The Poor Creatures

I just steal these pictures, really.

     Before I start this post, I would love to start with a small disclaimer and say that this -like all of my other posts- is completely opinionated, and I am completely biased based on my vegetarianism and love for animals. 

     Capitalism has affected many parts of human life, right down to the food we eat and buy. Most people when asked where their food comes from say, "A farm, duh!" However, Where is this giant "farm" everyone seems to know about? How big is it? All of these questions should also be running through your head as you think about our food and our relationship as human beings to other animals. However, I think a very important question you should be asking is, "Why don't I know more about this?"
     Because capitalism is based purely on money, capitalists only do things that are motivated by obtaining money. While this has the potential to be beneficial, it's mostly detrimental because it means that companies can and will do anything to get their money no matter what it does to other living things. Chickens are placed on conveyor belts ad put through the system with no caring, gentile hands. Pigs are crowded together in overstuffed pens and swept into a gas chamber to die. Cows are made to stand in their own manure for hours at a time, which also helps cause the spread of disease. Even though we think our food comes from all different places, Monsanto, who engineered their own kind of seeds that were a lot more healthy and stable. We use corn to feed all of our animals, so Monsanto basically owns the food market with big business. (Food Inc.) I think I could bare making all of the moral compromises except one where an animals's life is in danger. That's too much for me.

Wealth Gap

GOOGLE! 

     Let's take a second to discuss the terrible wealth gap between the rich and the poor in American (Yes, American) capitalism. This is a topic which never ceases to dishearten me. By dishearten, I mean that this upsets me so much that I start to lose the sliver hope that I have for my generation entirely. 

     If you weren't aware, the U.S. has been dealing with a terrible wealth gap between the upper 1% of the American population and the lower 99% of the American population. "The richest 1% of Americans control a third of the country's total wealth." (http://money.howstuffworks.com/one-percent-control-third-of-wealth.htm) How is this allowed? Why does this happen? This happens because in capitalism, the rich are made to keep getting richer, while the poor continue to get poorer and poorer. Because the government is not really allowed (although there are exceptions) to intervene in big business, it continues to grow and grow. It has been left unchecked for so long that now the upper 1% control a third of the country's wealth. Wow. Crazy, isn't it? What does this mean for my generation and the generations to come?
     To me, this says that no matter how hard I work in my life, I can never become wealthy. My generation will work and work and never get the compensation that we deserve for our honest labor. This also means that the more that people start to realize this, the higher things such as crime rates will become. That is not a good thing.
      In the GIF above, Donald is wealthy and Daisy begs him on her knees to pay attention to him. When Donald throws a coin down at her and pays her no attention, Daisy begins to cry. Who knows what happens after Daisy stops feeling sorry for herself and decides to get back at Donald? I do.

REVOLUTION.

Who's A Capitalist?

Google, man.

     This post is especially for those people (like me) who really don't like the fact that they live in a society based on capitalism. I find myself thinking from time to time that I'm not a capitalist and I have to pause and reflect on my thoughts. As Eugene says, the working class are all capitalists. Every person working for money in a capitalistic system is a supporter of capitalism, "and this is always and everywhere the capitalist class." This leaves us with the question: If by participating in capitalism we are all capitalists, then what do we do? How do we stop being capitalists? I've spent so much of my time thinking about this question and realizing that the only way to get out of this viscous cycle is to REALLY get out of it. And by that, I really mean "getting out of it". Become a gypsy, live in a remote part of a forest, get a farm going someplace. I don't know. Getting out is hard because our society makes it hard. To be an individual, you have to be willing to go all the way.

Sheltered

                                               Google is pretty great for these pictures.
   
     I would like to briefly discuss how sheltered the common person in our society is from all of the things going on in different parts of that world and even in our own society. It's almost as if we -the people- are purposefully kept in the dark (which is the truth in many cases) in order to prevent the expansion of our minds. They don't want us to be well-informed; they want us to be ignorant.

One of the top stories on my local news station, channel 7, is about an athlete who now plays music.
http://www.wsvn.com/story/24686615/newest-hurricane-player-excels-in-music

I don't know about you, but while this could be interesting, I find it rather annoying that  a news station wouldn't talk about more pressing matters going on in our society rather than some athlete playing the piano. (Not very well, I might add.) While they could be telling us more about something basic like where our food actually comes from now (a fact that only a small number of people these days seem to be aware of), they are informing us of something that has literally no effect on our lives at all! The press no longer informs us of the truth, it simply tells us what the man behind the desk wants us to think about. This all goes on while we send unmanned drones out into Iraq and Iran that kill innocent civilians.
What are we being made to believe?

A Viscous Cycle

                                                    I got this picture from google.
   
     In my previous post, I spoke about how mundane a capitalistic life can be. Everything, as we all already know, revolves around our ability to work and continue working to inject capital into our system. Keeping in mind that this system never ends and our leaders haven't ever told us what definite goal we're working towards, I feel it safe to assume that the process continues on forever. As the picture above almost graphically illustrates, we working class Americans are almost basically slaves to the dollar- to money that is now mostly just imaginary. We work so that we can buy so that we can consume so that we can keep on working, buying, and consuming until we die. This is not how mankind was meant to live! That is clearly apparent in (once again I am not bashing America, it's just a prime example here) America's mortality rate caused by coronary heart disease, which is known to be caused by the stress of everyday American life.

• "The 2008 overall rate of death attributable to cardiovascular disease (CVD) (International Classification of Diseases, 10th Revision, codes I00–I99) was 244.8 per 100 000. The rates were 287.2 per 100 000 for white males, 390.4 per 100 000 for black males, 200.5 per 100 000 for white females, and 277.4 per 100 000 for black females." (http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/125/1/e2.full)
• To me, this is a clear indication that something must change drastically before we stress ourselves to death!

"More, More, More"

                                                google.com                                               

"From 1947 until 2013, the United States Economy Expands 3.2% in Q4 averaged 3.2 Percent reaching an all time high of 17.2 Percent in March of 1950 and a record low of -10.4 Percent in March of 1958. The United States has one of the most diversified and most technologically advanced economies in the world. Finance, insurance, real estate, rental, leasing, health care, social assistance, professional, business and educational services account for more than 40 percent of GDP. Retail and wholesale trade creates another 12 percent of the wealth. The government related services fuel 13 percent of GDP. Utilities, transportation and warehousing and information account for 10 percent of the GDP. Manufacturing, mining, and construction constitute 17 percent of the output. Agriculture accounts for only 1.5 percent of the GDP, yet due to use of advance technologies, the United States is a net exporter of food. This page provides - United States Economy Expands 3.2% in Q4 - actual values, historical data, forecast, chart, statistics, economic calendar and news. 2014-02-07" ( http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/gdp-growth)

     I have nothing really against the United States, so I don't mean to attack this country. However, The U.S does serve to be a prime example of capitalism and it's ideas. 

     Growth is an exceptionally good thing when a positive and humanely beneficial goal is what's in mind. However, goal of a capitalistic society is to continue to grow and grow, but for what purpose? How big is too big? When does it stop? I, personally, feel the burden of a mundane life every day. Sometimes I am so exhausted from my shift the night before at the restaurant that I can't even crawl my way to school in the morning. By the time school is over, I have to do it all again. I'm 17! This is not the life I want for my children if I someday have them. People tell adolescents that as soon as they get to college, it gets better. What about those kids that are going to have to work their way through? It just sounds like more of the same to me. If you graduate from college with your degree, it just means now you can work longer hours and your job is no longer secondary in your life to school, but it IS your life. And to this, the government says, "Keep going.". So, you work harder and harder, you neglect the kids that you accidentally had because you're far too busy with work, and therefore produce "faulty" offspring that lack the basic moral values that (in my opinion) people must have. It's a viscous cycle that is only proving to get worse and worse with every passing year.