Oh, and feel free to poke holes in that, anybody. Not sure where my logic holds and where it doesn't.

>>it very likely might be arguable that Wal-mart, by offering limited and highly desirable consumer resources in limited quantity during a limited period might indeed be guilty of inciting mayhem, by setting up conditions that exacerbated already existing high anxiety.<<

it might also be argued that by performing in front of large groups of school girls, *insert insipid band name here*..

you see where i'm going with this - where would it end?

>>People, I think, as individuals are perfectly civil. Capitalism, on the other hand, is fucking brutal.<<

people have maimed each other in crowds over all kinds of things, most of which
had fuck all to do with capitalism.

the rest of your post seems specious to me since this guy getting mowed down was
an anomaly among *how many?* of the same sales that went on all over the country.

"People, I think, as individuals are perfectly civil. Capitalism, on the other hand, is fucking brutal. "

---what you are saying is that but for capitalism, everyone would be super nice, but introduce capitalism, and people become brutal.

This is absurd and is certainly not supported by history or economics. Human brutality existed long before capitalism.
Capitalist societies are no less civil than non capitalist socieites.

Anyhow, I think you are confusing consumerism with capitalism. They are not necessarily the same thing.

wild:

>the rest of your post seems specious to me since this guy getting mowed down was
an anomaly among *how many?* of the same sales that went on all over the country.

This is a good point. It wouldn't work to argue that Walmart caused this to happen, in the same direct way that melamine in infant formula causes babies to get sick. It might be possible, however, to argue that they set up conditions in which such a thing was likely to occur. In which case, that would be true of all stores holding sales and offering limited quantities, in which case you end up with the conclusion that Black Friday sales are extremely dangerous in times of deep economic anxiety. Which wouldn't work either, because it's silly--but then no sillier than, for example, the notion that liquid personal products could be turned into deadly weapons on airplanes, and that therefore we must forbid all of fthem.

Bigfoot:

>>---what you are saying is that but for capitalism, everyone would be super nice, but introduce capitalism, and people become brutal.

>>This is absurd and is certainly not supported by history or economics. Human brutality existed long before capitalism.
Capitalist societies are no less civil than non capitalist socieites.

The language wasn't as precise as it should have been, but that wasn't what I intended to say. My base assumption was that evil, such as it is, lies within systems that set people against each other in competition, not human nature itself. And this is one of those basic worldview things that can be no more proven nor disproven than the existence of God. It is perfectly true that human brutality is universal and probably hardwired. The form that brutality takes though, and the scale of it, can depend a lot on conditions. People are also equally capable of great kindness, civility, self-sacrifice, etc. What a piece of work is man, etc etc. Hamlet's self-absorbed depressive but pretty little rant covers this ground.

History and anthropology do support that human societies which exist in times and places where there is less scarcity are in general less violent than in places with more. It's probably no surprise that the first civilizations, and with them, the technology of large-scale war and the sort of social hierarchies that concentrate wealth and power to a few on top, all arose on river deltas surrounded by deserts: Sumer, Egypt, China. Polynesian societies on the other hand, where it's warm and there was plenty to eat, certainly had war and people being mean to each other, but not nearly the same history of pillage, takeover, large-scale war, etc.

Consumerism and capitalism actually are part of the same thing, or more precisely, the consumerism on which our economy depends today is a phase of what some describe as late capitalism. Capitalism works by expansion of markets and restriction of resources. The shift from a manufacturing to an information economy (an economy which also depends on high-stakes intangibles such as futures, sub-prime mortgages and overextended credit,) is part of what created the 90s bubble, and also part of what's creating the current crash.

Capitalism also works by desire--specifically, people's desires. Badness is no more hard-wired nor predominant than goodness. But desire is hard-wired. We're desiring beasts from the moment we're born starving and squalling. We stop squalling when we get to clamp onto mommy's nipple and then our eyes roll back into our pervy heads.

Capitalism works, and is at its way fun best, when it feeds desire. It dangles desirable shiny bright objects in front of us that make us pretty and look cool and gives us fun things to do and yummy fancy things to eat, provides us with the means to obtain some of these pretty things in return for working hard. So we work hard, we get fun pretty things in return--but not lots of things. Not most people. But we think we might, if we just work harder. And we think that the insatiable maw of desire might get filled if we only get enough stuff.

At the same time, the government has been telling people that the best thing to do is keep shopping. After 9/11, Bush told Americans to shop. This year and a couple of years ago, we all got free money encouraging us to shop. We are now too scared to shop, because the economy is collapsing. People really are in an intense state of anxiety right now, for all sorts of very real reasons--losing their jobs, homes, etc, etc.

But people are also scared not to shop. Because we've been told for at least a decade now that shopping is the thing that will fix this. Because shopping--especially for shiny consumer things at affordable prices--feeds the desire beast. Because they're frantically trying to make themselves feel better by getting the pretty things that always made them feel better before, except now they're afraid they can't have them, and if they can't have them, things all around are going to get even worse.

This is not good logic. It's the logic of crosswired consumerism and people who've been living in a civic and emotional vacuum and relative comfort suddenly threatened with an end not only to that comfort but also to real losses of stuff that people need actually to exist, like homes and jobs and stuff. But it's a logic that makes more sense to me than people are innately bad and they suck and they've just gotten suckier.

Good god, I am tedious, pontificating before breakfast. I seriously, seriously need to get out more.