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the important things rule (lemmy.blahaj.zone)
submitted 1 month ago by to c/196@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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:nonazis: 1
 

Text: My room in Tokyo is overlooking a graveyard, reminding me that death is coming for us all and to focus on the important things (b2b saas)

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[–] 18 points 1 month ago (3 children)

This is what makes most jobs so incredibly unattractive to me. I don't want to spend my life doing pointless nonsense, and if I have to do that nonsense, I want to do as little of it as possible (part-time). Money is nice, but how are people not going insane when they think about how useless their jobs would be if it wasn't for capitalism?

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  • [–] 6 points 1 month ago*

    Capitalism has now divided the world into places with different functions:

    peripheryThey are the countries whose economies are focused on raw resource extraction like mining and agriculture. These places are usually very poor as all investment coming abroad from international finance goes towards increasing the output of ore, crude oil, coffee, palm oil, etc. A good example from the beginning of Neocolonialism (Kwame Nkrumah) is of Ghana tripling its cacao production over the span of 10 years, but the actual net income from total cacao exports fell slightly. The global system of capitalism via monopoly power forces these countries to underprice their exports and forces them to overpay on imports and on the interest payments from loans they must get from the banks of rich countries like the EU or US. Africa and the Middle East, some parts of South America and Asia would be in the imperial periphery. They only consume close to the bare necessity required to maintain the workforce required for resource extraction.

    semi-peripheryThere are the countries whose economies process those raw resources into consumer goods. This group has become increasingly distinct over time as factories have moved out of the US and Europe into Asia and Central and South America. Life is sometimes better here and there is more consumption usually.

    And the one people are talking about and most people on here are probably from...

    coreThe countries whose economies are focused on consumption, finance, and IPs (or other forms of products only profitable because of rent). Almost all jobs fall into the categories of...

    Sales and retail, transportation, finance, creating IPs such as proprietary software, technology patents, or entertainment, and the maintenance of infrastructure. That's it, pretty much. It makes sense why nobody wants to work, almost all of them aren't contributing anything that seems helpful minus a few exceptions.

    Their biggest exports are loans, IPs (if those could even be said to be exports), and weapons.

    Alienation is the worst in these countries as every aspect of life is designed to make people consume as much as possible. Alienation is far more psychologically damaging than exploitation which leads to stuff like South Korea having a higher suicide rate than Sudan. Basically all of them are experiencing an ever worsening loneliness and mental health crisis. It's normal now that every person you know has a mood disorder.

    Also leftists have a far harder time getting anything done in these countries because a lot of the working class are basically bought off and apathy is like the dominant ideology. Also, what means of production is anyone gonna seize? The Coca-Cola bottling factory? The Walmart grocery stores?

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  • [–] 6 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    I kind of wish I didn't hate capitalism so much, because I'd like to know what it feels like to be so dumb and uneducated that I'm completely happy with (and unaware of) the fact that we're all being exploited so that the 1% can maintain their infinite growth.

    I look at my co-workers and see half of them being completely content with barely making ends meet, and I envy them. I want to know what blissful ignorance is like. I feel like Cypher in The Matrix.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 weeks ago*

    I often feel the same way, though I don't know if being dumb is the source of happiness in this case. Plenty of intelligent people have come to accept the status quo as what is "natural", "normal", and "good", though I guess being in a good economic position makes that easier than when you're barely able to make ends meet. I still agree, I wish I could just accept everything the way it is because it has to be an amazing feeling to never even think about how unjust our system really is, even if you're the one who's being oppressed. That's why I CBT didn't work / anti-depressants wouldn't work for me, because the knowledge of this injustice will always be there

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