(or maybe I should say “neoliberalism” to get more clicks :P)

Ok, super-extreme capitalism seems to say, markets will solve everything, because we are all rational self-interested people and we’ll choose things that are the best for us. If someone is offering something that is not the best, they will go out of business. That is usually pretty good. It lets us get cheap bananas.

Now there are a lot of externalities that go into getting those cheap bananas, which is usually the drum I bang on, but I’m not going to get into that here. Instead, what I’m focusing on here is the consumer experience of capitalism.

I just sort of assume that bananas work in a store-ish fashion. Like, I go to the store, I can see the price of bananas, I can basically see how good they look, and I can make the best choice. I know what I’m getting. (If I don’t - like, if the bananas later turn out to be rotten, or if they tell me a different price at the register, etc, then I just don’t buy bananas from them again, and they eventually lose.)

We assume this with choices of our time too. For the most part, we know what we’re getting if we spend our free time in a park, at a coffeeshop, at a bar, playing a board game, whatever. We pretty much know the

I’m trying to be a little more active of an activist, too. But that is tricky, because it’s usually not like a store, in that I don’t know what I’m getting for my time. I could phone bank all day and get 0 more votes. I could go to a meeting to organize a meeting to organize a meeting for something, and it might not ever help anything.

So I guess I’ve got to categorical-imperative it a little bit - just effin' do it, because it’s a good thing to do. Or maybe rely on social pressures- make some friends who are into something activisty, and then do it to hang out with them, and by the way we got some votes.