Starbucks Communism： Consumerism & Austerity in Communism and Capitalism
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Summary
Candace and Simone talk about the differences between modern consumerism and communism, and how they came to be, and why we should be worried about them. They also talk about how consumerism has changed since the founding of Starbucks, and what it means to be a consumerist communist.
Transcript
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You and I, even though it may seem an anathema to people, we promote both capitalism and austerity.
00:00:09.980
It is because capitalist systems are just more efficient than other systems.
00:00:17.460
It isn't because we assign any sort of like theological or moral value to capitalism.
00:00:21.880
And as to why we promote austerity, it is for the same reason.
00:00:25.640
Psychologically and effectiveness wise as an individual, it promotes those things.
00:00:31.280
Communist systems, historically speaking, for obvious reasons, have always glorified austerity.
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If you want to win contest, your mind must be hard and joyless like a Russian turnip.
00:00:45.860
And this made sense if you're actually trying to operate at any level economically functioning communist system.
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So you have gotten this totally unique to modern times combination of communism and consumerism.
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Starbucks communism, I guess we should call it.
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It's communism, but with polyamory and orgies and in constant self-affirmation.
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I am so excited to be here with you pushing through another pregnancy.
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And I want to talk about something here because it's something that I was thinking about that
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is just so fascinating because I was thinking about us pushing austerity, which we often push
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on our podcast, you know, austerity in your lifestyle.
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I recognize I, I'm like a robot from a Futurama.
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You've been up all night not drinking, haven't you?
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If not for yourself, then for the people who love you.
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Like if you look at your 23andMe, you're extremely European.
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Your people have lived off beer as their primary like nutritional water source.
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So people may not know this and we should actually elevate this point that she's making
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During parts of European history, because especially after we began to urbanize, because the water
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supplies became toxic often and you couldn't drink from them, the only thing that you could
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be almost certain did not, wasn't going to get you sick was alcohol.
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Well, that Coors Light, but watered down alcohol specifically because they would water down
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Like wine in, for example, Athens, when you hear about them drinking wine all the time.
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And we know this because they called like the Macedonians barbarians for not watering down
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They were like those maniacs, drink wine, spray.
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And it was actually the same with beer in a historic context.
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It was mostly meant to remove the microbes from it, but they consumed prodigious amounts.
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Yeah, I'd actually say though, people give you shit for drinking beer flavored water, but
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in the end, beer flavored water, just like furries, is the most traditional.
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I'm too pregnant for this, as Candace Owens famously said.
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I mean, on the topic of austerity, we often talk about austerity, and it is actually pretty
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rare these days for people to think about the combination of austerity and capitalism
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Historically, austerity was more associated with the communist system, whereas consumerism
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was associated with, I call it consumerism slash hedonism, was associated with the capitalist
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Well, and I would say, you can tell me I'm totally off base here, but it occurred to me,
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even when you look, and we're talking, you know, blur your eyes here, cross your eyes
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a little bit, but when you compare historical cities like Athens versus Sparta, or, you know,
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kingdoms essentially, Sparta was, you know, the more communist kind of place.
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And it was definitely way more austere in comparison, you know, Athenians were these
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effete, wealthy, you know, high class differentiation groups.
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So let's talk about why this is the case, first of all, because this is, I mean, if you are
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trying to functionally implement capitalism and you want to promise people something to
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get them to go along with the system that leads to a level of inequality that you don't
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get within communist systems, you promise them that even the poorest will have a better
00:05:06.080
life or even like the, like, let's say lower third will have a better life than your average
00:05:14.740
Also, when people historically have been implementing communist systems that are meant to practically
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work, well, you need to get them to be austere for the system to produce enough goods.
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You need to elevate austerity as a value system.
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One is, is that today the communists don't actually plan to implement their system or are not
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And so now you've gotten this weird mix of communism plus consumerism slash hedonism,
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which in a historic communist concept is a complete historical anathema, which we're going
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to talk about in a second, but I'm going to take this box it up, put it aside.
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But first we're going to talk about the weird mix of capitalism and austerity, because you
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have seen this in a historic context and actually where you've seen this in a historic context,
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This was in the, so for people who aren't familiar with this, there's a famous book on
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To read the Wikipedia entry on this book, because its subjects are pretty important to this particular
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discussion, the Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism is considered a founding text
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in economic sociology and a milestone contribution to sociological thought in general.
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In the book, Weber wrote that capitalism in Northern Europe evolved when the Protestant,
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particularly Calvinist ethic, influenced large numbers of people to developing their own
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enterprises and engaging in trade and the accumulation of wealth for investment.
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To make a quick quote from the book that will help you understand how the iteration of Christianity
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that the book describes here aligns very, very closely with Simone and mine's own view of
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He that can earn 10 shillings a day by his labor and goes abroad or sits idle one half
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of that day, though he spends but six pence during his diversion or idleness, ought not to
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reckon that the only expense he has really spent or thrown away to be five shillings.
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Remember that money is the prolific generating nature.
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Money can beget money and its offspring can beget more and so on.
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Five shillings turned is six, turned again is seven, and three piece, and so on, till it becomes
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The more there is of it, the more it produces every turning, so that the profits rise quicker
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He that kills a breeding sow destroys all her offspring to the thousandth generation.
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He that murders a crone destroys all that it might have produced, even scores of pounds.
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We call ourselves secular Calvinists, but it's important to note that our value set is actually
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very similar to the historic Calvinist value set, and Calvinists are often seen as inventing
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modern capitalism because they did so under the context of austerity, which is to say you
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have a free market, but not just a free market, but a free market where you reinvest your profits
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in increasing productivity of the system, which was not done under non-Calvinist early historical
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So I need to give a bit of a history lesson here so people understand why this happened
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So for people who don't know, America was the majority-
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A majority Calvinist country, at least among its white residents, when it was founded, I think
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it was like 61% in one of the things I saw from the Heritage Report.
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So this is something that's like, well, no, a lot of people don't seem to know this.
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I think it was one of the minority beliefs or one of a few beliefs.
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It was one of a few beliefs that came together, but it was by far the dominant in colonial America.
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Well, it held the belief in a kind of prosperity doctrine, which was to say, if God wanted to
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show you that you were meant for heaven, he would reward you with success in your career,
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However, there's a big caveat that makes it very different from the modern prosperity doctrine.
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Spending any of that success on yourself proved that he didn't actually favor you.
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It proved that he tested you with that money and you failed.
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So you were supposed to make lots of money, but you weren't allowed to spend it on self-aggrandizement.
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You resist temptation. And only the most powerful can resist the amount of temptation you get from great wealth, right?
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Yes. And this temptation came in many forms. You were supposed to resist any form of overstimulation.
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This included dancing, but also any sort of food that excited the mind or something like that.
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So they would often eat. This is where Kellogg actually came from in this early whatever movement, right?
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Where it was like, we need to make a cereal that is the most boring cereal in the world for people to eat,
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because we don't want them to be overexcited by too many flavors.
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And that's a whole different thing we can get into.
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But the idea was, is that you would eat very plain food.
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And very importantly, you would not donate to charities.
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Because charities were seen as a form of self-aggrandizement, because, you know, whether it's a church or anything else.
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Because keep in mind, Calvinist churches, anyone who's been to the traditional Calvinist churches,
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Any form of aggrandizement was seen as a idolatry, so you wouldn't have that.
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So there was really nothing to donate to, right?
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So what did the people do with all the money that their entire lives were dedicated to earning?
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You know, they weren't allowed to have any fun.
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And success in work was the sign of a gift of God, but you weren't allowed to spend it on yourself.
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And they reinvested it into starting new companies.
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And that creates scientific advancement, amazing infrastructure, really cool things, right?
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Well, it ended up creating a hyper-charged, ultra-capitalist early economy.
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And for people who are unfamiliar with the Calvinist trope of this period,
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Ebenezer Scrooge was the Calvinist trope of this period.
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If you read the book, you know, when they talk about him,
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He kept all of his, he didn't even keep full candles on in his house all the time
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And he wouldn't give away money to charities or family members.
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I often joke that Ebenezer Scrooge is for the American Calvinist value system,
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So people who don't know what corrective grape is, it's like, oh, that person's a lesbian.
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But if some, if they just had sex with a man, then they'd realize how great it was.
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And so this is for this, this, what I'd consider a more Catholic view toward Wells is to say,
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well, if he just gave it to the poor, he'd understand how great he would feel.
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But Ebenezer Scrooge was not keeping the money for himself.
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It is made clear in the story that he actually lives incredibly frugally.
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And that, that is, you know, with the end goal of this traditional Calvinist system.
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Anyway, also Ebenezer is one of the most Calvinist names ever.
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It would be like calling a character like, you know, Noah Greenberg or something.
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You know, it's like, in fact, in the, in the guide to Puritan spotting,
00:12:23.880
that a Star Slate Codex, Scott Alexander wrote, do they have a relative with the name Ebenezer
00:12:30.680
But anyway, you got to go back to the story here.
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So in early America, you had a combination of capitalism and austerity as a value system.
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And it led to an explosion of economic and cultural potential.
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Because surprise, surprise, people didn't like to stay in this system.
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Systems that urge this level of personal austerity and industry in combination do not do a good job
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of maintaining adherence intergenerationally, especially given how pro-science the value
00:13:02.680
system was in a historic context, which led to it secularizing about a generation before
00:13:09.620
So it was like more Jewy than Jews, which, which people often accuse the Calvinists of being
00:13:13.920
because they were very tight with the Jews, you know, even to like, I'm going through my
00:13:17.700
own family history and just again and again, we see our family being very close with Jews
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and Catholics, which in our community was seen as quite a bad thing.
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Like that was one of the reasons we were fighting the Klan so much as it's actually interesting
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because I was reading some family documents is, is when they were fighting the Klan, the
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justification, at least if you're going two generations back and so multiple generations
00:13:42.560
We need to get back to topic here, which is very interesting from the whole communist perspective.
00:13:46.900
You and I, even though it may seem an anathema to people, we promote both capitalism and
00:13:57.060
It is because capitalist systems, systems in which you allow independent things to compete
00:14:02.600
against each other, are just more efficient than other systems.
00:14:08.380
It isn't because we assign any sort of like theological or moral value to capitalism.
00:14:12.720
It is just the better working of systems for almost any goal.
00:14:17.420
And as to why we promote austerity, it is for the same reason.
00:14:21.140
Psychologically and effectiveness wise as an individual, it promotes those things.
00:14:29.300
I mean, do you have thoughts on this further before we go into the communist side of things?
00:14:35.900
I think that when most people think about capitalism, at least when I think about what I was taught
00:14:41.200
about capitalism as a kid, I think inequality, I think haves and have-nots, and I think rampant
00:14:50.160
When you're right, I mean, the type of capitalism that gets us excited and the type of capitalism
00:14:54.820
that we see being undertaken by at least many of the business leaders we admire most is definitely
00:15:03.120
this Calvinist form of, this is about building something bigger.
00:15:10.700
Well, it's a capitalist system that tempts the best in that system.
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The smartest and hardest work ethic in most industry people.
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Yeah, well, you can argue that capitalism is treated in our and a general Calvinist framework
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It's important to know because it tells you if you're doing well or not, right?
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Like if something generally feels good and is not painful, it's probably a sign that you're
00:15:41.560
not hurting your body, at least depending on the factors.
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But your job is to rise above that thing, be it in an emotion or money.
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And accept it as a signal, but not let it run your life, right?
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Capitalism is a system within this mindset to test the most industrious with the most temptation.
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So that they can prove their worthiness as the most industrious through not succumbing to that
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temptation and redeploying that capital to improving society's overall efficacy and efficiency,
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which is very different from the way we view capitalism often in a modern context, which
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is that it tests the individual and then rewards them with hedonism.
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Sorry, getting close to the birth year right now.
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So you're going through a lot, which I appreciate.
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You know, you're still out there creating these videos despite the pain you're going through.
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And that's the type of austerity that I genuinely admire and will make my children better than
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Maybe they won't succumb to this in the same way I have.
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Communist systems, historically speaking, for obvious reasons, have always glorified austerity.
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If you look at the communist propaganda, the perfect communist was the man who didn't take
00:17:08.580
all of their rations, who didn't take all of their luxuries that was offered by the state.
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He would eat his turnips raw, you know, and that was his favorite food was raw turnips because,
00:17:19.400
you know, that's the easiest to produce source of calories, right?
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He showed that he didn't succumb to the consumerism that was seen as the core temptation that the
00:17:28.080
bourgeoisie would use to try to bring him over.
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If you want to win contest, your mind must be hard and joyless like Russian turnip.
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I hear it's awful, but if you don't like it, we'll just throw it out.
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Your mom's enthusiastic spending is exactly what Jesus had in mind when he invented capitalism.
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And this made sense if you're actually trying to operate at any level economically functioning
00:18:06.740
But the new communists aren't like this because they don't actually have real aspirations of
00:18:14.420
They're mostly just complaining about the system they're in.
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Like, they haven't thought through the consequences of what if I succeed with this message I'm
00:18:28.720
And so you have gotten this totally unique to modern times combination of communism and
00:18:37.400
Where the communists are told you have the wealth so you can afford your iPhones and Starbucks.
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In your communist system, you're still getting Apple products, of course.
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You're still getting your fashionable, funky, niche subculture brands instead of having to
00:19:01.660
dress in like, you know, rice sacks, basically, because they're using this to lure people in
00:19:10.780
to what has drifted from modern communism is now more like a cult because it's not really
00:19:14.360
meant to work as an economic and political system.
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It's meant just to convert and to tempt people.
00:19:20.340
Yeah, it's so funny because, yeah, there is this vision of communism that I feel like I
00:19:25.940
kind of grew up with, with the Cold War, which is people making immense sacrifices for their
00:19:33.420
nation and living very uncomfortable lives in service of a larger vision.
00:19:38.100
Yet now everyone I know who has a Marxist bent is more arguing that they shouldn't have to work
00:19:47.900
and they should be given their fair share of resources.
00:19:53.300
And it's not about, well, I want to contribute.
00:19:56.980
I'm going to take less than I need and give more, which is really wild.
00:20:01.580
So they're basically arguing that the UBI was in a capitalist economy is really what they're arguing for.
00:20:07.860
But I mean, where did we go off the rails here?
00:20:12.900
Old communist systems were designed to work, not just designed to be popular.
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New capitalist systems are just designed to be popular.
00:20:21.480
And I should point out that we have moved so far that, that to be a communist these days,
00:20:29.200
I mean, I think we're watching a lot of CHOP slash CHAZ videos recently, you know,
00:20:32.960
the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone or District or whatever you want to call it.
00:20:35.960
And it is the, and we might do a full video on this, the perfect representation of why communism doesn't work.
00:20:44.960
Because the moment you begin to implement true communism, you know, communists will always say,
00:20:58.520
You know, they tried originally to implement real communism in the USSR.
00:21:02.940
They tried to implement real communism in CHOP.
00:21:06.060
But the moment they do, because it has no standing military, right?
00:21:11.840
It's immediately taken over by a warlord, you know, Razz Simone in the case of CHOP.
00:21:17.620
And then it's immediately taken over by warring factions that lead to violence on the street
00:21:22.760
with people trying to take resources from other people.
00:21:25.060
Because, quote unquote, real communism, as they define it, is a hierarchy-less society.
00:21:31.920
Which, unfortunately, means you do not have people in positions to create the structured systems you need
00:21:41.040
to prevent bad actors from manipulating the system to their advantage.
00:21:45.920
And this is why, whenever people try to create real communism,
00:21:50.100
it always ends up being taken over by bad actors who say,
00:21:57.280
oh, well, some people are more important than others.
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Some, you know, economic systems are more important than others.
00:22:02.680
And they're like, come on, this doesn't happen every time.
00:22:05.640
It's like, okay, first of all, it literally does happen every time.
00:22:08.440
You can't even keep a Reddit thread without this happening.
00:22:12.080
You know, look at what happened with our anti-work, right?
00:22:16.100
Where this monster ends up taking over and speaking on behalf of the community.
00:22:21.840
You know, the community is like, how could you do that to us?
00:22:24.260
And it's like, the moment these people get the ounce of power, they take it and run with it.
00:22:30.440
Because, you know, you're not able to create systems where people don't abuse the power
00:22:39.880
What the far left in the United States is fighting for,
00:22:42.040
they've already included a racial hierarchy in their ideology.
00:22:47.360
Like, they've gone full, like, not-so-communism already.
00:22:55.260
If you look at CHOP, they did things like put signs in the community garden
00:23:01.800
They did things like, you can watch speeches from there where they said,
00:23:05.180
okay, everyone in this audience has to give $10 to a black person in the crowd.
00:23:14.080
And like always happens, whether it's a Nazi or a communist system,
00:23:19.500
the races that they put at the bottom of the hierarchy,
00:23:22.080
like, you know, there was that productive farmer ethnic group within the Soviet Union.
00:23:30.420
Because an economically productive group must be demonized by the communist system.
00:23:35.200
In the same way that the Nazis demonized the Jews for making more money,
00:23:38.940
or the progressives demonized white males for making more money and contributing more to the economy.
00:23:43.520
They need to demonize the individuals who contribute the most to the economy.
00:23:51.640
It's how they recruit people, and it's how they endear themselves to the individuals they've recruited.
00:23:55.820
And yeah, it is scary to me that we are getting a communist system that is somehow literally worse
00:24:06.060
than any communist system that's ever been attempted before.
00:24:09.160
It's communism, but with polyamory and orgies and constant self-affirmation.
00:24:15.680
It's where the problem is, because I don't care about the orgies.
00:24:32.260
They take whichever groups they see as being in power, and they treat them as a labor class.
00:24:36.580
I mean, yeah, but that doesn't work, and then it falls apart.
00:24:44.380
I mean, yeah, it doesn't necessarily fall apart.
00:24:47.140
I mean, slavery, you mentioned Spartan as a communist system, and it was.
00:24:50.160
It was this communist system among the ethnic group that was considered human, and then
00:24:58.540
That's what you have within the progressive movement today, and that's really what they're
00:25:04.560
And I just, the white males who are fighting for this, or the white females, or the black
00:25:11.860
males, like anyone who is either male or white or cis who is fighting for the system and doesn't
00:25:17.660
understand that they are meant to be the helix class in this system, is incredibly stupid.
00:25:23.580
They are signaling this to you as loudly and clearly as they can.
00:25:34.660
And you will have everything taken from you, and everyone who thinks or looks or has the same
00:25:47.400
But yeah, that's, I think it's important at least to highlight that the Marxism being sold
00:25:53.620
to people today is not, from my understanding, what was supposed to be, which is interesting.
00:26:02.860
No, I know, it's, it's, it's, it's, I mean, you could say it's different from historic Marxism,
00:26:09.300
It's the way Marxism always turns out when implemented.
00:26:15.740
The real communism has never been tried, TM thing.
00:26:21.940
It's like, what do you think that literally every attempt at implementing a communist system,
00:26:26.820
even chop, even our anti-work was a bad acting, like, like was just all bad actors.
00:26:36.260
As we say in our book, it's like trying to build an upside down pyramid.
00:26:40.240
It's an intrinsically unstable structure that collapses into the same shape.
00:26:45.300
Every time you do it, you are building an unstable governing structure.
00:26:50.040
But what's worse is you are building it extra unstable because you are including within communism,
00:27:03.400
And so I think that if we can build a system, what's really interesting about this is the
00:27:08.240
communists were not wrong about the uplifting of austerity as a cultural value system, right?
00:27:14.160
Where people can earn cultural points and achieve higher cultural status through being more austere.
00:27:22.680
I think when you combine, that's what the communist got saying was right.
00:27:27.260
When you can combine capitalism with austerity, that's the perfect economic system.
00:27:32.640
Whereas the perfect evil cultural system is communism plus consumerism slash hedonism.
00:27:40.520
And Starbucks communism, I guess we should call it.
00:27:50.420
You like Starbucks communism more or Apple communism?
00:27:53.460
And, you know, they've been made fun of this for a long time.
00:27:59.500
Like, how can you be communist and have your Starbucks cup, right?
00:28:02.360
But I think that that was because people fundamentally misunderstood that these individuals were actually the perfect communists from their value set.
00:28:08.860
Because communism's goal for these individuals is not to distribute equality across society.
00:28:15.460
It's to distribute people like them the things they want, which includes not working.
00:28:20.820
But the core difference between, in reality, a communist economic system and a capitalist economic system is in a capitalist economic system, you go to work because they'll pay you.
00:28:31.400
And in a communist system, you go to work because if you don't, they'll shoot you.
00:28:35.100
And that's going to be just as true now as it was historically.
00:28:43.440
But if you're a total drain on the economic system, the AI has no more use for you than the other humans in that system, okay?
00:28:50.820
Well, I mean, people would argue, of course, that AI would be programmed in this case to always take care of people and just give them who they want.
00:29:03.420
You say, who's creating this AI that's going to care about you?
00:29:14.540
Within a system, people don't care intrinsically about the economically unproductive because they're not relevant to the health of the system.
00:29:22.340
And people are like, well, there's enough of us who want this stuff.
00:29:31.120
And so often people are like, why do you focus so much on economic productivity of groups?
00:29:37.620
And it's because groups without economic productivity do not have the power to push other groups to do things or to resist more economically productive groups when those groups want them to do something.
00:29:51.780
You can say, well, there's a lot of us, but it doesn't matter that there's a lot of you if you can't go to war, if you can't organize.
00:30:03.540
And I think, you know, we should be at a point by now in the American system that you should know just because you have a lot of people who will vote for something.
00:30:14.060
Unless it's the overwhelming plurality, which you don't have, that doesn't mean what you want will come to pass.
00:30:21.060
You have been convinced by your own ideology that your opinions and human dignity matter to other people.
00:30:32.000
When it is clear and plain to see when we look at the world today that they just don't.
00:30:44.740
What matters to other people is your ability to produce things that they want.
00:30:50.520
And if you can't do that, i.e. industry, economic productivity, then you have no power to influence the opinions of others.
00:30:59.740
This is going to become increasingly important and clear as AI replaces more and more of the population in terms of its productivity.
00:31:11.280
Yeah, well, and that's, I mean, that's why in the end, I'm not terribly worried about a lot of these ideologies.
00:31:19.500
I mean, okay, they should, I should be terribly worried because they can cause immense amount of damage while they play out.
00:31:27.240
But over the long run, there's just no way that they can sustainably exist because if you don't create value, if you don't advance human society, if you don't use the resources that you have well and conserve them and make the most of them and innovate better ways and more efficient ways to do things and empower people to do that and figure it out on their own, then you're going to fail.
00:31:48.400
So these systems are destined to fail, and that should give me comfort, but I guess I should also be very concerned about.
00:31:55.040
Well, I mean, just hope that existentially that none of our descendants ever end up in a system that's beginning to turn communist.
00:32:01.620
And that we teach our kids to leave the U.S. if it's moving in that direction, because people will die.
00:32:09.960
Yeah, that's, that's the part I'm not thinking about enough, and I should probably be planning around and worrying about a whole lot more.
00:32:16.480
Yeah, you could read more books about the killing fields, you could read more books about the revolution in Cuba, you could read more books about the revolution in Russia.
00:32:23.680
There's plenty of books, I just think that you would find them too disturbing, because I know you react so emotionally.
00:32:28.480
Especially if, yeah, children or babies are hurt, which obviously, I'm sure they were, so let's just not.
00:32:34.660
Yeah, I don't want to go over the horrifying things that happen in Cuba.
00:32:44.960
If people want to read about horrifying things happening to children, read the Killing Fields.
00:32:49.440
A great book about, I think, pretty generic communism, and this is agro-communism, but it's horrifying, horrifying.
00:32:58.480
The Red Scarf Girl is also a pretty girl, but not quite as horrifying.
00:33:14.240
All right, is this the right order, or do I move myself?
00:33:29.840
Well, you won't be soon, and then you'll be sad about it, because I know how you are.
00:33:34.760
After Titan was born, I was like, you know what?
00:33:36.900
I'm not sad about being pregnant anymore at this point.
00:33:41.360
Well, then I am happy you're in pain, because I remember how sad you got after the first couple pregnancies.
00:33:46.220
Yeah, well, that's because both of our boys were like, I mean, Torsten was like five pounds, Octavian was seven, and we had Titan at almost nine pounds, and I'm pretty sure industry is going to be over nine.
00:34:07.260
I love you to death, Simone, and you will survive.
00:34:12.320
You'll make it through, but I'm going to start.