There’s a debate that’s beginning to rage in earnest: should the internet be regulated? And if so, how? You don’t have to look much further than the UK’s draconian new policies to see all this emerging. (The UK’s approach makes people pay…their local bodega…for a license…to watch porn. “Hey…uh…Ashraf…can I get a…err…porn license card?” That, my friends, is probably a weird, hilarious, sad backward step too far.)

And yet the debate on regulating the internet is emerging for a very good reason. The internet needs to be policed, somehow. It’s a festering cesspool of extremism, fanaticism, fascism, recommended by algorithm, for profit’s sake. One which addicts us to it, make us unhappier, leaves our kids dumber, radicalizing them into real world violence. You’re kidding yourself if you think all this is vaguely acceptable. And yet we’re asking the wrong question. What the emerging debate on regulating the internet teaches us a lesson hiding in plain sight, which we’re missing. It’s this.

We used to make fun of Windows for crashing all the time. But all Windows did was crash computers. The capitalist internet is crashing things, too. Things much bigger than computers. It’s crashing democracy, society, and the future. It’s crashing meaning, freedom, fairness, reality, and truth. It’s crashing us, as selves, moral agents, too, emotionally, socially, intellectually, economically, politically.

The capitalist internet is one of economic history’s greatest failures so far. It’s a spectacular success, when it comes to profits, sure. But when it comes to real human outcomes, to social welfare, to progress? It’s something like a wrecking ball to societies. It’s pimped out our kids, uprooted our democracies, disconnected our relationships, and addled our brains (and if you don’t believe that, please take a hard look around, or think about how it is that American living standards are plummeting daily…how could the capitalist internet have benefited us…if our lives and societies are crumbling before our eyes?)

Why is that? Because what the capitalist internet is really selling us is a feeling. One that we came to rely on, to crave, that seduced us. A feeling we can’t get anymore much of anywhere else — as our lives, societies fall apart by the day, as we grow poorer, more powerless, more helpless, stuck, trapped. The feeling of power. Control. Superiority. Pleasure. Freedom. The feeling of what we imagine it must be like to be rich. Click, tap, swipe. Whoosh! The electric thrill of a dopamine rush. What could be more addictive than that? So here we all are — using Facebook and YouTube and whatnot every day while they literally poison our kids, societies, futures, and minds.…take no responsibility…pay no taxes…and profit. The feeling of power, control, pleasure, is false. It’s not real. It’s a trick. But it feels real — and so we can’t kick the habit of addiction to the capitalist internet.

We’re junkies, who need the capitalist internet’s self-destructive pleasures, ever more costly, just to make it through the day. And much of that is because we asked the capitalist internet to “police itself.” Our first thought — often well intended — is that “companies should police themselves. But how often does that really happen? When was the last time an industry policed itself? The banks didn’t — they crashed and burned, and then demanded trillions in bailouts. Pharma and HMO’s didn’t — they jacked up insulin prices up by thousands of percent, just for money. Auto-makers didn’t — they had to be reined in every step of the way, or climate change would be even worse than it is now. Advertising doesn’t — it didn’t yank all those tobacco ads all by itself. In fact, I can’t think of a single industry ever, in history, that’s been genuinely successful at policing itself. Can you? Go ahead, consider it.

The capitalist internet is the latest example in this sad trend of capitalism being unable to police itself — and it’s probably one of history’s best examples of it, too. Remember my question? If I told you two decades ago…would you have laughed? And yet here we are. The internet is one of political-economic history’s greatest illustrations of the failure of capitalism to police itself. Here we have an industry literally profiting by spreading hate, disinformation, misinformation, radicalization — not to mention loneliness, unhappiness, misery, envy, rage, greed, and despair — and it’s totally unable to police any of that, really.

Why is that? The argument often put forth about capitalism policing itself is a naive one. It goes something like this: given competition, people will choose the highest quality product or service, and that will be the one which polices itself. But has that ever really held true? People don’t choose the highest quality product or service unless they can afford it. Most of the time, people choose what’s glitzy, glamorous, immediate, and offers them the greatest, quickest, cheapest rush or thrill or idle pleasure. This argument relies on the fabled homo economicus — the rational, macho decision-maker — but nobody is really that person (least of all men who imagine they are.)

So the theory goes that as “consumers” “defect” from shoddy products and services, “incentives” will arise for companies to “police themselves.” But what the capitalist internet has shown us that theory is wrong on every count.

Nobody’s defected yet, really. Here we all are, using Facebook and YouTube every day. Wait — didn’t a mass murderer just namecheck a YouTube celebrity? Isn’t Facebook a very big reason our democracies are in trouble? What the….what the hell is wrong with us then? We’re human, my friends. All too human.

The theory is wrong. We haven’t “defected” away from the platforms that cause us misery and ruin in every imaginable way, really — cultural, social, democratic, emotional. In fact, we use them more and more every day. Why is that? Have you ever wondered about this strange and weird paradox?

The first obvious answer is that we can’t defect, because there’s nowhere to defect to. What are you going to use instead of Facebook? YouTube? Internet economics are dominated by network effects, which mean that when we’re all on a platform…we stay there. And so the rivals quickly go bankrupt, and one player, maybe two, is left standing. Winner takes all. But the result, as in so many other arenas of capitalism, is monopoly. There are handful of banks. Just five or six companies own all that TV you watch. How many oil companies are there? HMOs? And the situation is even worse on the internet. There are just four big players, each in its own domain, Facebook for “social networking”, Twitter for commentary, YouTube for video, Amazon, Google, etcetera. So we can’t defect because there’s nowhere to go.

But the reason there’s nowhere to go is that these platforms are all deeply addictive. They give us a dopamine rush, all of them, in different ways. Whoosh! And then we feel better — and who doesn’t want to feel better these days, when life is literally crumbling before your eyes? When you can’t make ends meet? When just having decent healthcare is an impossible dream? Facebook gives us the rush of false intimacy. YouTube gives us the rush of escapism. Amazon, the cheap thrill of having choices, money.

All of these platforms give us the dopamine rush of power — in a time when we are powerless to really make our lives better. In that way, they leave us addicted — but also more helpless, just like any addicts, in the end, to really better our lot. If you’re spending all day on YouTube, you’re not earning that degree. But only one of these things is going to help you in the end. And so on.

(Think about what really happens at Amazon for a second with me. I’ve bought tons of stuff at Amazon — mostly random stuff I might have bought at a hardware store or drugstore or pet store. And I’d say about 30% has turned out to be defective, 30% has turned out to be just flagrantly misrepresented, and 30% has ended up being cheap junk. Maybe 10% is genuinely satisfying, in the way that shopping at a local store might be. So why do I keep doing it? I don’t. But I did for too long — and after thinking about it, I realized that I did so not just because it was convenient, but because it was thrilling, in a weird, new, unexpected way. It gave me a sense of power. Look at all these choices! Wow…all this stuff can be mine!! I can read all these reviews! I’m in control! It made me feel rich, wealthy, in other words.

Have you felt like that? Be honest — nobody’s listening. But if you have, then see the point: the platform isn’t policing itself. And what it’s really selling you isn’t stuff — but that feeling of power, of being rich, of freedom. But it’s a false one, because you’re not really better off in the end — just like I returned to my local hardware store and drugstore, after filling my place with junk which I had to trash…stores which aren’t capitalism so much as they’re just friendly, sane business.)

So what these platforms are selling, really, is a feeling. A feeling of power. Of being free, wealthy, rich, entitled — in a time where people’s standards of living are cratering. What could be more seductive, more powerful than that? Amazon sells it in low-grade form — “consumer power.” YouTube, in explicit form — white power. But what they’re selling remains the same — power, superiority, wealth, freedom. But none of it is real.

Yet they’re all “free” — remember. They don’t charge you a penny. What could be better in times of growing impoverishment? But the price — too steep — is paid in every other way imaginable. Yes, really.

You might think I’m overstating it. But I’m not. The research on this subject couldn’t be clearer. There is literally nothing positive, in net terms, that comes from using the capitalist internet. The goods — what little there are, convenience, ease, comfort — are vastly outweighed by the bads. Facebook makes us loneliner, dumber, sadder. YouTube makes us meaner, dumber, crueller. Twitter…LOL. They all make us poorer, too — they don’t pay taxes, but you do. There is not a single net positive effect — cultural, economic, social, intellectual, democratic, political — of the capitalist internet discovered to date, probably because there isn’t one that exists, and you don’t have to look much further than the ruinous state of our societies to see it.

The capitalist internet is one of the greatest proofs so far historically of capitalism’s many failures, how toxic it ends up when left to its own devices, how it turns people and societies against their better selves. What happened wasn’t an American economists’ utopia of “free choice” — people running away from shoddy products and services. Instead, the more outrageous, disgusting, and grotesque those things became, the more people grew addicted to them. The more they sought a hit of power to give them a tiny morsel of pleasure, in a time when they felt powerless to change their declining fortunes. A vicious cycle resulted. Instead of using low-quality, substandard platforms less — people used them more and more.

And when people weren’t “voting with their feet”…why would the capitalists police themselves? So mostly, they laughed. YouTube went right on algorithmically recommending Nazism to teenagers, radicalizing. Zuck went right on crying “it’s not our fault!” Bezos went right on selling people shoddy crap, without checking a thing — and becoming something like the world’s first junk baron.

The capitalist internet is selling you a feeling. A feeling of power. Of control. Of pleasure. Of freedom, wealth, entitlement, privilege. But it’s false.

This is capitalism’s ever-present bargain. Not my local hardware store — that’s business, not capitalism. Capitalism — the true kind — mega business, giga corporations. Their trick is to sell you back all the feelings you don’t feel. The ones you don’t allow yourself to feel. Because you’ve been told you’re worthless all your life long. But who’s been telling you that? Capitalism has. In ads. In infomercials. In “news.” In magazines, glossy editorials, at jobs, in careers.

See the con game that’s being played? If you feel like you’re worthless, you might react, like a YouTube fascist, by getting addicted to extremism. Like an Instagram junkie, by taking pretty pictures, even though you’re depressed, Like a Facebook or Twitter addict, by constantly sniping and bitching to prove how superior you are. Ahhh. The rush. Power. Pleasure. Control. Freedom. Now you feel like a rich person, must, right? The rich, my friend, are just as miserable as you, in a capitalist society. It’s in different ones — gentler ones, truer ones, kinder ones — where happiness and meaning and intimacy emerge.

You might object — “hey, you’re publishing this on the capitalist internet, idiot!” I don’t think so. I think Medium is more what I’d call post-capitalism. It’s not here to maximize profits by recommending you fascist videos, is it? It takes safety very seriously — and it tries to do better things than just addict you to garbage that feels good. It’s trying to do genuinely positive things, which maximize your intelligence, trust, happiness, and so on. Will it succeed? I don’t know. I hope so. But I do think it’s a model to follow.

And that brings me to back to the question of regulating the internet. No sane society is going to let this state of affairs go on — the capitalist internet radicalizing kids into violence, wrecking democracy, addling brains, making people desperately unhappy. Europe and Canada are already regulating it. Britain’s approach is too heavy-handed. But I fear all this misses the point — and it isn’t me saying “there shouldn’t be an internet!”, like some kind of Luddite lunatic.

The internet should be either a post-capitalist good, or a public good. A public utility. Like a town square. Things like Facebook and YouTube and Twitter never should have been capitalist at all. Like all town squares, the rules of civilized speech should apply. I can’t call someone a nasty name, harass them, intimidate them, bully them there — nor should I be able to here.

The capitalist internet is one of history’s great failures, my friends. Whether we know it now or not, our grandkids will certainly regard it that way. They’ll be incredulous that we were seduced and then addicted by its garbage culture, its trash spectacles, its junk food for the human mind and spirit, all so we could get a desperate hit of feeling power and control…while our planet, democracies, future, and lives were all melting down. It’s up to us to build a better internet, and do it now. And whether we do that through post-capitalism, or through public goods — or both — that challenge is very real, very urgent, and very noble.

Umair

April 2019