Why You Love Capitalism

This sentence doesn't make any sense at all, not as a question nor as a statement. As a question, the presumption is that you indeed love capitalism, which is ridiculous to say the least. As a statement the presumption is that there exists an answer at all to the ridiculous question. Still, this doesn't stop Prager "University" to publish a "five minute course" with this question or statement as its title. That's asking for a rant...

_{source: Picpedia}

"Why is going to the Apple store so fun, but going to the DMV so painful?" asks the ignorant narrator in the video. The obvious answer, according to the reactionary right-wing hacks of PragerU: "Because one has nothing to do with government, and one IS the government." Here's the next standardized presumption made by all who adore the capitalist status quo: if you love capitalism, you must hate the government. This still amazes me to no end; many people indeed DO love capitalism, when in fact that love is a one-way street for 90% of the world's population. A great quote, from the masterpiece The Usual Suspects comes to mind: "The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist."

That one sentence, claiming that Apple is great and government is not, carries in it one of the greatest tricks of the defenders of the capitalist status quo; the belief that we, as a society and species, owe all life-enhancing progress and innovation to the bravery of risk-taking entrepreneurs who can only become successful and rich if that bravery is rewarded in the marketplace. Therefore Jobs, Gates, Zuckerberg, Bezos and their peers fully deserve their power and glory. And we should do nothing to impede them, we should allow them to do whatever is necessary to keep doing what they're doing; government should stay out of their way and not tax them too much, or they'll take their business elsewhere. Government bad, multinational corporation good.

Yeah, sure that would be a nice story if it wasn't a blatant lie. In fact it's a complete reversal of actual reality; almost every innovation of the past half century and more has come from publicly funded research and development. When you hear someone, like me for instance, say that Apple has never invented anything at all, you can take that as literal truth. I know, this puts a serious dent in the standard narrative of the neoliberal era we live in, and I'm sure this post will be unpopular with many of you, but hey, truth isn't a popularity contest. The PragerU video isn't original at all and lists the usual technological miracles of our times, like the iPhone, Google and Facebook as proof of capitalism's worth to humanity. This is so deceitful, so dishonest and so misleading, and I'll tell you why.

Let's start with Google, arguably the world's most powerful tool for mass deception and mass control. Who remembers Google's original internet address? It was google.stanford.edu; Larry Page and Sergey Brin developed their world-conquering search engine technology on the tax dollar subsidized research campus of Stanford University. How about the internet it runs on? That began as ARPAnet, as a way of fast communication and sharing computer resources between scientists, and a way for the military to have a decentralized (bomb-proof) network of communication with no specific hub to act as an attractive target for enemy forces. Knowing its origin, you might be slightly less surprised about the fact that the internet is now being transformed into a larger than life spying- and manipulation-network. What about WiFi? That began as ALOHAnet; development of the ALOHA network was begun in September 1968 at the University of Hawaii with the goal to use low-cost commercial radio equipment to connect users on Oahu and the other Hawaiian islands with a central time-sharing computer on the main Oahu campus. Necessity and a publicly funded campus, and not entrepreneurship or competition, were the parents of yet another life-changing technology.

What is Android, other than the operating system for my Samsung smartphone? It's Linux! I could go on, but the general rule is this: you've already payed for your iPhone. Your tax-dollars payed for all the technology in it, but you're supposed to have "fun" going to the Apple store to pay for it again, because Jobs put it all in a nice and shiny package; even the LCD screen, the lithium ion battery and the GPS system were payed for by tax-dollars. And still many will proudly show their new iPhone, as proof they're in the club of rational customers who want nothing but the best and are willing to pay a little extra for the status that comes with this club-membership. That's so sad. I sometimes wonder; do we WANT to be deceived? I guess we do. It's like an abusive relationship we have with this irrational free market ideology; it keeps screwing over 90% of us, but no one dares admit it. "Pure" capitalism is nothing but survival of the strongest, a confirmation that "might is right". There would be no democracy, only the power of property and those who accumulate most of it by exploiting the rest of us and the planet.

That's why right-wing hackery, as so blatantly displayed by PragerU, wants you to believe that you love capitalism, and hate the government when it tries to contain its built-in excesses; and that's why they now own the government too. Both sides in all wars are funded by the same corporate powers; economy is war, and War Is A Racket. That's enough ranting from me for one day, so here's the video that triggered it, please watch with caution:

_{Why You Love Capitalism}

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