Without corporations to make us stuff, what exactly are we going to do?

Question

As you know, corporations may be money hungry, but at least they provide us with products that keep us from being extremely bored. Without corporations, no ISPs, without ISPs, no internet, without internet, no Facebook or Twitter or YouTube or Xbox Live or PSN. Even with internet still around, there would be no corporations to provide us with the last things I mentioned. The internet is just one instance of my point. Corporations make television shows and provide cable for the television. Corporations make fashion clothes. Corporations make toys. Corporations make music. Corporations make pretty much anything the stateless can, but on a faster and more efficient scale. How do anarchists expect today's general public to give up such things? What will we be doing most of the time? Maintaining the nation? I sort of see that as a downgrade seeing as how that is already taken care of now, and by people who do it for money, where as we'll be doing it to have a decent place to live because we don't have anyone to do it for us, like the state. If we're not doing that, then what are we doing? Sitting around a campfire in our "communities" singing koombayah? Really? I understand that we're enslaved by corporations and their products to believe that they are good, but to be honest I kinda prefer that over living in the boring bloody hell I just described. As you can tell, I'm not too fond of the overrated anarcho-socialism.

Comments

Read "Society of the Spectacle".

Or something that lays out the ways in which the entertainment industry is just a way of distracting people from the unending alienation and exhaustion created by trying to survive under capitalism.

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as i understand it, RB, this anonymous doesn't care that it's just distraction because the distractions work for them.

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I feel you. I guess I just read it as assuming that those methods of distraction are a desirable thing for all people - or possibly the /only/ desirable thing for people.

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no matter how trolly this questioner intended to be, the question continues to fascinate me: an acceptance of "slavery" and brain washing combined with a desire to maintain the status quo. seems like there is a lot in that assessment that we could learn from...

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In my ideal society, decentralized planning would take care of this. After a society is set up and the needs are met, we can worry about our creature comforts. The thing is, they would be of a higher quality. The resources to make these things would be socially owned, and the community would decide what to do. See, without the profit motive people would be free to create the best products that we can have. The community would decide on what to produce. Eventually, people would be free to experiment and tinker to make the device/thing/whatever possible. Then the distribution method would be decided socially controlled so these items would be readily accessible to the public. So without this competition, instead autonomy, people would be free to use these resources to their greatest extent freely and autonomously, leading to the best quality item possible. So don't you worry about your creature comforts my friend, for they would be infinitely superior.

Answer 1

if you're not dissatisfied with the world as it is, then anarchy is not for you.
if you think that "entertainment" as currently defined is the best that can exist, then anarchy is not for you.
if you think that "more and faster" is more important than unique, context appropriate, non-alienated, environmentally appropriate, and flexible then anarchy is not for you.
if you think that the lives of people before corporations were horrible (or at least worse than what we have now), then anarchy is not for you.
if you think that corporations do near as much to encourage creativity and flexibility and fun as they do to DIScourage it, then there are probably some books you could read or some conversations you could have with people who have worked in them.
the idea that "maintaining the nation" is something that anarchists would do points to a significant level of confusion on your part.

hardly anyone (maybe no one) on this site would describe themselves as an anarchist-socialist, so not sure what your last point is in reference to.

ps: your definition of efficient is mind-boggling. do you have any idea of the phenomenal waste that happens - do you know anything about the floating islands of garbage? the filling up of landfills? the toxins created by garbage furnaces?
this whole post is amazing to me. thank you very much for the reality slap. bracing.

Comments

i like this answer, and it's funny that the OPer didn't put a name to their scribblings.