The impact of monopoly capital on social change

The deepening of capitalism is accelerating the collapse of a certain order; and the mutual trust, theory and friendship built on this order have also been swept into the garbage heap of history.

Editor’s note: This article is from the WeChat public account “Needle Point” (ID: zhenjianyule) . 36氪 is authorized to publish.

Recently, a lot of things have happened in the cultural industry: the contract and strike of China Literature Group , the tearing of public opinion caused by "Hou Lang" and Xiao Zhan, and the "Tencent's Last Stand" that swiped the screen.

The above events seem to be irrelevant, but the inner core logic has something in common, that is, the means of capital’s pursuit of profit break the zero point of traditional distribution, which in turn stimulates a rebound in public sentiment. This oppression harms the interests of the majority, and is increasingly leaning toward the model that accelerationists describe—that the deepening of capitalism is accelerating the breakdown of an order that is built upon Mutual trust, theory and friendship have also been swept into the dustbin of history.

What is social prosperity?

Different schools of economics often have different views, but from a psychological point of view, the perception of prosperity is actually the consensus of the public on the expectation of a better life.

Japan once made a main theme movie called "Eternal Sanchome Sunset", which showed us the other side of prosperity from the perspective of people's lives. In 1958, 13 years after the end of World War II, Japan was still a poor country, but its citizens had positive national self-confidence. Why? Because the people have effectively shared the dividends of social development.

The protagonists, the Suzukis, run an auto repair shop, and they work hard, step by step, without making anything unique. However, before they knew it, their lives had undergone significant progress—they purchased modern electrical appliances such as refrigerators and TV sets, and tricycles were transformed into cars, and the prototype of modern life was gradually established; In the distance, the Tokyo Tower, which represents the rise of Japan's economy, has also been gradually built. The big country and the small people have achieved organic unity at this stage.

This belief that "tomorrow must be better than today" is the spirit of the Showa era that Japanese people still miss today. This kind of high-spirited positive emotion is unimaginable for the social animals.

National loyalty is also closely related to the expectation of a better life. During the Khrushchev era, the Soviet people moved from bungalows into buildings, realizing the progress of "upstairs and downstairs, electric lights and telephones"; during the period of Bosch's administration, TVs, refrigerators, cars and other commodities began to popularize; cakes have been getting bigger, The Soviet people were also full of institutional self-confidence.

However, in the 1980s, when the growth of material life in the Soviet Union came to a standstill, the overly advanced expectations of a better life would accelerate social disintegration. In fact, in terms of material level, the Soviet Union at that time was not bad - the "Houlang" were born with a material life that their parents worked hard to achieve. However, after seeing the more prosperous material and cultural life in the Western world, the Soviet people put forward higher requirements for material progress, which exceeded the social productive forces at that time to a certain extent. As a result, the expectations of a better life between the Soviet people and the government were divided, and the Soviet people who wanted to live in the West did not hesitate to abandon the government that their ancestors fought and built.

The above cases tell us that the essence of social prosperity is not simply the level of productivity, but the acceleration of social development; when the faster the social development, the faster the material rewards brought by development reach the people, the people will spontaneously produce a kind of Positive spirit, this kind of national self-confidence is often explained as a "prosperous scene". Conversely, when social development tends to stagnate and the people have high requirements for material development, social conflicts are likely to arise, and even a regime may be overthrown in severe cases.

Imaginings of a better life are stagnant at the moment

At the moment, however, more than 30% of the world's population has a stagnant vision of a better life.

In the 1930s, the skyline of Manhattan Island in New York was basically finalized. Buses, subways, private cars, city parks, airlines, and movie theaters, the material elements that affect modern urban life have taken shape, and there has been no major system innovation for decades. In the cartoon "Tom and Jerry", the villa, car, refrigerator, radio, telephone and pet owned by Tom's owner are already a complete modern life template.

Beyond the Internet, are 21st-century Americans really making leaps and bounds over their grandfathers? At the very least, the individual experience brought about by this progress is significantly smaller than the perception from 1850 to 1930.

The same is true in China today. It is not an empty talk that China has gone through a hundred years of social development in Western countries in thirty or forty years. Today, refrigerators, air conditioners, washing machines, TVs, mobile phones, and the Internet are all popularized. Except for the real estate that the whole people are thinking about , there are few material cravings that can stimulate the nerves of the public. In fact, even real estate is in a stage of structural excess. As early as 2016, the per capita housing construction area of urban residents has reached 40.8 square meters. The so-called housing issue is not a productivity issue, but a distribution issue.

(The interior set of the TV series "Everything is Good" basically restores the living environment of an ordinary Chinese middle-class family)

To sum up, whether it is the United States, China, or Western Europe, Japan, and South Korea, the common problem is that social development brings less and less material stimulation to ordinary people, and people's imagination of a better life tends to stagnate. To Apple mobile phones, from double-layer refrigerators to three-door refrigerators, from ordinary air conditioners to inverter air conditioners, and from 40-inch TVs to 60-inch TVs, this kind of replacement is of course progress, but this kind of "small step" can bring The room for imagination is too small, so small that the public cannot feel that this is indeed a kind of progress.

The ordinary life of the public needs a continuous supply of great stimulation. When material progress cannot keep up with the growth of people's desires, certain social problems are prone to occur, such as the sullenness of social appearance and the pervasiveness of despair.

In order to combat this kind of sinking and shift the focus of contradictions, mature democratic political entities often promote some partial bills to disguise the illusion that the society is still developing, such as the rainbow bill targeting minority groups, all of which occur in the GDP growth rate without exception. low areas.

On May 24, 2019, Taiwan Province of China officially became the 24th region in the world where homosexuality is legal, and the first region in Asia to support gay marriage. Taiwan's GDP growth rate has been lower than 2% for many years. In the past 20 years, social development has tended to stagnate. The per capita GDP has fallen from the head of the four Asian tigers to the tail of the crane. The starting salary of college students has not risen in 20 years. Therefore, the DPP government urgently needs the rainbow bill to demonstrate its progress. After all, compared with the difficult task of developing the economy and making the cake bigger, there is no cost to engage in same-sex equality, and it can also earn a false name of "South Asia's Prosperity". Happy but not?

The virtual economy is easier to re-harvest

In this chapter, we can finally put things into practice and talk about how technological progress has broken the imagined boundaries of a better life and recreated new demands. Demand, or desire, is the underlying kinetic energy that drives the development of human society. The root of all this needs to be attributed to the invention of the Internet. The Internet has created a brand new virtual world, and it has also brought about new virtual consumption demands.

The essence of virtual consumption is a kind of spiritual enjoyment. Spiritual consumption often has the characteristics of immediacy and infinity. This attribute is fantastic. For example, a foodie who can eat again has a limited appetite, and it is impossible to eat it indefinitely. When he is full, he has no desire to consume; but in the game world, the player's skin, equipment enhancement and tokens, But it never makes the individual feel full. If you like to play card-drawing mobile games, then you are even more blessed. A ten consecutive draw is 200 yuan. In theory, you can draw infinitely. The cost of collecting all rare cards in the public beta stage is generally hundreds of thousands.

(The picture shows a screenshot of the ten consecutive draws of the mobile game "Tomorrow's Ark")

As a result, virtual consumption has actually created a brand-new consumption that breaks through the boundaries of human biology, even worse than pornography, gambling and drugs—huang, there is still a refractory period; gambling, you have to sleep; poisoning, two There is a gap between times. But in the game world, none of these limitations exist.

To sum up, the game industry has created a business model with unlimited harvests.

However, not everyone plays games. Especially for some women, the proportion of them playing games is low. If they want to play, they only play light games such as "Everyday Love Elimination", which is difficult to get addicted to krypton gold. Therefore, in order to directional harvest they also need to invent a new tool.

The modern idol industry came into being.

The modern idol industry can be regarded as a real-life RPG development game. Fans play the role of players and help their favorite stars maintain their popularity through krypton gold and data brushing.

Conversely, idols will also target fans through virtual products. Taking the music market as an example, the current membership price of major music platforms is mostly more than ten yuan per month, and the annual subscription is cheaper. After paying this fee, you can listen to all the music libraries from pop to classical, with hundreds of thousands of songs.

This business model logically destroys the commercial value of music albums. Because no matter how awesome an individual is, it is impossible for ten songs to be worth more than hundreds of thousands of songs; no matter how good a work is, it is impossible to compete with the crystallization of all human musical talents. Therefore, no matter how much you spend to buy the album of a specific star, it is a very uneconomical thing. Buying an album quickly turned into a pure fan support behavior.

Currently, all the top albums on the major music charts are from idols, which is why.

As albums became a mere act of fan support, purchases quickly became a measure of fan enthusiasm. In the previous Xiao Zhan album's related super words, the threshold of "Light Spot" was set at 105 pieces.

Why do you need to re-buy 105 times a product that is useful after just one purchase?

Because buying an album is not a rational act, but an emotional catharsis, and using the amount of money to express emotional loyalty has a certain religious connotation.

The Eve of Acceleration: Big Company Monopoly and Accelerated Harvest

When the development of the material society is stagnant, the growth rate of virtual consumption is increasing, and it has become a new component of human refreshment. According to the " China Mobile Internet Industry Market Prospect and Investment Strategic Planning Analysis Report" released by the Qianzhan Industry Research Institute, the scale of China's mobile Internet transactions in 2019 is close to 10 trillion, and the value of the industry chain has reached 1% of China's total GDP in 2019. /10. This speed will get faster and faster. Maybe one day in the future, the proportion of human beings in virtual consumption will exceed physical consumption.

This is not an unimaginable story.

In May 2020, epic released the new Unreal Engine 5, which is visually stunning. Considering the iterative efficiency of the five-year generation of Unreal Engine, we will probably be able to immerse ourselves in the virtual reality world around 2030. People play, live, and even connect more emotionally in virtual worlds, and of course spend more money.

This money will mainly flow to two areas: 1. Hardware manufacturing that supports people to enter virtual scenes, including chips, memory, graphics cards, screens, interactive tools, etc.; 2. Software suppliers in the virtual world, the corresponding ecological niche is today The game, social, and streaming media companies constitute the main consumer of the virtual world.

In this context, some seemingly isolated events have the logic of the grass snake gray line:

(1) Virtual consumption is based on the monopoly of the traffic pool. Wherever the traffic stays, it is more likely to be consumed there. Only large companies can build this kind of infrastructure;

(2) The virtual consumption scene pays more attention to cultural value. In addition to software development, the biggest production tool is copyright. For example, the foundation of Marvel's business empire is its character copyrights accumulated over decades. The essence of the reading contract is that commercial capital must first solve the problem of ownership of copyright as a production tool.

(3) Virtual consumption breaks away from the sensory limitations of human basis, so it pays more attention to the ability to create something out of nothing. People will be hungry if they don’t eat, but if they don’t follow idols, it will not have any impact on life. The value of Xiao Zhan lies in the ability to create meaningless demand - buying 105 albums, giving meaningless purchases a sense of ritual and value.

However, does this kind of imagination of the virtual economy really match our beautiful imagination of the future society? It is based on the monopoly of large companies and is an efficient harvest; it squeezes the aesthetic needs of non- fandom users, causing confrontation and conflict between different ethnic groups. More importantly, does this cultural industry really have the ability to expand externally and compete for the world market, or can it only be a monopoly behind closed doors? Still unknown.

The only thing that can be foreseen is that the demand of monopoly capital for the social distribution ratio will continue to increase to meet the needs of profit growth; when this ratio is close to 100% and cannot be increased upwards, it may be the time when the singularity of collapse comes. As the Acceleration Manifesto writes: The existing capitalist system, or some technological social process that has its historical character, should be expanded, reused, or accelerated to produce radical social change.

There's no question that we're already on the accelerator pedal.