This piece was reprinted by OpEd News with permission or license. It may not be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.
Reprinted from caitlinjohnstone.com by Unknown
Propaganda is so advanced that rank-and-file members of the public will openly cheerlead their government's imprisonment of Assange so that their government can continue to lie to them.
~
The focus shouldn't just be on bad things done by individual plutocrats - Gates did X, Bezos did Y etc. The primary focus should be on how we shouldn't have a system which allows any individual to have that much power over our world. No individual should have that much power to do that much harm.
~
You couldn't create a more perfect profit-generating scheme than war. Entire civilizations can be streamlined into the task of cranking out top-of-the-line, name-brand killing machines at the drop of a false flag. War will continue as long as human behavior is driven by profit.
~
If you want more of something, apply capitalism; if you want less of something, apply socialism. Capitalism is great for making a ton of stuff, but for making less stuff it's sh*t, whether that be making less illness, less pollution, less ecocide, less war, less prisoners, etc. Right now we live in a world that needs a great reduction of a great many things, and there's just no way to get there as long as human behavior is driven by profit.
This is obviously true of things like healthcare, where actually eliminating illness kills demand. But it's also true of even things like charity programs, where if you actually fix the problem people are throwing money at then a lot of professionals lose their income sources. You've got to actually incentivize people to disappear the problems, but capitalism doesn't have an effective way of disappearing things. It necessarily incentivizes people to perpetuate them.
This is just common sense business practice that anyone who's ever run a business should understand. If you make products, your goal is to create and sell as many products as possible. If you sell services, your goal is to create as many clients as possible. So if your business is war machinery, you will necessarily be incentivized to lobby for as many wars as possible. If your business is medicine, you will be incentivized to keep as many sick people around as possible. As long as we're motivated by profit, such things persist.
Trying to consume our way out of our current predicament is like trying to eat your way into weight loss.
~
"That's not real capitalism!" is not an intelligent response to leftist criticisms of our current approach to money and profit as a motivator of human behavior, it's just playing pedantic word games. Nobody cares if you feel like your pet word is being mistreated. Address the damn argument.
~
In the debate about "cancel culture" it's important to remember that the rank-and-file public yelling that someone has sh*t opinions is completely different from powerful media-controlling plutocrats deciding who does and does not get a voice. These two separate things should not be conflated.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).