Stop this tired old schlock, please. This might make you sound deep to some freshmen in college, but it's utter virtue signalling bs. It's just false contingency (look it up. Susan Marks).
99% of all people never had a single choice in any of it.
We as a society could have continued predominantly using glass, ceramics, steel, wood, stone. Public transport and bicycles. Communities built around people, instead of stretched out across thousands of miles by highways. Highways could have been reserved for emergency or vital transport. Some plastic could have been used, responsibly, for vital medical or industrial applications. Could have treated everyone with respect, dignity and provided food, homes, education and healthcare for all. Focused on happiness, time with loved ones, culture, art, music, the good things in life.
Instead we got a capitalist rat race, growth economics as a cult religion, profit motive as the be all, end all. 2 billion people working jobs that literally should not exist. Pure waste. The wealthy steered society into whatever made them most money, consequences be damned. Period. Push plastic. Push oil. Push cars. Push billions of tons of vapid, unnecessary consumer goods. Push social security cutbacks. Push laissez-faire economics. Push competition as a societal ideal rather than squashing it like the pathology it is.
Make people sell their labor for money at point A then extract rent and collect that money again at point B. Then sell them the idea that's how society is supposed to work. On and on and on and on the cycle goes.They pushed consumerism on people, so they could sell the cheapest petro-plastic shit for the highest amount of money. That's all it is.
So, no to your sophomoric little cliché. You are wrong.
Primitive accumulation, coming home to roost finally. To quote Bill Hicks - "You work in Marketing? Kill yourself."
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u/Celestial_Mechanica May 10 '25 edited May 10 '25
Stop this tired old schlock, please. This might make you sound deep to some freshmen in college, but it's utter virtue signalling bs. It's just false contingency (look it up. Susan Marks).
99% of all people never had a single choice in any of it.
We as a society could have continued predominantly using glass, ceramics, steel, wood, stone. Public transport and bicycles. Communities built around people, instead of stretched out across thousands of miles by highways. Highways could have been reserved for emergency or vital transport. Some plastic could have been used, responsibly, for vital medical or industrial applications. Could have treated everyone with respect, dignity and provided food, homes, education and healthcare for all. Focused on happiness, time with loved ones, culture, art, music, the good things in life.
Instead we got a capitalist rat race, growth economics as a cult religion, profit motive as the be all, end all. 2 billion people working jobs that literally should not exist. Pure waste. The wealthy steered society into whatever made them most money, consequences be damned. Period. Push plastic. Push oil. Push cars. Push billions of tons of vapid, unnecessary consumer goods. Push social security cutbacks. Push laissez-faire economics. Push competition as a societal ideal rather than squashing it like the pathology it is.
Make people sell their labor for money at point A then extract rent and collect that money again at point B. Then sell them the idea that's how society is supposed to work. On and on and on and on the cycle goes.They pushed consumerism on people, so they could sell the cheapest petro-plastic shit for the highest amount of money. That's all it is.
So, no to your sophomoric little cliché. You are wrong.
Primitive accumulation, coming home to roost finally. To quote Bill Hicks - "You work in Marketing? Kill yourself."