Fair Warning: NSFW. I’m a bit sweary and emotional about this.
I’m Now A Socialist.
If this is Capitalism then let me be a Socialist. Okay, that’s not so much of a secret, I reckon rampant capitalism is the single most destructive thing to have happened to the planet, bar none other.
Yes, it brought about huge changes in our living conditions and safety. But now it’s gotten to the point where it’s rapidly taking all those things away again, and that’s just unacceptable.
When you have a tradesman whom you pay to build you a house and they build you a good solid house then that’s an advance in your living conditions. If the tradesman steals the materials for your house from someone up the street, that’s a reason to pull them up short and give them an ultimatum.
When the tradesman then comes back into your house that you’re living in and starts hitting you with a hammer just to make keep on paying them without actually adding the new rooms you wanted, that’s when you either call the cops or hit them back, and generally harder because you have a whole family living in your house.
There were whole generations not so long ago that would have left that tradesman’s head on a spike out on the front lawn as a bit of a blunt message to the other tradies.
So - capitalism made us a race of deluded sociopaths who don’t give a shit for anyone else, don’t value the planet for anything other than what they can rip out of it, who value pieces of paper more than lives or the environment, and who are admired by everyone else because their stack of paper is taller than anyone else’s.
The Theory
I figured out that we somehow skewed our theories of Economics far away from what was fair (value given = value received) the moment the first hominid realised that they had a family to feed.
I hypothesised that our survival imperative had to favour the hominid that bargained a slightly better ratio (value given < value received) which would in one sweep give themselves more of the hard-won resources at hand and at the same time deprive the other hominid(s) of that ‘profit’ portion of those resources, thus lessening their chance of survival.
That first caveman was an arsehole, but his ‘family’ of females and offspring were well provided for and so more of his genes propagated in the pool. The pool didn’t become better because of it, just greedier. My hypothesis is that his genes can be found in the DNA of every banker and financier today, and in about half of commercial landlords.
Plus that guy that tried to lowball me back when I was selling my old car, he’s 100% That Cave-dweller.
But in between societies that lived well within their means and societies that profited from those other more modest societies’ means, there’s a whole spectrum between altruism and profiteering. . .
Corporate Profiteering
The last time I saw proof of my profiteering pilferers was this article in The New Daily.
Nine years of the previous LNP government shoving money up the arses of their corporate buddies and overlords, telling the workers that the economy would be so much better off if we just stopped asking for wages and salaries and instead just consumed and purchased and spent.
“Oh and if you don’t mind, also use up your superannuations and pension funds so that corporations can sponge up any of that which they may have missed. Future governments will pay all that back, meanwhile, we don’t mind if you starve and freeze in the here and now, we can’t see why you’re making such a fuss, sheesh.”
Thanks, Early Paleolithic Hominid!
More Profiteering
BUT then the ‘good news’ arrived! Hurray! Hurray!
You lucky cash crop you, Coles has made a profit! Rejoice, rejoice!
“But we’re raising prices on staple foods because - well, because . . . because, just because! Can’t you meat money making machines ever just shut up and suffer silently? Sheesh.“
Yep - “posting a 4.3 per cent uplift in annual profits to $1.04 billion” and “chief executive Steven Cain, who will receive an $890,000 bonus in September” just about says it all, doesn’t it?
Don’t forget though that as these big supermarket giants are scrunching and squeezing you for the last possible little coin, they’re also bending over and soundly shafting their suppliers.
A woman in some Chinese packing plant got laid off and her co-workers had to take a pay cut, because Woolies wouldn’t let the packing plant out of its contract but used the little clause on page 217 that said Woolies was allowed to reduce what they paid if the CEO needed a new car.
Farmers here regularly get royally screwed by the Big Two and all they can do is suck it up because we don’t want to go to the trouble of buying our vegetables at a separate F&V store and also facing seasonal supplies (which BTW has been proven over and over to be healthier than everything everywhere all the time, because your body gets the nutrients each season demands, at the time the season is happening) oh and a farmer charging $6 for an iceberg lettuce is a total rip-off bc they just grew than damn thing in the ground, whereas Coles charging $6 for that same lettuce is quite okay because they have shareholders doncha know?
BUY LOCAL, people! BUY IN SEASON! And DON’T PAY A FRIGGEN SHAREHOLDER TAX!
Ah, what’s the use? I think what you want me to tell you about next is:
Farmers “Profiteering”
I admit, farmers aren’t always the good guys either: https://thenewdaily.com.au/finance/2022/08/25/workers-labour-shortage-agriculture
“We NEEDS dis workers but we NEEDS to pay dem nothing!”
You have to realise, don’t you, that the farmers’ offer to part-pay workers in produce is a BIG indicator of why this particular situation is happening. They’re being screwed by the supermarkets, and the box of vegetable they could give the worker in lieu of $50 of their wage would after all cost the worker $65 or more at the supermarket so inb effect the worker would get a bit more value this way.
But the farmer, by using that barter as a legitimate running cost, could avoid The Contract which they stupidly signed that will somewhere in it have a buried clause that says something like:
“On and by the way we reserve the right to pay you even less for your box of vegetables, or even reject it and penalise you for breaching your end of the contract and we also forbid you from selling any of your produce including the stuff we reject or we’ll really penalise you. Why are you looking at us like that? You signed the damn thing. Sheesh.“
Your Landlord Profiteering
And possibly the reason why you’re living on the street: Holiday home / AirBnB owners say they can earn more from renting out their holiday shacks for a month than they can earn by giving someone a permanent home for the year, so screw them.
If ever there was a stratum of society that needs to be eliminated it’s landlords and real estate agents. Sheesh.
And I’m going to also hurriedly add here that there are also some genuine landlords out there who are doing a fantastic job of keeping people in their properties through thick and thin, and aren’t turning people out just to raise rents. But the majority are by and large some of the worst people for sheer greed and heartlessness.
And I’ll also hasten to add that many tenants don’t make a compelling case for long-term tenancy, either. But by and large you’d think landlords and property managers would have learned how to tell the difference by now, so there’s probably two sides to this.
Our Government(s) Profiteering
Take this as a given.
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