Growth capitalism is a deranged fantasy for lunatics.
Year 1, your business makes a million dollars in profit. Great start!
Year 2, you make another million. Oh no! Your business is failing because you didn't make more than last year!
Okay, say year 2 you make $2 mil. Now you're profitable!
Then year 3 you make $3 mil. Oh no! Your business is failing! But wait, you made more money than last year right? Sure, but you didn't make ENOUGH more than last year so actually your business is actively tanking! Time to sell off shares and dismantle it for parts! You should have made $4 mil in profit to be profitable, you fool!
If you're not making more money every year by an ever-increasing exponent, the business is failing!
Absolute degenerate LUNACY
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Oh, Alcohol.
Barenaked Ladies saved me from a life (and possibly death) as an alcoholic.
Let me explain:
My first official, tax-paying job as as a mutuel teller at a horse track in the mid aughts. I worked for $8.15/hour most of the year and during live season (when races were taking place at my track) they bumped it up to $8.50. During live race nights, I could easily pull in $100 in tips in a night.
You would have thought that a nearly-homeless college dropout trapped in a relationship he didnāt yet fully realize was extremely abusive would have squirreled that away to make a better life for himself, but no. My coworkers (including The Ex From Hell) liked to go drinking at the restaurant/bar across the highway from the track after live race nightsātwice a weekāand I, being starved for company and having TEFH as my only ride home, went with them.
It was always a jolly old time. I drank so many mudslides & flying grasshoppers and ate so many mozzarella sticks you wouldnāt believe. My regular bartender and I (and that phrase should set off alarm bells in your head already) developed a new drink! Itās still one of my favorites. Here, let me share it with you:
AQUA VELVET
2 parts blue curaƧao
2 parts Midori (melon liqueur)
1 part pineapple juice
spritz of Sprite
Shake with ice, strain, serve cold in a hurricane glass.
Fucking incredible drink.
But yeah. I drank pretty heavily every night we went out. Drank until I got loose and loopy and extremely homosexual. Drank until I didnāt care about the dysphoria I was trying to ignore and the mental illness & traumas I couldnāt afford to get help for. Until, for just a few hours, I was happy.
And then one night as āClosing Timeā by Semisonic played on the speaker system and I received my solo bill, I really looked at it and realized Iād spent literally all of my tip money for that dayās work. I spent over $100 on alcohol in one sittingāin 2007 or 2008 money, on an $8.50/hour wage. Moreover, Iād drank over a hundred dollars worth of booze specifically for the goal of getting drunk and staying that way.
As a sidebar, one of the many things wrong with me is moderate/severe OCD. My most intrusive symptom is endomusiaāmusic stuck in my headā¦everyā¦wakingā¦moment. As in, I can tell when Iāve woken up because thatās when the music starts. (In a fascinating twist, my father and brother both suffer this, too.) Any little thing that I see or hear or think about could set off a new song playing on repeat in my head.
And in that moment, looking at that staggering total on my receipt for the night, I heard Barenaked Ladies jamming their way through a syncopated bridge:
I thought that drinking just to get drunk was a waste of precious booze
Had it not been for that song, I would not have known that drinking to get drunk on a regular basis was a classic sign of alcoholism. But because I knew and loved that song, and because I had that moment of crystalline clarity at something like one in the morning, I realized that I had a fucking problem and I needed to stop.
I am immeasurably lucky that I came to this realization before my alcoholism developed into an actual dependency instead just of a deeply stupid bad habit I did for fun twice a week. I donāt take for granted that it could have been the end of me if not for that single moment. As much horrific shit as has happened to me in my life, holy fuck have I ever gotten some lucky breaks.
I donāt drink much nowadays, and havenāt for almost a decade. I donāt really like how it makes me feel most of the time. I just finished a top shelf margarita before writing this, in the safety of my own home, and itāsāI think the second alcoholic drink Iāve had this year.
So yeah. Music saves lives, yāall.
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