The Demographic Aging Of Capitalism.
History as we know it is comprised of short, medium and long term cycles and periodic moods and models. Since I am making a very obvious reference to menstruation, it wouldn’t be ludicrous to say the times when history is pregnant with possibility are few and far between. I write that as a man who has lived with three menstruatators and a female dog who was sterilized at a very young age. For a while there, I was the only person peeing standing up. Now I sit down when I pee and that’s its own sort of dividend. What? Ah please, things were getting too serious on this blog. The blog was becoming something other than an entertainment site. That’s why people come here, it’s not for the “Free Palestine” or the “China Surplus” or the close to a million dead soldiers in the USSR. I had messages from some US troops after that, a mixture of morbid humor - that’s how you know military is reading this stuff - and a sort of… ah we get it, why Americans didn’t care about the dead American soldiers in other wars. I mean think about it, a million soldiers ! are dead.. not injured, just dead and Americans have barely paid attention to the war (Russian newspapers are still told to call it a conflict not a war). At some point, if this continues, the war will be upgraded to a conflict .
Be honest, what’s the most tragic thing in anything I wrote about so far in this essay? It’s the sterilized puppy is it not? That’s how Dunbar number works. When given a range of tragedies to choose from, we pick the one we like the most. It is a strange coincidence of history that Donbas sounds like Dunbar and Donald both and also the Arabic word “Bas!” meaning “Enough!” Not to worry though, American’s haven’t had enough of the peculiar brand of comedy America’s Donald brings to the White House. Still Donald has an “al” within the words like AIberta (whose attempt at withdraw from the union with Canada failed) and AIbertsons the supermarket chain who went to court, also yesterday to protest it’s failed merger with Kroger. Google in simple cipher is 7007le, not sure if it has a license to be serious.
Do the readers feel if Capitalism as a trend, a fashion, an economic theory, a way of life, a way to not have to work or a way to “must work” has …. run its course? Or do you think it has a second wind left? As an example, the ex-CEO of Google, a guy named Eric Schmidt invested in Anthropic in the early days. Eric was already a billionaire then many times over because of Google stock. Eric owns about 1% of Anthropic because of those early days and it cost him a few million dollars (I’d guess 40 million or so). When Anthropic goes public in a little over a month, that 1% will be worth around 20 billion or more, presuming of course that he hasn’t sold any of his 1% holdings. That is why I was very encouraged by Musk’s gesture of donating 1 share of SpaceX to every child in America (somehow there are 70 million children in a population of 350 million). 1 share of SpaceX is worth a couple of hundred now in a few years it ought to be worth at least a few thousand more presumably is the thought behind the gesture. The children of America will get a couple of months of free rent (hopefully) on Uncle Musk. I mean that’s Capitalism at its best. At its worst, it allows for Trump to say Shylock a few times and be called “anti-semitic”. Meanwhile Trevor Noah writes a comedy routine on terrorists in South Africa and everyone presumes they’re Muslim and laughs.
If I didn’t know better, I’d say Trevor reads the stuff we write: there is mention of terrorism, children, essay writing and more. He also speaks fluent Zulu apparently. Bloomberg writers are worried if India will be able to figure out a retirement system by the time it’s youthful population gets old. About twenty years ago or so, that country’s politicians called its demographic youthful and asked the capitalists of the world to take advantage of the “demographic dividend.” Now the worry is, the dividend didn’t pay and the demographic will eventually get old. To provide a capitalist example: the largest telecom platform operator in India, provides services to 500M people (more than the population of America). It is going public at an “unprecedented” value of 100+ billion and will raise 3B in the IPO. Anthropic meanwhile… will go public at a 2 Tn valuation. Even by capitalistic standards that’s sad.
Presuming the world continues with its infatuation of scarcity cycles and capitalist narratives and China surpluses at some point there will be either mass starvation or a living wage for everyone. AI will take everyone’s jobs, the rich will be richer yet, students will give up protesting in France and India, the people of Palestine will have moved to greener pastures, the remaining men in Russia and Ukraine will have their pick of women, Sudan will only speak Arabic and people will obey the Chinese. I am simply extrapolating the trends as they exist now. Other trends may emerge and they too will be equally ridiculous. More wars, more famine, more scarcity, more daily grind and the middle class will become the poor class and the poor class will lose weight again. That was a fun trick though: call the flour enriched flour. Stripped of nutrients it’s causes poor people to bloat up like fat cats. That too is a cycle: in the early days the rich were known to be so because of their being “fat” and “Rubenesque” while the poor were frail and malnourished like waifs. Now the rich are known by their being in peak physical shape - slim, svelte and sexy - while the poor are seen as Gary Oldman in Slow Horses.
As I said, we’re an entertainment site. Everything we publish here should not be taken seriously. I continue to belong personally and in my mind to the genuine Left that has never existed in the world - on the side of workers. It’s the safest side there is, no one takes me seriously and everything I would like to happen is considered fantastical and absurd. Meanwhile, the pendulum, according to newspapers will swing back to the left - the progressives, the liberals, the neo-cons, the social democrats in this election cycle. I will not vote since my votes are unlikely to be lodged in protest. What has been lodged has already been elected. The vote then, by the people, is simply a ritual, a rite of normalcy. Sort of like France allowed a few protests to celebrate Macron leaving politics and is now cracking down. The people need to express themselves every now and again as Jefferson once wrote. Having done so, they will go back to being good little boys and girls and get back to work. And someday we shall all die.
