Unproductive labor can be heavily subsidized in a financialized...
R.Сам 🦋🐏@Logo_Daedalus
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Mar 22, 2025
~4 min read
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Unproductive labor can be heavily subsidized in a financialized globe spanning empire as it is concommitant with an increased production of Veblen goods as a form of industrial sabotage. The Leisure Class enjoys employing unproductive slaves, to flex their ability to expend capital superfluously. Veblen describes sabotage as “the conscientious withdrawal of efficiency.” This is a technique of producing “luxury goods”— unproductive labor that could be automated away becomes valorized & enshrined as a “essential.”
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In a deindustrialized heavily financialized economy dominated by the sphere of circulation (FIRE), the proletariat becomes a minority compared to the dominance of unproductive classes. This is Sabotage, a conscious effort was made to sabotage the America proletariat, alongside campaigns of lumpenization, in the form of things like dumping CIA cocaine into the neighborhoods of declassified former proletarians.
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This is the correct understanding of class war. In the 1960s, you could pay for college with entry level proletarian wages, & also keep a roof over your head, & even support a family. Deindustrialization was not to increase efficiency, but to enlarge the “superprofits” extracted by a dominant sphere of circulation by pushing the sphere of production to the fringes of the Empire, where wages could be a fraction of what they were in the interior.
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The ideology of this regime will say the opposite: “This isn’t just coffee made by slaves (proletarians), this is Art, made superfluously inefficient, to preserve traditional/native coffee ways, & thus does not compete with automated coffee production. Enjoy Luxury Coffee today.”
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A prevailing part of this ideology is describing unproductive labor as “more humane” than productive labor. All factories in China are “sweatshops”— your iPhone is “made by slaves” but the marketing for your iPhone is made by “artists.”
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Luxury fashion for instance can “get away with” the profit margins of cocaine production because luxury fashion items are Veblen goods which are purchased explicitly to “flex” the purchaser’s ability to expend capital superfluously.
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“Recent reports revealed that Dior suppliers in Italy paid a mere 53 euros to assemble a men's accessory retailing more than 2500 euros.”
According to the prevailing ideology, that profit margin is “produced” by advertising/marketing/&c.
According to the prevailing ideology, that profit margin is “produced” by advertising/marketing/&c.
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You could buy a “bootleg” luxury fashion item made by the same producers, but this would defeat the whole point of veblen goods— the point is the inefficiency— the point is expending capital superfluously— the point is for it to be a “waste of money.”
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“Making it rain”— or the superfluous expenditure of money for nothing— is the most obvious means of emphasizing your dominant role in the economy— even more so “if you didn’t have to work for it.” Nothing expresses dominance like leaving an exorbitant tip for unproductive workers.
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One must imagine the slavemaster’s wife giving “the help” (unproductive servants) a set of gold earrings as a tip. “Oh these? They are nothing to me. Thank you for your service.”
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But if the slavemaster’s wife gave all the field hands (proletarians) a set of gold earrings— now you are threatening the viability of the plantation economy.
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So imagine — instead— you just keep the field hands separated by thousands of miles from your house slaves, & you reside in a nexus of purely unproductive rentiers, each with their own menial staff. This is America. You have massive concentrations of wealth surrounded by its “servicers” — & the proletariat is marginalized.
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Look at the retinue of the idle billionaire! The yoga instructor, the private security officer, the private driver, the golf instructor, the staff of the NGO charity tax avoidance scheme…
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& then imagine, if these unproductive servants of the sphere of circulation’s luxury expenditure on veblen goods— if they started hiring their own servants! Yes— the yoga instructor needs her Double Ristretto Venti Half-Soy Nonfat Decaf Organic Chocolate Brownie Iced Vanilla Double- Shot Gingerbread Frappuccino. She deserves it! A little bit of luxury!
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Because what says “I made it” like “treating yourself” with a purely superfluous expenditure?
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It never strikes anyone as odd— how much money is expended on the yoga instructor— to teach yoga— which can be freely done by anyone & learned with a free youtube video…
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This is what “trickle down economics” actually means. It doesn’t mean increased wages for proletarian labor— it means enlarging the pool of superfluous labor, by increasing the pool of superfluous wealth expended by the richest.
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In the 1970s, being a steelworker meant you were doomed. In the 1970s, becoming a yoga instructor meant you were primed to inherit a windfall from the superprofits rendered by deindustrialization.
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Paying for Yoga Instruction becomes a way of demonstrating your class— to cut that spending would indicate to your milieu that you’ve hit “hard times”— it might become rude to invite you to the charity auction, if you can’t afford superfluous expenditure…
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“Daughter, there’s no future in the steel factory, go to Los Angeles and start a luxury brand for yoga instruction. Some new gimmick to make it more expensive than the rest.”
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This is the new “American Dream”— having a “luxury brand.”
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The reason western marxists suck is because they don’t read Veblen. Veblen explains it all. & Hudson followed in his footsteps.
