Oh you like phones? Well our phone companies require us to directly or indirectly create proxy wars in this region in order to acquire the raw materials necessary.
This is the democracy of western nations: policy hidden behind capitalist interests that the people engage with through consumption.
Its democracy for the rich not for the millions of us.
That's why they NEED to manufacture consent, in order to get you on board with murder and fabricated poverty in order to have goods and services.
I think that is the will of the masses.
I've got this fairphone in my pocket that has a replaceable cobalt-free battery and a replaceable OS for a reasonable price. But people by-and-large don't want fairphones, they want iphones.
The third worlders fighting over cobalt don't want peace, they want wealth for themselves.
People don't want niche third parties and alternative stuff, they want to be part of a larger cultural group.
Captialism is based on individual voluntarism, and the problems you describe are not caused by manufactured sentiment but a lack thereof. The problems are caused by the distributed actions of a silent majority, as opposed to some greater rational plan.
They are enabled into fighting by big, huge interests. They ship them weapons and rationales.
Who are the customers in the end? Western nations. They create the abject poverty, they use poor governments to exploit and enslave their own people. There is no "poverty" in the world only exploitation. All poverty is fabricated and sustained.
Why is it that Mali is one of the poorest nations on earth but is also one of the top 10 exporters of gold? How does that work?
Capitalism is not voluntarism. That is the myth of philosophical liberalism.
To say that someone who owns as much wealth as a few million people is equal to those same millions of persons who directly own nothing except credit(debt)? It's a myth.
Voluntarism would only be true if we were on equal economic standing. Therefore voluntarism implies that no one can be coerced or leveraged, its a moot and infantile viewpoint of social dynamics.
The "silent majority" has no real way to speak. You choose candidates based on talking points who can then REALLY do anything they please. That is called "trusting campaigns", not democracy.
In reality what happens in elections is that we are choosing a group of people to enact policies based on the market-demands of a society that cannot control its market/production. There is a huge disconnect. It's not a real influence WE have. It's an influence that is given.
IE. The majority of people dont want to use plastic materials for anything related to their consumption. But plastic is cheap and easy to produce. I'm sure that if given a choice people would rather their society work a bit more, spend a bit more of human-energy if it means we dont have nuts full of microplastics.
It is how we produce that determines what choices we have, and how we produce is determined by market dynamics which are reduced to sustainability of production and profits. It is profits that determines production, not consumers' will.
So tell me: if we dont directly control the options we have, but you say we are making a choice, what is that?
There is another word for that. Coercion, manipulation.
I dont want child soldiers killing for control over resources or kids mining for 12 hours a day, I want a good, cheap phone. It is not the same.
Is there really no other way? I would sure as hell try to have it any other way.
Whoever conflates these is doing so because they profit off of it, not because its the only way.
In capitalism the heads of production and their profits determine the directions of our societies.
Weapons and rationales don't fight wars themselves (yet).
>Why is it that Mali is one of the poorest nations on earth but is also one of the top 10 exporters of gold? How does that work?
Gold is just a shiny rock. No one needs gold to survive and it has few industrial uses. If your only asset is a resource like that, you are going to be stuck digging it out of the ground and trading it for everything else you need (including protection).
The wealthiest nations in the world are industrious. Not those built on top of some natural resource that they are incapable of defending- that's a recipe for instability. Look at taiwan, japan, ukraine, even isreal. These little nations can leverage greater nations to fight on their behalf by using their industrial capability, even when they are surrounded by enemies. The "divide and conquer" principle is not only used by larger nations to control smaller nations, but also by smaller nations in dealing with larger nations.
>Capitalism is not voluntarism. That is the myth of philosophical liberalism.
>To say that someone who owns as much wealth as a few million people is equal to those same millions of persons who directly own nothing except credit(debt)? It's a myth.
You are conflating voluntarism and democracy. Capitalism is voluntaristic, but democratic insofar as wealth is well-distributed.
>The "silent majority" has no real way to speak.
You vote with your dollar. Most people in the USA are not willing to pay for the premium associated with ethical production. Hence, iphones dominate while fairphones lag behind. You see this everywhere you go. At the supermarket, there is a premium associated with organic foods. Actions speak louder than words.
>IE. The majority of people dont want to use plastic materials for anything related to their consumption. But plastic is cheap and easy to produce. I'm sure that if given a choice people would rather their society work a bit more, spend a bit more of human-energy if it means we dont have nuts full of microplastics.
I would make this tradeoff, but I wouldn't be so sure others would, in the large. There are some things that only plastics can do, so it would be a slippery slope of what applications would be allowable.
>It is how we produce that determines what choices we have, and how we produce is determined by market dynamics which are reduced to sustainability of production and profits. It is profits that determines production, not consumers' will
>So tell me: if we dont directly control the options we have, but you say we are making a choice, what is that?
The only way you could directly control the options you have is by producing goods and services yourself. Farm your own food, build your own smartphone. The economies of scale and capital costs are not a result of any specific economic system, they are often the result of the realities of production and logistics. These tradeoffs exist even within communist command economies.
The only difference is that in capitalism, it is voluntaristic enough that you have the ability to choose what you do with your own wealth and time. You can affect change gradually, on a small scale.
>I dont want child soldiers killing for control over resources or kids mining for 12 hours a day, I want a good, cheap phone. It is not the same.
Then buy a fairphone or something. You have some options.
>In capitalism the heads of production and their profits determine the directions of our societies.
If you don't buy their product, then it won't be profitable. Boycotts are an effective political tool. Divide and conquer!
