Starbucks Communism: Consumerism & Austerity in Communism and Capitalism

Join Malcolm and Simone Collins as they delve into the complex relationship between capitalism, communism, and the modern iteration of "Starbucks Communism." In this thought-provoking discussion, the couple explores the historical context of austerity within communist systems and how it has been replaced by a unique combination of communism and consumerism in contemporary times. They also examine the efficiency of capitalist systems and the importance of promoting austerity as a cultural value. Throughout the conversation, Malcolm and Simone shed light on the potential dangers of modern communist ideologies and the importance of understanding the consequences of implementing such systems.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] You and I, even though it may seem an anathema to people, we promote both and austerity. Why do we promote these in combination? It is because capitalist systems, are just more efficient than other systems. Alright? It isn't because we assign any sort of like, Theological or moral value to capitalism.

And as to why we promote austerity, it is for the same reason. Psychologically and effectiveness wise as an individual, it promotes those things. Communist systems, historically speaking, for obvious reasons have always glorified austerity.

What is this? This rocket is decadent and wasteful. If you want to win contest, your mind must be hard and joyless, like a Russian turnip.

Malcolm Collins: And this made sense if you're actually trying to operate in any level economically functioning communist system. But the new communists aren't like this so you have gotten this [00:01:00] totally unique to modern times combination of communism and consumerism Starbucks communism, I guess we should call it. It's communism, but with polyamory and orgies and, and constant self affirmation.

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone! Hi. I am so excited to be here with you, pushing through another pregnancy.

Your

Simone Collins: upended turtle wife

Malcolm Collins: here. No, no, no, no. You are an amazing picture of grace, and I want to talk about something here because it was something that I was thinking about that is just so fascinating because I was thinking about us pushing austerity. Which we often push on our podcast, you know, austerity in your lifestyle.

And this isn't to say that we don't sin, you know, I know I drink, I know I shouldn't do that, I know I indulge myself occasionally. It's

Simone Collins: wine and water, you have to drink that or you'll

Malcolm Collins: die. I, I, yeah, right, I recognize, I, I'm like a robot from a, a Futurama,

My God, [00:02:00] you're a mess.

Leave me alone. Look at that five o'clock rust. You've been up all night not drinking, haven't you? Please, Bender, have some malt liquor. If not for yourself, then for the people who love you.

Malcolm Collins: You know, I need alcohol or I'll go crazy.

European,

Simone Collins: you are a, a very European genetically. Like if you look at your 23 and me, you're extremely European. Your people have lived off beer as their primary, like, nutritional water

Malcolm Collins: source. So people may not know this, and we should actually elevate this point that she's making here because it is actually interesting.

During parts of European history, because especially after we began to urbanize because the water supplies became toxic often and you couldn't drink from them, the only thing that you could be almost certain did not, wasn't going to get you sick was Coors Light. Well, that quote is like, but watered down alcohol specifically because they would water down their alcohol historically.

A lot of people don't know this, like wine in for example, Athens, where you hear about them drinking wine all the time. In symposia, yeah. Heavily watered down. And [00:03:00] this, we, we know this because they called like the Macedonians barbarians for not watering down their wine. They were like those maniacs drink wine.

Drunken maniacs. Yes. Yes. And it was actually the same as beer in a historic context. It was mostly meant to remove the microbes from it. But, but, but they consumed prodigious amounts. So I am not that dissimilar from my ancestors.

Simone Collins: Well, your body's kind of built for it. I'm just saying. And Yeah, I'd actually say that Also, the, and I just, you know, people give, give you s**t for drinking beer flavored water.

But in the end, beer flavored water, just like furries is the most traditional path.

Malcolm Collins: It is. It is the most traditional path. I'm a trad for drinking Coors Light but anyway, this is a completely off topic.

Simone Collins: Yeah, sorry. It's, it's yeah, I've had a long day. I'm, I'm too pregnant for this, as Candace Owens has famously said. Because we

Malcolm Collins: get, well, I mean, on the topic of austerity, we often talk about austerity, and it is actually pretty rare these days for people to think about the combination of austerity and [00:04:00] capitalism.

As moral systems, historically, austerity was more associated with the communist system. Whereas consumerism was associated with the, I call it consumerism slash hedonism was associated with the capitalist system and in sort of a historic context. Well, and I would say

Simone Collins: you can tell me I'm totally off base here, but it occurred to me, even when you look and we're talking, you know, blur your eyes here, cross your eyes a little bit, but when you compare.

Historical cities like Athens versus Sparta or, you know, kingdoms, essentially Sparta was, you know, the more communist kind of place and it was definitely way more austere in comparison, you know, Athenians were these feet wealthy, you know, high class differentiation groups.

Malcolm Collins: So let's talk about why this is the case, first of all, because this is, I mean, if you are trying to functionally implement capitalism and you want to promise people something to get them to go along with the [00:05:00] system that leads to a level of inequality that you don't get within communist systems, you promise them that even the poorest will have a better life, or even like the, like, let's say lower third will have a better life than your average person in a communist system.

And this is. True, generally speaking. Also, when people historically have been implementing communist systems that are meant to practically work, well, you need to get them to be austere for the system to produce enough goods. You need to elevate austerity as a value system. The problem is, a couple fold here.

One is, is that today the communists, Don't actually plan to implement their system or are not seriously thinking about it. And so they can promise whatever they want. And so now you've gotten this weird mix of communism plus consumerism slash heathenism. Which in a historic communist concept is a complete historical anathema, which we're going to talk about in a second, but I'm going to take this, box it up, put it aside.

But first we're going to talk about the weird mix of capitalism and austerity, because you have [00:06:00] seen this in a historic context. And actually where you've seen this in a historic context, you got supercharged capitalism. This was in the, so for people who aren't familiar with this,

there's a famous book on the subject of Calvinism.

Do you read the Wikipedia entry on this book because its subjects are pretty important to this particular discussion. The Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism is consider