Does it surprise anyone that when we talk about growth (economy/GDP), we are not talking about an increase in production to meet human needs? Growth does not seem to be about use-value or social provisioning, but specifically about increasing commodity production in order to generate and accumulate surplus value—its sole objective. Is this not a little upside-down?
‘If you tell an AI to make people happy, it may decide to just put everyone to sleep, forever. Which, you know, given the state of the world, might not be such a bad thing. Turns out it’s almost impossible to program something to be good. We don’t have the words for it. I wonder what that says about us.
But maybe we eventually figure out this goodness, and how to program it.
It’s an incredibly disturbing realization that this does nothing to benefit society and it’s just literally created to keep the economy afloat. The mantra of the relentless pursuit of growth, under the guise that it betters the economy, is frankly absurd. The idea that our entire system’s survival hinges on a never-ending increase in outputs and a relentless reduction of inputs—working more, working faster—is irrational and cruel at its core.
As I read on how the economy works, I sometimes pause to reflect: GDP does not differentiate where its growth comes from. Be it the bread made by a local baker that feeds people, or the production of Russian tanks used to kill, for GDP, growth is growth.
Here we are, spinning on a blue marble, in a universe too vast to fathom, yet we’re shackled to a system as old as time, dressed in new clothes. The same play, different actors. Economic slavery, my dear friends, isn’t a relic of history books; it’s the unspoken chapter of our modern saga, a silent symphony playing in the background of our bustling lives.
Consider the rat race, that endless marathon we run, gasping for a breath of financial freedom, only to find the finish line ever-receding.
The neon sign flickered in sporadic bursts of electric color, casting its cynical promise across the cracked asphalt of the near-deserted street. “Privacy Sold Here,” it said, —as if privacy could be commodified, packaged, and distributed like so many cans of processed meat. But this was San Angeles, 2051. An urban sprawl that had metastasized across the scorched earth, swallowing town after town in a meshwork of cables, silicone, and carbon fiber.
Many walls were built and pulled down. Walls that divide people. Everyone believed that those walls were dividing the world. That East and West were separating people into ‘us’ or ’them.’
I thought that the reason people made small talk, you know, like standing in line at the grocery store, and, “oh, nice day today”. I thought that the reason people did stuff like that was because they had nothing interesting to think about inside their heads.
