BORED IN THE HOUSE AND IM IN THE HOUSE BORED

apersnicketylemon:

lukeish:

apersnicketylemon:

“Capitalism made your-”

No. LABOUR made it. LABOUR made my phone, my laptop, the internet, this website, my clothing, my house, all social media, and everything else. LABOUR makes things, Capitalism doesn’t because economic systems don’t ‘make’ anything, they just determine who gets paid for making things.

Okay, but I think you’ve missed the point - they aren’t saying that capitalism literally made the phone. The point the capitalist is making is that you are profiting from the labour of others who are exploited elsewhere, which is why you get to live in a country where you own an iPhone. They are also pointing out the efficiency of a system where for-profit companies can collaborate well enough to assemble all of the parts for a device from various locations around the world, at very little cost to the consumer.

This is very literally my field of study, so believe me when I say that no, I have not missed the point, you have missed mine. 

A capitalist says ‘capitalism is the reason these items exist, because without money no one would invent new stuff!’ This is an argument. 

My argument is that no, capitalism didn’t make anything. It didn’t create anything, and it can’t make anything, because it’s an economic system. The items in question would still exist in other economic systems (and in some systems, exist in a much better way than they currently do, and we may even see far more new, useful inventions), but the people we pay would be different under socialism, because the person who made it would have been paid a reasonable amount, and the CEO would have been paid far less to make sure that happened. 

Capitalism is also not an efficient system. To call it one is either to deeply misunderstand how capitalism works, or to lie outright. Capitalism is an exploitative system, and very literally has resulted in planned obsolescence, items are very literally built to break at certain times. How do you think they assemble all those parts for so little? Like, I’ll give you a hint and it starts with an e and ends with xploitation. And more often than not it starts with an s and ends with lavery. Capitalism has directly resulted in the USA actively overthrowing fully democratic governments and intentional destabilization of regions, in the name of higher profits. 

Likewise, companies intentionally build their products to break after a certain amount of time/certain number of uses. Batteries and lightbulbs used to have much longer lifespans than they do today. Why? Because it wasn’t good for profit margins. 

This is not an efficient system. It’s a system that requires slavery, exploitation, and for items to be built to break, or it will fail outright. It is a system that cannot function without some people starving and being in such poverty that they cannot afford the basic necessities of life. It is a system that is crumbling and failing in front of us right now.