Entry 23

Happy Autumn Equinox y'all! Also

Ok so this video above is pretty long, but very relevant to.... everything that's happening lately. Obviously y'all already know me lolll all I do is bitch and moan about capitalism but yeah it's seriously beginning to spread much faster and worse... like some kind of aggressive terminal disease.

Another late stage capitalism-y thing has happened recently too, which I'm sure many people have at least heard a bit about by now. Basically, to sum up:

Now ofc this is kind of-- in the modern age of the internet-- old news since this happened to be announced 12 days ago. However, it's still definitely relevant right now as everything from music and labels that produce them, general labor and production, and the world of art are all very much seeing the worst of the impact that LCS is wreaking on society in general.

It's obvious that things are going to get worse before they get better, but while so many ppl are swearing up and down that we'll never see the collapse of capitalism in our lifetimes, it's incidents like these that keep happening that really make me wonder.

Companies are very obviously desperate nowadays. I feel like we as a capitalist society have really hit the ceiling in terms of profits, and since capitalism and monetarism are all about infinite growth, CEOs and hedge fund managers who only think in terms of profit margins and quarterly reports, they're scrambling to find other ways to squeeze pennies out of common consumers while also cutting costs on production. But as Cheyenne Lin's video above points out, there are only so many ways you can cut corners before everyone starts noticing they're being screwed over.

And let's not even TALK about Temu... I didn't think it could get any worse than Wish and here companies prove me wrong.

When EVERYONE is starting to notice the rapid decline of the quality of well... everything, that's when you know it's becoming a big problem

And that's the big question here, isn't it? What do we do? When capitalism inevitably collapses (because it just isn't sustainable!) what will happen next? Living in caves and farming our food? Go back to wearing rags and simple cloth?

Or could the answer possibly be what we've known for decades? If we can't keep up this infinite growth, if we can't possibly sustain overconsumption and disgusting greed then wouldn't the answer be Degrowth?

We're already seeing lots of words like "sustainability" and "eco-conscious" being thrown around more, and less and less ppl are impressed by influencers and celebs flaunting their gross (sometimes not even real) shows of wealth, and more ppl around me are picking up skills that can improve their lives, like knitting, sewing, gardening etc.

We're very obviously in the middle of some historical times. The shift away from trusting brands is happening swiftly, but the damage has been done. It's not all irreversable, and economic degrowth is p much the only hope for humanity atp but we are never gonna get anywhere if we let the divide that these capitalist institutions installed grow in between us, socially speaking. We have to work together and start pushing for more pro-social policies and changes bc the hyper-individualist lives that is basically killing us all slowly is eventually going to be our REAL downfall!

P much the only reason why Walmart and Target and McDonald's and all these giant companies that are household names even got as big as they did wasn't entirely organically. Not only was secret capital being exchanged behind closed doors (anyone that says Amazon and Windows and Apple came up from the bottom-- bc Bezos and those other clowns want to push that narrative-- is a sheep don't @ me) but also racist urban planning and propaganda drove us further apart. Dividing cities into classes and then isolating us, enacting racist zoning laws that separate local businesses from residential homes... it's all interconnected just to have individual family units keep to themselves and depend on companies more, making them forgo the tradition of neighbors asking for cups of sugar.

Remember those times? When you could just knock on someone's door and ask them for help or a cup of sugar? Now we have Ring cameras, paranoid Tiktok misinfo floating around, and ppl shooting random lost strangers that are just innocently looking for their friends' house.

Yes, companies will fall. We're already looking at a bunch of companies still struggling after the Silicon Valley Bank mishap this year. Not to mention that we, as previously mentioned, already see with our own eyes companies desperately clawing back their lost profits from the pandemic. Even with natural disasters ravaging the earth (wildfires, earthquakes, even my own state faced flooding from the heavy rains we've been getting this summer) and millions of ppl dead from COVID or other totally preventable diseases that can't be taken care of by our abysmal healthcare system, companies want to see... profits.

Just profits. They want money. Duh, ofc since that's what all businesses are for, but where do we draw the line? At what point does humanity get prioritized over profits? Imo, never. Not in a capitalist system, not ever. And that's why we've got to do away with it all. It's just all so rotten from the core, and I know the change will not be easy (since when is any of this easy lol) but it is necessary.

Maybe we will be seeing capitalism collapse in our lifetimes! The pandemic has shown us loud and clear that the direction we're going is just Not It lmfao and I am one of the many ppl who agrees

Either way, I hope whatever direction we go in in the future, we'll go back to Basics 101. A lot of ppl keep forgetting that we as a species survived all these thousands of years not bc of "survival of the fittest" or any of that bull. We survived bc we were social animals who helped each other out and took care of one another. Humans aren't inherently evil, but it's easy to forget that when we live in a system that is built upon and encourages corruption at every chance.