Duty Now For The Future, 2023 edition (Part III)

“Molasses to rum to slaves” the old saying went, describing the triangle trade from Boston to the Bahamas to Africa.  A raw product sold to a manufacturer who makes a valued consumer product who then trades it for cheap labor to make the raw product.

(Oh, yeah, I’m sugar coating and white washing a lot of horrendous behavior by calling it cheap labor, thus the irony of using “sugar coating and white washing” as my choice of terms.)

Modern capitalism needs cheap labor to make cheap goods it sells at as high a price as the market will bear.

The workers making those goods do not see the wealth their labor puts in the pockets and cryptocurrency wallets of the 1% who own almost everything.

In a very real sense, they are robbed of their labor.

Further, relentless advertising campaigns and social influencers pressure and seduce them to spend what little they do make off their labor to purchase the very items they manufacture!

Furthermore, if labor cannot afford the consumer goods being forced upon them -- or if they live in company towns where they’re compelled to purchase the very equipment they labor with from the company they labor for -- they’re encouraged to the point of being extorted to go into debt to afford those goods (or worse, go into debt to provide for health care provided at horrendously marked up prices to line stockholder pockets, and often for medical conditions caused or acerbated by their employment or the substandard goods they consume).

Furthermore still, the capitalist system requires the constant expenditure of workers’ income on new products and services in order to maintain the system with the 1% remaining on top.

If a significant number of workers decide to stop spending money for even a short period, it sways the flagpole the 1% sits atop to the point they fear they’ll be flung off (hats off to Uncle Harlie for that metaphor).

The system must make non-durable goods in order to keep operating, it must require consumers to acquire more useless stuff.

And as markets reach their limits, the owners see to cut costs by reducing the number of employees, often by using automation and online facilities to get said goods and services to consumers even cheaper and faster.

We’re seeing the spectacle now of shopping centers, cut down by Amazon and the like, becoming storage centers where consumers can rent space to store the stuff they bought in the malls in the first place.

AI will continue to replace humans, making the goods and services even cheaper.

Question:  Once the last human employee is fired, how will the unemployed afford the purchases needed to keep the consumer economy viable?

I see two interesting trends occurring in contemporary consumer culture, perhaps contradictory, perhaps complimentary, only time can tell.

The first is by owners to deprive consumers of anything they might physically possess.

We see this in the form of streaming services rather than Blu-rays.  Make the consumer pay for renewable licenses rather than something physical they might own.

An ancillary to this are services like YouTube and Tubi that offer “free” streaming paid for by advertisers.

Congratulations, you just reinvented television circa 1948.

YouTube and a few other services are notable for their overlap with the second trend cited below. 

It’s possible for digital creators to circumvent traditional distribution methods or selling directly to customers; rather, they can generate the capital they need to do their projects by streaming their media on services supported by advertising, getting a slice of the advertising pie based on the number of views.

(We’ll sidestep any discussion of quality vs sensationalism at this juncture; the fact it’s even possible is remarkable enough.)

The second trend is a growing rise in the do-it-yourself spirit, everything from backyard gardening to homemade clothes to garage workshop projects to iPhone movies.

For many this is simply scratching a personal itch, but even then the end results may be sold for additional income. 

It can turn into a full-fledged business (many home knitters are backlogged with commissions), it can turn into a hobby that pays for itself by video promotion in the form of how-to videos that generate advertising revenue.

It’s still dropping the bulk of the revenue into the e-wallets of the undeserving 1%, but it’s better than jumping through hoops for a pittance with no chance of self-expression.

© Buzz Dixon