"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will
make violent revolution inevitable." ~ John F. Kennedy
After a long hiatus, I’m finding it refreshing to write something
for myself, without any real thought for my audience. Still, it’s important to
address the reader, at least as a basic conceit, so with that in mind I will
endeavor to explain why it is imperative that Bernie Sanders become president
of the United States.
If I had to lay out my thesis in simple terms, it’s this:
Bernie is the compromise candidate.
I alluded to the economic precarity in the latter part of my
welcome back letter, but repetition is important. In general, the people in
power (ie the “boomers”) do not understand the depth of the problem. To use an
example, when Greta Thunberg said “You have stolen my dreams and my childhood,”
she was being incredibly literal. The youth (‘generation Z’) grow up understanding
something that millennials (that’s me) had to learn the hard way: there is no
hope. The problems I wrote about 3 years ago have only gotten more dire — we
even have a pandemic now, which is exciting.
There are so many issues, I struggled to winnow it down enough
to start this sentence, but I think the most central aspect of the problem is
the so-called “Late-Stage Capitalism.” I will explain: At its heart, capitalism
is an exploitative system. This is not even meant as a criticism, merely a
statement of simple fact. The main mechanism is to extract and retain value,
which we call capital. The craftsman, assuming he sells his goods, trades his
time, expertise, and capital for materials and a greater amount of capital. If
he manages to retain enough, he might be able to open a new workshop and
thereby increase his ability to retain capital. Or, if he fails to retain
capital, he can find himself unable to make the initial trade. He then might
have only his time and expertise and be obligated to trade those for capital directly.
In the real world we would call this a “Job” or a “wage”.
This system works.. fine. In theory. Unfortunately for all
of us, there is an underlying assumption — a zero-ith law, to make a
reference. The greatest source of capital has always been the natural world. It
grows food, there are shiny rocks to pick up, I need not elaborate further. Follow
the trail back, and it will always lead to some basic extraction of value from
the earth. This eventually creates a problem, as we are now seeing quite
clearly. The great majority of the ‘natural’ capital is finite, and the parts
of it that aren’t are generally unable to meet sustained demand (for instance, overfishing).
So-called “human capital” is inherently reliant on natural capital, as human
beings need things like food, water, and clean air in order to live.
In the past, perhaps, natural capital was effectively
infinite. Examples of overuse were anomalous, such as consuming all the passenger
pigeons. However, the days when the aggregate impact of human activity was
insignificant is long gone, if it ever even existed. This is basically just a
long-winded way of talking about the tragedy of the commons, except that the planet
itself is a giant commons and we’re the ones facing the tragedy. The idea is
pretty straightforward, as every individual has a base level of need below
which they cannot survive, the human population is increasing, and the world is
inherently finite, there will reach a point where people’s needs will not be
met. As Malthus might say, something’s got to give. Obviously, we are not at
this point yet — isolated pockets aside — but we don’t need to get all the
way down to bare subsistence level before we see problems. Capital accumulation
snowballs, dividing into the haves and have-nots. We’ll talk more about the
billionaires soon. The have-nots are obligated to exchange their time in order
to live and are — as a rule —structurally unable to accumulate capital. As
capitalism has been around for a long time, there are very few unexploited
natural sources of capital — not a lot of places you can go and just stake
out a claim. Just about everything is owned by someone.
Now, of course, the average American worker is significantly
worse off than in our stick-figure model. Not only do they not have capital,
they are forced to leverage their future ability to accumulate capital and to
make economic exchanges that are less than ideal. Student debt and paying rent,
to give an example of the former and the latter. This double-whammy exacerbates
the aforementioned structural disadvantages — i.e. the system is rigged.
The fundamental assumptions — that everyone has access to natural capital, that
the supply of natural capital is inexhaustible, that making use of natural
capital has no downsides — no longer hold. This is a fact that the younger generations
feel in their bones, their basic survival needs forcing them inevitably into a
cage of work and debt. It is economic slavery, plain and simple — the chains
are simply more abstract.
The boomers should not be surprised that socialism is popular
among the young, if anything, they should be surprised that it is not more
popular. It goes without saying that the beneficiaries of this system do not
have any desire to dismantle it, and programs of wealth distribution which would
otherwise blunt the system’s sharp edges are manifestly unpopular among the billionaires.
Of course, they would not be billionaires if they were not
short sighted in this regard. Better writers than I have explained at length
why it is unethical to be a billionaire in a world where people are literally
starving and dying preventable deaths, I will merely be gesturing in the
direction of the argument. But the fact
of the matter is that very few would choose this system that they are forced to
live in, if given the slightest choice in the matter. The phrase “the consent
of the governed” comes to mind, and it’s appropriate here, as the entirety of
the edifice rests on mutual understanding and respect for the rules that govern
capital accumulation. While it’s true that we live in a society, that concept
is a far more fragile thing than most people realize.
I implore you, boomers, try to enter the zoomer mindset.
Looking around you see a world full of riches and luxuries that you have no hope
of obtaining. If you work hard, go to a good school, you too can make 35K and
live in an apartment with roommates. Looking around in the mall, at the tentacle
facades of multi-national corporations, staffed by minimum wage workers. Who
decided this? Why not just take what we want? The only reason the person behind
the counter cares is that their manager might fire them if too much stuff gets
stolen. And so on up the chain, until it’s just a billionaire owner trying to
get a higher profit margin.
The instant someone offers a plausible way out, people will
take it. Capitalism consumes and churns, creating millions of people who have
literally nothing to lose. Historically speaking, this comes via populism, and eventually
it’s always a choice between socialism and fascism (or imperialism, if you
prefer). We can either build a society that frees us from the malicious
incentives inherent in capitalism, or we can scramble to become the group on
top, profiting by hurting anyone we can get away with hurting.
I have no illusions that Bernie will be able to do that, his
proposals are only extreme by American standards — and by the standards of
other non-first world countries. Most of them have made a conscious effort to
take care of their citizens, cushioning them from the thresher at the foot of Moloch.
Try not to let people starve to death, take care of the public health, invest
in youth. Pretty basic stuff, as society goes. We’re all in this world
together, “rugged individualism” is the world’s biggest scam, and Atlas
Shrugged should be rightfully ignored by anyone more mature than a stunted
teenage boy. Bernie merely represents a step in the right direction, and one
that we desperately need. Not taking the step is possible, but unwise.
There’s simply too much momentum, historically speaking. One can only rule over
a disaffected populace for so long; though I’m sure the Romanovs must have felt
near invincible right up until the end.
Ultimately, though, our hand is already collectively forced.
We’re currently being dragged headlong into fascism by the current party in
power, who are gleefully destroying anything they can’t loot or subvert. The scaffolding
upon which our society rests is actively collapsing, it’s merely a matter of
where we want to land. For me, the choice is clear.
A government of the people, by the people, for the people.
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