Unthought Of

But what if profits weren’t the only, or even primary, incentive? What if we rewarded employee wellbeing, positive community and environmental impact, innovations that reduced suffering or improved health not because they could be commodified but simply because they mattered?

We’ve been in capitalism’s grasp so long that we’ve been trained to think these things are impossible. But why should they be?
Laura Moore "Work is broken: Marx, alienation, and the Great Pretending"

If I had a dollar for every time I saw this description of things, I don't know how many dollars I'd have, but it would be a good number of them. This idea, that living under Capitalism "trains" everyone to think that Capitalism is the only possible system, is common enough to be a cliché. (After all, a book was written about the subject a decade and a half ago.) But if it were true, why are so many people writing about some alternative economic system for it have become a trope unto itself?

The answer, I think, is found not much later in the essay:

To upend what sits at the root of everything would mean pain and havoc, not just for those at the top but for everyone.

And so I suspect that people understand that change is possible. But that it's not painless. But I think that pointing this out, noting that what stands between people and the better world they want to come into existence is their own pain tolerance, isn't affirming. And in a world where creating a Substack is no more difficult than having a blog, cutting through the noise means being really, really, attractive to people. And sometimes, that means being willing to tell them what one understands they want to hear.

And blaming a factor external to the reader, like "Capitalism" can be attractive. Because it casts them as not being an agent of their own dissatisfaction. Which I understand, because taking the blame sucks. No-one wants to feel, for instance, that the reason why young people can't afford a home in their area is their attachment to all of the equity that rising home prices have given them. Or that the reason why fast food workers are so poorly paid is that theirs is an industry driven almost entirely by discretionary purchases, and their price sensitivity is part of what keeps prices low. While the media loves to tout companies "reaping record profits," little is said about the fact that this is what puts money into the 401k and IRA funds of the middle class.

And, I'll be honest, this is the world as I prefer to see it, but I think that the real problem with Capitalism is that it's a convenient scapegoat for the fact that in many Western nations, and especially the United States, caring for one another simply isn't en vogue. People's sense of poverty drives them to place themselves ahead of the employees of the businesses they patronize, their communities, the environment or the health of strangers. But it's a sense of social desirability that can prevent people from acknowledging that. And Capitalism accepts the blame without complaint, just like any other inanimate object would.