Kinda curious how “capitalism” as an ideal only exists in the heads of people opposed to it. The term points to a series of historic pseudo-equilibrium conditions that are unified only by being paths of least coordination resistance through their eras.
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Increasingly the only reason to ship bad things is that you actually want to. Not because the alternative is inaction or pure destruction. This is one reason “good” capitalism requires being on the technological frontier where the good optionality is at its highest.
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The more you’re stick in the past technologically, the more your revealed capitalism will be ugly and the reflection of the lower optionality of the post. This is an underappreciated aspect of the evil of trump. He’s 90% stuck in steam and phone and TV era tech. Literally.
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The medium is the message. He keeps referring to his MIT uncle. His reason for preferring steam catapults for aircraft carriers over EM is an aesthetic preference for steam, the way kids like steam locomotives. Is it any wonder his revealed capitalism is ~1830s+1950s?
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Capitalism is more a behavioral disposition (restlessness for shipping) than a set of beliefs. The main way it is good or evil is generally being at or behind the technological frontier of maximal possibilities.
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Hmm just realized my account here is close in spirit to Zizek’s notion of cynicism as ideology. http://pujoldotcom.com/2011/11/21/slavoj-zizek-cynicism-as-a-form-of-ideology-concept-of-kynicism/ …
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Okay getting more convinced of this based on replies exchanges. Capitalism as an ideology is a category error. It’s like calling politics an ideology. Politics is a class of behaviors that may include ideologically prescribed and constrained ones but is much larger.
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There are times when politics gets confined to a set of possibilities, like “electrical democracy” but the thing itself is what Kevin Spacey does in House of Cards or what Cardinal Richelieu did in 1600s France. It’s a set of behaviors within a theater. They “shipped politics”
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End of conversation
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For those following this thread: this is a small, Bay Area lens on above: “capitalism = innovation = shipping”. I’m sure CEOs less trained in the intellectual aspect of their work identify with it (good for the consulting biz) but it’s such a small subset of the whole of picture.
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