Butler seems like a Capitalism Apologist to me. All the benefits touted are abstract and relegated to the Lucky (either in money or in-born capabilities) and all the harms are concrete and bolstered by *systemic* infrastructure built by Capitalism. It reminds me of the "Fabians": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabian_Society, forever arguing for tiny tweaks that can be easily overturned by the Bull in the China Shop (e.g. Trump).
More importantly, I smell some kind of internal contradiction amongst people who believe in meritocracy and, simultaneously, complain about the systemic decoupling/instability of more traditional systems (e.g. complaints about postmodernism, trans-sexuality, trans-gender, etc.). This video essay was interesting on that front: here's what's ACTUALLY wrong with postmodernism https://youtu.be/_4k26xGx1zI?si=5mS3DGHVBTTXf0bQ While I'm incompetent to assess whether he's right, there's a kernel in there somewhere I think I believe, and is bolstered by Butler's article: Decoupling (peri-biological, traditional, political, religious) relationships through things like fiat currency, markets, value propositions, etc. ... *merit* writ large, seems to directly lead to a decoupling of meaning from its concrete grounding. So Capitalism (advanced or not) is an abstracting force. And those who believe in abstractions like "merit" should, in order to be well-integrated psychologically, embrace postmodernism. Admit it y'all, you *like* it that words have no meaning anymore! >8^D On 6/5/25 9:12 PM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:
Wow, that's quite a dark view of the future with the capitalists running the show! I just want to repeat what I said before — nobody knows the future. And we also don’t know what will happen if we try different policies now. Maybe I am living in a bubble, and maybe I’m totally wrong — but I’m honestly glad that my view of the future is still bright. I’m not saying capitalism is perfect. Like most things, it has good and bad sides. I found an interesting study (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s42087-018-0034-6 <https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s42087-018-0034-6>) that shows this quite nicely: "The Impact of Advanced Capitalism on Well-being". It says that capitalism brought a lot of good things — freedom, health, comfort — but also brought problems like stress, insecurity, and inequality. On Fri, 6 Jun 2025 at 00:12, Jochen Fromm <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: What Naomi Klein says. 100%. "Klein" means small in German but Naomi thinks big: "The reason that we’re in a deranged circle of hell here, is that we’re very deep in the project. There’s not much to sell off; there’s not much left to privatize; there’s not much left to deregulate. And the effects of all of their earlier successes mean that we are in a very volatile state. Whether it’s our Earth systems in the face of climate change, or how financialized and shock-prone our economy is. [...] But now, capitalism has entered a radical and apocalyptic phase. There is no utopian vision in any of this. Instead, there’s a final battle. And this is where it gets really dark. The people who are advancing this agenda are also building their luxury bunkers and their spaceships to Mars. They don’t believe that there is a future. These people believe history is ending, literally. It’s end times! Get onto your rocket ship, or get into your golden city in the sky. And that is distinct." https://archive.ph/2025.05.04-140732/https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/naomi-klein-trump-musk-thiel-oligarchs-climate-science-1235330780/ <https://archive.ph/2025.05.04-140732/https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/naomi-klein-trump-musk-thiel-oligarchs-climate-science-1235330780/>
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