Endgame Competition — Heads We Win, Tails You Lose
This is part four of a six-part series in response to the lies propagandized by our capitalist society. Part one, The Capitalist Lie — Welcome to the Slaughterhouse and part two, Shop ’til You Drop — the Unsustainability of Capitalism have been followed by part three, The Myth of the Meritocracy and the Palace of Thieves that can be found here https://medium.com/coping-with-capitalism/the-myth-of-the-meritocracy-and-the-palace-of-thieves-16122577bf6d
The Advantages of Power
When examining capitalism as a social and cultural institution, one might hope that a meritocracy would encourage merit-worthy behavior and foster a cohesive and just society. With all these meritorious acts and attitudes, one might even hope a level of prosperity can be attained by the bulk of our citizens.
Yet, what we see in practice is anything but this. As we have concluded in the preceding critique, merit-worthy behavior is more the exception than the rule. Indeed, meritorious behavior only seems to appear despite the influences of our social order. Further, our capitalist society really demonstrates that we are encouraged to “game” the system without concern for how fair or just our behaviors might be. If we fail to act in self-interest, we are likely to be counted among society’s “losers” or even its “suckers” thanks to those playing along.
In his evaluation of ancient Greek political systems (political systems are how states institutionalize the creation, enforcement, and adjudication of laws), Aristotle concluded one system wasn’t necessarily any better than the next, but when those who rule make decisions for their own good and not the good of the state and its populace then politics, and ultimately the state itself, becomes corrupt.
As this is true with political systems, so it is true with economic systems (these being structures that determine how wealth is distributed). Thus, we have fully exposed the myth of the meritocracy, or this myth that those who have gained the power (which must follow wealth) show their deservedness of this power through the exercise of justice. No, today is worse than in Aristotle’s troublesome democracy, the rule of power gravitates unerringly towards the personalities at the center of this power supporting and expanding the original source of power.
Economics, like politics, must work for the common good, or else economics are not serving humanity, the community or any collective body, but only serve those who hold the power.
The Claims of Power
Conservation stands in direct opposition to capitalism’s reliance on the propelling energies of consumption. Along with this, the capitalist “meritocracy” is rooted in competition — a force directly opposed to cooperation. So, while a communal society might be built around conservation and cooperation, the capitalist society is rooted in the opposite forces of consumption and competition.
This competition is presented as natural, but it is only really a “natural” state in terms of power controlling the distribution of wealth. Nothing, in this respect, has really changed. The real argument, it seems, is this idea that the inequities of power somehow form a “natural state” to which we must all conform to and, at a minimum, ultimately succumb to.
To claim property as our own, we must take it and build boundaries. This is a competitive stance — it’s mine and it’s not yours. Just as the American economy was founded on the exploitation of native peoples and black slaves, the roots of capitalism are similarly based upon this sort of violent theft.
With all of this comes the rationalizations for exploitation and genocide. In ancient times the powerful wielded physical might along with supernatural power, and this became the rigid social hierarchy and divine rights of aristocratic rulers in the Middle Ages. With colonialism came manifest destiny, the Christian mission, and the civilizing influence of the sword that were folded into economic expansion to provide the continuities of elite power.
All along the way, the powerful have claimed that it is somehow their merit that justifies their exploitation and that this isn’t merely just, but also somehow “natural” and something we should all accept and acquiesce to.
Michel Foucault has pointed out to us that reality is simply a manifestation of power. When someone or some institution says something is the truth, is part of a “natural” order, or something we must accept, then post-modernity states we must question this “truth” and examine how power has actually manifested this reality.
With the claims of a meritocracy, we can see that this is a rationale for the exploitation of others so that one can better their own position. This is not some sort of altruism or moral behavior. In fact, as we examine these claims closely, it becomes obvious that this competitive meritocracy is an important tool the powerful use to strengthen and expand their own position of power.
The Exploitation of Power
Once we recognize this, the various means of power consolidation become clear. In recent history, we can see this in the neoliberal counter-revolution. Milton Friedman and the Chicago school promoted this “supply-side” approach to economics claiming that capitalism works best when it is unfettered by regulations, taxation, and spending on social programs.
This approach emphasized the importance of capital for suppliers or producers claiming the market made up of worker-consumers would benefit when the capital pump was primed at the top. This approach was known as trickle-down economics, but was little more than another highly successful method of enrichment for those at the top.
Supply-side economics brought with it a fairly successful dismantling of the welfare state and eventually “austerity” for the masses as wealth-fare spending, corporate monopolization, consolidation, and tax breaks continued virtually unchecked for those in positions of power.
The reality that capitalism works best with strong consumer/worker markets flush with capital and that this environment frees the flow of investment capital was literally ignored. Market strength is actually demonstrated through a strong “middle income” portion of the economy. The inequities of the system make it like a tight-rope walk, but supply-siders’ neoliberalism has bifurcated the economy throwing the whole act into a dangerous imbalance.
The vast majority of the wealth funneled to the upper classes benefits the already rich. The numbers of newly rich are relatively few while those squeezed out of the ranks of the middle class are legion in number.
The real consumers in the capitalist system are not suppliers, not the wealthy, not corporate leaders, not investors, not hoarders of wealth, but consumers who are very simply also the very workers producing products and providing services.
While corporations have used technology and automation to diminish the value of labor, they have expanded their consumer base with a global reach. Manipulation of the financial sector has been strategically incorporated to put off the bad news for a later date.
This is how competition has worked in the capitalist world. Competitors show up with advantages and disadvantages. Many of these differences ensure success or failure for all intents and purposes, so the game can be said to be “rigged from the start” in favor of the powerful. It becomes overly simple for those who have benefited from this competitive system to leverage their power or to “game” the system to their own advantages. This should not be a surprise to anyone.
The system may be “competitive”, but when individuals start from various points on the circuit, we can’t claim it’s in any way fair.
In dismantling the welfare state and funneling capital back to the top, the neoliberals create a system where 1% of the population (the billionaire class) use 20% of the population (the upper classes) to manipulate and truly exploit 80% of the population (the rest of us).
That’s how competition works. Those on top ensure they will remain on top, then they use their power to manipulate the system to further enrich themselves and solidify their power further.
This is no natural state, but a truly unnatural state that will inevitably teeter in upon itself. As long as the system is consumption-based with a “freely” competitive marketplace, then the endemic morbidity of the system doesn’t go away, it becomes a crawling disease.
The Power Stranglehold
That’s not all. Competition is highly inefficient. It divides resources to attain objectives. It takes three enterprises to accomplish what one could accomplish. Yet, inefficiency also feeds into this goal to hollow out our planet extracting every bit of wealth we can from it. Being inefficient simply serves to exacerbate consumption which means inefficiency is a money-maker for people as well.
Like with consumption, the evils of competition have come home to roost. We aren’t simply paralyzed by failed leadership, but by capitalism’s demand for international competition making us innately ill-prepared for collective action. This is something competitive capitalism will not help us accomplish even as collective action is a necessity for our own survival.
Some of us make money on other people’s disease and illness while others make money off horribly devastating bombs being dropped on children and other innocents. Some make money peddling drugs that get people hooked and sick and, finally, dead. Others make money through the alienating and suffocating labor inflicted upon their workers for the sake of their petty and self-serving enrichment.
All this for the sake of freedom, but who’s freedom? we should ask.
Competition becomes an important variation of the “divide and conquer” strategy the powerful use to keep us at one another’s throats. By striving against one another for the few scraps thrown to us, the wealthy can keep us looking at each other instead at the source of our woes. For certain, competition serves as another very important means of control and exploitation.
This exploitation is on full display with capitalism’s modern iteration. Labor and the requirements of labor are not even a tertiary consideration today. We work, often more than one full-time “gig”, only to come short of home ownership, mind-body prosperity, and any truly fulfilling enrichment in our lives other than the relations we can manage from such an unneighborly economics.
Competition doesn’t just fuel global conflict, but feeds internal conflict as well. Citizens end up funding these conflicts, expanded militaries, border security measures, surveillance, and black ops. Corporations and their leader/owners pocket the profits, advance their agendas and end up compromising the health of the very citizens the state is supposed to protect.
Why, one might ask, would the state wish to compromise the health of its citizens? For exactly the same reasons that corporations are willing to compromise the health of their customers or their workers or the community or even the health of the nation-state itself!
As with consumption, competition incentivizes behavior that is destructive to individuals, entire classes, “races”, gender identities, sexual orientations as well as any other identifiable lapel pin like simply being a “human being”. This is a feature of our competitive drive and in the end it even threatens the nation-state and, believe it or not, the very corrupted powerful plutocracy it is meant to protect and nurture. They are, after all, human too.
Power is quickly moving from nation-states to international enterprises. Watch where the money flows and you’ll see power will follow. One enterprise or nation pollutes the globe we all have inherited. Our competitive conflicts and paralysis only feed the fires of a global climate disaster.
Like with other global crises we face today, one must quickly realize these sorts of problems won’t be tackled through competitive efforts. There is no invasion from outer space. The problem looks at us in the mirror every morning and is manifested just outside our windows. We have no one to blame but ourselves.
That’s right. We built this world.
So, yes, we can change this world.
There is a caveat. We have to do it together.
In Part Five: The Tyranny of Capital and the Gilded Cage we will dive into how capitalism’s claims of fostering a free society are but another lie.
