The social jackpot
On luck, power and human dignity
The Social Jackpot
You can get rich by luck,
you can get rich by stealing it,
you can get rich by using the capitalist system as a tool to bring you riches…
then you are admired
and you have the social proof
that you have arrived.
Some, like the Rockefellers, were using and reusing the clothes of their children from one to another, not because they could not afford it materially — that would be an absurdity.
But mentally, they wanted first to inculcate in their children avarice:
money is better than comfort,
money is better than new clothes.
And frankly, they loved their children but did not care if they wore beggar clothes made by hand, sewn by Mrs. Rockefeller herself, if that meant having ten dollars more saved.
This avarice comes from their absolute need for social validation,
and this social validation comes through winning and hoarding money.
The bigger the purse, the better,
like a moneyholic who never ever has enough.
This example is at the basis of the capitalist system.
Nobody ever has enough money, the rich or the poor,
all looking for the same pursuit,
the same ladder to the same god
and the same goal.
This is the most democratic system of all:
you can steal the social proof,
or get lucky,
or work for it.
There are a thousand ways, and the most sophisticated ones, to get money —
the casino being the temple of money,
where the believers go to have adrenaline shots of luckiness,
just to get more addicted to it.
A society needs a goal to function,
and our society has found money to be the absolute goal.
From billionaires to the beggar,
the two poles on the scale of richness.
We need to see the Elons and Bezoses of this world to know the direction:
they are the carrot to the human society donkey,
while the whip is the image of the eternal beggar on the street —
the beggar who represents the worst of the worst,
the absolute fear of oblivion we fear so much:
getting poor,
homeless.
They are there not because we cannot house them for a fraction of the fortune of one big billionaire;
they are there as a social bottom of the pit
so all run in the same direction:
“Please Elon, open the door,
there is a beggar coming toward our house!”
We tried communism,
and most of it finished in depression and economic marasmus.
Yes, equality,
no money supremacy,
social achievements like education or healthcare
or a kind of social justice,
literacy,
sport,
and common goals —
we like all that.
But the major difference is that nobody can achieve those goals by being lucky in a casino of education where you win without effort.
All the social proof in the communist system was the result of hard work.
That’s why everybody was dreaming of shiny objects from the West:
they represented the freedom to get lucky,
the “chance” to win without effort,
and the easy way.
That’s why the communist system didn’t work.
It removed the oldest incentive for man to function:
money,
in order to replace it with a supposed true human order.
The communist system’s problem
was that it distributed everything equitably,
even social proof.
Individuals had no reason to do their job well,
to risk,
to invent,
to do the right things,
because they were paid anyway.
And because nobody was enticed to play the game of delivering the best,
a mass complacency prevailed.
Not only did you have no real risk for your work,
but your security of job, house, and food was kind of absolute.
You merely had to show yourself at the job.
But the money was fake.
No correlation between offer and demand broke the system by hiding inflationary tendencies.
The communists had paracetamol for the fever of the system,
and they never really realized that sometimes the system should have a 42°C fever to fight parasites.
If you always hide the symptoms,
you might end up collapsing on your legs,
like the communist system did,
saying “I’m fine”
while falling into a coma.
This vitiated capitalist system is more vigorous
because it exploits human fear and human greediness,
but at a horrible cost of imbalance,
unsafety,
and frankly self-harming tendencies.
We can explain war very easily in this system:
war is a fake problem used to grow the economy.
Capitalists attacked in 99% of cases.
They don’t want safety, progress, or well-being;
they want to perfect this system to the maximum.
This maximalist pursuit of money
deepens the rift between its poles,
where we are swirling down into more and more horrors of our capitalist civilization,
where humanity as a concept is ground down,
erased,
and transformed into a monstrous matter,
unrecognizable.
The unhinged capitalist system, without brakes,
pushes all humans into a real cataclysmic catastrophe,
at the measure of the injustice it promotes and aggrandizes.
We must change the paradigm into a different system:
a basically socialist system,
but with capitalistic-like social incentives.
Not money,
but some kind of incentive where you can be lucky without effort,
like a casino.
In this sense, ordinary workers are more like communists,
but they don’t play ball like capitalists.
They can never get rich only by getting lucky —
it’s not enough anymore.
They feel the rigorousness of the system
but without benefits.
It is a cynical enterprise
to go “happy” to work every day
and smile while you think of murder.
Hypocrisy is the most widely spread sentiment.
Workers should live in a socialist system with advantages, security, and safety,
but they may then not work enough because the fear of the bottom is gone.
There is not much incentive
for them to move and do their best
unless you keep some sort of easy social proof
to keep them moving toward a goal.
I say we don’t need to replace the addiction to money
with the addiction to another social-proof gimmick.
We need to create a society where people will not be addicted to anything,
but addicted to bettering themselves at what they truly are.
For that society,
basic needs should not be a problem.
No human should be born in this world
to run the 9-to-5 rat race
and call it a life.
Basic conditions should be fairly easily provided today
with technology and relatively modest efforts.
Every man should eat without fear
that tomorrow he might not have food;
should have decent shelter and safety,
education and medicine.
These basic needs should be universally provided
simply for the chance and dignity
of being born a man.
Other mechanisms should provide the psychological incentives
for people to turn their lives around.
The secret is in the Summerhill School,
a school for the worst of the worst problematic kids,
where nothing is mandatory,
yet with some kind of magic wand,
every kid becomes responsible and studious
after one to two months.
A free man from basic needs,
or rather, a man who no longer fears basic needs,
is the most capable man.
Togetherness,
excellence,
civic spirit,
love for nature and human values,
artistic enticement of the masses
are far better triggers for the free man
than the horrible shackles of enslavement to money.
I would say:
keep the system as it is,
but remove taxes
and instead trade them for community work
for the basic needs of everybody.
Each and every one of us,
through our trade activity and capacity,
instead of paying taxes,
contributes a part of our economic output
in order to assure the bare minimum for everybody.
Free food,
free basic shelter for whoever wants it,
free school,
free medical help
should be 100% provided by everybody.