See, in the old days you would only have to look past 'progress' to find all of capitalism's faults. The lousy distribution of power. The child workers(even in England, there were child workers up to the turn of the 20th century). The unlawful treatment of non-whites.
It was everywhere, but little action was taken where it should have been. Because the people who had to power to change things were the same people who gained most of the benefits, including the rifles and bullets that only a progressive, capitalist economy could mass produce.
*sidenote*
think about it. The bolt action rifle is a simple weapon, and I can explain the entire mechanism with ease. But I could never produce one. Not even one. Not just because it's illegal, and not because you'd need to have an engineering background. It's because you'd have to be able to coordinate resources in a way that no one man can do efficiently. The timber for the main rifle body, the iron ore for the steel that forms the barrel and the rest of the assembly. The brass bullet shells and the gunpowder. Not only do the sub-components of the rifle need to be separately manufactured by very different industries, but the components themselves require resources. It's nuts that mass production is possible. But it is, only with the structured system that capitalism provides.
*sidenote over*
I WAS TRYING TO MAKE A POINT HERE, STOP DISTRACTING ME.
Ok, here goes.
I think we've effectively covered the mess that we used to be able to blame on capitalism.
We blame big corporations, who aren't even people(really, how do you blame something that isn't even a being, I don't even blame my dog for stepping on me).
Big oil spill, solution: boycott BP. Sure, yeah it IS technically their fault. But BP isn't a terrorist group. They're a company who wants to sell you petroleum, and they have got competitors. One fuck up, and suddenly BP is the bad guy. I sincerely believe Exxon, Shell and Petronas are no better than BP. They're all big companies that want the same thing, BP was just the thief that left a trail.
I said BP six times.
I'm still distracting myself from my main point here.
As cynical as I may be, this bit of bad news really ruined my Thursday, partly because it was my fault.
Here it goes:
A worker in the Foxconn factory in China died of exhaustion after working a 34 hour shift.
First I laughed. Haha, the capitalists have done it again. Foxconn makes computer components for big companies like Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo and most important of all, Apple(the last time Foxconn had a problem like this was with that dude who lost the new iphone while it was in testing phase). Steve Jobs said he'd do an investigation or whatever, but who cares.
I stopped my laughing when I remembered one of my previous blog posts. The one where I dismantled my Xbox. Because after taking that picture I remembered something printed on the side of the inner console.
What was printed was "Foxconn".
My Xbox was part of the 3rd generation. You see, I'm not a TOTAL idiot. I may be a gamer, but I know my machines like the back of my hand(Which is why I routinely dismantle them, like I did my Xbox). I know that the Xbox and PS3 are selling WAY below cost. Microsoft and Sony are actually selling their consoles at a loss. But they make up their losses with the hardware components and contracts with game companies.
The fact is, my version of the Xbox 360 is the Core version, to be precise the Foxconn Core version with the Lite-on disc tray. Which is the cheapest one. Which somehow makes me feel like it was a bigger burden on Microsoft, which must have translated to wage cuts on the labourers. And I admit, I feel terrible.
But I've been feeling terrible about a lot of things recently. Red Dead Redemption made me feel really bad. The ending was so so sad. That's the only way to put it. Just a mood killer. For the entire week.
I even finished the seventh season of 24 and that got me a bit down.
Time for a rude interruption. See this guy\/?
He was sitting right at the edge in the lotus position. I wonder if the quiet Buddhists types would get angry if you pushed them over while in meditation.
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