Its difficult to describe capitalism & its overarching effects without sounding vaguely conspiratorial.
The idea that a maligned incentive system can result in profound society-wide harm without operating under some agreed upon master plan absolute breaks liberals brains. Individualism brain really cannot fathom the idea that class interests arise from a bunch of people making decisions that benefit their individual interests. The vague notion of competition outweighs the fact that every “competitor” has a shared interest to make decisions that directly run counter to the interests of the workers & society at large. Somehow that same conceptualization of competition never carries over to reducing labor costs.
Emergent behaviors require no collusion. Capitalism would still result in widespread social ills even if the entire ownership class was comprised of nice people™
Its difficult to describe capitalism & its overarching effects without sounding vaguely conspiratorial.
It is not surprising that the CIA financed several conspiracy groups and on the other hand propagated the very idea of “conspiracy theory” to disqualify any point of view against hegemonic.
I would say the conspiracy is by design :real-conspiracy-hours:
Conspiracy theories take on the superficial trappings of socialist ideas, that there is a single group in society actively causing its major problems, as a smokescreen to distract the people from forming class consciousness. It’s the same reason fascists will adopt superficially leftist sounding rhetoric.
Mostly it is just a disconnect between the systemic vs. individualist framing. I do think that if you follow every lead under either framework you can actually get to the same conclusion since these systemic issues are the sum of entire classes acting in their perceived individual self-interests that just happen to be shared. But the systemic framing offers a very helpful layer of abstraction that makes getting there (and therefore further examination of the issues) much less of a chore.
Its difficult to describe capitalism & its overarching effects without sounding vaguely conspiratorial.
The idea that a maligned incentive system can result in profound society-wide harm without operating under some agreed upon master plan absolute breaks liberals brains. Individualism brain really cannot fathom the idea that class interests arise from a bunch of people making decisions that benefit their individual interests. The vague notion of competition outweighs the fact that every “competitor” has a shared interest to make decisions that directly run counter to the interests of the workers & society at large. Somehow that same conceptualization of competition never carries over to reducing labor costs.
Emergent behaviors require no collusion. Capitalism would still result in widespread social ills even if the entire ownership class was comprised of nice people™
It is not surprising that the CIA financed several conspiracy groups and on the other hand propagated the very idea of “conspiracy theory” to disqualify any point of view against hegemonic.
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I would say the conspiracy is by design :real-conspiracy-hours:
Conspiracy theories take on the superficial trappings of socialist ideas, that there is a single group in society actively causing its major problems, as a smokescreen to distract the people from forming class consciousness. It’s the same reason fascists will adopt superficially leftist sounding rhetoric.
Mostly it is just a disconnect between the systemic vs. individualist framing. I do think that if you follow every lead under either framework you can actually get to the same conclusion since these systemic issues are the sum of entire classes acting in their perceived individual self-interests that just happen to be shared. But the systemic framing offers a very helpful layer of abstraction that makes getting there (and therefore further examination of the issues) much less of a chore.