Why (Sexual) Capitalism Must Die, And How To Humanely Euthanize It (Updated Re-Post)

I have discussed before how that favorite evil brainchild of patriarchy, capitalism, is literally killing our Mother Earth as we speak, and is thus both ecocidal and ultimately suicidal since humanity is in fact part of Nature (despite frequent and stubborn protestations to the contrary).  And that the only way to humanely euthanize that vile system is to give it the one thing it cannot survive--ABUNDANCE--while harsh austerity measures of any kind (ecological or otherwise) will ultimately backfire in the end, leaving us permanently stuck in a very bad place while still ending up destroying ourselves along with our planet.  (That is, like futurist Walter Baltzley said, the best way to win a tug-of-war against a stronger opponent is to simply let go of the rope and let them fall down.)  But did you know that capitalism also has a sexual dimension as well?

Wait, what?  That's right--and it is one that would make Freud himself blush beet red.  So much so that capitalism should really be called "greed patriarchy", while patriarchy should really be called "lust capitalism" or "sexual capitalism".  Please allow me to explain:

• While financial rentier capitalism uses artificial scarcity of money, goods and services, etc. to control the masses, sexual capitalism uses artificial scarcity of sex (and sex substitutes) to do the same.
• Sexual capitalism, which is part and parcel of patriarchy, uses the "commodity model" of sexuality to make sex just artificially scarce enough for the conditions of the times to effect maximum control of the masses.
• In the commodity model of sexuality, sex (however defined) is seen as something of value (perhaps even a sort of "currency" at times) that men "take" from Women, but not the other way around, and is seen as a zero-sum game.  A Woman's worth is thus considered inversely proportional to her level of sexual experience, while the reverse is usually (though not always) true for men (i.e. the classic double standard, slut-shaming, etc.).
• Therefore, men have a vested interest to keep the "cost" of sex as low as possible, while Women have a vested interest in keeping the "cost" of sex as high as possible.  One can see how this does not exactly make for harmonious gender relations or mutuality, since the interests of Women and men are inherently opposed in this model.
• At the same time, the (mostly) male elites have a vested interest to keep the "cost" of sex as high as possible, or at least just high enough to control the masses.  This is typically done by punishing Women in one way or another for having too much and/or the wrong kind of sex (i.e. "giving it away" for free or cheap), imposing a very high cost on Women who then pass some of that cost onto men.  Or demanding for specious and spurious reasons that sex be only for procreation and claiming that sexual pleasure especially for its own sake is somehow "sinful".  Thus, they control Women in order to indirectly control men, while (in the days before modern birth control and DNA testing) also ensuring paternity certainty as well.
• That explains the patriarchy's arcane and archaic rules against not only "fornication" and adultery (note how usually only Women have historically been punished for these in practice), but also masturbation, homosexuality, non-monogamy, non-coital sexual activities, abortion, "artificial" birth control, divorce (albeit with some nuance), pornography (albeit with some nuance), and most ironically of all, prostitution (despite the fact that patriarchal marriage is often little more than long-term prostitution in practice).  It also explains why so many self-proclaimed "pro-lifers" have the GALL to oppose birth control despite the fact that it actually has the net effect of reducing the number of abortions due to fewer unwanted pregnancies.
• A high cost of sex (and its substitutes), ceteris paribus, leads to higher birthrates (Women are the brood mares in this system) and more work done by men (men are the work horses) in order to gain access to sex, which ultimately makes the rich richer going.  A low cost of sex (or its substitutes), especially sex for pleasure, leads to lower birthrates and theoretically less incentive for the serfs to work harder to make the rich richer.
• Thus, a relatively high cost of sex is seen as necessary for the oligarchs to keep the whole Ponzi scheme of growth for the sake of growth (i.e. the ideology of the cancer cell, which eventually kills its host) going to make them even richer.
• And the experience of physical pleasure, affection, and intimacy in general (not just sex, but overall) are restricted to one degree or another, so much so that people end up craving it even more through a narrow little keyhole called sex, particularly coitus.
• Not that such sexual strictures really make The System any more virtuous in any sense, of course.  A certain amount of male-defined prostitution, sex trafficking/slavery, rape, and even full-blown pedophilia and incest is virtually always tolerated or even tacitly encouraged (clandestinely or otherwise) to one degree or another in patriarchy provided it does not threaten The System or inadvertently give Women too much power.  And these ills tend to explode when sex in general is highly restricted and costly (see what happened in the Victorian era, for example).  It's all just "collateral damage" in the eyes of the patriarchy and the oligarchy, basically.
• And of course, Women primarily get blamed for "getting themselves raped", rather than the men who rape them, since under the commodity model, the onus falls on Women to be "gatekeepers" of the  "commodity" in question and keep it it from becoming "too cheap" in the "marketplace".  And the resulting fear of rape (and blame/shame for it) is used as a cudgel to keep Women "in their place".
• And much like in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, patriarchy relies on Women to police each other (enter slut-shaming, body-shaming, the "mommy wars", etc.), further enhancing the divide-and-conquer aspect of The System.
• And just like financial capitalism, sexual capitalism functionally sets itself up as a contest to see who cares the least, in more ways than one.  A contest that MEN, not coincidentally, nearly always win.

And really it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see how this model perpetuates the 7000 year battle of the sexes, promotes rape culture (much like how financial capitalism promotes crimes motivated by money and possessions), and even contributes to the destruction of Mother Earth in the process via overpopulation and ecological overshoot.  At best, it inherently centers men at the expense of Women, and to say that is actually being quite charitable.  Fortunately, the whole "commodity model" of sexuality is indeed currently dying as we speak, and that is a GOOD thing. Such an outmoded, outdated, toxic, and sexist paradigm is downright dehumanizing to both primary genders, and we would all better off without it. Sex is a mutual act, and it is time we started treating it as such. And marriage for economic reasons rather than love is becoming increasingly obsolete, as it should in an increasingly egalitarian society. And while marriage can be re-purposed for a post-patriarchal society, the idea that everybody must get married as the sine qua non of "real adulthood" is outmoded and no longer holds any real water in the 21st century.  Ditto for the whole "everybody must procreate" mentality as well, which is now downright maladaptive in a world of overpopulation and ecological overshoot. 

(Note that I while I condemn the commodity model, I do NOT intend to disparage any actual sex workers of any kind.  They are, after all, some of the most honest people on Earth when it comes to their intentions, and in any case are not the real problem here.  It is the "little man behind the curtain"--the system of patriarchy and capitalism--that is the real problem.)

This inherently capitalistic and patriarchal model should be regarded as obsolete and outmoded, and replaced yesterday with the "performance model" or "mutual pleasure model" of sexuality.  And thus sexual capitalism will also be humanely euthanized by giving it the one thing it cannot survive--ABUNDANCE.  So what are we waiting for?

Let the planetary healing begin! 

Who's Afraid Of An Aging (And Shrinking) Population? (Updated for 2024)

I had long wondered why so many men, especially the elites, are terrified that our overall population is (gasp!) aging. It is not just because they fear that their economic Ponzi scheme of necrotic growth for the sake of growth will unravel, though that is clearly part of it as well. No, I think that their real fear is that the Crones (i.e. Women over age 50 or so) will have an *unprecedented* level of power due to relative strength in numbers, and thus so will Women in general. That is because Women are living longer than ever before, as well as having fewer kids. And the men are getting scared.  Hence the recent push to whittle away Women's reproductive rights, eventually including most if not all birth control as well.

Additionally, with birthrates declining over time, and each new generation thus slightly smaller than then previous one, that effectively means that there will be fewer younger Women relative to slightly older men, giving younger Women that much more bargaining power in the dating market despite an overall surplus of Women in general.  Thus by the 2030s, Women will get the best of both worlds, and be even more empowered as a result of such demographic trends.

(Note that this also means that statistically more younger men will be "mentored" by older Women in that regard as per the laws of supply and demand, which would also help further accelerate the transition to Matriarchy as well.)

Ah, you say, but what about the supposedly legitimate economic fears of an aging (and eventually shrinking) population?  Well, a recent study came out that found that such fears are essentially overblown.  In fact, moderately low fertility (i.e. between 1.5-2.0 children per Woman) and a shrinking population would actually maximize living standards for the general population.  Another recent study found that there is essentially no robust correlation between population aging and economic growth, contrary to what many people seem to believe.  Not to say that an aging population will not pose some challenges, but on balance the benefits would outweigh such drawbacks.  And our Monetarily Sovereign federal government can easily absorb the fiscal costs of aging such as pensions and healthcare.

Oh, and by the way, there is that elephant in the room--make that the elephant in the Volkswagen--OVERPOPULATION.  Left unchecked, it will destroy the very planet that gives us life.  While technology (and Monetary Sovereignty) can largely solve the foreseeable economic challenges of aging and declining populations, the same cannot really be said of the intractable ecological problems of overpopulation.  And the only ethical way to do this is to voluntarily have fewer children, i.e. well below the "replacement rate" of 2.1 or so.  According to the best evidence, the best ways to accomplish this is 1) female empowerment and 2) poverty reduction, since after all, the number one cause of overpopulation is the MEN who force, coerce, deceive, and/or brainwash Women into having kids that they otherwise would not have (or much sooner and closer-spaced than otherwise).  Seriously. 

Sorry fellas, but the truth hurts.

So what about countries like Japan, Italy, Greece, Spain, etc. with so-called "lowest-low" total fertility rates below 1.5?  Yes, it is likely that they will hit a sort of short-to-medium-term "pothole" on the road to sustainability if they stay below 1.5 for too long.  Their populations' aging and decline will be significantly more rapid than for countries with TFRs between 1.5-2.0, and may be more difficult to adjust to from an economic perspective.  Well, the answer to that, again, is increased Female empowerment.  We see that European countries with greater Female empowerment and more generous social safety nets for Mothers and children tend to have higher fertility than those with less female empowerment and stingier safety nets such as Spain, Italy, and Greece.  Even though all of those countries have TFRs below replacement, Northern and Western Europe are generally around 1.6-2.0 while Southern and Eastern Europe are generally significantly below 1.5 children per Woman.  

And now the USA, thanks in part to the pandemic and the lockdowns, and likely the jabs as well, birthrates have REALLY crashed through the basement.  The estimated TFR for the USA in 2020 is as low as 1.64, a record low.  And no sign of reversal anytime soon.

The proof is clearly in the pudding.

(Recently, there was a reactionary right-wing article that actually said the quiet part out loud about what the right-wing reactionaries and sexual counterrevolutionaries really want to do, if you have the stomach to read such disgusting verbal defecation. TL;DR version:  when Women are forced or coerced to mate in captivity, and/or otherwise forced or coerced to be utterly dependent on men, their birthrates are way higher than when they are not, go figure.  In other news, water is wet and the sun rises in the east.)

Make no mistake, if Women were to take over the world tomorrow, the global TFR would plummet to 1.5 or lower almost overnight.  But it would not stay below 1.5 for very long, as it would gradually rise back up to around 1.5-1.9 where it will remain for at least a generation or two, and eventually rise to around the replacement rate of 2.1 after the population shrinks significantly over time.  And honestly, it can't happen soon enough.  I've said it before, and I'll say it again.  We must leave room for Nature, lest Nature not leave room for us.  We have been warned, decades ago in fact. 

As the great Marianne Williamson once said, at this juncture of history we are now at the "menopause" of humanity, in which what we really need is fewer babies, and more wisdom.

In other words, VIVE LA FEMME!  Let the planetary healing begin!

Only Women Can Break The Cycle Of History (Re-Post)

 

History, or more accurately, HIStory, has always seemed to occur in cycles.  Ascendancy and decline.  Collapse and rebirth.  Spring and fall.  Over and over again.  And with smaller cycles occurring as part of larger ones as well.  The modern meme about it goes like this:

Hard times create strong men.

Strong men create good times.

Good times create weak men.

Weak men create hard times.

And so on.  And if current events are any indication, we seem to be in the "weak men create hard times" stage, alas.  But the authors of this meme did not pull this out of the ether, rather, this idea of the cyclical nature of history is thousands of years old.  The ancient Greeks called it "Anacyclosis".

Per Wikipedia:

Anacyclosis states that three basic forms of "benign" government (monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy) are inherently weak and unstable, tending to degenerate rapidly into the three basic forms of "malignant" government (tyranny, oligarchy, and ochlocracy). [Ochlocracy = mob rule]

Polybius' sequence of anacyclosis proceeds in the following order: 1. monarchy, 2. kingship, 3. tyranny, 4. aristocracy, 5. oligarchy, 6. democracy, and 7. ochlocracy.  [And finally chaos, and then the cycle repeats with a new king emerging from the chaos...]

And then there is the "Tytler Cycle" (or "Fatal Sequence") as well.  The following quote, actually of somewhat unknown authorship, has nonetheless been attributed to Alexander Fraser Tytler sometime in either the late 18th or early 19th century, though occasionally it has been attributed to Alexis de Toqueville as well:

A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.

The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to selfishness; From selfishness to complacency; From complacency to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage.

These two paragraphs actually did not occur together until the 1970s, but the latter one is the one that stuck the most.  It can thus be summarized graphically as follows:

The first paragraph of course can be debunked by the theories of Monetary Sovereignty and Modern Monetary Theory, in that a government that issues and controls it's own sovereign currency cannot really go bankrupt unless they deliberately choose to, and thus loose fiscal policy per se need not result in a dictatorship.  In Venezuela, for example, dictatorship (and corruption) actually came first, well before their extremely loose fiscal policy.  Furthermore, Switzerland is the very closest thing to a truly direct democracy in the modern world, and interestingly the voters in 2016 actually rejected a Universal Basic Income (UBI) referendum.  And even Canada, arguably somewhat more democratic in practice than the USA (prior to 2020), had actually shrank the size of its government dramatically from 1990 to 2019 via fiscal austerity (which came at a heavy price), and barely any stimulus even during the Great Recession.  But the second paragraph is the one that is the real essence of the quote, regardless of what sort of governing system is in place.  And it seems to be true throughout history time and again.

To be fair, many civilizations have lasted for much more than 200 years, and sometimes some of the stages listed here are truncated, inverted, and/or leapfrogged over entirely.  But as a general rule or heuristic, it largely holds true. 

And more recently, William Strauss and Neil Howe's generational theory also appears to dovetail with all of this.  And the ever-insightful Julius Ruechel observes how that cycle seems to occur every four generations, or roughly 80 years or so (making us due for a major crisis by 2020, being about 80 years since the Great Depression and its infamous segway into WWII).  This is, of course, a smaller cycle within larger ones like the ones mentioned above, but again it follows basically the same pattern.  A pattern that seems to be, for all intents and purposes, sooner or later, inevitable and written in stone.  So what is the underlying reason?

Thus once again, we return to the first meme, with the proper emphasis added this time:

Hard times create strong men.

Strong men create good times.

Good times create weak men.

Weak men create hard times.

And so on.  Now do you see why?  Because MEN are in charge, that's why.  Strong men and weak men are ultimately two sides of the same coin.  And thus only Women can finally break the cycle for good, by reclaiming their rightful place as the new leaders of the free world, Goddess willing.  And as they say, the rest will be HERstory.

Let the planetary healing begin!

International Men's Day: A Day Of Atonement

In case you didn't know, November 19 is International Men's Day (which also happens to be World Toilet Day, interestingly enough).  As if we really needed a day to celebrate ourselves, lol.  What International Men's Day should really be is a day of atonement, a sort of Yom Kippur for men.  And for those guys who arrogantly claim that they have literally nothing to atone for, prepare to eat some humble pie, and apologize to the Divine Feminine.  The following is food for thought:

So what has our gender collectively done for the past 7000 years or so?

We paved paradise and put up a parking lot, we created a desert and called it "peace".  We devoured and suffocated our own empire, the world is on fire, and now we are all paying a heavy price for it.  It's 14:59 of our proverbial 15 minutes of fame, and the clock is ticking.

All because we foolishly decided one day to depose Women from power because we thought we could somehow do better.  Well, we were wrong, dead wrong in fact.  We are sorry, but clearly we can stuff our "sorrys" in a sack at this point.  The agony of regret indeed.

Yes, I know, "not all men".  But the fact remains that the "good guys" among us have clearly and consistently failed to prevent the truly bad guys from subjugating, tyrannizing, raping, abusing, and degrading the better half of humanity (while also doing the very same thing to Mother Earth as well), and overall turning heaven on Earth into hell on Earth.

So how could heaven turn to hell?  You guessed it, it was us all along.  But one day the shadows will surround us, and the days will come to end.  And now we see clearly...

We both knew, it would always end this way...

(Bonus points for anyone who can find the hidden and not-so-hidden pop-culture references and lyrics to various songs contained throughout this apology to the Divine Feminine. Give up?  Scroll down to the bottom for the answer.)

And just like you should never wish someone a "Happy Yom Kippur", as there is really nothing happy about atonement, we should probably avoid doing the same with International Men's Day as well.

The new song "The Feminine Divine" by Dexys Midnight Runners also comes to mind.

But the cultural references above are really from various songs by Joni Mitchell, Shinedown, Sugar Ray, and Five Finger Death Punch, et al.  And also Seinfeld, and a paraphrase of the Ancient Roman historian Tacitus as well.

The ONLY Real Long-term Solution For Peace In The Middle East

With the current Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, and the larger, decades old, Israel-Palestine conflict in general, the idea of lasting peace in the Middle East seems to be increasingly elusive these days.  But there IS actually a solution, one that is extremely unlikely to happen anytime soon.  So what is it?

It's really quite simple.  Men on both sides need to step down yesterday and let Women take over completely.  Period, full stop.  Because practically all of the violence, terrorism, and warmongering are being done by one gender, and it's not Women (while many of the victims are Women and children).

Otherwise, there is no long-term solution.  But until then, a "two-state solution" is still far better than a "Final Solution" on either side, to the victors going the ashes of the spoils.

How To Get Men To "Accept The Unacceptable"

As any student of world history can tell you, the USA and its Allies were once up against an extremely formidable enemy during WWII, one who was even harder to defeat than the formidable Nazis.  That "honor" goes to none other than Imperial Japan, the country that got America into the war in the first place.  They were not only extremely skilled and disciplined fighters by far, but were also most notably extremely stubborn when it came to surrendering.  "Death before dishonor" was so integral to their code of ethics that they would routinely engage in suicide attacks against the Allied forces.  They literally saw the prospect of surrender as worse than death, and thus behaved accordingly.  That was what we were up against in the Land of the Rising Sun.

As powerful as General Hideki Tojo was, the Japanese troops ultimately answered to one and only one man:  Emperor Hirohito.  He was literally regarded as a god, and was obeyed accordingly.  He ultimately turned out to be Imperial Japan's weakest link, however.  Long story short, rightly or wrongly, when the USA had first bombed and napalmed Tokyo, and then nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Emperor was scared straight into surrendering unconditionally to the Allies.  He was thus forced to address the people and admit that he wasn't really divine, and that it was time for Japan to "accept the unacceptable" and surrender to the Allies.  And they listened, for the most part.  (Some Japanese troops didn't want to believe him and continued fighting for a time, but that was a tiny number that was readily quashed.)  In return for Hirohito ordering his troops to surrender, the Allies allowed him to remain as a figurehead "Emperor" in the new constitutional monarchy imposed by the Allies, which he remained until his death and succession by his son, Akihito.

So what can we learn from this?  Will it be possible for Women to finally get men to surrender this way?  That is, would it require a very powerful and charismatic "bro", one who is practically deified, to convince men that it is in their best interest to "accept the unacceptable" and surrender?  And what would it take to get that man to do so?

In a way, one particular man, former President Donald Trump, would have perhaps fit the bill as the Hirohito of American men if he wasn't so narcissistic, unstable, demented, corrupt, and of course frankly misogynistic.  If there was a way to get him to unconditionally surrender to Women, he could have perhaps convinced about 50-60% of men to join him in surrendering, maybe even more.  But even so, that window has long since closed, as the Donald is now discredited and he is nowhere near as popular as he once was.

So who will it be now, if anyone at all?  That is an open question that only Mother God really knows the answer to.

Why Full Decriminalization Of Sex Work Is The Only Just And Rational Policy

A few years ago, I wrote an article titled "Prostitution: The Oldest Profession or The Oldest Oppression?" that looked at the issue of sex work from various angles, and ultimately came to the conclusion that full decriminalization was the only just and rational policy in that regard.  That is the same conclusion that such diverse voices as Amnesty International, the ACLU, the WHO, UNAIDS, Human Rights Campaign, and so many others have come to in recent years.  And the legendary Guru Rasa Von Werder has also long supported decriminalization as well.

New Zealand is probably the best example of full decriminalization, which has prevailed for the past two decades.  A few other places in the world have or have had some flavor of this policy as well, including some parts of Australia, and formerly in the US state of  Rhode Island from 2003-2009.  Ditto for Denmark, the only Nordic country where the so-called "Nordic Model" never really caught on.  And while not a panacea, it is clearly the least-worst policy.

This is to be clearly distinguished from "legalization", where sex work is confined to a narrow and tightly regulated framework but otherwise criminalized outside that framework.  Basically, the state becomes the pimp in practice, if not also in theory.  And it is a half-assed solution at best.  Nevada, the Netherlands, and Germany are classic examples of such.

As for the so-called "Nordic Model" or "Equality Model", which should really be called the "Entrapment Model", we see that after over two decades of it in Sweden, and several years in several other countries that tried it, it fails miserably.  (As of 2023, the only US state to adopt it is Maine, and they did so earlier this year.)  While it is arguably a step up from full criminalization, that's a pitifully low bar to clear.

And of course, not even Mao Zedong and all of his brutality was ever able to truly eradicate prostitution, and it wasn't for lack of trying.  Sex work has existed in practically every culture in history, except for a tiny few outliers here and there.  Matriarchal societies would mostly likely have significantly less of it for reasons of both supply and demand, but it would likely still exist regardless (e.g. Sacred Harlots).

Ideally, the adult trade should be controlled entirely by Women, as when men control it they inevitably ruin it horribly.  Thus, banning men from acting as pimps and brothel owners would likely be a good idea.  Otherwise, putting restrictions on the adult trade generally does more harm than good.

Thus, we still ought to endorse full decriminalization.  The case in favor has only gotten stronger over time.

QED