1. Capitalism, Consumerism, and Creativity
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3.          It is vital to question the many types of jobs and roles of society, in terms of what they give back to the national community. There are many products and services that help the human condition and make life more pleasent for people, while other jobs simply shuffle capital about and produce nothing. What is aggravating is the propensity of professions that produce profit but little or no appreciable benefits to society or other people. If the only thing a company or individual is doing is trading money back and forth or owning property, their contribution is close to nil. Capital does not produce anything on its own, it is labor that uses the means of production, tools, land, and other assets could be shared by everyone. The IRS, banks, stock brokers, investors, and owners of the means of production give no appreciable benefit to society. Nothing is produced, and the services rendered are those that reward the greedy by stealing from the workers.
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5. One recent defender of capitalism and consumerism claimed that the money he spent on things that he found neccessary or desirable stimulated the economy, kept the system flowing, and was a service in itself. Consuming something does not help other people at all. Your choice as a consumer of what to buy is supposed to determine the best product, but this is not usually the case. It is the best advertised products that sell, not the highest quality or most neccessary. We are told by commercials and print ads exactly what we need to be happy and desirable people, and if a lie is told often enough it becomes truth. The corporations even get people to buy products that advertise themselves, like brand-name T-shirts and having logos on everything. The best advertised candidate, religion, or paradigm is also the one adopted by the most humans.
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7. The companies that can make the biggest profit are those that can afford the most advertising and mass production technology. These are the giant multi-national corporations, ones that swallow smaller companies who have actual innovations. Microsoft is a corporaion that has a history of doing this, gobbling up the businesses that challenge it's monopolistic practices or have profitable inventions.
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9. Our culture's love of capital is built in by the consumerism at the heart of our American society. We are taught as soon as we are old enough to watch T.V. that wanting things and buying things is good and healthy, something to be encouraged. The problem is, this is brought about just by the advertising guys working for the huge Corps, who also think that hoarding money is the best thing to do. The Gov gives out huge subsidies to the large corporations,The workers are not fairly compensated by their labor as the "owners" that make up the Illuminated ruling class/The Con take a huge share of the profits.
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11. We should have a system set up where the highest salary at maximum is about 23 times the lowest yearly income of paid workers. A maximum wage directly porportional to the minimum wage will keep things much more fair and just, and hopefully reduce the insane lust for more money that the ruling class has.
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13. It is saddening that I couldn't support myself comfortably on something like art or writing alone, because society doesn't value it very much. This has nothing to do with my talents, and applies to most people doing something cretive and weird. What seems to be valued is people who trade pieces of paper around all day, or keep track of how much money people have, or who try to figure out how they or their bosses can get the most amount of money from the least amount of their own work. People with imagination, talent, and creativity often pollute themselves and end up making commercials to get people to buy useless things. I recently witnessed a presentation by the animator of the red "M&M.", a very talented man who does work for a variet yof advertising agencies. I asked him if working for corporations had limited him as an artist. He replied something along the lines of "No, I actually have more time now, so when I'm working it's work and when I go home then I can be an artist." This view frustrates me because he seems to view art as either a money-maker or a cool hobby. He used to be freelance, spending a lot of time stuggling to find work, which is a travesty considering that he's very successful working for companies that waste millions on T.V. commercials. While there is sometimes creativity and worth in commercials, it is a perverted contribution in the same sense that relegion is used to gain power and money. What happened to the free expression of ideas, unfettered by a greedy ulterior profit motivation?
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15.      I hate The Conspiracy!
16.         The Chaos Gerbil