Let's talk about pyramids. Actually, just one pyramid for now. The Maslow's one. No need to explain, everyone knows what it is, it simply represents hierarchy of needs, from the most basic (food, water and shelter), up to esoterically sounding self-transcendence.
Now, when you are a bad capitalist, you see needs as profit opportunity, and lack of need as excellent opportunity to create one (and profit from it). If you are a good capitalist, you seen needs as opportunity to improve human condition and.. make some profit? Bad capitalists see nothing wrong with selling whatever they can on all levels of the pyramid. Even things that should be incompatible with markets, like self-transcendence - well, they are incompatible, but they still can be used. If there is a need, there is someone out there with an appropriate substitute. If you've ever been to New Age bookshop, you know what I'm talking about.
Not always, not necessarily. Some levels of the pyramid are more resilient than others, profiting on some levels is less harmful that others - like trading fresh water vs trading flowers. Some needs might be better served by competing parties - there is such a thing as healthy competition, even if my writing so far suggests otherwise. As long as they are genuine needs... Say, a fridge. Last time I needed one I spent some time on researching and choosing the right one. Or what seemed to be right. And it's a good fridge, although I've no idea where it was manufactured or what impact to environment it caused. But it was a genuine need, as alternative ways of storing fresh food would need more time to research and make happen than I currently have.
But how about food? What food is the most advertised? The food no one really needs. Sugars, soft drinks, alcohol... Not that I don't enjoy a good beer, but the sheer amount of ads trying to get me dead drunk is just... it is a bad side of free market. Plus don't forget, advertisement industry is not to inform you about products, but it is to make you buy more. And more. And more. The more you don't need something, the harder they try. Usually (coincidence?) stuff you don't need is not very good for your health, but excellent for other industries, like, tadaam, big pharma. Which is in itself amazingly evil. And so on.
Only by escaping into extremes - the homeless usually don't pay taxes, off-griders don't have to buy food, and extremely rich do what they well damn please, and only then you have ways to protect yourself from government. But majority of us, if we want to live on civilized level, can't opt out from the free market. No such freedom for us. Being able to chose from thirty different sugar bars is not freedom. You have to eat, drink, live somewhere. These things are provided almost exclusively by free market participants, who by definition must make profit to survive and pay extortion fees. This things can only be bought. You have to buy, so you have to have something to buy them with. So you have to have something to sell. It is a market after all. The house of exchange. And for most of us, regardless whether we work directly for someone or on our own, we pay with our time.
And just how it was and how it is. It is meant to be a fair system too, we can blame mother nature that we have to eat to live, but it's not the point. The point is that what we want or need, from food to cars, can be made by someone else, and we simply do what someone else needs in exchange for what we need. That's the idea at least. Everyone works, so everyone can be happy and have more civilization (and free time as a bonus) than they would be able to get on their own. Problem with theory is that practice proves it incomplete. In practice the working class (OMG, I used the C word), very bottom of the pyramid, works not only for greater good, but also to support the parasiting rest - and it is the rest, very, very small percent of the rest, who dictates how high extortion rates are going to be this year. And we don't just support them, we don't just sponsor their luxuries, but we let them spend mountains of gold on making other people suffer.
And then... extortion happens on what the extortionist is able to see. On everything that has value defined in language the system operates in - and common denominator is fiat money. It is the simplest profit measure, and simplest to demand a share in, if you have enough force on your disposal to extort it. Hence all those VAT games, escaping with taxes offshore, etc. Thieves robbing thieves. Fiat money can be controlled. When cash is banned, and it will soon be, control will be even more efficient. And interestingly free market in its current form seems to be part of the problem. It seems to be a... multi-level platform on which participants play games, and the house always wins. The big extortionist has tentacles in every transaction that takes place on the platform. And every attempt to change, un-rig the game can have fatal consequences, like... Iraq or Libya talking about ditching petrodollar. Iran is going to be next, isn't it. Then one more thing, by extortion I don't only mean taxes. I also mean interest rates and various inventions that are operating on the virtual levels of in itself illusory fiat money.
To be perfectly honest I am not sure where this is going. I know where I want to get to, but thinking about one thing leads to another and... here is yet another intermediary post, a stop on the way which leads further and further... Next one soon.
