I kind of agree. I find that almost everyone I meet has a firm grasp on tech topics affect their lives. From social media to privacy, they seem to understand the fundamental questions even though they aren't programmers or CISOs or whatever.

> capitalism infected by the shareholder-theory-of-value and financialization

For those who aren't inside the club, those are superstitions.

>> capitalism infected by the shareholder-theory-of-value and financialization

> For those who aren't inside the club, those are superstitions.

Come on, they are not. One is a value system, the other is a technology/practice.

Maybe I have too much imagination and stretched the rules a bit. But, if superstition is 'any belief or practice considered by non-practitioners to be irrational or supernatural', I'd argue that financialization is a consequence of an irrational belief in the power of the 'invisible hand' and that the shareholder-theory-of-value is a similar belief in the power of abstractions over actual human needs. Call it Friedman's invisible hand. I call these beliefs irrational not because they aren't profitable and effective - in certain environments for certain times - but because in the long run they will bring unenlightened practitioners and their subjects to ruin because they won't balance themselves and so they will be balanced by something else.

As economist Stevie Wonder once said, "When you believe in things that you don't understand Then you suffer Superstition ain't the way"

> Maybe I have too much imagination and stretched the rules a bit. But, if superstition is 'any belief or practice considered by non-practitioners to be irrational or supernatural', I'd argue that financialization is a consequence of an irrational belief in the power of the 'invisible hand' and that the shareholder-theory-of-value is a similar belief in the power of abstractions over actual human needs.

I think it's too much of a stretch to label anything "irrational" as superstition.

I think both the purported benefits of the shareholder-theory-of-value and fictionalization rely on plausible-but-false belief in the outcomes created by the 'invisible hand'/selfishness-at-scale, but I wouldn't call it superstition, just wrong.

Also, I think the connotations of words are pretty important, and there are a lot of words that for the most part mean the same thing with different connotations. If I had to describe the connotation of superstition, its an action believed to have an effect, but that effect is a total non-sequitur. At least with what we're talking about, there's at least a plausible basis for believing the effect will happen, even it that basis is wrong.

I'd suggest reading David Graeber. Those aren't as categorically distinct as you're assuming.

> when it was really capitalism infected by the shareholder-theory-of-value and fictionalization pursued by really smart and rational people focused on their personal self-interest.

That's one factor, sure. Another factor is the widespread rejection of mainstream science and consensus reality in favor of conspiracy theories that feed into populism and authoritarianism.

For all of capitalism's faults, you can at least have an educated society with technological and scientific progress under it. You can't have any of that when people who don't believe germs or real or who do believe wildfires are caused by Jewish space lasers are allowed anywhere near positions of power. When belief in imaginary satanic pedophile cults swing elections but actual pedophiles face no consequences. It doesn't seem entirely wrong to me.

>> when it was really capitalism infected by the shareholder-theory-of-value and fictionalization pursued by really smart and rational people focused on their personal self-interest.

> That's one factor, sure. Another factor is the widespread rejection of mainstream science and consensus reality in favor of conspiracy theories that feed into populism and authoritarianism.

I think you (and Sagan) are getting the causality backwards. Unrestrained capitalism doesn't serve people, it serves money. "Widespread rejection of mainstream science and consensus reality in favor of conspiracy theories that feed into populism and authoritarianism" is a reaction to an economic system that doesn't serve the common person and is very resistant to change.

Can you explain what it means for capitalism to "serve money"? That sounds exactly backwards to me; money serves capitalism, that is, it is the breath expelled when people speak the language of prices to understand each others' values.

I think it's also worth dilating on this notion of "unrestrained capitalism". Capitalism is after all a product of restraints, namely the enforcement of property, contracts, and the validity of money.

> Can you explain what it means for capitalism to "serve money"? That sounds exactly backwards to me; money serves capitalism, that is, it is the breath expelled when people speak the language of prices to understand each others' values.

Capitalism doesn't work to satisfy the wants and needs of the people in a society, generally. It works to satisfy the wants and needs of the people who have money, in proportion to the amount of money they have. If you don't have money but need something, Capitalism says "kindly FOAD." If you desperately need something, but a rich guy kinda-sorta wants it, rich guy gets it if he's willing to pay more.

So as inequality increases and wealth gets concentrated, a capitalist ceremony (without more restraints that we have) will increasingly neglect the needs of a large fraction of the people in society.

A lot of capitalism apologists assert capitalism is there to meet people's needs, generally (usually just lazily generalizing from US vs. USSR circa 1980), but that's only true under certain conditions which are not guaranteed. That goal is not part of its programming.

> If you desperately need something, but a rich guy kinda-sorta wants it, rich guy gets it if he's willing to pay more.

I share this concern about access to scarce goods, though I'm not sure what these scarcity catastrophes look like in practice. To generalize your example, if there is some scarce resource, at most some number N of the wealthiest demanders (which can include corporations such as unions or communes, not just individuals) can access it. I certainly agree that this is a failing of a capitalism, but it's not clear to me how you would propose adjusting it's tenets to recover these drawbacks, and at what additional cost. Like, if the issue is we want to ensure everyone can get what they need to survive, I imagine you can't allow buyers and sellers to negotiate prices, there has to be some neutral third party to do this. And if this modification to prices disincentivizes extraction, production, or delivery of these goods how you would force people to do those jobs.

I hope this doesn't sound like a strawman, I'm just honestly unclear on what should replace what are seemingly basic and natural rights, namely property, physical autonomy, contracts, whatever. I won't pretend that in e.g. the US these rights haven't been abridged whilst the sky remains suspended above us, but my imagination fails me on the question what it looks like when we shave away more of those rights, versus restoring them. Though I'd also imagine that your policy prescriptions would probably include both abridgements and restorations of these rights, so don't let me speak for you.

> A lot of capitalism apologists assert capitalism is there to meet people's needs,

An apologist here. "Capitalism" is a legion - a near continuum of systems - some of them can meet people's needs quite well.

> but that's only true under certain conditions which are not guaranteed. That goal is not part of its programming.

It's not an intrinsic part of its popular tradition but there's noting preventing us from adding it to the program in some sensible manner. The lack of guarantees isn't mandatory either, such can be added within the framework of capitalism.