The Heisman Trophy, Collegiate Rules, and Capitalism

There is a difference, I would say, between producing for productions sake and consuming for consumptions sake.

Consumerism at heart isn't an issue, but corporate growth is. Smaller businesses have never done damage to society. There's your reconciliation.

In other words, the very discourse by which we evaluate the problem is an instrument for our oppression.

Quite true. Capitalism is dependent on excess. Someone makes too many bars of soap, so he sells them. He didn't make them because people were demanding soap, so he has to create the demand. "Here's a product you need, son."

This is only possible in a capitalistic society. A society where you sell your labor for capital, rather than using that labor to produce something. There are several aspects of the opening section that I haven't even touched on yet that really glue this all together. It is a must read. I assure you.

I'm not sure how this addresses the problem. If production = freedom, what do we do with the results? Not consume them? Is mankind free when he produces right up until the point when someone else consumes it? Does it somehow depend on whether or not that consumption is reasonable, or just for the sake of consuming? If so, who decides what is reasonable? I don't see any way to make a distinction that doesn't immediately raise dozens of unanswerable questions.

If individuals can do damage to society (and they obviously can), I see absolutely no reason to believe that "smaller" businesses can't, or haven't. It stands to reason that businesses and groups of any size are capable of harming society, and have at one point or another.

Even if they hadn't, this would still leave the question of what constitutes a "smaller" business, and what a law that prevents businesses from growing beyond a certain size would even look like, and who gets to make such determinations, and on what authority.

For instance, why would people want this type of repression? How did capitalism come to replace the despotic society? How exactly does capitalism contain its control over everything? These are questions that are all raised in the text.

Businesses are not the units or agents of oppression; Capitalism as a system is.

I cook food because my machines (organs) want to make and break connections (eat, digest, and s***). This basic understanding of why things are produced can be applied to any sized system, which is exactly how they talk about capitalism.

Desire used to be about producing things, which is our man's subjective reality. But now, because of the Oedipus complex, capitalism has turned desire into me wanting to buy more Teletubbies.

How are you measuring "demand"? Why does someone have to specifically request that another person invent the automobile to justify its creation and sale? Why isn't it enough that people by and large obviously always want to be able to travel cheaper, faster, safer, and more comfortably? Nor have you defined how you determine "excess." What's "too many" bars of soap? Should we have extra, just in case? How many?

All these arguments break down as soon as you demand specificity of them.

Except that your capital is traded for someone else's labor to produce something. It doesn't reduce production, it just makes it fluid. If you're a baker and you need your window fixed and there's no such thing as money, you have to hope the guy who knows how to fix windows needs bread. If he doesn't, you're screwed. But money allows you to trade your production for another person's production even if you don't happen to need or want each other's services.

Money is basically just a certificate proving that you did something of value to someone else. It's probably one of the smartest, most important concepts we've ever come up with as a species.

wait wut

I did miss something

Believe me, Yoda, my disgust with capitalism has some very well thought out reasons, and it's not just your typical "it destroys the world" sorta argument. But also, it's very difficult to convey in just a few short online posts. Hell man, I spent 2 weeks studying this crap, just to get where I am now!

Isn't one of the problems having all these positions of power? Does the power not lead to dreams of more power? I know it's been indoctrinated into people that this is how things work in this type of society, but assuming one society has the common sense not to grow or produce more than necessary, would the society eventually become capitalist? Why are the only options capitalism and tyranny?

I don't think there's a solution that doesn't involve revamping the societal construct of how we view business and trade...or greed. To what point does splurging become greedy?

And again, I am definitely not advocating for the destruction of capitalism. I agree that it is certainly a very fluid system. That's the dangerous part, though.

I think it's more likely that it takes two weeks buried in a convoluted text in order to lose sight of the otherwise simple problems with it. Immersion can work against understanding just as easily as for it.

I won't go as far as to say a complicated argument is always a false one, but I'm definitely more suspicious of positions that always need to complicate the issue to come up with an answer, particularly to such simple follow-up questions.

Going meta simply is not going to help here. I agree with Yoda. Let's get down to the dirty examples.

No, they're not complicated arguments. In fact, the argument of the book is one of the simplest arguments you will ever read. The text is just difficult to decipher, as it's heavy on metaphors and allegory.

These are fairly interesting questions, I guess, but I'm not sure what you're suggesting through them, and I don't see what they have to do with all that stuff about "smaller" businesses.

Splurging on what? What you're spending on factors pretty heavily into whether or not a certain amount of spending is "greedy."

Let's say I buy way more movies than I should (true). I can tell you that the only person this hurts is me since I still pay my bills and buy christmas presents etc. Would you categorize this as spoiling myself rather than greed? If so, we know what greed is.

If it does, I may have something to offer from an Underachieving Bum's perspective. Then again...