Deadbeat: Return of the Iron Fist - Closing the open hand of capitalism

As I wander through through the Basque country the Sunday papers from Donostia are full of it. Deadbeat of course has my inspiring snaps.

Capitalism will crush humanity, it's inevitable. It's a tidal pattern. The latest alarm bells are being run by AI but ah'll tell you it's never been a secret.

Since the days of Adam Smith exploitation is at the core of capitalism. Exploring what is free. Slave resources. That includes enslaved peoples a concept know to humans for 1000's of years and perpetuated despite protests of emancipation.

My Dad was brought up with a little helper from Ireland who was provided with free room and board in exchange for helping run the guest house. Is it indentured slavery. Human migration out of poverty to a new level of poverty persists today and yet somehow it's always the poor who are the problem. My Dad and his brother could afford to go to university on the back of this business model. His mum was widowed early and she used the tools of the day to transition into a fat cat out of their own relative poverty.

Nowadays we have a term modern slavery so that politicians can say they acknowledge it, corporations can have policies while the prejudiced police have few powers or desire to prevent it.

Have we lost our humanity or did we never have it.

My reading of the papers here suggests there are still voices questioning it.

I've written about how we are trying to hit the 100th anniversary of the wall Street crash with something even more extreme.

As well as humans exploitative capitalism has taken its toll on our "mother" earth's resources. Taking the piss out of mum, there's a concept to consider.

We also exploit our societies. We make laws that make it easier for the money to be made by the richest and for those who can't join in it's just tough. It's a card game open to all if you have £1m buy in.

Meantime we are sold out products and sold out lifestyles. I sound like Cassandra wailing and moaning about marketing muddying the economic mind but it's simple. Built in obsolescence sells new products and keeps you poor.

It used to be that electronic goods got cheaper then along came the phone. I call it the phone tax. For some it's 8% of income.

Our total dependence on the phone is small potatoes when it comes to the disaster recovery of the world order collapsing.

Food fuel weather water sewage. The first world slides past the third world. We've lost the tools to be humane.

This does not end well.

2030 really will be a shit show and planning for it now is pointless to a degree.

The speed at which it unravels will be interesting. It will also be very scary.

Disenfranchised individuals will become disadvantaged groups, cities, countries. The 0.1% will still expect the 90% to jump while the 9.9% sit on the fence and wonder how long it will hold them.

On one level you have the insane pressure in the markets to rise.

Everything else is rising too.

Student debt, society debt, council debt, nation debt rising.

Poverty rising

Prices rising

Wages, ah like food production falling..

I used to try and explain to my old man how these tools for economics are fine if we believe they are for the improvement of all our lots. Even Adam Smith understood the limited nature and how easily corrupted they could be

He was a child of the wall Street crash. A man who only saw growing aspiration, opportunity and a society that by 1979 felt so enabled they voted for Thatcher and Reagan. It didn't take long to undo all that good work in the post war period.

He couldn't see how Margaret cut away that which his generation had built.

I could see it in 1980 yet like many of his generation they could only see it as a temporary thing. He grew up in an era that saw Profumo resign over something related to integrity and people would see through it. They didn't, the corruption continued. In the UK Tony Blair was elected leader of the labour party and changed it's name to the Tory Blair party. He might have thought he was moving with the times. I like many thought he was jumping on the Tory bandwagon and fuck the lot of you. There's an expression WIGIT, when it's gone it gone. WELL DONE IT GONE. A gangster was elected President of the USA and 3 years and a similar number of Billions in and he's still not being removed.