Today I dumped a brain-train rage onto a page.
Feel free to hang on to your hats, clutch at your pearls, or merely rail against the system.
The city inflated its lungs to start another daily cycle, transit systems whirring to life, shuttling tonnes of thinking-embedded meat packages from their overnight resting locations to employer designated computer terminals and interaction areas, feeding commercial systems with data that made money, some of which was paid to them. They were encouraged to spend it on things they didn't need made by other companies who made more money using yet more people. A lot of this money was taken both before and after its transfer between parties by other organisations, who employed people who were needed to help people who couldn't afford to educate, feed, clothe or house themselves or even the children they chose to have.
#lateststagecapitalism
#latestagecapitalism
#latestagecapitalism
#laststagecapitalism
#lateagecapitalism
Even when there was no money left to do this, they were encouraged to give it away to help even more people, some in far-away lands. To give lots of choices to people so that they felt it was more about what they wanted to have rather than didn't need to have, and slightly better than what their friends or colleagues had, companies charged lots of different amounts of money for selling the same things in different ways. This made it so complicated that people no longer knew what they should buy or renew, so they ended up picking what looked best or not changing at all. This meant they spent more money than if they had no choice at all or only a single option. The companies giving lots of choices liked this, but sometimes it made poor people even poorer.But the paradox of choice was the less money you had, the fewer choices you could have. These were normally the most expensive ones, because the companies didn't trust you to pay them, so they took more money from you in case you stopped paying them. Sometimes they even took money from you for things you hadn't used, but only gave it back when you asked for it. This was called 'improving cash flow'.
People complained about this and the companies were forced to only charge a maximum amount, sometimes the people in charge paying them the rest with money they didn’t have, which of course the same people originally complaining then had to anyway pay back in extra taxes. It didn't matter either way because they just charged a bit more to all the other people who could afford it. This was mainly the people who had taken time to make the best choice. Sometimes you made the best choice and then find it was no longer the best, even though nothing had changed. This was because the company wanted to gain more customers and it could only do this by slowly increasing the cost for its existing customers whilst waving tempting lower cost offers at new customers. This meant there was no trust or loyalty and people were told that they had to change to another company for 'the best deal'. Even though it was only the best deal for one year. People even invented new companies that helped people decide what company to use. But sometimes these new companies were paid by the older companies to not make the best decision for customers and instead make them their customer.
“Sometimes you made the best choice and then find it was
no longer the best, even though nothing had changed.”
So that the people who were working hard and making the right choices and doing what they were told could still enjoy things after they were told they were too old to work (without taking money from the people in charge who didn't have any money to give back to them), they were encouraged to pay money to people who would buy small pieces of companies and take some of it for themselves for doing so. They would never like to say how much they took. The bits of companies they bought changed in value every second of the waking day, not necessarily because the company was doing anything different, but because these people thought they might or could do something, which might be either a good thing or a bad thing for that company. But nobody really knew what was going to happen, not even the people who were paid lots of money to guess what would happen. But this was different to guessing what would happen for fun, because the maths already told you that you would, on average, lose. But you carried on playing anyway, because it was fun to pretend you could beat the bank, even if you knew what the probabilities were. But most people didn't know or care. Until they lost a lot of money. Then they complained it wasn't fair and the people in charge agreed with them and made other people give them money to keep them quiet and later vote for them to still be in charge.
Now, my question to you all is:
Given all of the above, who truly believes their life is self-made, and not perpetually and deliberately made unfair?