I have been chilling by myself for the last 48 hours due to a fresh new case of covid. I feel very pent up: I want to work and I want to embrace my family. Instead I have been watching daytime, pantry-organizing, television and reading the Joan Didion book my wife bought me for Christmas. January has been a hoot which, in only 20 days, has already included a case of the flu, a case of covid, a memorial for a friend who died far too young, and the death of my uncle. Onwards and upwards, I started this morning by reading Israel Daramola’s article about the impact of the demise of pitchfork on the music industry at large.
This is emblematic of corporate America as a whole: the value is in the brand and not the product. Greed is the reason that everything that was once cool, fun, or beneficial, has become a worthless husk of its former self.
Greed is the biggest issue facing society today. I see people online wasting time lamenting the evils of capitalism in favor of virtuous socialism, and I roll my eyes. Both capitalism and socialism are mere methods of allocating resources within a population, and are no more virtuous or evil than the metric or Dewey Decimal systems. History is rife with examples of the suffering of the masses due to the pervasiveness of greed among those who hold power in socialist and capitalist economies.
What we are seeing now is the impact of Wall Street on the global economy. Since the 1970s, we have seen an increasing number of activist investors, hollowing out companies under the guise of efficiency. It’s truly viral behavior: latch onto a host company, extract the maximum value until the host is useless and is abandoned in favor of a new host.
Where we consistently fail as consumers is by being blindly loyal to brands that no longer fulfill their former promise. As a New England Patriots fan, it pains me to write this statement. The moral of this rant is to stop buying the fucking box and pay attention to the ingredients. If something sucks then don’t pay for it (as I stare at the Netflix icon on my smart TV remote). We have the ability to stem the tide of greed by speaking with our purchase dollars. Buy quality and, wherever possible, buy locally.
It’s 10am. Arsenal defeated Crystal Palace. I need to get out of my house. Will rant more later.
L U K E 