Capitalism killed the Conservative star
How modern, digital capitalism mutated to become something that looks like socialism and attacks one of the conservative pillars: the private property
It’s 8 AM in the morning. After breakfast I go out from the home I share with some other roomies I found through a mobile app. Down in the street and parked along the sidewalk, I see a gallery of a set of different branded electric scooters and bikes. I check –again– the screen of my smartphone, tapping on the icon of one of those brands in order to unlock one of the vehicles. I put my headphones on, fire my playlist, adjust the helmet only God knows how many different heads have wrapped before and drive, gently and swiftly to my office in a coworking space. Fortunately there’s some room available in a random table so I can sit down, open the lid of my laptop and start using the software tools I acquired by monthly suscription.
This could be easily the daily tale of a modern worker citizen. If we made it thinking about a few decades ago only, we’d probably find quite a different story.
The classical political paradigm of liberal democracies that we learnt for generations was easy to understand: Conservatives to the right, Socialist (progressive) to the left. The formers defending free trade and private property, the latters defending high taxes to fund public services in shared spaces.
Being like that, it was pretty straightforward to link capitalism to conservative parties. This would be probably right, until now. Modern, consumer-based, digital capitalism has mutated into something that has some leftist flavor and smell: it’s all about that false friend called collaborative economy and some other euphemisms that nimbly hide the well-known beast of greedy profit hunting.
After this layer of good intentioned, environment-aware and happy jingle Youtube ads, this modern capitalism is obliterating one of the conservative pillars: the private property.
The citizen of the initial story owned nothing. He or she was everything but an owner, just… a user. No home, no mortgage, no car, no office. Even the music that pours out from the headphones it’s not owned, just lifetime rented actually, or even just an evanescent stream.
If the twentieth century capitalism, that is, the bull that confronted comunism temptations, offered people the dream to become a proud middle class landowner, car owner, mortage-holder and a happy father/mother with children to become their heirs; the present digital-based capitalism is removing any trace of property, so it does then with the same concept of middle class.
Investment have found how easy is to get more revenue without offering any kind of ownership in exchange. So basically they (investors) can progressively and freely acquire the ownership of all existing properties, that will be offered only for rent at an arbitrary price to the vast majority of “users”, conveniently tagged with some fancy wording. No doubt that some green, washing, progressive and revolutionary jargon will be used to advertise this new way of exploitation.
Private property, once the political torch waved by right-wing leaders like Ronald Reagan or Margaret Thatcher in the 80’s has become, paradoxically, in probably the most humanistic, revolutionary claim these days. The tool, the way regular people could reverse this wicked, biosphere-killer, inequality-booster modern capitalism.
The one that knows nothing about Left or Right.
