{"id":11073,"date":"2019-02-12T00:28:33","date_gmt":"2019-02-12T08:28:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=11073"},"modified":"2019-02-12T00:28:35","modified_gmt":"2019-02-12T08:28:35","slug":"young-people-are-giving-on-capitalism-because-capitalism-failed-young-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2019\/02\/12\/young-people-are-giving-on-capitalism-because-capitalism-failed-young-people\/","title":{"rendered":"Young People are Giving on Capitalism Because Capitalism Failed Young\u00a0People"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

How Capitalism Became Young People\u2019s Pusher, Pimp, and Abuser<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
\"Go<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

umair haque<\/a>\u00a0Jan 28, 2019 (medium.com) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s a strange and terrible thing I\u2019ve noticed\u200a\u2014\u200aand you might have too. Nobody I know under the age of 40 or so can make it anymore. That applies to people over 40 as well, of course\u200a\u2014\u200abut as we\u2019ll see, an economy\u2019s fate hinges in many ways on young people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What do I mean by \u201ccan\u2019t make it\u201d? I mean it in all the ways that anyone can mean it. Young people can\u2019t make ends meet. They can\u2019t earn decent livings. Hence, they can\u2019t save. Because they can\u2019t save, they can\u2019t buy homes. Because they can\u2019t buy homes, they can\u2019t start families. Because they can\u2019t start families, they can\u2019t move out. Because they\u2019re stuck living in their parents\u2019 homes, they\u2019re depressed, frustrated, and furious. Hence, the rise of the \u201cside-hustle\u201d, but I digress\u200a\u2014\u200alet\u2019s think about the meaning of all this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(And because they\u2019re depressed, frustrated and furious, I\u2019d guess, they turn to what they can afford\u200a\u2014\u200asocial media and Netflix and \u201cself-care\u201d and so on. But these don\u2019t make the emotional trauma\u200a\u2014\u200aand it is a trauma\u200a\u2014\u200aof being trapped in powerlessness and hopelessness better, they make it worse. A vicious cycle has emerged: economic disempowerment, psychic trauma, social isolation\u2026.wasted potential. Psychoeconosocial failure, a situation so gruesome we barely have words for it. But I\u2019ll come all that, in quite sordid detail, shortly.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Capitalism has trapped young people in a kind of never-ending adolescence\u200a\u2014\u200aduring which it stalks them, like prey. It never lets them grow up\u200a\u2014\u200awhile telling them to \u2018take responsibility\u201d and \u201cbe adults\u201d and \u201cpick themselves up by their bootstraps.\u201d Like a monster, it traps them, isolates them, and picks them off one by one, when they\u2019re at their weakest\u200a\u2014\u200afor their sweet flesh. Wham! The dystopian tales of this age aren\u2019t so far off the truth. Young people are kept in this state of perpetual adolescence so that they can be exploited with maximum, perfect efficiency\u200a\u2014\u200auntil they have nothing left, and then they\u2019re disposed of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, you might think I\u2019m exaggerating. Alas, my friend, a brief glimpse at basic socioeconomic realities suggests that if anything, I\u2019m understating the case. Depression and suicide are soaring amongst the young. They can\u2019t afford to move out. They\u2019re having fewer relationships. They\u2019re even having less sex\u200a\u2014\u200awhen have you heard of young people having less sex? Doesn\u2019t that alarm you? They\u2019re broke\u200a\u2014\u200aand they\u2019ll never retire\u200a\u2014\u200abut they can\u2019t get decent jobs in the first place. A life as good as Dad\u2019s? Grandma\u2019s? LOL\u200a\u2014\u200ait\u2019s a distant dream.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s no surprise, then, that young people have given up on capitalism, either.<\/a>They aren\u2019t just against it. They mock it just like a child might say: \u201cI\u2019m not afraid of that monster!\u201d They hold in contempt and scorn and disgrace. They should. Young people are giving up on capitalism because capitalism has failed them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beneath this grotesque veneer of dystopian inevitability lies a deeper truth. Young people sit at the intersection of three great economic shocks\u200a\u2014\u200aones which no generation, really, has had to face before. First, digitization has stripped the last few remaining good jobs from the economy, and concentrated them among a tiny number of \u201ctech\u201d companies. Second, financialization has made everything a matter of piling on debt, so that the unaffordability of things remains invisible. Third, decades of underinvestment in society have made the basics of life laughably unaffordable. When you\u2019re paying $10K a year for healthcare\u2026per person\u2026the idea of having kids, starting a family, buying a home becomes a bitter, twisted joke.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What do young people do? Well, what can they do? If they have affluent families, they endlessly tap them for the support they desperately need. Dad! I need to pay rent. Mom! I need to pay for healthcare! Uncle Dan! Can you help me with my car payment? And so on. There\u2019s no shame in it, but because we feel so ashamed of it, we don\u2019t discuss it\u200a\u2014\u200ayoung people are on life support these days, my friends\u200a\u2014\u200aeven the responsible and productive ones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those who don\u2019t have affluent families are in far worse positions. What do they do? Well, a lot of them have turned to drugs. Sure, young people always take drugs (hi, 22 year old Umair.) But there\u2019s a big difference between a spliff here and there and a helpless dependency on opioids because you\u2019re stuck in a dead end life in some rust belt town. Young people are medicating away the pain of capitalism, essentially.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those that are brave enough not to medicate away the pain are forced, increasingly, to turn to grotesque and demeaning lives to make ends meet. The rise of camgirls and online-escorting-to-pay-for-grad-school and so on is one example. There\u2019s nothing wrong with sex work, and if you choose it, great\u200a\u2014\u200abut my feeling is that many women aren\u2019t choosing it so much as they\u2019re being compelled into it by financial hardship. That\u2019s a common feature, too, of collapsing societies\u200a\u2014\u200atheir women have to sell their bodies to support their men and themselves\u200a\u2014\u200ahence, we Americans make fun of the Eastern European sex industry, Thai child prostitutes, mail order brides, but we don\u2019t quite connect the dots\u200a\u2014\u200athat\u2019s what capitalism is doing now to our women, too. It\u2019s another thing we don\u2019t discuss, because we\u2019re too busy lionizing sex work to wonder: is it just a coincidence sex is being commodified and harvested for profit in more extreme forms, at the precise moment our society\u2019s collapsing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What about men who have neither affluent families, and can\u2019t sell themselves like women? They turn to digital gig work, many of them\u200a\u2014\u200adriving Ubers and TaskRabbiting and so forth. While those gigs might help drive \u201cdown\u201d the unemployment rate, it\u2019s an illusion, at best\u200a\u2014\u200abecause you can\u2019t do it forever. It\u2019s not just not a career\u200a\u2014\u200ait\u2019s the opposite of one: an activity that invests nothing in your human or emotional or social capital. It\u2019s another way to sell your body, essentially\u200a\u2014\u200abecause you can\u2019t develop your mind, heart, or soul. That\u2019s not to say people don\u2019t pay for school with Uber or camming or so forth\u200a\u2014\u200asure they do\u200a\u2014\u200athe point is: should they have to? What does it cost us all when those are the choices on offer?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you see what\u2019s really happening here? I\u2019m drawing some extreme examples\u200a\u2014\u200ato make a point. What\u2019s a camgirl? Something like a concubine, a kept object of pleasure, unless that\u2019s what said person only ever really waned to be. Sorry if that makes you mad, I guess\u200a\u2014\u200abut sex-positivity, too, should have some critical limits. What\u2019s an Uber driver? Something like a chauffeur. Capitalism is recreating something very much like a feudal society, where today\u2019s young people are essentially becoming servants, serfs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They are selling the very last things they have\u200a\u2014\u200atheir bodies, their muscles, the most desperate forms of labour, from sex work to menial work. These forms of labour are of course the lowest paid, and the most predatory, too. Young people are being forced to sell their bodies to the lowest bidder\u200a\u2014\u200ainstead of having their minds, hearts, and spirits nourished, nurtured, and cultivated. What else is a serf, really, but someone who is compelled to sell their physical labour in the most menial way they can\u200a\u2014\u200ainstead of being able to develop themselves more fully, their minds, creativity, intellects, aspirations, imaginations? Isn\u2019t that why the world went nowhere for centuries?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That is how capitalism is preying on young people. It keeps them trapped in a perpetual adolescence\u200a\u2014\u200anever allowing them to grow up, afford homes, start families, become genuine adults of their own. Then, cleverly, it asks them to sell the only thing they are allowed to have, since they cannot really grow up\u200a\u2014\u200atheir bodies, their sweat, their tendons and muscles. Once those are exploited to the maximum\u200a\u2014\u200abang! The commodity is disposed of. Does a camgirl get a retirement plan? Healthcare? What\u2019s the Uber driver\u2019s career model? You see my point, perhaps. Young people are kept a perpetual adolescence by capitalism because there is little more profitable than a kept class of fresh, smiling serfs and servants to pimp out\u200a\u2014\u200awho are always a tap and swipe away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a truism that \u201ccapitalism is exploitation.\u201d But what precisely does that mean in the context of a collapsing 21st century society? Something like this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Capitalism has become our young people\u2019s pimp and pusher, their madam and their jailer, their sweatshop slavedriver\u200a\u2014\u200ait is the algorithm that auctions their bodies, sweat, and muscles to the lowest bidder, at the highest cost, and little more. It is not the gentle hand which nourishes them into adulthood. I mean all that quite literally. Do you think I\u2019m being unfair? What does reality say, when you look at it coolly, unemotionally? Aren\u2019t young people turning to increasingly desperate forms of both labour and consolation, as their society collapses around them, just to survive?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I said capitalism was preying on young people, this is what I meant\u200a\u2014\u200ait traps them in a perpetual adolescence, where they\u2019re kept young, and then picks them off, one by one, for prettiness and health and strength of their bodies, more or less. Capitalism has made young people nobodies, going nowhere, because there\u2019s nowhere to go. There\u2019s just a perpetual adolescence, during which you\u2019re exploited ruthlessly for the things you have when you\u2019re young\u200a\u2014\u200amuscles, sweat, energy, a fresh body\u200a\u2014\u200aand then discarded like trash, once those things are even faintly scarred, abused, marked. Wham! Time to exploit the next line of young people. For their bodies, smiles, tendons, flesh\u200a\u2014\u200athe only things people trapped in an endless adolescence can have\u200a\u2014\u200auntil those are not so fresh and lithe anymore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Capitalism isn\u2019t maximizing the possibility of America\u2019s young people\u200a\u2014\u200aturning them into tomorrow\u2019s great inventors, revolutionaries, artists, and thinkers. It\u2019s true that some of those might emerge, but by and large, they are becoming servants now. Concubines and chauffeurs and cleaners and \u201cassistants\u201d, 40 year old interns, opioid addicts, internet burnouts, people who\u2019ve never had a decent job in their lives, youngsters approaching middle-age who still live with Mom and Dad because there\u2019s nowhere to go. People who, in the end, might just be growing accustomed and resigned to being ruthlessly exploited for the sweet taste of youth by the old, the rich, the predatory, even as they rage into their screens against the machine that preys on them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Capitalism is creating a kind of feudal caste society now\u200a\u2014\u200aand young people are at the bottom. They are like algorithmic servants, whose primary purpose in life is to sell their youthful bodies\u200a\u2014\u200anot to develop their minds\u200a\u2014\u200ain whatever increasingly desperate way they can find. Driving a car, doing a cam show, cleaning a home, and so on. Another way to see it is that young people are something like janitors of desire. They are there to clean up after the messes society\u2019s appetites make. Want to get laid? Need some plumbing? Just swipe! Ahh, sweet relief. Maybe you see what I mean. Young people are servants and prisoners of desire now\u200a\u2014\u200aa caste of menial pleasure-workers, always there on-demand, to service you\u2026which is what servants have always been.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But can a caste society of algorithmic servants dong menial body-work, selling their youth in increasingly desperate ways, also be a democracy? A modern one? A place of abundance, peace, growth and maturity\u200a\u2014\u200aor just a perpetually destabilized place, by this cycle of being perpetual adolescence, too?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You see, something very grave and vital is lost when we pimp out our own young people to capitalism, or when capitalism becomes their pusher, pimp, and sweatshop boss. Those young people don\u2019t turn into tomorrow\u2019s Einsteins, Salks, and Malalas. Not at nearly the same rate. They give up on democracy and freedom\u200a\u2014\u200aenough of them sit at home burned out and high and depressed and sucidal, instead of voting and marching. They become traumatized and wounded. So much so that perhaps they buy into the mechanisms of their own oppression\u200a\u2014\u200ahey, Facebook\u2019s good for me! Don\u2019t take my Uber away! You can hardly blame them, after all\u200a\u2014\u200awhere else do they have to turn, but to oppression, for the means of subsistence?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You see the trap now. Capitalism says to young people something like this. I\u2019ll never let you grow up. Sell me your body, while it\u2019s fresh, if you want to live at all\u200a\u2014\u200ahere, I\u2019ll give you a few pennies for it. Shrug. It\u2019s your choice. I\u2019ll never really let you develop your mind, your heart, your soul. In this way, capitalism is something very much like the boogeyman, my friends. It is all the archaic monsters dwelling in our unconscious in this way\u200a\u2014\u200apreying on our children in the darkness where only an algorithm glimmers, stealing away their youth while they sleep, making them old before they have ever really been young.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And yet young people still show signs of life. They are rebelling against capitalism, because capitalism has failed them, in all these terrible and gruesome ways, which have yet, I think, really to be understood. That should give us all a little hope. The young have always been the wisest among us. And in their vehement rejection of capitalism\u200a\u2014\u200aeven if they don\u2019t quite still know the depths to which it has abased and disgraced them\u200a\u2014\u200athey are better and truer leaders than they know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Umair\nJanuary 2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Go<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

umair haque<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

\nMedium member since Jun 2018\n\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How Capitalism Became Young People\u2019s Pusher, Pimp, and Abuser umair haque\u00a0Jan 28, 2019 (medium.com) There\u2019s a strange and terrible thing I\u2019ve noticed\u200a\u2014\u200aand you might have too. Nobody I know under the age of 40 or so can make it anymore. That applies to people over 40 as well, of course\u200a\u2014\u200abut as… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11073"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11073"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11073\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11074,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11073\/revisions\/11074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}