Chapter 13: Capitalism and Human Relationships

The socio-economic paradigm pits individuals and groups against each other. With economic resources tightly controlled and scarcified by modern feudal lords and their corporations, there is strong reinforcement for mutually-predatory, adversarial behaviors for survival. Cooperative, symbiotic behavior is strongly reinforced against. This sets the stage for a society chronically riddled with dysfunctional, toxic relationships at every level, as you’ll see below.

In the workplace:

The pyramidal hierarchical power structure of enterprises ensures that there are the most jobs available at the bottom, lowest-paid bottom end of the pyramid and very few highly-paid positions at the top. Access to those few positions is almost always reserved for individuals who come from the ruling elite of the financial sector, not the ranks of peasant or serf employees. In between are a few positions that pay a living or just-over-living wage as compared to the barely or sub-living wage paid to the majority of employees.

Promotion opportunities are few and far between. Assuming the company will promote from within, only one among the many employees struggling on sub-living wages will get the promotion. The paradigm is set up on a win-lose-lose-lose-lose-lose model. For one to win, others must lose, usually multiple others.

While individual responses will vary widely, this setup strongly reinforces mutually-predatory and adversarial relationships and behaviors within the workforce. Behaviors that are reinforced will predominate, those that aren’t will tend towards extinction. You survive by getting the promotion or bonus, not by one’s workmate getting it. This sets the default tone for interpersonal relationships in the workplace. The cultural myths of such societies reinforce and amplify this toxic dynamic. The myth in question is that predatory, aggressive, adversarial, greedy, bullying, manipulative behavior is a natural part of human nature and that cooperative, symbiotic, synergistic, mutualistic, compassionate behavior is contrary to human nature. It’s a vicious cycle in which the reinforcers in the society give rise to a dysfunctional social dynamic, which is easily misrepresented or misinterpreted as “proof” that it reflects human nature. Add this to the adversarial relationship between employee and employer, and you have a destructive brew of alienation, desperation, jealousy, distrust and despair. Backstabbing and backbiting are commonplace.

Human nature is a rich palette including a wide range of possible motivations and behaviors. What is reinforced gets amplified and becomes the norm. What isn’t reinforced becomes the rare exception. Psychological studies have also reproducibly shown, in addition, that the mere fact of being in a position of power tends to suppress or shut down the brain centers for empathy and compassion. Hierarchical social systems are actually contrary to human nature in that they reinforce destructive behavior and suppress constructive behavior. A paradigm that reinforces constructive behavior and suppresses (by not reinforcing) destructive behavior will be superior in every way to what we see around us today. Individual and community will thrive, be empowered, be happier and more fully actualized than is possible under the current paradigm. “One man’s loss is another man’s gain” is not a law of nature. It’s an arbitrary concept that sets the stage for unprecedented human suffering to no good end. There is no upside.

In The Family

For all of us not in the ruling modern feudal elite, the gap between income and cost of living is a constant source of stress as we constantly struggle for survival. Within a family, this often puts a strain on the relationships among family members.

When each family member is doing their best to contribute to shared survival but the results still fall short, resentments often arise, with members blaming each other for not doing enough to bring in income or reduce spending. This strain is multiplied when one or more family members are unable to find work or brings added expenses such as student, medical or credit card debt.

Sometimes people develop coping mechanisms, such as “shopping therapy,” gambling addictions, drug or alcohol use or escape through video games, which increase the lack of currency for survival. Resentments and recriminations can become unresolvable. Yet we’re conditioned from birth to shop, to spend money to make ourselves feel better, creating a vicious cycle that keeps us stuck like quicksand. Mutual blame often rips families apart in the most painful ways. Those who cope by stoically enduring clash violently with those who cope by spending more money in one way or another. This kind of stress destroys countless families, harming all concerned.

When families are blown apart by such stresses, each family member must survive on their own. Expenses multiply as one household becomes at least two, each with its own rent or mortgage, car insurance, utility bills etc. If attorneys are involved, all parties may find themselves deep in debt in the process. The result is the disempowerment of all concerned. It’s true that the most harmonious, healthy socio-economic paradigm doesn’t guarantee successful, harmonious relationships; but such a setup does vastly reduce the stresses and the reinforcements of destructive behaviors. A boat that sinks under combat conditions might have decades of good service as the fishing boat it was designed to be if not put in combat. Such a boat should never be subjected to combat conditions!

While ultimately our happiness and the condition of our relationships is up to us, there’s no doubt that the socio-economic paradigm has a big impact, as the fertility and sufficiency of soil and water impact the quality of wine produced on a given farm. We dare not assume that one’s life condition is up to the individual alone and fail to change and correct toxic conditions in our control that we know cause incalculable harm with no benefit. That is a crime against humanity. The concept of adversity “building character” must never be used as a justification for perpetuating oppressive, toxic behaviors and norms that are within our power to change. We may not be able to stop ageing or change the laws of physics; but we can certainly choose to change the way we interact and treat one another.

Effects on friendship:

Friendships are affected very similarly to families under the dominant socio-economic paradigm. Financial issues strain countless friendships to the breaking point and beyond, often turning friends into enemies.

When a person has a financial crisis such as losing a job, home, or health coverage and/or becomes homeless, it’s natural to turn to friends and family for support. Yet since all but a very few people are barely or not quite surviving, our natural instinct as a social species to help each other is countermanded by the reinforcers of the socio-economic paradigm. You can’t help your friend if you barely have enough for yourself and your family. If your lifeboat is floating barely an inch above the waterline, how can you take on your friend? This dynamic again leads to resentments which often cannot be healed.

This is not to say that people never help out their friends in need; but such behavior is strongly selected and reinforced against. Very, very few are in a position to be able to help out a loved-one without having to worry about how doing so will affect their own survival. Perversely, those who do manage a rags-to-riches trajectory all too often try to distance themselves from the marginal existence of their past and are not inclined to help out those still struggling, even treating them like vectors of a deadly contagion. This is not because they are “bad” people. It is a behavior that is statistically inevitable in any society operating under the current dominant paradigm.

The worse and longer a person’s misfortune, the less likely they are to be able to find help. Once one has had an eviction or been jobless for more than a couple of months, their prospects of finding a job or place to live plummet in a vicious cycle that’s nearly impossible to reverse. It can take years of deliberate, consistent effort to arrive at a relatively stable situation. It can take less than one day for all that you’ve built and worked for to be utterly destroyed for many years to come. Disaster may come in the form of layoffs, a legal action, a predatory mortgage, a property being sold from under you, a car needing major repairs or any number of circumstances.

Regardless of what the law or Constitution may say, the default reality under the dominant socio-economic paradigm is that you have no rights whatsoever unless you pay for them constantly in perpetuity. Getting the money to pay for them is kept forever just out of reach for all but a very few. Under the dominant paradigm, we don’t even have the right to occupy space unless we pay for it every day of our lives. It is a paradigm based on denial-of-life. We are eternally kept hostage and must constantly ransom ourselves over and over and over.

The paradigm also spawns and reinforces manipulative and predatory behavior. It’s not unusual for people to manipulate each other for financial gain, to form relationships for financial advantage, and even to betray each other over finances. Not everybody will do so of course; but those behaviors are strongly reinforced. In such a paradigm, people sometimes observe that “nice guys finish last” or “everybody has their price.” It becomes increasingly difficult for people to trust each other.

In Society At Large:

As it does with individuals, the dominant modern feudalistic socio-economic paradigm creates conditions which cause societies to break down into groups and castes which are set up to conflict with one another, since whatever gains or benefits one group makes come at the expense of another group or groups. This guarantees that these groups will distrust, blame and even attack each other mentally, emotionally and practically. Group is pitted against group for artificially scarcified resources and opportunities. This pattern effectively neutralizes the potential for the kind of 3829515034 united, concerted awareness and action that are necessary to force the paradigm out of operation and replace it with one based on freely chosen mutual benefit and support.

Modern feudalism’s ultimate extreme is seen in the phenomenon of slavery. The U.S. southern states built an entire economy based on the fundamental principles of the paradigm: minimize expenses and maximize profits. The reduction of human beings property status, allowing a business to eliminate the expense of salary and benefits, with no constraints on how much they can demand of their slaves. There is nothing in the paradigm that works against this. It took a bloody war to end that atrocity. The fact that slavery was ended is proof that we humans have a deep compassionate instinct that is strong enough to override the dominant paradigm upon occasion. Yet forms of slavery still persist underground in the form of human trafficking for both labor and sexual exploitation. The paradigm makes this virtually inevitable.

In the World at Large:

Under the current paradigm, many corporations and wealthy individuals wield more power in every way than many countries, and are functionally immune to consequences, being accountable to nobody.

Given the focus on the “bottom line” imperative in the dominant paradigm, it was inevitable that companies in the U.S. and other developed nations would outsource to reduce their expenses, especially in technical and remote support roles, as well as subcontracting manufacturing to sweatshop facilities in developing countries. Why pay an American an appropriate wage when you can pay someone in India, the Philippines or China $40 per day for the same work? The number of well-paying jobs in the country plummet, leaving a growing percentage of people competing for sub, barely or barely over living wages. In the outsourcee country, the ripples of damage continue. Those employed in those jobs become well-off in their country but often must work long hours under sub-optimal conditions to keep their salary. The overall socio-economic conditions in the country don’t change much. Consider that the much-publicized Chinese Middle Class amounts to about forty million out of 1.2 billion, a little over three percent. A very small drop in a very large ocean.

Agricultural supplies companies advertise their genetically-modified seed stock to farmers as a way to get vast yield per acre. The seed stock is sabotaged so that if farmers keep some of their crop to plant next year, the plants are genetically programmed so that the seeds they produce are inferior or non-viable. Even when this is not the case, companies use “intellectual property” laws to sue farmers out of existence for keeping seed for a bumper crop. Farmers are forced to buy fresh seed every year for no reason other than that the companies can get away with it. There is nothing in the paradigm to contradict or discourage such behavior. When a developing nation challenges these policies, larger corporations have actually challenged the sovereignty of nations. Here we see again the feudal nature of the paradigm which is inherently incompatible with a free and democratic society.

The forced overproduction and overconsumption driving the paradigm drives the accelerating unchecked depletion of the world’s natural resources, the generation of an unmanageable amount of waste and pollution, and the destruction of our biosphere including the Amazon river basin, the Artic, forests around the world, and the oceans themselves as well as depleting and degrading soil, water and air. This process serves and perpetuates the accelerating accumulation of wealth, power and control in the hands of the modern feudal ruling elite. The operating principles of the paradigm guarantee this.

The behavior of the modern feudal lords and their corporations is reminiscent of the behavior of addicts of the Russian drug Krokodil (desomorphine) whose lives are wholly driven by compulsive production and use of the drug that rots the flesh from their bones. The modern feudal lords are no less addicts that these. Allowing the current paradigm to continue is no different from allowing a drunken or stoned pilot to fly an airplane.

Food quality suffers, since the paradigm reinforces getting the most produce out of an acre, getting it as big and good-looking as possible as quickly as possible. The food thus produced has less nutritional value and less taste by far. To get enough nutrition, we must buy more food which increases profits and reinforces the behavior.

Tourism is a big money-maker for the modern feudal lords and their corporations. In its current form, luxury tourist resorts destroy not only the natural environment in an entire region, but also the livelihoods of local people, their way of life, and their well-being. The cost of living skyrockets so people who’ve lived there for generations can’t afford to stay. A sharp socio-economic stratification occurs with the modern feudal lords at the top, the tourists below them, a very few locals under them acting as an exclusive aristocracy over their fellows, leaving the vast majority in functional slavery or unemployed.

Both man-made and natural sites of beauty and historical significance are overcrowded and progressively damaged or even destroyed by a phenomenon called overtourism. Because of the economic dynamics, money-bearing tourists are given priority over local residents for access to many things, which can even be off-limits to locals.

To reiterate, the problem is not specifically the players; it’s the game itself and its operating principles, what it reinforces and fails to reinforce, what it suppresses.

The Travesty of “Corporate Personhood”

The moment corporations were given status as “people” under the law, the rights and sovereignty of real human beings was permanently compromised.

The impact of this is far more severe in practice than most people imagine.

Corporations have small armies of top-notch attorneys on staff, whose sole job is to serve the corporation’s interests and agendas. The corporation incurs no added cost in legally litigating against an individual. A typical citizen is barely or not quite surviving on their pay and must try to find an attorney who is competent, trustworthy and affordable, which is kind of like looking for a unicorn. Most good lawyers charge more per hour than most people make in a week or two or even a month. As a result, one usually does not find representation anywhere near as good as the corporation’s. Since the outcome of court cases depends as much on the gamesmanship, skills and resources of the attorneys as it does on the facts of the case, the scales weigh heavily in favor of the corporation.

As a defendant in a criminal case, one has the right to a public defender, who is most likely underpaid and carrying a tremendous caseload. If you’re the defendant against a corporation, your disadvantage is clear. If you’re the plaintiff, you get no help whatsoever, nor do you in a civil suit. Corporate personhood puts you and me in a position similar to a single soldier armed with one assault rifle and one magazine, up against an armored division with unlimited resources. It is rare indeed that an individual human being actually prevails against a corporation or wealthy, powerful person in a court of law.

Going up against an individual of the modern feudal ruling class is not much different from going up against a corporation. In fact, often they are functionally one and the same. Yet “corporate personhood” actually shields bad actors within a corporation against liability and consequences. If a CEO or senior executive committed an offense, one ends up going up against the corporation, not the person within the corporation. The law looks at it more or less as the same idea as not being able to sue or charge a thief’s hand for theft. This legal fiction is a direct negation and mockery of the sovereign status and rights of every individual not in the ruling modern feudal elite.

When the current paradigm us decommissioned and replaced with a mutually-empowering symbiotic paradigm, corporations will cease to exist. “Corporate personhood” will be relegated to the same historical junkyard as “Divine Right of Kings,” flat earth theory, and the Greek gods.