capitalism
Save The Web: Advanced Dollarnomics
In the first part of this series I started last year, I spoke about the idea of Dollarnomics, describing it in some detail. If you want to get the basics of the concept, then you should go read that first. It’s not a long piece and I’ve linked it below. I do outline a few ideas there, but there needs to be some additional context so that you might fully understand the power that I believe resides both in the $1 bill and in the people who are tired of always being on the bottom of the economy, even if you only have a few million dollars in the bank, an amount that is nowhere near as comforting as it was a decade or two ago.
Advertising is dead. Please flush on your way out…
Ads are almost literally everywhere.
It is rare, but every once in a while I presume to speak for everyone. It’s not like this is breaking news or a controversial hot-take, either. No need to sit down or get a stiff drink:
Nobody, but NOBODY likes advertisements… except ad people.
When I was working IT at Saatchi & Saatchi LA back in the mid-2000’s, Toyota was paying them tens of millions a year to make a handful of splashy national ads. Sure, they were epic, for ads, but all that money floated a five story building bursting with 500 worker bees that would pump out a half dozen ads a year.
Saving the Internet for Humanity: Dollarnomics 101
Or not…
The Internet of 2023 sucks.
Every site, every service, every entree and every destination on the modern Web of today is controlled by corporations. Blood and treasure is expended, our personal data and real money is hoovered up to feed bottomless C-suite salaries…
While the World Wide Web may be comprised of an endless cavalcade of corporate entities vying for ultimate control, there remains a much, much larger contingent that has yet to stand up and take it’s own power: we average peeps.
Yup. The rest of us. The rank and file, as it were. The NOT 1% of Americans who just want to get on with life minus all the drama and violence.
So, within this unpleasant and difficult context, I’d like to offer my thoughts on fixing our ailing Internet. Now, I’m not going to suggest my ideas can fix all our woes, but a better foundation for our public internet can go a long way towards healing the rifts dividing and disrupting all our lives. So, let’s kick this proverbial pig.
Does our future require Capitalism?
A neighborhood in Mexico City that shows a stark divide between the wealthy and powerful and those who cannot afford to live in a safe, clean place. [SOURCE: BoredomTherapy]There is an existing dynamic between capitalism and science which fosters a high stakes game of one-upmanship among different corporations and organizations to find the “killer app” and crush the competition. An enormous component of this dynamic is the winner-take-all mentality that is a core tenet of today’s current hyper-capitalism.
Proponents of capitalism claim that it is the market that is the catalyst for the competition that has created all of our advanced technologies and drives our future. Without capitalists being allowed to do whatever they want (ala Ayn Rand) our potential will waste away as we languish in a socialist paradise overflowing with flotillas of content people, no longer interested in competing because there’s no hunger behind that drive to innovate.
This concept causes the rise and fall of entire industries and consumes billions of dollars every single year, raising and dashing the hopes of hundreds of thousands of employees caught in this seemingly never-ending tide of feast or famine. In the meantime, the capitalists who started off as innovators have amassed vast oceans of wealth and owning, year after year, more and more of the artificially finite global cash reserve, while a growing number of people on Earth fall deeper into poverty as available money inexorably moves towards the top.
This, we are told, is what we need because, without it we would all just be filthy apes scrabbling in the dirt for food. We should thank the “job creators” for fostering an environment where the struggle for little slips of paper is real and necessary and the only thing that will drag us out of our neanderthal state and into a glorious future full of bright, shiny technology and prosperity.
On the face of it, that’s rather preposterous. Before money, people competed just fine. With money, people compete just fine. We live next to a baseball field and every Monday night anywhere from 20–40 people show up to play a night of baseball. Nobody pays them. It’s not a formalized league. There is no prize for winning. Yet, people still congregate to share in the sheer joy of competing with each other. You should hear the noise that rises from that field. Those people put their hearts and souls into those games, and for no reward greater than just having tried their best.
What do you think? Can we have functional competition while maintaining a healthy lifestyle for everyone on Earth? If humans invented money, can’t we just invent a better way and still have all the benefits a global society, rich in cultural diversity brings?
Why outrage doesn't matter anymore
Here's the thing. We, as Americans, have lost the ability to lash indignant hellfire at those who violate our collective sensibilities. Cops outright murder Black people almost every day, and we get mad, but nothing changes. Our politicians lie, cheat, steal, and send dick pics to minors, and we get mad, but nothing changes. Companies like Facebook, Google, Uber, the entire oil industry, the entire pharmaceutical industry, the medical establishment sell each of us for $12 a year, tricks hundreds of thousands of people into indentured servitude, skirt the law with impunity, and price gouge with lip-licking voraciousness, and nothing changes. Banks, housing, dialysis, the battle for a living wage, the death of education, the abandonment of the separation of church and state, and much, much more is killing us all every day.
And nothing changes.
Sure, we get mad, we harangue people on the internet, we watch "news" programs that are little more than shills for an ideology, and nothing changes. That's because, those who benefit from the status quo have discovered a simple truth. As long as there are enough Americans making enough money to maintain a decent credit score and there's enough "white" noise in the media, nobody gives a fuck.
Americans have their interests predetermined. Get born, go to school, get a job, buy a house, raise two and a half kids, buy a few cars, take a vacation every year on your tax return, enjoy blockbuster movies at your local cinema, keep the riff raff out of your neighborhood, keep your head down and go to church every Sunday, or at least on the major Christian holidays. Most of all, however, is don't question anything outside of your little sphere of reality.
We've been conditioned to be selfish and think that's okay. There are many, many, MANY things wrong with American society, politics, education, social justice, healthcare, and a billion other things, but one of the biggest, simplest pieces is this grab, grab, grab ideal we have (that was an intentional reference to capitalist in chief, Trump). If we cared, stopping rape would matter. If we cared, women would have the same chances and choices as men. If we cared, we would make real reparations to native Americans and the descendants of slaves. If we really cared, we'd recognize that all of us are descended from immigrants, except the people we stole this country from in the first place, of course.
So, until we decide we aren't going to be selfish and share just a little with everyone else, things won't change.
And that really sucks.