing walls of the Church of Andrew ("liquidate them all") Mellon of Latter Day Capitalists; out here in the bright clear light of reality; the real world looks much different than the free market utopia.
The printer cartridge industrial complex manufactures ink cartridges at a cost of a few pennies then peddles them to sovereign consumers for 30 bucks. In response to a massive consumer revolt that saw the rise of a free market in ink sales and cartridge refilling services, the printer cartridge industrial complex cut its prices by half to drive the free market interlopers out of the marketplace. Profits on sales of replacement cartridges, even at "half price", continue to shine as bright spots on the quarterly reports of the triumphant plutocrats who own and operate the printer industrial complex. And of course, a free market industry that replicates brand name printer cartridges and sells them for 5 bucks, earning only 2 or 3 bucks profit, is illegal, because the technology is owned as "intellectual property" by the monopolists whose property rights are sacrosanct in the laws of the capitalist state.
Then there is the razor blade industrial complex that transforms a few cents worth of steel and plastic into a $4 profit per $5 pack of replacement blades. ALL of them do this. You cannot escape oligopoly pricing by switching brands.
The breakfast cereal industrial complex transforms a handful of inexpensive grain into a $5 box of chemically adulterated food-like substance, marketed to kids by improbably cheerful cartoon characters and child actors.
The electronics industrial complex keeps the sovereign consumer running on the capitalist rat wheel by constantly "upgrading", so your new electronic wondertoy becomes an obsolete piece of junk and you have to buy a new one every two years. The priests in the Church protest in feigned injury, "But you don't have to buy our products if you don't like our business practices."
When they die and go to Hell, the Devil will provide water dispensing machines in each of their dungeons, to slake the thirst of damnation. But the operating system that makes the machines dispense the water will be constantly "upgraded", so as soon as the sinners read the 300 page manual and figure out how to get the water out of the machine, the system is upgraded so they have to buy a new manual from the Devil. When the damned complain, the demon priesthood will chant in wicked delight, "If you don't want the water you don't have to keep buying new manuals."
Since "you can't take it with you", the sinners get money in Hell by mortgaging their souls. They never get a satisfying drink of water, but they do get another day older and deeper in debt, as the prophet lamented. And they owe their mortgaged soul to the One and Only Bank of Hell, whose ownership is masked by a Gordian knot of offshore corporations to disguise the identity of its sole shareholder, good old you-know-who. The damned, like us in the here and now, will be eternally unsatisfied sovereign consumers whose alternative to the Devil's bargain is simply to "do without".
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