The Japanese sensation Shohei Ohtani signed with the L.A. Dodgers this past weekend (after a furious Friday of twitter activity in which he was thought to be on a flight to Toronto to sign a contract with the Blue Jays- but Canada in December? Really?) on a contract worth $700 million for 10 years, the most lucrative contract in sports history, not just baseball. My friend immediately reacted to this development as "late stage capitalism," which I hadn't thought about but makes a ton of sense in how society works nowadays. Everyone wants to be the first to congratulate the best in the world, and appalude when they "get a bag," aka get paid a lot of money, a way to applaude others when they make it but also hope to be as successful as them and have that success rub off on them. So the winners win not only in the money and social status achieve but also the attention and esteem from others, branching off one way, while those who are not successful or never get any praise (me!) get ignored, so the top 1% are really the top 1% in everything: they win everything, and the losers get nothing. Very little attention is paid to individuals who need help or just need a little to get on track because the attention is all lumped on those who need help the least (the 1%) while those who need help the most get ignored. That's late-stage capitalism, and I'm really worried about it; the definition includes that the system is on the verge of collapse; this rate of winners winning everything is unsustainable. According to Karl Marx, there will be a violent revolution of this system by those suffering at the bottom who can't take it anymore.
I'm not saying there will be a violent revolution soon, but I am very sympathetic to those who arent' in the "big club" of celebrities and those who have made it. Everyone (including MJ and I) like to see the success stories and go to luxurious big cities and stores that are winning, but what about the local businesses that close down after failing? The 90% of cities in America that are not the big 4 NYC, L.A., Chicago, etc. and are just getting by? Nurses and teachers and others just making it on a basic salary who are having their purchase power decreased because of inflation and coddling of the richest class. My Youtube and Facebook algorithm is filled with successful comedians, musicians, Youtubers with great cat videos, movies, and if you don't actually go into society a bit you'd think that's all society is, people fooling around, having fun but making money, living a decent lifestyle and being able to create "content" as a career. That's not America, nor the world. Very rarely do I get directed to videos of struggling lower-to-middle class people who are living paycheck to paycheck, in dire financial straits, etc......I've recently seen some Mr. Beast videos and others who give handouts to those in desperate need: not a panacea and won't solve the overall problem, but at least these videos show the underside of our society that doesn't get shown in the upward-climbing capitalist society that only cares about stepping up in society. While doing that, it's important sometimes to also reach down and try to lift some of those who are down there up. (Maybe my roots of being born in a Communist country sprouting up, but Asian societies still value collective communities whereas American and other western societies are much too individualistic and emphasizing individual accomplishments, to hell with everyone else).
Hope we figure out how to fix this late-stage capitalism thing and avoid the early-stage violent revolution thing.
No comments:
Post a Comment