YOLO Economics: The Macabre Business Continuity Plans of Necrocapitalism

For a society that does everything in its power to distract itself from its mortal predicaments, it is an irony that it is host to an economic system which worships death through and through, down to the core operating principles of its foundation. Capitalism is a funeral business enriching itself through extinction, extraction and inequality. Its biggest commercial threats are a biodiverse planet, an egalitarian society, and humans who want to work to live rather than live to work. The de facto definition of a successful business today is to be a virus: to create more of itself as fast as possible, at any cost and detriment to people and planet. This dogma of unchecked expansion can logically only come to an end when there are no people, no nature, and no liveable planet.

Until then, this parasitic system will continue to get richer, even as resources vanish. Because if you build the coffins, the corpses will come. This is not just a figure of speech, but the most evil business continuity plan this economic system has ever concocted. The way that necrocapitalism plans to endure in a ravaged planet of diminishing returns is by jacking up its prices, precisely by ramping up its destruction of people and nature. The dearer the price of wood becomes, the more this funeral parlour we call capitalism can charge for its fancy corpse caskets. When you’re in the business of death you just have to go with the flow…of blood.

But all death cults are, ironically, death-defying cults: they thrive on a convenient interpretation of death which affects everything except themselves and their worshipers. It is a cognitive short circuit which has worked every time, in fact Christian religion has made so much use of it throughout its narratives, practices and iconography, that you would think by now we would at least be somewhat suspicious.

This ignorance of death, of the fragility of life and the natural world itself, has in the end resulted in the most hardcore cult of orthodox necrophilia: you only live once, might as well destroy everyone else but yourself. The oligarchs don’t see the self-destructiveness of this reasoning, precisely because they treat death as another one of their traded commodities: if all the death is used up on other people and beings, there will be no death left for me. “Your death is my salvation” is the thinking process taking place in the heads of oligarchs. It is terrifyingly retarded to say the least, but not to them: because they have learned throughout their career that the misfortune of others is the most monetizable of all resources. Whether it is genocide, cancer or diabetes, there will always be a weapons, pharmaceutical or food industry executive behind it, tucked away in a glass tower calculating this year’s financial bonus from yet another one of capitalism’s engineered disasters. Death is a political commodity for this economic system, and genocide one of its most precious investments. Those who dare put these investments in peril will undoubtedly risk becoming part of whichever ethnic cleansing seems to be trending at the time.

But I’m still conflicted about whether these oligarchs, religions and other authorities who over the centuries crafted the self-destructive narratives of this civilisation knew all along what they were doing. Perhaps I am not as evil as them to get into their heads. But I increasingly gravitate towards the conclusion that there isn’t much of a thought process going on here other than raw smash-and-grab primitive stupidity on a collective basis, as much as we try to charge this all to the “genius” oligarchs. After all we, the peasants, are responsible for believing the narratives they sold us and the expensive coffins we willingly walked ourselves into. Is that too harsh? Because it seems we have accepted to live in a system which thrives on our misfortune, naively miscrediting it for all the “good” things in the world. The reality on the ground shows that we have made yet another grave cognitive mistake.

So, there is a collective lack of consciousness here, from both oligarchs and plebs. Because when a civilisation is half-conscious of engineering its own collapse yet completely resigns itself to it, there are many questions to be raised regarding the nature and existence of human consciousness itself. A civilisation which pollutes itself cannot possibly be sentient. It is a mere chemical reaction running out of raw materials to burn, like a candle running out of wax. A civilisation which throws out 13 million smartphones a day cannot be described as a civilisation. It is an infection that spreads mercilessly until it is consumed by its own waste. A civilisation that has passively surrendered to the thought of sinking into its own toxic waste products is a civilisation that perhaps was never meant to last to begin with.

This civilisation keeps avoiding its responsibilities by pretending they don’t even exist. We live in a society which puts tremendous effort into pretending that it is not destroying itself. Perhaps then this is not a civilisation after all. Perhaps it is merely some type of material incarnation of destruction itself.

I cannot sweeten this pill even if I try. We have built death-worshipping civilisations which come with temporary benefits, and permanent side effects. Necrocapitalism’s evil business continuity plan was not recently devised, as some analysts claim. It goes back thousands of years into our culture. Growth and capitalism are criminals who think they will never get caught. Our society is founded upon the disrespect of nature and the normalisation of atrocities and genocides against 10 million species, including our own. But we have come to an age where profit has thoroughly corrupted society. It has bought the land, the media, the politicians, and it has scorched the future. It is becoming increasingly difficult to discern any fully functioning human animals within this army of remote-operated consumatrons. It would seem to me that they went extinct long ago.

The natural outcome of this can only be self-annihilation. Humanity is a clumsy terrorist with no escape plan, and capitalism is like AI: unless you unplug it, it will speed all the way to the endgame. Because we are fast becoming roadkill to our own profit locomotive.

If you think my voice should be heard louder then PLEASE support by becoming a paid subscriber. I have minimal overheads, no sponsors I sell myself to, bosses who tell me what to write (or NOT write), or staff I have to pay. I’m here for you raw, straight, and dedicated. Your support is appreciated. Thank you.

George is an author, scientist and researcher covering the polycrisis

My Books

tsakraklides.com