I don’t believe in grand conspiracies, but I do think that the various people in power employ similar tactics to maintain their power, and the collective effect of these tactics over millions of people can easily create an unofficial alliance of opinion.
For example, it is rare for society to endorse a high savings rate. Even popular figures like Dave Ramsey only recommend you save 10%, and the further you go beyond that, the more people assume something is wrong with you. And this works great for enforcing economic churn, which keeps money circulating throughout the economy. It keeps you dependent on a job, and it keeps money flowing into the coffers of those in power (who are usually those with the most capital).
However, many of the things in our lives are not actually useful or meaningful, and many of our expenses are simply side-effects of greater problems.
I’d say that the expense of widespread car ownership works in favor of the rich. At its most simplistic explanation, car ownership increases the coffers of large car companies, but more importantly, the high cost of owning a car forces you into perpetual employment, which causes you to work harder, gain more skills, etc, all of which helps capitalists get more rich. Restricting free movement by NOT providing adequate public transportation forces most people into a sort of perpetual servitude to their employment, since they need a large portion of their earnings to pay for their vehicles. Again, I don’t think this is some grand conspiracy, but I could potentially see special interests trying to reinforce the generally bad perception people have of public transportation, and the dislike taxpayers have toward funding public transportation.
The extreme resistance to raising the minimum wage also works in favor of the rich. Now, the cost of living is a huge subject, and I don’t think I even understand it fully, but I think it’s important to note that because minimum wage is not designed to be a living wage, this dramatically increases the demand for higher-paying jobs. In order to get higher-paying jobs, individuals must pour time and effort into gaining skills, but because these skills do not guarantee them higher-paying jobs [a subject I might be writing about soon!], this gives employers a pool of qualified candidates who are desperate to earn a living wage. Being skilled economically helps you earn a living wage, but more importantly, it ensures that capitalists have a source of skills from which to exploit profits. A public that does not possess employable skills can’t earn these profits for those who own capital. In fact, often the very skills that one needs in life are regarded poorly simply because they can’t be used to enrich another person, but we phrase this pejoratively (“jack of all trades, master of none”). Farmers are some of the most highly skilled and self-sufficient people you will ever meet, but their skills aren’t often super specialized, and so don’t often have value in the labor market, and somehow that has come to be looked down upon. Skills that make you independent are also often looked down upon, and there is no shortage of “business” books telling you you’re a fool if you aren’t outsourcing labor based on economic calculations. Did the New World Order personally commission those books? Lol.
Now, you’re going to have to bear with me a bit because this is a bold way to phrase things. To what extent that “unofficial alliance of opinion” is highly coordinated among the powerful, I don’t know – this is all speculation. But it’s a different angle that’s very interesting to explore.
I think what I’m ultimately getting at is that there are very special interests that want to make sure you are buying into their system. Because public transportation is “dirty” and nobody wants to fund it, the only realistic transportation option (in the United States) is vehicle ownership, so now you have to carry that expense. Culturally, large houses are admired, so people clamber over those and sometimes spend millions of dollars over 30 years for the privilege of “owning” one (usually it owns you). Nobody can easily live on a basic job, so people invest in skills that can be exploited by others. Older cars are “unsafe” and must be maintained, so buying new is presented as the winning option, and small cars are equally “unsafe” so you must buy a larger and more expensive car, because don’t you care about your children?
If you look around you, almost everything is structural demand. No wonder so many people are swimming in place!
Of course, with this all being speculative, I think it is important to face the truth, though, that if you want to earn money you have to make yourself useful to other people. There’s really no getting around that. Think about that, though. How different is that from making yourself exploitable? I’m not saying that’s what it is, but maybe there’s a spectrum along which, at a certain point, being useful turns into being exploited. I don’t know. And unless you have a large family and are perpetually busy, there’s really no reason you can’t invest in skills that help you earn money. But isn’t it interesting that the minimum wage is so low? It’s almost like…if the minimum wage was a living wage, a lot of people would opt out of the corporate bullshit, and a lot of other people don’t want that to happen. But why? What’s wrong with it? It’s interesting to think of it from the perspective of capital: fewer people could profit from others’ labor if it were easier to ‘opt out’.
In fact…why do we ask children what they “want to do” in life when they are so young? Somehow, over time, this seemed the appropriate thing to ask. We might as well just ask them, “How do you want to be exploited when you grow up?”
Okay, I’m joking, but only kind of. See, though? More structural demand. Does it truly benefit the individual to “be” anything? To associate one’s job title with one’s identity? When did that come to dominate the popular imagination? It used to be that you farmed, and most communities were farming communities. I’m glad we have more options, but at what point did that change, such that we began to see what we did as a personal identity? I’m rather curious. It works in somebody’s favor, but is that necessarily ours?
That’s enough for today, I’d better get back to studying 😉