Pablo

EXACTLY WHY EVERYTHING SUCKS, COSTS MORE, AND STEALS YOUR ATTENTION (INSANELY IMPORTANT TO UNDERSTAND THESE CONCEPTS I BROKE THIS DOWN AND ACTUALLY USED EFFORT IN THIS POST WHICH I HAVE NOT DONE IN MONTHS) Capitalism doesn’t make any of this happen so lets get that room temp IQ conclusion out of your mind forever What people are actually describing is fiat currency and the downstream effects of inflation There are a lot of second and third order consequences that come from that One of the biggest is a shift in time preference Capitalism itself does not have rules or guaranteed outcomes It is not deterministic It is just a label for a free market At its core it means choice We do not even live under real capitalism So blaming capitalism for anything happening today already falls apart In a truly free market some of these behaviors would still exist Because they come from biology and human nature But they would not be anywhere near this exaggerated Materialism would not dominate the hierarchy to this degree Status games exist in every species They always form hierarchies around something What changed is what signals status Consumerism did not naturally emerge on its own It was pushed Companies are not the root cause of that They respond to incentives The real driver is government and the single metric it worships GDP GDP must go up Our two party system and short term political cycles make this worse If GDP goes down during an administration’s term they lose power The public has been trained to believe GDP going down means the economy collapsed because of whoever was in charge What people do not understand is that around 70 percent of GDP is consumption Not quality of life Not ownership Not well being Future debt obligations are not accounted for at all That matters when almost everything is done on leverage Buying something with a loan still pushes GDP higher Even though the person does not own it If most consumption and investment is debt based then GDP is no longer measuring prosperity It is measuring throughput More spending equals better optics even if people are poorer and more stressed Low cost organic fun does not help GDP Dive bars House parties Surfing Live music without a paywall Highly monetized status environments do Bottle service Guest lists Promoter hierarchies Pay to participate social scenes So that is what survives This did not happen because of capitalism It happened because incentives were warped GDP went up Culture got worse And people blamed the wrong thing GDP only measures activity It only cares that money changed hands Because governments are judged on GDP They design policy to maximize transactions Anything that increases the number of times money moves is rewarded Disposable consumption is perfect for GDP If something breaks quickly it must be replaced That is another transaction GDP goes up If something is rented instead of owned That is a recurring transaction GDP goes up every month If an experience is gated behind constant spending That is better than a one time purchase So markets slowly shift toward Subscriptions Fees Access instead of ownership Planned obsolescence Not because companies are evil But because those models are favored by policy and finance Credit accelerates this Easy credit lets people spend money they do not have yet That pulls future consumption into the present GDP records the spending now The debt shows up later From the GDP perspective this looks like growth From the individual perspective it is compression Time preference shifts lower People spend sooner Save less Replace instead of maintain Advertising fills the gap If demand is pulled forward with credit It has to be constantly recreated So marketing shifts from informing to stimulating From usefulness to identity From need to status Consumption becomes part of the social hierarchy Experiences that used to be social and informal Become branded Curated Monetized (1)