my_text_data/writings/capitalism.txt

characteristics of capitalism:

- Setting profit and self-interest as the highest priorities over anything else.
  Society that serves the people at large is NOT specified as a goal.
- Oppression of workers, paying as little as possible, stealing surplus, forcing
  to work as much as possible, people are treated as mere resources, unions
  are met with hostility.
- Unethical corporations with extreme power, machines maximizing profit created
  by evolutionary principles in the free market. Ethical behavior is a
  disadvantage in competition and won't survive.
- Aggressive marketing, forcing of products and brainwashing encouraging extreme
  consumerism, even targeted at children (games, forcing to use Windows at
  school, "loot box" gambling etc.).
- Creating a huge gap between social classes, big difference between poor and
  rich, leading to conflict, tension and hostility.
- Bad technology: planned obsolescence, resistence of repair, DRM, bloat,
  spying, backdoor, killer feature creep, purposful incompatibility etc.
- Destruction of life environment.
- Artificial scarcity, even of very essential things like food.
- Creating artificial, unnecessary and burdening needs, for businesses to
  satisfy.
- Effort to keep people constantly unsatisfied, decline of mental health.
- Giving either no choice (monopoly) or only a choice of a lesser evil (e.g.
  Windows vs Mac).
- Wasting resources.
- Bullshit products, services and jobs.
- The lower salaray, the harder job.
- Wasting human effort (trade secrets force reinventing wheels, ...) and
  potential (gifted people who could be working on curing cancer rather focus
  on how to outsmart others in the market).
- Surveillance and loss of privacy.
- Anti-progress, purposful destruction of innovation and cheap alternatives to
  established busines' products (e.g. hostility towards free SW). Free market
  is an absolutely backwards step, a return to the laws of jungle.
- Fascist attributes: social hierarchies, cults of personality (Steve Jobs 
  etc.), dividing people into competing groups (brands) etc.
- Unethical business behavior towards competition.
- Lack of long-term planning, managers need to make profit NOW.
- Decline of morals, as an obstacle to making profit. Encouraging greed, hatred,
  "smart" cheating etc. Spreading responsibility to achieve unethical behavior
  when everyone is just "doing their job".
- Propaganda of populism, lies and false promises: "anyone can make it",
  "hard workers will be successful", things always on "sale", shilling, 
  astroturfing, illusion of freedom etc.
- Assigning worth to people based solely on their productivity and success, 
  giving average and less gifted people a feeling of guilt for not being useful
  enough.
- Business intruding and taking over the state.
- Business intruding every aspect of people's lives, i.e. free time, art,
  education, news etc.
- Denying available essential things like food, shelter and healthcare to poor
  people.
- Irresponsibly and without planning endangering whole humanity by making 
  everyone rely completely on corporations, their technology and products,
  making people non-self-sufficient slaves. Even a short global blackout could
  cause the wipe out all people.
- Poverty, crime, violence.
- Only two possible social roles: either a slave or a slave master.
- Centralizing wealth on the detriment of whole poorer continents.
- Need for constant control by state which however, in the long run, becomes
  weaker than the strongest corporations and unable to contain them. (E.g.
  Microsoft has the power to shut down most of the world's computers at will.)
- Corporation control of not only supply, but also demand (marketing creates
  artificial demand).
- Strong competition fuels hostility among people, fascism, want to fight, war
  thinking etc.
- Instability, constant threat of depressions caused only by psychological
  factors.
- Censorship (justified e.g. by "intellectual property"), manipulation of press.
- Creating culture of fear, needed to keep consumerism going.
- Culture destruction: intellectual property prevents evolution of art,
  globalization destroys small cultures, ads embedded in art etc.
- Progressive transformation of state (which should care about people) into a
  corporation (which cares about itself). Rich enterpreneurs become politicians
  supporting their businesses etc.