Thread by @PnictogenHorses

the ideal economy, under #capitalism, produces absolutely nothing.

this may sound ridiculous, but it is no more ridiculous than the central assumptions of capitalism, which begin with the assumption that only people who *own* factories ought to make any money from them.

(1/x)

capitalism is absurd, but in a sense that's been a boon for capitalists: because it's impossible to make sense of things that are fundamentally absurd no matter how much energy you expend on trying to explain them, #capitalism's absurdity helps generate its own propaganda.

(2/x)

it is rather like attempting to defend the British monarchy on rational grounds. the monarchy is a vestigial horror, an open wound in the side of the British body politic‚ an endless drain on the public coffers and an ongoing publicity nightmare—but that's also a *plus*.

(3/x)

the mere fact that the British monarchy is vestigial and corrupt means that the British monarchy gets endless press coverage. the monarchy's own awfulness helps prop it up as a public idol, something whose continued existence can be defended as a public necessity.

(4/x)

"what would people do without the monarchy to believe in? where would people be without #KingCharlesIII?" is a question that @Telegraph editorialists can ask, over and over again. if anyone answers something like, "because Charles is a bounder," they can be ignored.

(5/x)

#capitalism, likewise, creates its own headlines.

the defenders of capitalism—@EricRWeinstein, @MattWalshBlog, all those @AEI and @Heritage propagandists, along with more or less the *entire* media apparatus of Western society—are like the defenders of British monarchy.

(6/x)

they strike a similar absurd pose, a "doublethinkful" embrace of contradictory ideals: #capitalism (like the British monarchy) is the only rational solution; while at the same time, #capitalism (like the British monarchy) works because of some ineffable, mystical quality.

(7/x)

the abstractions of capitalism are imbued with an almost supernatural existence of their own. "the market" makes decisions for us. "free enterprise" somehow guarantees happiness. this mystical apparatus also has mystical enemies, like "inflation" and "entitlements".

(8/x)

because capitalists have hoarded all the money, they've been able to purchase themselves truly gigantic quantities of propaganda on behalf of #capitalism—and they've bought themselves compliant governments that subsidize corporations and prop up sagging business models.

(9/x)

@EricRWeinstein and the other minions of #capitalism do their best to muddle the fact that capitalists and corporations *could not exist* without being sheltered and protected by governments.

_corporate law_ exists because government officials create and enforce it.

(10/x)

without governments, corporations couldn't force their workforces to toil on behalf of capitalists' bank accounts: if workers attempt to rebel against their maltreatment and exploitation, the capitalists can whistle for the police—in #capitalism, workers work at gunpoint.

(11/x)

sometimes the guns are there in sight: capitalists have hoarded SO much wealth that, like bank robbers attempting to protect a huge heap of loot, fearful corporate titans like @EricRWeinstein's leash-holder @peterthiel are sheltering behind private armies of mercenaries.

(12/x)

but *any* business owner is the beneficiary of officially approved, officially uniformed and officially armed agents of punitive violence—any capitalist in #capitalism can count on the police for backup. Western police are, above all other things, guardians of capitalism.

(13/x)

this is *inevitable*: #capitalism requires the rigid separation of all society into an overclass and underclass: an overclass that gets to hoard all the profits, and an underclass who's supposed to toil (under threat of police violence) for the wishes of the overclass.

(14/x)

the ideal corporation pays zero for labor. #capitalism loves slave labor and prison labor, for this reason. German capitalists supported the Nazı counterrevolution in Germany because the NSDAP promised *cheap labor* to German industry—from war prisoners and work camps.

(15/x)

the United States has its own "work camps"; according to the U.S. Constitution it's legal to enslave prisoners, hence American #capitalism has become highly reliant upon prison labor. capitalism *needs* full prisons as a result—jailing people is extremely profitable work.

(16/x)

it is not *possible* even for @EricRWeinstein defend #capitalism on rational grounds. all the central assumptions that drive capitalism are absurd. capitalists imagine infinite growth, which is physically impossible—matter and energy CANNOT support "infinite growth".

(17/x)

mountebanks like @EricRWeinstein have decoyed themselves into dreaming that infinitude is possible because one can represent infinitude in an abstract, symbolic fashion—#capitalism is something like Feynman's "dry water" in that regard. it only functions in abstraction.

(18/x)

because of its absurdity, #capitalism has forced Western intellectual culture to become absurd—only in this way has capitalism been able to hide from intellectual refutation. capitalism has worked overtime to keep discredited ideas and ideologies afloat in the West.

(19/x)

@EricRWeinstein is an example of this degeneracy: he's an imitation scientist (really he's just a money-grubber in thrall to @peterthiel's unhinged ambitions for humanity, like @elonmusk is) who exists to keep racism alive, especially Sinophobia, with specious arguments.

(20/x)

for #capitalism *requires* social stratification even to function, it's in the vested interest of capitalists to keep bigotry inflamed as much as possible: the enforced division between overclass and underclass *requires* some sort of social segregation, some _sorting_.

(21/x)

racist #computer geeks—@EricRWeinstein, @ID_AA_Carmack, @RokoMijic, @JeffDean, whoever you can name—*love* sorting things. computers are good at sorting and these fools all think physical reality works the same as their simulations. Western intellectual decay is _total_.

(22/x)

the damage is not irreversible but it *continues*. as long as #capitalism exists it's almost forced to continue undermining the intellectual apparatus of the West.

it's the only way it can preserve itself—by keeping us all as muddled as any @EricRWeinstein fan.

~Mona Drafter

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