Economics Post

(Note: revised, when I saw that it had gone up to 12 page views; July 24)

The problem: Given that you have a society how do you give consideration to the one that is different? How do you give consideration to the other...the poor...to "them"?
     We are good at one way of handling it: integrating them. In this stratagem, they are glommed together into, in a sense, a new product. (Just like a "cross-over" hit in music; a "fusion" menu) The problem is that this is the only method we have at present-----turning everybody into the same thing. It is no small problem. It is the main problem. So, we need to consider this problem of difference.
     What is the fundamental method of capitalism? Why does a particular system work? As far as the unique way of life that a few capitalistic societies have developed, does capitalism really work according to this fusion principle? -principle of just glomming everything together? Just saying "we are all the same" solves something? We should consider another way of looking at is, that in the specifically capitalistic system, difference is a fundamental, basic part of the reality of it. Therefore, the first thing we must do is learn to see the system for what it is. We should learn to theorize how it is that difference is a structural part of capitalism. We need to see how  the system actually works. And glomming and fusion is not all there is to it. (And if that is the case, it is not going to work in the end. Another consideration I though of: even we proceed by glomming things together, if we did not start with difference then there is nothing to glom, is there?)
     In the real life of things, the history of the last few centuries, we know that capitalism gets bigger. Other systems do not do that. It has been often pointed out, by writers other than myself, that as capitalism gets bigger we want to standardize everybody to the same universalized, McDonalds-patronizing consumer, we become the same type beings who shop at the mall, etc. There is a tendency to conceive of only one type of "first-world person." We seem to want to reduce everything to one.
     In order to get everyone to accept the idea of capitalism as one homogenous system, the public media system (there are lots of these guys) transmit the idea that their method works.
     The problem is that it does. For us, (the inquirers) the problem, then, is to get beyond the hype and understand this topic of what capitalism is. Marketers know it is far easier to add hype a product that is already popular.
     So, this is my view. My view here says that this kind of society does work, but what I am saying here is that it does not, and has never, worked in terms of there being no such thing as different persons or kinds of persons ("people" "peoples"). That is not true. At a fundamental level, capitalism required these different persons, different kinds of persons.

     So, if we ask capitalism to just erase difference, or turn everything into a big fusion product, it isn't going to work.