Week Fourteen: Capitalism Is Killing Us

Roundup

Protests were held on May Day across the world.

Republicans voted to allow the deportation of us citizens

Trump had an interview in which he said he could return Abrego Garcia but won’t (in defiance of court orders).

Dems are drafting articles of impeachment against Trump and Clarence Thomas.

Trump signed executive orders defunding Harvard university PBS & NPR.

Mike Walz is out as Secretary of Defense.

A drone spotted Venezuelan immigrants held at a Texas detention center spelling out SOS. In related news, AG Pam Bondi said she will prosecute mayors and governors who don’t comply with ICE & BCP.

Friday, The DOJ announced they had reached a settlement in the wrongful death lawsuit brought by the family of January 6th insurrectionist Ashli Babbitt. Capitol police shot Babbitt after she ignored multiple warnings to stop and tried to breach the Speaker’s Lobby.

The Trump regime will stop enforcing The Voting Rights Act of 1965 and anti-segregation laws.

During his speech announcing the closing of the Education Department and how state would receive education funding, Stephen Miller said children must be taught to love America and taught to be patriots. That they must be taught civics and not extreme leftist ideologies if schools want federal funding. Miller’s speech was what you’d expect to hear in Russia not America.

Also, the FDA has cut hundreds of jobs raising questions about the safety of the US food supply and our medicines. RFK , JR. has changed policies regarding vaccines so all vaccines must go through double blind studies, which will result in delays of annual flu and COVID shots and stunt development of new vaccines. And the trump regime has closed the CDC’s infectious disease advisory committee as experts warning Bird Flu is on the verge of becoming a pandemic.

Tesla has begun the process to remove Elon Musk as CEO after their stock tanked because of his and his DOGE employees’ actions.

But the big story this week is the us economy contracted by 0.3%, the first decrease in the GDP in 3 years. Trump blamed this on Biden but expects say this decrease in GDP is due to his tariffs and the economic uncertainties they’ve created.

In any case, people’s anger toward elected officials and corporations is mounting. One example of this is the growing backlash against Nintendo and other companies raising the prices of their games and consoles.

This leads me to this week’s theme.

Capitalism Is Killing Us

I’ve been a gamer since I was a preschooler playing on my neighbor’s Commodore 64, and I survived multiple console wars from the ‘90s till today.But as with everything in our hellscape timeline, video games have been enshittified to the point they aren’t worth it anymore.

Following Nintendo’s announcement they’re increasing the base price of their games to $80, Xbox followed suit, with Playstation reported to increase their prices shortly.

Add to that the games being produced are neither enjoyable nor worth their current prices.They’re either remasters/re-releases or the same game released with minor changes, and/or they’re full of micro transactions. Assets and features that were once standard issue on launch day are now locked behind paywalls. Increasingly, video games are becoming pay to win with loot boxes and exclusive items only available via in game purchases. Add to this advertisements are creeping into our games, so no space is safe from them.

And the cherry atop the shit sundae is the phasing out of physical games so we will own nothing. We’re expected to be okay with corporations being able to remove or edit media at will without warning or refund.

We’re expected to pay multiple times for the privilege of leasing the same game, so the shareholders can buy another yacht, another vacation home. And we are to be happy about it.

But this is about more than video games.

A Brave New World

Unfettered capitalism has reduced every sector of our lives to money. Our politicians whore themselves out to the highest bidder and pass laws enriching themselves and their donors as they restrict the freedom of their constituents. Then they refuse to hold town halls and be held accountable for their actions.

They engage in legal insider trading and make millions as the average person struggles to buy groceries. Incompetence and cronyism are rewarded while playing by the rules is punished. The rich and powerful openly flout the law, like the current administration.

It’s all about money.

Everything now must be monetized and maximized for profit. Nothing is a hobby anymore. Everything’s a side hustle because we’re all trying to make enough just to pay the bills.

And thanks to the virulent brew of inflation, enshittification, and corporate greed, we’re told we must accept higher and higher prices for inferior products in smaller quantities. All this as companies make money off us and our data, yet we don’t see a cent.

Our world has become one in which things are valued not for what they can do or their impact on people, but by how much you can get away with selling them for.

And in this brave new world Capitalism has built, is it any wonder the arts and humanities are devalued because their worth isn’t as easily quantifiable as that of STEM or other fields.

I was a physics major and now write professionally, so I’m uniquely qualified to comment on this issue.

Creatives can spend years on a project, but its value is independent of its commercial success or failure. Empathy, tolerance, the joy of seeing yourself on the page for the first time, the arts and humanities teach these and more, and they are priceless for it.

But in this brave new world brought to us by corporations, creative efforts will be reduced to whatever slop reaches the largest audience possible.

We need no further proof than the current state of our media.

The books that sell are the same generic ones pushed on Tik Tok, written by the same handful of writers. Likewise, movie studios continue releasing remakes, reboots, or sequels, while new IP’s are ignored. And the majority of the songs on the top 40 charts sound the same.

Everything is fast becoming a homogeneous blob of blandness that attempts to appeal to everyone while appealing to no one.

Bringing things back to video games, the big game studios have stopped innovating or pushing the envelope with content. Case in point, Mario Kart World for the Switch 2, priced at $80, is only now bringing chat and an open world to the Mario Kart franchise. Meanwhile, these features have been standard in other racing games for years, yet Nintendo thinksit should rewarded for playing catch up.

A Line in the Sand

No.

If we don’t stand up to these corporations and unfettered capitalism, then soon we’ll live in a world where the very air we breathe will be packaged and sold to us for a premium and told to like it, like Nestle has done with water from our Great Lakes and elsewhere.

And if we refuse their rule or can’t pay, we will be incarcerated and used as slave labor to further enrich our corporate lords.

From the cradle to the grave, our existence will be commodified. Corporation will sponsor us so we can afford basic essentials, and under this new feudalism, we serfs must swear fealty to our corporate lords. They will dictate everything we do or say. How we dress, our interests, who we date will be controlled by them to deliver the greatest return on their investment. And once we die, our likenesses will continue being used to promote products while paying nothing to our families.

To wit I say, “Fuck that!”

Every facet of our lives shouldn’t be a lopsided round of Monopoly. The game has been rigged against us and it’s past time we flipped the table.