The following is a vent piece I wrote in my personal journal. The target audience is/are demoralized socialists who believe a better world isn’t happening in their lifetimes. I’m posting it here in the event it could be of use to anyone.
There's a funny story circulating around the internet these days about a bunch of merry pranksters at r/WallStreetBets. Looks like a bunch of hedge funds decided to short GameStop, and a collection of motivated individuals decided to pool their resources, buy up all the shorted stock, and refuse to sell. The result was the hedge funds lost billions of dollars. What a great prank!
And what a wonderful teachable moment this is.
I'm on the political left, but my means and methods are very unorthodox. For years I have been frustrated by my inability to properly communicate my own position. To those on the left, I sound like a neo-liberal shill. To those on the right, I sound like socialist scum. It comes down to the fact that I come to the whole "capitalism vs socialism" argument from a very different perspective than most. I don't fit into any of the pre-established narratives.
Most people describe capitalism vs socialism as a faction struggle. There is a grand narrative of conflict. The rich wage class war on the poor. Lines are drawn. Tribes are formed. Groups are labelled as in or out.
This feeds into almost every position or action you can take. Do you prefer protesting? Go to a protest. Or go to a riot and throw a brick or two. Do you prefer writing? Research a paper explaining how your side is better than the other. Are you an organizer? Get people to rally under a banner and take actions in unison.
Me? I'm a hacker.
Not professionally mind you. It's just something fun I learned, though if anyone asks I learned so I could make the software I develop more secure. Did you ever play HackNet? It's a game where you're a hacker trying to solve a murder mystery. That is my jam right there. I've always loved stealth games, especially the Thief series. I love it when I can silently infiltrate the enemy and sabotage them from within. Or just nick all their stuff, that's cool too.
So after playing a bunch of games where you are a fake hacker, I decided it would be fun to learn to do it for real. I went to a place called www.hackthissite.org. They give you lots of exercises and tell you to have fun. And as you start to go through them, eventually you reach an epiphany. It's so profound it is hard to describe. The best way I can describe it is thus:
"Huh. Neat. So that's how you do an attack. Wow, that stuff is everywhere. If that's how you do an attack then nothing is secure."
…
"Oh... my... GOD... That's how you do an attack... That stuff is EVERYWHERE! NOTHING IS SECURE! NOTHING IS SECURE!!!!!"
The ease with which I broke a (fake exercise pretending to be a) server filled me with shock and horror. I spent the rest of the year being a paranoid nutter. Eventually I came off it because I realized the cranks wanting to keep all their data private had the wrong idea. It's already out there. The cat is out of the bag. It's too late to delete it, we'll just have to live with it.
This bring us to the topic of capitalism. It was only a matter of time until I looked at capitalism and asked myself, "Can I hack that?"
Yes. Yes you can.
For being a tool of the rich and powerful, it really does have piss-poor security. All you need to get inside is a few basic tools and the time and motivation to learn about its inner workings. And when I say "inner workings", I don't mean economics or poly-sci classes where they tell you bullshit about entrepreneurialism or what have you. Approach learning it like a hacker. We aren't trying to get in through the traditional door, we are looking for a hole in the wall where we can sink in a crowbar and pull until it's wide enough to get through. We make our own way in.
This is why I have so much trouble talking with other people on the left. This is why I get called a neo-liberal shill. If you want to infiltrate a system, you have to be able to pass as part of that system. If you want to hack capitalism, you have to learn to be a capitalist. In fact, it's not enough to just learn to be a capitalist, you have to learn to be BETTER at capitalism than the capitalists.
This is also how I got my second epiphany.
Do you know how hedge funds work? Not the stock answer. Not the common perception. We're not talking about the economists perspective, and we are not talking about the TV talk show perspective. What we care about is the hedge fund manager's perspective. How does a hedge fund work, from the perspective of a hedge fund manager?
"Don't bet your own money, bet other people's money."
They make their money on commissions. Each time they buy or sell stocks, they collect a fee. Hedge fund managers make money regardless of whether the fund goes up or down. And when you look at the actual numbers they are GRISLY. 80% of hedge funds do worse than the S&P500, and they have a tendency to melt down every seven years or so. With those terrible numbers, how do they keep convincing marks people to sign up? They have a scheme going where they run multiple funds. 20% beat the odds (because that's how odds work). Those 20% are then put at the top of the list. The ones that fail or do poorly are quietly closed and whatever funds remain are rolled into one of the better funds. This gets them off the list. When you look at the options for investing, it's magically all winners!
The whole point of a hedge fund is to hide the fact that they don't know how to beat the market. The whole point of a hedge fund is to extract a profit regardless of results, because they don't know how to beat the market. They can't beat the market and they KNOW they can't beat the market. It's all smoke and mirrors. They are selling the illusion of success. It's no surprise that so many hedge fund managers came from rich families. How many do you think would be successful if they didn't have that "small loan of a million dollars" from dear old dad? Without the appearance of being rich, without a convincing illusion of success, they would be nothing.
"Huh. Wow. They don't know what they are doing. They're just script-kiddies using their daddy's admin account."
…
"Oh... my... GOD... They don't know ANYTHING. They're IDIOTS! They're just SCRIPT-KIDDIES using their DADDY'S ADMIN ACCOUNT!!!!!"
Thus begins my descent into madness.
There is a sacred cow among the left. It is the one thing they will stubbornly, doggedly REFUSE to question or examine. Any time you bring it up you can just see the light in their eyes fade as they stop listening to anything you say. This is the thing that gets me branded a neo-liberal shill every time I question it:
"The system is rigged against you. You can't beat the system through individual effort. Only systemic change can save us!"
No.
NO!
NOOOOOOOOO!
I want to scream into the void at the top of my lungs.
Don't you see? The people you're afraid of are IDIOTS! Do you REALLY think Eric Trump has the brains to rig the system against you? The man can barely tie his own shoe laces! There is no conspiracy by the 1% to keep you down. They're all backstabbing gits who are far more afraid of each other than you.
THERE IS NO PLAN! THEY ARE MAKING ALL OF THIS UP AS THEY GO ALONG!
And r/WallStreetBets proves it. They hurt the hedge funds, and Robin Hood stopped letting people buy GameSpot stock. That is not a rigged system. That is a bunch of script kiddies in their daddy's basement realizing they got caught and cutting the lines in a panic.
There is no plan, and that means you can fight them as equals. All of the power they've had over you this whole time came from the belief you were fighting a super-villian. This whole time you've been throwing haymaker punches at Lex Luthor, and every one of them was a miss. It wasn't because Lex Luthor has super-human dodging powers, it's because he doesn't exist. It was a figment of your imagination this whole time.
The closest we have to a real life Lex Luthor would be David Koch, and he's just running a glorified disinformation campaign. He built up a huge web of dark-money contributors and lobbyists. His goal was to fund think tanks to develop policy, lobbyists to put that policy in front of a sympathetic politician, and build enough astro-turf to convince the rest of the politicians to vote yes when it came up for vote. How are you to fight this on equal terms? Here is how: Start with a group of people with background knowledge, an understanding of social media, and a free weekend. They write a policy article and then promote it until it goes viral. The viral article catches the attention of The Squad, who bring it up for a vote. The viral article then generates a bunch of emails from people who like it to their representative, asking them to vote for it. Gratz, you've just managed to match result for result David Koch and his dark money empire. Take a bow.
Stop giving these incompetent buffoons more credit than they deserve. They can be fought. They can be beaten. All you have to do is fight them at their own game, not on their own terms.
That part is so important that I am going to say it in English repeat it. You fight them at their own game, not on their own terms.
Take a union for example. Unions had fantastic success during the labor struggles circa 1890 to 1930. So what is a union? It is a group of workers coming together and pooling their resources to take action for their own best interests. They are opposed to corporations. So what is a corporation? It is a group of investors coming together and pooling their resources to take action for their own best interests. Alone, a worker fought on the corporation's terms. But together, a union could fight at the corporation's game.
I am a socialist who advocates that socialists learn capitalism, because that's how we fight them at their own game.
Remember, they might inherit their daddy's admin account, but you will ALWAYS have them beat for motivation. To the wealthy, money is just their score. It's bragging rights. For you, money is food. Money is shelter. Since you will always be more motivated, that means you can surpass them at knowledge. Knowledge is a fantastic equalizer.
We have the internet people. We have the sum total of all human knowledge at our fingertips. Time to put it to good use!
Okay, I've spent a lot of text on explaining that you CAN fight back. Time to talk about HOW you fight back.
Time to give you the tools.
When functioning normally, capitalism causes money to flow from the poor to the rich. The goal of hacking capitalism is to reverse the flow of money. Therefore...
The first tool is this website: https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/
This website is one of the big names in the F.I.R.E. movement. That stands for, "Financially Independent, Retired Early". It's written by a software developer who retired at age 30. There is a "Start Here" button that leads to the article called, "Getting Rich: from Zero to Hero in One Blog Post". Read that first. Then start from the first article and read every single one of them.
And just like that, you have more knowledge of how to work capitalism than the Wall-Street brats.
If you don't like his politics or attitude, just ignore it for now. Retiring at 30 means you've successfully hacked capitalism, which means he has the knowledge you need for your own purposes. Learn to see capitalism how he sees capitalism. Other disagreements can be hashed out later.
I like this particular security flaw because it has an important advantage: stealth. You don't face repercussions until you break stealth, and with this flaw you can complete your mission without breaking stealth once. WallStreetBets messed with a hedge fund and it was glorious, but they did it by going loud. They revealed themselves, and now that security flaw is going to be patched. On the other hand, this security flaw let's you silently and legally (important!) siphon money out of the pockets of the wealthy. It's novel enough that it is currently below the radar. Corporations will not notice until enough people are retiring that it gets hard to find employees and they have to raise salaries.
The second tool you'll need is a job with at least okay-ish pay. $40,000 in a low cost of living area would be sufficient. In a high cost of living area, try for $60,000 or better. If you have this now, then you are already go-ready. Spend a week reading that website and then put the lessons you've learned to practice. Immunize yourself against capitalism and experience true freedom. If you don't have this job already, that's where things get tougher.
If you're in college, go for the money. I'm not pulling any punches here. If you're looking for a job where you turn your passion into a paycheck, stop doing that. In two years you'll hate your job regardless. Nobody likes their job, that's why it's called a "job". Go to your job placement office, find out what gets the good pay, and change your major to that. You can work on your passion AFTER you're retired at age 30.
If you're already working, not getting paid enough, and you are in field of work that has potential for better pay, then you need to get that better pay. Getting promoted at your own company can be hard though. Most people get their pay raises from finding new jobs. Sign up for ZipRecruiter or a similar service and see what other companies are paying for the same job you're doing now. Remember, your corporate masters have no loyalty to you, so you should have no loyalty to them.
If you're in a situation where you can't work or can't find work that pays enough, I don't have any good answers for you. Sorry. Hopefully enough other people will do the thing and we can all have socialism.
That's all I've got really. It's not that hard a concept in the end. Once I found a security vulnerability in capitalism, I started prying at it until capitalism broke, at least for me. There are probably other security flaws elsewhere, but I haven't been looking for them. There's plenty of room though, so feel free to grab your own crowbar and give it a go. If even one person is convinced to join me, I will consider this article a success.
Thank you for taking the time to read.