This is great work. Thank you! I will read the prior article next. I particularly loved this list: “Voluntary exchange” conveniently ignores that the majority of exchanges are driven by structural coercion—people “voluntarily” sell labor because the alternative is homelessness. / “Growth” is framed as social progress, even though, in physical terms, perpetual growth is thermodynamically impossible.
“Rationality” is treated as an inherent human trait, even as behavioral science repeatedly shows humans do not behave according to economic rationality.
“Competition” is elevated as a moral and structural necessity, but the endgame of competition—monopolization—is conveniently swept aside.
“Freedom” is redefined as the freedom of capital, not the freedom of people."
Hey, governments suck. They're all top down, power over structures. I never consented to be RULED over. Governments exist to protect CAPITAL and the ruling class.
This is a brilliant account of how capitalist ideology operates. Through early and continuous social conditioning, beginning in childhood, individuals internalize a set of thoughts that form a "fixed, insulated lexicon." These "pre-loaded packages of meaning" are unquestionable, and function like gravitational centers: they pull other ideas, arguments, and perceptions into their orbit, producing a rigid mental architecture and, ultimately, a false identity.
The only point I would add is that this alien structure of the human mind is created and continually reinforced by fear—by the ever-present threat of punishment, deprivation, and death. This fear is not merely psychological but is rooted in the material structure of capitalism itself: an economic system that monopolizes the means of satisfying vital needs and subordinates them to profit. If a person does not serve profit, they face suffering, or, in many cases, slow or sudden death.
The fact that our survival depends on this system leads to a psychological dependence which in turn leads to an identity. A psychological defense known as delusion kicks in when this identity is challenged to avoid an identity crisis. There is no arguing with delusion.
And more to your point, when survival amd well being are on the line fear can easily be used to push the buttons of the amygdala. Diverting energy from our pre frontal cortex, which is strongly linked to critical thinking and social skills, to the more primal amygdala, which processes emotions. Fear is extremely useful to keep people asleep.
You have presented a second treatise. I have read it. I have applied my method to it. I will now do you the courtesy—the only genuine courtesy possible between minds—of taking your arguments seriously. Not as social gestures, not as tribal signals, but as propositions to be validated or invalidated against reality. I will begin by cataloging your specific grievances, your diagnosed problems. I will grant you, for the sake of this dissection, what you appear to demand: that your descriptions are offered in good faith. I will be epistemically generous. I will be stunned by what I find.
You begin with a diagnosis. The problem, you state, is not intellectual disagreement but a structural one. Thought is built from language, and your opponents—the pro-capitalist cultists—operate with a “fixed, insulated lexicon.” This lexicon is a “pre-loaded package of meanings” treated as inviolable. These meanings are “fused with identity,” leaving “no elasticity” in conversation. The terms of market economics—“voluntary exchange,” “market efficiency,” “growth”—are not treated as testable empirical claims but as axioms, “eternal facts.” As a result, challenging a symbol is heard as an attack on the person. This, you declare, is “the core of capitalist indoctrination: a symbolic lexicon that overrides the capacity for empirical interpretation.”
You then elaborate the architecture of this alleged indoctrination. You speak of a “linguistic bait-and-switch”: “efficiency” meaning perfect conditions that don’t exist; “voluntary exchange” ignoring structural coercion; “growth” framed as progress despite thermodynamic limits; “rationality” asserted against behavioral science; “competition” elevated while its monopolistic endgame is ignored; “freedom” redefined as freedom for capital.
From this, you describe a “collapse of meaning.” When you critique “market efficiency,” they assume you don’t understand their meaning. When you point out the fiction of voluntariness under precarity, they conclude you “don’t know what voluntary means.” Discussions loop endlessly because you are not disagreeing about facts but about “symbolic authority.” They are defending a mental dictionary.
Next, you identify a “reversal of reality.” The fixed lexicon allows the ideology to “invert reality without triggering cognitive dissonance.” Competition is reframed as collaboration. War games, arms races, predatory pricing become “collaborative.” “Externalities” minimize ecological destruction as a bookkeeping error. “Innovation” becomes planned obsolescence. “Choice” becomes market fragmentation. Every term is “a linguistic device engineered to maintain ideological coherence.”
You argue this indoctrination is a “structural need, not an accident.” Capitalism “is uniquely dependent on misinterpreting its own consequences”: inequality reframed as merit, exploitation as opportunity, desperation as incentive, collapse as externality. If people interpreted these outcomes literally, capitalism “would lose legitimacy overnight.” The system requires a rigid symbolic system to override empirical interpretation. Capitalism becomes the “interpretive frame” that defines what is realistic, rational, and possible.
This leads to “hostility toward empirical scrutiny.” Real-world examples of market failure, monopoly, inequality, are met with reframing, blame of government, or outright denial. The symbolic lexicon “is not built to accommodate contradiction. It’s built to absorb it.” You point to monopolization; they claim it “isn’t real competition.” You show ecological costs; they claim the market “would” price it in under ideal conditions. Empirical realities “must be dismissed to preserve the sanctity of the symbolic system.”
Finally, you describe a “social reinforcement loop.” Market ideology is entwined with nationalism, American individualism, entrepreneurial mythology, masculine competitiveness, anti-government sentiment, and narratives of personal responsibility. Critiques are interpreted as personal attacks. The ideology punishes divergence with labels: “Marxist,” “hate freedom,” “anti-progress,” “class warfare.” These are “boundary-maintaining mechanisms.”
Underpinning it all is “the psychological comfort of simplified systems.” Capitalism offers “deceptively simple” equations: people respond to incentives, competition drives innovation, markets self-regulate. These claims survive because “they reduce complexity, not because they reflect reality.” They function like a religion, offering comforting narratives that feel explanatory even when empirically hollow.
This is your case. This is the phenomenon you have isolated, described, and condemned. I have summarized it as accurately as I can. I have not yet inserted my voice. I have merely held your claims up to the light, side-by-side.
A lot of these criticisms are not unique to capitalism. Subservience to those who have by those who don't for survival have been constant in any society using a system of trade, no matter the ideology defending at the time or place.
Take an ideology such as anarchism. The idea that hierarchies can be abolished but the system of trade in tact. It's inherently contradictory. The very act of trade implies "I scratch your back but only if you scratch mine in return" but the back scratches are resources/services we need to survive. If we need to trade in order to survive then by definition you must make yourself subservient to someone who has something you need. You are coerced to play this game, no matter it's version.
You can argue most of that in response to any ideology or belief system.
Reality needs to be wrapped in a metaphysical narrative, a frame of meaning and symbols, which by definition must be incomplete (there are some 8 billion iterations of it currently in circulation). And most of us treat our 'truth' as a castle which must be defended. It is quite literally the 'place' we reside...
The answer to your questions is generally yes, but they kind of miss the point here. You can't talk to people who are not vulnerable in the foundational understandings that support their conclusions. Market cultists have already pre-decided what their economic lexicon is and if you challenge it they can only say that you "do not understand economics." The realization is that you literally can't communicate with such minds when it comes to opening the door for true, social and economic progress or thought. They are not there to change anything. It's like trying to find reason in a faith based system in traditional religion. Inference works to a degree, and then all the doors shut.
Etymologically, philosophy is the love of wisdom, so the phrase "libertarian philosophers" is an oxymoron. These low-effort thinkers conflate socialism/communism with state/government, which is the polar opposite of wisdom. Working people don't need enforcement to enjoy the fruits of their labor. Only idle "owners" need it to steal the fruits of working people's labor and amass capital.
This is great work. Thank you! I will read the prior article next. I particularly loved this list: “Voluntary exchange” conveniently ignores that the majority of exchanges are driven by structural coercion—people “voluntarily” sell labor because the alternative is homelessness. / “Growth” is framed as social progress, even though, in physical terms, perpetual growth is thermodynamically impossible.
“Rationality” is treated as an inherent human trait, even as behavioral science repeatedly shows humans do not behave according to economic rationality.
“Competition” is elevated as a moral and structural necessity, but the endgame of competition—monopolization—is conveniently swept aside.
“Freedom” is redefined as the freedom of capital, not the freedom of people."
Hey, governments suck. They're all top down, power over structures. I never consented to be RULED over. Governments exist to protect CAPITAL and the ruling class.
This is a brilliant account of how capitalist ideology operates. Through early and continuous social conditioning, beginning in childhood, individuals internalize a set of thoughts that form a "fixed, insulated lexicon." These "pre-loaded packages of meaning" are unquestionable, and function like gravitational centers: they pull other ideas, arguments, and perceptions into their orbit, producing a rigid mental architecture and, ultimately, a false identity.
The only point I would add is that this alien structure of the human mind is created and continually reinforced by fear—by the ever-present threat of punishment, deprivation, and death. This fear is not merely psychological but is rooted in the material structure of capitalism itself: an economic system that monopolizes the means of satisfying vital needs and subordinates them to profit. If a person does not serve profit, they face suffering, or, in many cases, slow or sudden death.
The fact that our survival depends on this system leads to a psychological dependence which in turn leads to an identity. A psychological defense known as delusion kicks in when this identity is challenged to avoid an identity crisis. There is no arguing with delusion.
And more to your point, when survival amd well being are on the line fear can easily be used to push the buttons of the amygdala. Diverting energy from our pre frontal cortex, which is strongly linked to critical thinking and social skills, to the more primal amygdala, which processes emotions. Fear is extremely useful to keep people asleep.
Didn't know that part of the brain is call amygdala--thanks
Sorry, I provided the wrong link to my response. Here is the correct one: https://selfishjohn.substack.com/p/the-unwashed-capitalist-pig-laments?r=4d5gb5
Peter Joseph,
You have presented a second treatise. I have read it. I have applied my method to it. I will now do you the courtesy—the only genuine courtesy possible between minds—of taking your arguments seriously. Not as social gestures, not as tribal signals, but as propositions to be validated or invalidated against reality. I will begin by cataloging your specific grievances, your diagnosed problems. I will grant you, for the sake of this dissection, what you appear to demand: that your descriptions are offered in good faith. I will be epistemically generous. I will be stunned by what I find.
You begin with a diagnosis. The problem, you state, is not intellectual disagreement but a structural one. Thought is built from language, and your opponents—the pro-capitalist cultists—operate with a “fixed, insulated lexicon.” This lexicon is a “pre-loaded package of meanings” treated as inviolable. These meanings are “fused with identity,” leaving “no elasticity” in conversation. The terms of market economics—“voluntary exchange,” “market efficiency,” “growth”—are not treated as testable empirical claims but as axioms, “eternal facts.” As a result, challenging a symbol is heard as an attack on the person. This, you declare, is “the core of capitalist indoctrination: a symbolic lexicon that overrides the capacity for empirical interpretation.”
You then elaborate the architecture of this alleged indoctrination. You speak of a “linguistic bait-and-switch”: “efficiency” meaning perfect conditions that don’t exist; “voluntary exchange” ignoring structural coercion; “growth” framed as progress despite thermodynamic limits; “rationality” asserted against behavioral science; “competition” elevated while its monopolistic endgame is ignored; “freedom” redefined as freedom for capital.
From this, you describe a “collapse of meaning.” When you critique “market efficiency,” they assume you don’t understand their meaning. When you point out the fiction of voluntariness under precarity, they conclude you “don’t know what voluntary means.” Discussions loop endlessly because you are not disagreeing about facts but about “symbolic authority.” They are defending a mental dictionary.
Next, you identify a “reversal of reality.” The fixed lexicon allows the ideology to “invert reality without triggering cognitive dissonance.” Competition is reframed as collaboration. War games, arms races, predatory pricing become “collaborative.” “Externalities” minimize ecological destruction as a bookkeeping error. “Innovation” becomes planned obsolescence. “Choice” becomes market fragmentation. Every term is “a linguistic device engineered to maintain ideological coherence.”
You argue this indoctrination is a “structural need, not an accident.” Capitalism “is uniquely dependent on misinterpreting its own consequences”: inequality reframed as merit, exploitation as opportunity, desperation as incentive, collapse as externality. If people interpreted these outcomes literally, capitalism “would lose legitimacy overnight.” The system requires a rigid symbolic system to override empirical interpretation. Capitalism becomes the “interpretive frame” that defines what is realistic, rational, and possible.
This leads to “hostility toward empirical scrutiny.” Real-world examples of market failure, monopoly, inequality, are met with reframing, blame of government, or outright denial. The symbolic lexicon “is not built to accommodate contradiction. It’s built to absorb it.” You point to monopolization; they claim it “isn’t real competition.” You show ecological costs; they claim the market “would” price it in under ideal conditions. Empirical realities “must be dismissed to preserve the sanctity of the symbolic system.”
Finally, you describe a “social reinforcement loop.” Market ideology is entwined with nationalism, American individualism, entrepreneurial mythology, masculine competitiveness, anti-government sentiment, and narratives of personal responsibility. Critiques are interpreted as personal attacks. The ideology punishes divergence with labels: “Marxist,” “hate freedom,” “anti-progress,” “class warfare.” These are “boundary-maintaining mechanisms.”
Underpinning it all is “the psychological comfort of simplified systems.” Capitalism offers “deceptively simple” equations: people respond to incentives, competition drives innovation, markets self-regulate. These claims survive because “they reduce complexity, not because they reflect reality.” They function like a religion, offering comforting narratives that feel explanatory even when empirically hollow.
This is your case. This is the phenomenon you have isolated, described, and condemned. I have summarized it as accurately as I can. I have not yet inserted my voice. I have merely held your claims up to the light, side-by-side.
https://selfishjohn.substack.com/p/the-unwashed-capitalist-pig-laments?r=4d5gb5
A lot of these criticisms are not unique to capitalism. Subservience to those who have by those who don't for survival have been constant in any society using a system of trade, no matter the ideology defending at the time or place.
Take an ideology such as anarchism. The idea that hierarchies can be abolished but the system of trade in tact. It's inherently contradictory. The very act of trade implies "I scratch your back but only if you scratch mine in return" but the back scratches are resources/services we need to survive. If we need to trade in order to survive then by definition you must make yourself subservient to someone who has something you need. You are coerced to play this game, no matter it's version.
You can argue most of that in response to any ideology or belief system.
Reality needs to be wrapped in a metaphysical narrative, a frame of meaning and symbols, which by definition must be incomplete (there are some 8 billion iterations of it currently in circulation). And most of us treat our 'truth' as a castle which must be defended. It is quite literally the 'place' we reside...
Would addressing real-world vocabulary with real-world symbols be a start when it comes to engaging in meaningful conversations with people?
Would emphazising the difference between belonging and fitting in also help deconstruct the cognitive barriers of indoctrination?
Would the abstract arts help speaking for the audience in that manner?
The answer to your questions is generally yes, but they kind of miss the point here. You can't talk to people who are not vulnerable in the foundational understandings that support their conclusions. Market cultists have already pre-decided what their economic lexicon is and if you challenge it they can only say that you "do not understand economics." The realization is that you literally can't communicate with such minds when it comes to opening the door for true, social and economic progress or thought. They are not there to change anything. It's like trying to find reason in a faith based system in traditional religion. Inference works to a degree, and then all the doors shut.
Then I trust in you knowing what to do here.
When it's impossible to agree on the meaning of words, it's hard to debate anything really.
Etymologically, philosophy is the love of wisdom, so the phrase "libertarian philosophers" is an oxymoron. These low-effort thinkers conflate socialism/communism with state/government, which is the polar opposite of wisdom. Working people don't need enforcement to enjoy the fruits of their labor. Only idle "owners" need it to steal the fruits of working people's labor and amass capital.