i realize im a huge pile of contradictions

i hate money and capitalism and yet my brain spends almost all day thinking about pop culture media i like

a lot of the music i listen to and things i am interested in make a lot of people rich. i realize this is a contradiction. 

i dont really have a point to make here… just that… i guess its important to realize that this is kind of just how things are in the world right now, and i think that art is worth consuming even if we live in capitalism. getting rid of capitalism would allow a lot of art to flourish even more, so liking it now isn’t a bad thing in my opinion.

but its not the art aspect that is a contradiction, its the marketing and the distribution and the profit and the way that the artists dont see very much of that profit and all these kinds of things

and i know, i know, i know. i know that i’m a leftist and this shit is infuriating. nevertheless, i am interested in this stuff anyway, and i’ve even been getting into some korean groups recently, despite everything i know about the kpop industry. this is a contradiction. and that’s just…. how i am. i dont have to rationalize everything about myself nor can i. nor can anyone. we all have contradictions and double standards and hypocritical opinions. nobody’s perfect, nobody’s got completely amazingly 100% ethical praxis, especially when it comes to the things they enjoy in their downtime. in an ideal world, the things we enjoy wouldnt be tied to these capitalist things we hate, but… in any case, i’m anti-capitalist and i will definitely buy the new pokemon game if and when i can. and i know these things are contradictory… but… that’s life, i guess. 

Your post is at the heart of the problem for Millennial and GenZer Socialists and Leftists as we begin acting on our political beliefs.

We all instinctively know something is terribly wrong with our society. We're deeply unhappy with the highest rates of depression, suicide and mental illness more generally of any generation ever.

We're unhappy because Capitalism pushes us through propaganda from the time we were born to live a materialistic lifestyle. As every religion teaches us, materialism will always make us unhappy in the long run.

The things that make people truly happy; civic engagement, academic achievement, community, family; are all being steadily eroded through financialization and the commodification of every aspect of our lives as capital is increasingly running out of new places to expand to. The only way to increase profits that's left under neoliberal capitalism is by spreading into parts of our lives we would never consciously allow, or by raising prices substantially, or lastly by decreasing our traditionally middle-class lifestyles by eroding wages and, removing consumer protections, eliminating worker protections, benefits, job security, and retirement programs.

All if this piles on to the pressures we live, work, and study under. But still, all we have known for entire lives is this materialistic culture. We have the urge to buy the newest products even if we don't need them. We listen to the music from the artists we grew up loving, even if that music was designed and packaged to specifically grab our attention and we know it.

These contradictions go to the very heart of Capitalism. It's completely normal to be a victim of such contradictions, to notice them, and to feel uncomfortable with it.

What will matter most in the coming years as we seek political power and desire to reform global capitalism will be whether we can set aside our urges to have stuff and truly change the system, or if we just slightly reform capitalism and end up leaving Neoliberalism mostly intact.

It won't be easy to create a Socialist system, and that will be made even harder by the fact that we've spent our entire lives under Neoliberalism. We know nothing else. How to we change a system that's shaped all aspects of our lives, our ideas about family and community, and formed our every desire?

The future is uncertain, but it'll come down to our ability to distinguish between our true desires and what has been shaped by consumerism.

One company bought all the retail outlets for glasses, used that to force sales of all the eyewear companies and jacked up prices by as much as 1000%

If you wear glasses, you might have noticed that they’ve been getting steadily more expensive in recent years, no matter which brand you buy and no matter where you shop.

That’s because a giant-but-obscure company called Luxottica bought out Sunglass Hut and Lenscrafters, then used their dominance over the retail side of glasses to force virtually every eyewear brand to sell to them (Luxxotica owns or licenses Armani, Brooks Brothers, Burberry, Chanel, Coach, DKNY, Dolce & Gabbana, Michael Kors, Oakley, Oliver Peoples, Persol, Polo Ralph Lauren, Ray-Ban, Tiffany, Valentino, Vogue and Versace); and used that to buy out all the other eyewear retailers of any note (Luxottica owns Pearle Vision, Sears Optical, Sunglass Hut and Target Optical) and then also bought out insurers like Eyemed Vision Care and Essilor, the leading prescription lens/contact lens manufacturer.

Controlling the labs, insurers,  frame makers, and all the major retail outlets has allowed Luxottica to squeeze suppliers – frames are cheaper than ever to make, thanks to monopsony buying power with Prada-grade designer frames costing $15 to manufacture – while raising prices as much as 1000% relative to pre-acquisition pricing.

It’s even worse for lenses: a pair of prescription lenses that cost $1.50 to make sell for $800 in the USA.

LA Times columnist David Lazarus wrote a column about skyrocketing eyewear prices and was approached by Charles Dahan, who once owned one of the largest frames companies in America, Custom Optical, which supplied 20% of the frames sold at Lenscrafters prior to the Luxottica acquisition. Dahan describes how Luxottica cornered the horizontal and vertical markets for eyewear and pushed out or bought out every other company (Oakley refused to sell or lower prices, so Luxottica boycotted it from its retailers, forcing the company into such a precarious position that it Luxottica was able to buy it for a fraction of its peak book-value just a few years later).

This is a good example of how decades of far-right ideologically driven antitrust malpractice has hurt everyone. After all, glasses aren’t just a fashion item: they’re a necessity for people with poor vision, a prerequisite for driving, walking, cycling, reading, getting an education or doing your job.

Luxottica grew through acquisition, by buying up its competition. This was banned under classic antitrust law, until the Reagan years. This pattern has been repeated in many other domains: beer, whiskey, retail pharmacies, and so on. In every one of those domains, we are getting screwed, as are small businesspeople and the families they serve.

https://boingboing.net/2019/03/12/luxottica.html

We should all count our blessings we live under global capitalism and don't have the misfortune to deal with that awful monopolistic state enterprise system...