Re: Capitalism
"And, no, we don't actually have real capitalism. We have a massively corrupted form of capitalism."
Absolutely. Pure capitalism, like pure communism, is a fantastic ideal on paper or as backing for revolutions and upheavals, but because of the innate greed and perversity of human nature, neither can actually work in a real-life scenario.
Because no matter how fair or just a political ideal may be, someone, somewhere, wants to gain at the expense of the other guy, and it's the ones who discover ways to game the system to their own advantage that always end up winning; and what you then have is an inevitable return to the old aristocratic feudal society where the rich descendants of the gamesters who ruined the ideal system for their own gain, become the dynastic rulers of the new order.
Historically, humanity's method of dealing with this sort of dynastic corruption has always been revolution and upheaval; a group of disaffected revolutionaries extol the virtues of either a communist or capitalist idealistic system as described above, enlist the help of the proles in overthrowing the dynastic rulers with the promise of a bright new future for all, and if they win, for a brief golden age everything is wonderful. But invariably some new gamester appears to exploit the new system, and so the cycle continues.
Until now. With the advent of technology, and more so psychology, revolution has become impossible. With psychology, the dynastic rulers can control and manipulate public opinion, tying the disaffected up with minutiae until an absolute hierarchy prevails forever. The days of storming the Bastille with pitchforks and torches are well and truly over. One only has to look at the fate of the Occupy movement and the public perception of them to understand exactly how this works. Expressions like "first-world problems", "hippies expecting handouts", "get a bloody job", "I work my arse off so should you" echoed by huge numbers of middle-class office sheep, like many on this forum for one example, show the effectiveness of psychology and manipulation of public opinion in derailing revolutions.
Technology was supposed to free us and make our lives easier. Back in the 70s, the average working week was 38 hours, with talk of automation leading to a future where the three-day-week would be the norm. People would have more time for leisure, and everyone would benefit from the many new ways in which technology would free us from the exigencies of manual labour.
Yet it didn't happen, did it? Now, your average working and middle class wage slaves toil 60-to-80 hour weeks AND rubbish the hell out of anyone who doesn't want to do the same. The buying power of the average Joe has decreased massively: for example, in 1975 my Dad earned $108 per week working 38 hours a week and bought his house for $25,000. Today, a worker in that same job works minimum 47 hours for $620 a week and can expect to pay $350,000+ for a similar house. You work it out: 25,000 / (108 pw / 38 hrs/w) = 8,796 hours' work for a house; 350,000 / (620 pw / 47 hrs/w) = 26,532 hours' work for a house. That's less than ONE THIRD the buying power per hour of labour today than what we enjoyed in 1975.
So it would seem that the same thing has happened to the ideal of capitalism under today's leaders, as what happened to communism under Lenin and Stalin. Except that the revolution that brought the Soviet Union to its knees won't be repeated in the West. The abuse of technology, and the master manipulators of psychology and all the bleating sheep who worship their own slavery at their hands, have seen to that.
(1984 icon because Orwell beat me to it by 65 years)