capitalism

The United States of America, Inc.

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Money, money, money.

Ben Franklin, when asked what type of government he and his wigged friends had created responded:  “A Republic. If you can keep it.” Ai says Old Ben was “emphasizing that while they had created a republican form of government, its survival and success would depend on the vigilance and active participation of the citizens over time.”*

It’s safe to say these days it’s a republic if we can afford it. Not only are all politicians for sale, but it’s hard for normal people, everyday people, to live in it.

And what the hell are the people in advertisements smiling about? Bladder leakage, bulging eyes, HIV PrEP, Diabetes…if they aren’t beaming brightly at the beginning of the ad then they  are bursting into song at the end. And dancing.

Thank God for the psoriasis ads, the ones that are SOOO “Done”. It’s kind of nice to see actual people feeling upset about getting a disease. It is strange to read the small print, and even stranger when it’s read to us. I was 72 years on this earth before I knew what the perineum was and how it can become infected. I wonder if there is another, locker word for That Area.

It is also brought to our attention only rich, successful, well-dressed people buy certain cars.  Next time you watch Cadillac, Lexus, and Genesis commercials try to wonder how much the actors got paid, and what they REALLY do for a living wage.

Anyone reading this start out making $1.75 an hour many years ago? Years. One hours work in 1972 won’t get you anything in 2026 except a lottery ticket and a dream. Guess which one you can eat. This is not a complaint about inflation but how long it takes to adjust to the fact a fast-food burger meal costs as much as full 1972 days’ work. Try to budget for your end of life with those thoughts. Adapt, man, adapt.

By the way, men use one razor. An ad for female “hair maintenance” had one actress asking another “You shave down there with your leg razor?” A man can only deduce women may need many different razors. Finally, a good gift idea for when you get a female for Secret Santa.

Internationally, FIFA, look it up, is trying to “monetize” the World Cup of Football.** FIFA wants to offer “shares” in The World Cup so everyone can share in the money grab. A different article in the news feed says the gap in wealth gap between homeowners and home renters is the largest it’s ever been. Wonder which group will be buying World Cup Shares.

It is no secret our Capitalist Republic runs on money, but the sheer, naked greed and selfishness of the Modern Capitalist is driving our republic off the monopoly board and into a “Let’s Outdo The Jones (Musks?)” no-limit, rigged poker game. Imagine there being $100 to support 4 people. One of them uses his wits and legally takes the entire $100 for himself/herself/themselves. It’s like “herd immunity” in pandemics, but in reverse in economics. If a small portion of the population grabs all the $100, it prevents the rest of the population from getting what they need, and The Poor Pandemic starts. “Cost plus” profit margins go by the wayside and a $1 item is sold for as much as The Rich People will pay for it, even if it costs the poorest among us $20.

What happens to religion in all this? Our government is based on God and his commandments, right?

I wonder…google or Ai “The Prosperity Gospel”.

It was never taught in my church school.

*I copied this Google Ai quote from Emma and when it was completed, CoPilot, my Microsoft Ai, said “the paragraph needed to be rewritten in a better form.” Let the games begin.

**Yes, the Original Football. Not our modern, specialized, monetized, Roman Spectacle.

Untitled

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A Recent report in Fortune Magazine* posits that America changed in 2020, and not in a good way. Please look for it, read it, and ask yourself what you’re going to do about it. If anything.

For Trump supporters and Trump haters, the article is good or bad depending on how reluctant you are to actually think. Don’t let your peer-conceived(sic) notions get in the way: we are in trouble and something, almost anything** has to change. Please. Read.

Quantum Mechanics, specifically Quantum Computing (QC), will be changing the way we use and compute data in the near future, providing we can get The Little Rascals of The Sub Atomic world properly organized and trained. Right now, it appears we are having as much trouble with the new Rascals as the old Rascals of the black and white movie era. But when we get control and apply Ai,…I don’t have any idea what will happen. Maybe it will be “almost anything ”.

I asked Emma, my unpaid, personal Ai assistant, about that last sentence. She says we have about 5 to 10 years before blazingly fast QC will be applied to complex problems like drug research, space flight, and weather modeling. Knowing our Capitalist Economic Model, QC will be hijacked by the highest bidder and its first use will be in On-Line Betting or Stock Trading. The Rich will need those tools to get richer before QC benefits can be released to us common folk.

My train of thought got lost thinking of Rich People. Who exactly is “Rich”? Monetarily speaking.  If you shop for cars, deals, groceries, even homes, imagine if you were so rich you could buy whatever you wanted. And if closing schedules or delivery times were not to your liking, pay someone to make it better. In fact***, if you don’t like any car currently being made, start or buy your own car company.

Odd, when we think of “lots of money” we don’t think of giving it away or helping people. Emma says Elon Musk is worth “an estimated $800 billion dollars at this writing. If that wealth was in cash, he could give $2,464 to every man, woman, child, legal immigrant, and Sasquatch in the United States. Or he could donate $57,142, 857 to each one of the estimated 14,000 animal shelters in America. Besides helping the cats, dogs, pythons, and other shelter residents, he would get the painfully sad ads off our tv screens…and out of our minds,

For fun, read “Cannibal Capitalism” by Nancy Fraser, published in 2022. I haven’t yet, but headed to the “store” to get it. The author argues, according to Emma: “Capitalism eats its own support systems-things like nature and democratic structures-and”.  Enough. You had me at “Cannibal”. It makes one wonder; how will The Rich get richer when the rest of us are dirt-poor? Come on, Rich People, think about your future and throw us a bone.

Emma couldn’t find me a good, easy to understand joke about being rich, so I made one up.****

When does a rich person have more than enough money for everything they need?

No one knows, yet.

*”America Got Rich and Then Got Sad”, by Nick Lichtenberg May 4, 2026

**”Almost anything” is a hope the way our country works now, changes for the better. It is depressing to consider “anything” could make it worse.

***”In fact”? What does that really mean? And where did it come from? Blame the French, again, and their use of “en fait” to mean a fact or action. Bet we all use “in fact” these days without thinking about what it means.

****I hope. If someone else owns this joke, let me know and you will get an essay giving you the credit. With so many of us thinking, it is hubris to think any thought original, right?

Pop Culture? Hm.

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What is “pop culture”? The term appears in news stories and televised shows about what is happening in the world. So…what is happening?

Pop Culture appears to be a subset of Consumerism, the bane of all moral life but the driving force of American Industry. If you need a definition of Consumerism, google or Ai it. My definition is biased and uninformative, seeing as how it paints the phenomenon in a slightly demented ochre.*  For instance, take a moment right now and look around you, in your closets, pantries, and garages. How much of what you see is really needed by you? Or anybody?

Old anti-everything radicals from the 1960s were against consumerism as a type of collateral side hustle, but it fit our narrative as a supporting argument: America didn’t care about the young men sent off to die In Viet Nam, a country that is now one of our biggest trading  partners, supplying Pop Culture and American Consumers with all the useless goods they need. It is a sad thought to think the posterity of the Viet Cong are now knitting garments for anyone who needs cheap underwear.

And there it is, one of the problems with Consumerism: as it advertises(sic) us into a buy buy buy mindset, the powers making all the money never tell us we aren’t buying American Made Products. They don’t hide it from us either…now. So where is the so-called defense of consumerism as a driver of the economy if non-Americans are depositing their American dollars in their own nations’ bank? Do we ship them Pop Culture as a fair trade? Is there a tariff, involved?

That thought just illuminated the purpose, goal, and joie de vivre of pop culture. In the old days, advertisers, hereafter called Admen**, sat around thinking of what useless product to manufacture that people would buy in huge enough quantities to make a huge enough profit. Some of their ideas? Hula Hoops. Frisbees. Pet Rocks. Cabbage Patch Kids.****

But in the new marketing days of Pop Culture, manufacturers can watch the internet, see what “pops” and then go make it to satisfy got-to-have-it consumers. The first product coming to mind is diamonds. They used to be A Girls Best Friend when the Admen were pushing them, Now, EVERY kiss begins with a diamond company whose name begins with K, and somewhere there is a young, impressionable something or other needing to get the kiss, so he/she/they buy one. Consumerism is the model for DEI.  Why limit your markets/suckers? Sell to everyone.  A more obvious product is the people involved in Pop Culture who build a “Brand” or following and then look for products and manufacturers to take advantage of how well “liked” the Brand has become. It appears females are very good at Brand Building. That cuts the number of Admen needed in our modern economic miracle of a country.  It’s poetic karma that old Admen aren’t needed anymore.

There isn’t really enough time to rant about Pop Culture and Consumerism in a short post. A proper rant needs a whole book. But…imagine if we all bought only what we needed? There is lots of collateral damage in an out-of-control consumer economy: homelessness for example, while rich people build houses large enough to house a battalion of Viet Cong.

Consumers’ benefit when we can easily get the things we need, like toilet paper. That’s good for all of us, especially if you find one of the many brands, styles, thicknesses, and patterns that works without tearing you a new one.*** Maybe we can tone down the influence that causes us to need a certain handbag, or sneaker, no matter what it costs. (See past post about Dynamic Model Pricing.)

Eh. Money has the Power, even Pop Culture bows to it, and it’s wrong to hope for a perfect economic system when we are so imperfect, ourselves. Do this next time you need to buy something, though, ask why you want it, first, and see what happens. Unless its toilet paper. Get that one fast.

Caveat: I, too, have stuff I don’t need. When I typed “imperfect”, It meant all of us.

And was it too subtle, talking about Pop Culture and toilet paper in the same post?

*Look that up for help understanding a sentence rife with “irony”.

**There were women in adverting in the Old Days. Guess what they did?

***What a terrible play on words.

****These products experience a life after their normal sales death: collectibles.

Reverend Barber of North Carolina on TDS

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It is not often a serious discussion gets a lengthy exposure without a gaggle of jokes on Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show (TDS) on Comedy Central, streamed the next day on Paramount Plus. It is a comedy show.

But Reverend William Barber of North Carolina was a guest Monday night, June 17, 2024, and the weight of the discussion kept Jon from the usual antics during guest appearances. It is a Comedy show.

The subject of poverty is a heavy weight to bear. Watch the show or get the Reverend’s new Book titled “White Poverty” to see exactly how heavy.

Much was discussed but the one thing never mentioned, at least not heard by me, is what the real problem with poverty is: it is a historically classic example of Got Mine Go Away (GMGA). The numbers of people in poverty is staggering, even with the lowest estimates. The affect of said poverty on millions of people is a national disgrace rivaling the fentanyl and firearms catastrophes. And the border, too.

Dr. Barber’s point is the people suffering from poverty are not who you think they are. And they don’t act the way you think they act. Racism is a part of poverty, but it is more a class/caste war. Not a black-white issue but a true Us against Them in a capitalist battle nearing a tipping point. The downtrodden can only suffer so much for so long.

When you hear someone has “escaped from poverty”, who do you picture? And who did they take with them? It is a class of people and a way of life, and when you escape it there’s no going back. No returning to break the cycle for others. I’ve no facts to know this statement is true except to note poverty still exists and the Poverty Class is growing. There will be dire consequences for civilization if the Poverty Class reaches a point where there is no nope and no chance, and nothing to regret.

Musk, Bezos, Allen, Crowe, Buffet, Soros, others might be trying to help. But how hard? After all, the Capitalist System NEEDS a loser class, a Poverty Class, to ensure the unending flow of riches to those that do not need any more. Musk, alone could give nearly $1billion to every state in our union and see if helps make sure people have enough to eat, have water which won’t kill them, and healthcare when they need it.

It isn’t as simple as money because anytime money is flowing, aspiring Capitalists will be there to swallow it up. But it seems we could do something. Or at least talk about it. Anyone? Look how fast the rich respond when higher taxes are proposed. Can they solve poverty as fast? As least for one generation?

Watch the interview and check out the Reverend’s book.

Anyone.