Exploitation and Consumerism Are Actually A Good Thing

An introduction to the case for being a coward or a sociopath

I.

In an unbuilt world, the best way to win is to build the new. But in a built world, the best way to win is to exploit the existing.

Put another way:

In an unbuilt world, short-term-pain-for-long-term gain (ie ethical behavior) is necessary to escape the hell that is nature. But in a built world, there is far less incentive and necessity for this. “The work is over, it is time to reward ourselves” says the collective borg brain.

As an individual, your entire life time is spent only in a small part of a much larger, multi-century cycle (a la Spengler). And it can feel like hell inside the “exploit and consume” stage—particularly toward the end of it, which we are in now. But ultimately, it is good and right and necessary for the health and growth of civilization.

In the same way that you in your own life cannot only sacrifice and work, but must also consume and relax—and that the rewarding and the consumption is necessary recovery time to get you to build again—society is the same. And further, just how in your own life it is often necessary to destroy it just a little bit so that you remember the fragility of order and don’t get complacent and take it for granted, such is true of the larger cycle.

Sure, if you abdicated discipline and ethics every day for months you could probably zero yourself out irrecoverably. And some do this. But most don’t. What most do is “put money into the bank” (engage in pleasure-deferring activities like hard work, discipline, focus, etc) and then later, once they’ve saved up sufficient “capital” they will spend some of it (engage in pleasure-seeking activities good food, vacation, video games, TV, etc).

Some, such as myself, can tend to get a little carried away in either direction. We will “build capital” for a while to achieve a specific goal, then will reward ourselves, then get a bit addicted to all this reward, then start to see negative signs of all this reward, and then have a little mini crisis which incites a new cycle to get back to sacrifice and building. But even then, we freak out long before permanent damage occurs. If anything, its more like we’ve pulled back the slingshot to catapult on toward great new heights—not one step back before two steps forward but two steps back before five steps forward.

The specifics may vary, but the trend is universal—and also fractal. You experience this phenomena in minor ways every hour (ex study for an hour, then doom scroll for a bit, then back to studying). You experience it at the end of every day (go to work all day then come home and play vidya or watch TV or eat naughty food). And you experience it on a quarterly, yearly, and even decennial basis (I usually have three quarters of grinding then one of kinda chilling; also had eight years grinding then two basically retired, now back to grinding; etc).

And this occurs in much more than individual organisms. It occurs in the meta-organisms that are your friendships, family, and marriage over the course of years or decades. And then into the super-meta-organism that is your civilization over the course of centuries. And finally into our whole species over the course of millennia or perhaps even entire universes over the course of eons.

Point being: regardless of the scale, the two steps forward are always succeeded by one step backward. And that one step backward is always itself succeeded by two more steps forward. It is slow and ugly and messy, and often feels like the end during the “bear market” of the step(s) back. But it ultimately always survives and then goes on to reach new highs (and everyone completely forgets how hopeless it felt in the bear market).

So take a chill pill my friend. All is happening as it always has and always will.

To be fair, your existential fear of the end times is also how things always have been. It is part of the reason we always recover. And it is further reasonable given that not everyone and not everything always do recover. One of these times, it really will be the end. It’s just extremely unlikely it will be this time.

The Panic Monster is the critical alarm system that shifts you (or an entire civilization) out of consume mode into produce mode. But The Panic Monster is also retarded and highly unpleasant to spend lots of time around.

An alarm notifies you there is a problem. But it does not actually solve problems. If anything, it continuing to blow your eardrums out after you’ve already acknowledged it is actually slowing you down.

Perhaps some must spend their entire lives as an alarm; living in a perpetual state of stress and fear yelling “someone has to fix this!!!!”. Perhaps that is their good and right purpose to humanity—to ensure that all new risks and dangers get the attention they need. Builders do need to feel and acknowledge the alarm. But then they need to tune it out so they can focus methodically, strategically, and rationally solving the actual problem.

If you are smart enough to be reading this, you are also smart enough to be more than an alarm.

II.

Organizations are built by the ethical, maintained by the obedient, and pillaged by the opportunistic.

Why is it the case that exploitation is the best strategy after something is built? Simple. Because exploitation is easier. The only reason it doesn’t dominate the unbuilt is because there is nothing to exploit (besides the natural world, aka “build shit”).

If you had what you wanted to eat at home would you go out to buy it instead? Of course not. You will only do the more difficult thing when it’s necessary. And you should. To do otherwise is simply a waste of energy. And wasting energy is how you lose.

So why then doesn’t everyone exploit? Because it is high risk high reward. You are right that today’s elite are largely made up of exploiters. What you miss is that 99% of exploiters are dead, broke, or in jail. Exploitation requires a lot of luck and a lot of skill. One big mistake or bad call could easily zero you out.

Building is similarly high risk high reward, but for different reasons. It has much less risk of zeroing you out, but much more risk of never gaining you anything in the first place. Exploitation’s gains are near instant—it rewards you the whole time until the point at which you die, go broke, or get incarcerated. Building, in contrast, takes from you the whole time until the point at which you either “make it”, or cut your losses to go build something else.¹

Which is why most people instead choose the third option: maintenance. Join an existing project, support it, contribute to it, and ultimately create a pay-to-spend ratio that is roughly 1:1.

If everyone did this, there would be nothing new, and thus no civilization would exist in the first place. But once Builders and Maintainers create a stock of capital and productivity, the emergence of Exploiters becomes inevitable.

It is for this reason that start ups tend to attract ethical, intelligent, creative people; mid sized companies tend to attract obedient, safety oriented, worker bee people; and that mega corps tend to attract opportunistic, Machiavellian, and exploitative people. And that the death blow to a company is when the exploiters outnumber the builders.

And all of this applies equally to countries or really any group human project.

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There is much more to be said on this topic. But I do not have the time to say it at the moment. So that is all for now. If you want to be emailed when more is said, you can…

1. Becoming an exploiter or maintainer is not an option for those temperamentally geared toward building. black pilled builders simply because nihilistic destroyers, seeking vengeance against their own weakness and/or the world around them. They become anti-builders, tearing everything down around them. They should be encouraged to kill themselves [link] or stop being pussies and get back to building.