You may remember Aaron Clarey — also known as “Captain Capitalism” — as one of the random manospherians interviewed for the cinematic abomination known as The Sarkeesian Effect. I don’t quite remember if he made it into the final cut of the official, er, “film.” He definitely did appear in Davis Aurini’s bootleg version, pontificating about the alleged lack of ethics in American journalism while, for some unknown reason, wearing a cravat.
Turns out that Mr. Clarey’s definition of “ethics” is a rather unique one.
On Monday, Clarey encouraged his blog readers to take advantage of a unique opportunity to earn some sweet, sweet cash — helping students cheat their way through college by writing their essays and term papers for them.
Clarey posted a pitch from his apparent pal Aleksey Bashtavenko, the head of something called Academic Composition, who started off by thanking Clarey for sending so many aspiring , er, ghostwriters his way in the past.
I’d like to personally thank Aaron and all of you who follow his blog Captain Capitalism, you guys have been the main driving force behind the recent growth of our enterprise.
After a slow summer, “Alex” reported,
we’re definitely getting much busier and this may well be our most lucrative semester yet.
Quite a few people have inquired about job opportunities with us and we weren’t able to receive help from all of you. Yet, we could definitely use all of the support we can get. Within a month, we will be entering the busiest juncture of the academic year and it will last all the way through the end of 2016.
As you can see, he’s all about the high-quality prose.
Alex, who claims his “full-time writers earn over $3,000 per month,” also has some job openings in the Craigslist spamming “subcontracting” department as well.
We’re also looking to expand our ranks of Craigslist subcontractors. Many of you have been posting for us regularly and invariably, this helped us get to where we are today. We pay $5 for each lead our subcontractors generate and another $1 for each day your ads have been live.
Presumably Clarey is getting paid for posting this. Is there anyone in the manosphere who isn’t some kind of grifter?
@JennyWren
You don’t understand. These people use democracy against itself, they use the trappings of democratic language and mannerisms in order to subvert it from within. They use their sheer numbers and power to enforce what they believe is right in bald defiance of the rights of others, and they think that majorities should have the right to trample on the feet of minorities (but they’re all about “inalienable rights” and “Keep government out of my uterus” when it’s happening to them).
Soon, there will be a day when man can no longer enjoy junk food because some activist and her friends will have decided that people can’t decide what to do with their own bodies (again, unless you’re aborting a fetus). Then the Turkish cigarettes will be gone. Absinthe will be absent from our homes. You can’t even buy burgers medium rare in some states, and I can see a day in the future when activists and other assorted malcontents try to use government to either prevent people from eating cows because of animal cruelty or force them to eat more because of methane gasses.
This dude probably voted for Bush’s second term, if they were old enough then.
http://66.media.tumblr.com/3c6879efb81dd03f4cb5581c8abc21f6/tumblr_ntlzzxCq9b1unx10go1_500.gif
What is this, 1890s? Absinthe was banned for decades in America and was recently re-legalized in the early 2000s. What fucking century are you from?
What are they supposed to do? Use smaller numbers and less power? Enforce what they believe is wrong? Like it’s one thing to disagree with specific activist causes, but you’re basically saying activism in general is wrong.
@Mig,
Civilization’s hard, as it turns out. There is room for a lot of discussion on all of these topics, what the limits of democracy should be, how we should govern, what we should forbid and what we should allow – these are all great and important topics. I’ve got no doubt that we would be happy to have those discussions with you, too. There are lots of people here who are very well learned on them, and they’re a delight to talk to. I hope we can get there in this thread.
But first, my question was sort of important. What’s the difference between what you described and the operation of a healthy society which is working with a different set of ethics from you?
It’s okay to say that there is no distinguishable difference to you. There’s absolutely no shame in it. But it’s important to deal with this sort of thing honestly and openly if you want this discussion to go anywhere beyond name-calling and bile.
The dude is a literally a Status Quo Warrior.
@Handsome Jack
They kept that job destroying Al Gore out of office, that was definitely a good move.
The electoral college is a good thing, because they help keep populist demagogues out of office (Trump may be an exception). They’re not fool-proof, but they’re definitely a help.
Damn health codes! Why can’t I poison my customers with tainted meat???
We had some really bad ecoli breakouts in my state in the 90s, and it was illegal to serve undercooked meat for a while because of that. Turns out about 15% of ground beef was contaminated at that time. That’s a 1 in 7 chance of getting a potentially fatal illness from eating undercooked burger. Now it’s legal but they put a disclaimer on it letting the customers know that the FDA recommends against it and the meat suppliers cleaned up their act (literally). All thanks to those pesky government regulations.
That’s not how the electoral college works. The electoral college is suppose to vote the way the people who voted in the representatives voted. That’s why they’re voted in. And the only reason we have an electoral college in the first place was because way back when, not everyone knew how to read or could organize polling properly. We now have the organization and technology to make it so everyone can have a direct vote on who is president so why even have an outdated system around?
I mean, that kind of thinking is why so much of the government works on computers from the 80s. Why change something that kinda works to something more efficent, amiright?
Which corporations have been rendered bad by leftist interlopers? Which specific corporate policies are bad. Please exclude policies that are there because of government regulation. Please exclude policies that are the result of responsiveness to the market. For example, gaming consumers wanting more diversity and the developers seeing a profit opportunity in that.
How are you differentiating laziness from disability, mental illness or advanced age? Many people who don’t work or who work part time low skill jobs (like my brother) are unable to bootstrap to their way to good fortune. Not unwilling.
Why is a job good in and of itself? As we become more technologically advanced, the 40 hour week is becoming increasingly irrelevant. Less labor is necessary to keep society functioning. Why is there a moral imperative to cling to an industrial era economic model?
Those who do not seek to use the government to overpower their fellow man are those who care most deeply for democracy. The electoral college is a good thing, and those who seek to dissolve it are also part of the problem.
Also, contrary to popular belief, many households on government assistance do actually work. http://laborcenter.berkeley.edu/the-high-public-cost-of-low-wages/
Maybe if those dreaded unions had more power, wages would be higher and fewer people would be on assistance. We need either a breadwinner economy or a welfare state or poverty will be too high for society to function properly.
@Scildfreja
I can hardly see the difference. For all I know, all the rest of you are sick and I am the healthy one. Just because you all have bigger numbers doesn’t imbue your arguments with anymore virtue; if it makes 90% of society happy to tell violate the rights of the other 10%, do you consider that ethical?
The 17th?
According to my calculations, he was born in 1687.
I wonder if he was at the Salem witch trials? He would’ve been very young, but just old enough to remember it. He was definitely a puritan before he joined the ranks of the undead. That much is clear.
Say, Miggs? How old were you when your mortal self died and you became undead? Just curious.
All Terrain Alt-Right Transport said (emphasis mine):
Those pesky ~WOMZ~! If they get into power, they’ll take away all the junk food from good, hard-working, MANLY MEN! How can MEN possibly hunt the mammoth if they’re not hopped up on Mountain Dew and Doritos?
…Wait, I’m getting word that some ~WOMZ~ actually like junk food, too. And some MEN don’t like junk food holy shit
@All that Migging
The peasant man calls
“Have you no shame for our kings?”
“You are all sick leeches.”
Now to break form because you’re now going into the bullshit claims.
Let’s see the top corporations pay no taxes or are paid by the government, the top 10 of 1% earn 50% of all the wealth in the entire world, so I find any claims of them working literally hundreds of times harder to be load of crap. Let’s put in the part where corporations turned the US into a damn plutocracy where they are about to have another recession because the banks that ruined the economy are bigger than ever.
Living wages, why have that? Caring about the environment before we are all fucked everywhere, why bother? Making a profit off recreational drugs, the DEA and pharmacy can’t have things that would reduce their bottom line.
@ ATMAT
You seem to be running the old “tyranny of the majority” argument. That’s fine, you’re not the first. One way people have sought to address that is to incorporate features into democracies that protect the rights of minorities. Generally societies are heading towards a ‘you can do what you want so long as it doesn’t interfere with other people’s rights’ model.
Of course though there will always be tensions between different interests bit that’s people for you.
But specifically which of your rights do you feel are being infringed?
Does having a broader range of characters in games and media actually affect my inhibit your enjoyment. There’s almost certainly going to be someone in there you can identify with. Why shouldn’t other people also see characters that are like themselves?
It doesn’t seem to be a zero sum game to me, but I’m happy to be corrected if you can show me where I may be in error.
No, no, no. It’s trampling on the rights of men for women to eat junk food! That would make women fat and cause sad boners. We couldn’t have that now could we?
@Mig, thank you for the clear answer! Very helpful.
Correct! Virtue stems from ethics. Frankly, very, very few people think themselves unethical (much as the channers like to argue otherwise). Ethical evaluation is mostly a society-level operation. Individual morals are opinions; societal morals are an ethos.
(This can of course be extended into the whole “is there absolute morality” discussion. It’s funny how everyone who claims there to be an absolute morality also claims that it matches their own, though. Sort of telling.)
Not at all, and that’s not what I was leading to, either. Ethics are ethics, and their standards apply to everyone – there’s no utilitarian calculus involved.
They also shift over time, however. What is ethical in a society twenty years ago may not be acceptable today.
Is this closer to the root of your problem with “leftists”? That their standards have shifted away from the morality you are familiar with, and you’d rather they didn’t?
David, you’re not going to re-watch the film to find out? We’ll stand by with brain bleach.
@ tara
I’m not going to watch it until there’s an all female reboot; with a black woman.
ETA: Ooh, could we do that just to annoy them? Anyone have a video camera?
Now Mig has transformed into his fourth form, from being a 329 year old engineer, to a hard working common man, to the ruff and tuff island survivalist, has now become, the libertarian GG’er worshiping the hands of the market in hopes of getting rewarded by the powers that be for his trumpeting.
@ scildfreja
Another discussion for another time, but as always you’ve got me thinking. I’ve been in quite a few meetings where “It’s not exactly ethical but…” decisions have been made. That’s a lot more prevalent since I shifted more into corporate law. Now, are business people more willing to recognise when they’re behaving unethically, or does the fact the actions will actually be carried out by companies (which in law are separate ‘persons’) mean they can shift responsibility/guilt onto a different entity?
Don’t they have machines to do that kind of work now
The argument that they work hundreds of times harder only works if you believe that labor is the foundation of value in a good or commodity. Some jobs are labor intensive, while others are capital intensive. Either way, why shouldn’t they be allowed to have that wealth?
@All that and a bag of chips
Hey, genius, I’ve been unemployed for a month or two now. In that time I’ve put in over 50 applications to various companies, small businesses, anyone seeking work. I’ve recieved ONE call, and it only happened today. So randian shit for brains like you who constantly screech about how the unemployed are just lazy can piss the hell off.
@Alan, from my experience, whenever someone says “Well, this isn’t exactly ethical, but”, they’re doing a couple of things in the background in order to compensate. First, they’re separating themselves from the unethical decision. There’s always a reason outside of themselves for the unethical action – “It’s not me, it’s the company” is custom-made to carry that burden of guilt.
(Frankly, I suspect that companies-as-entities was introduced as much for shouldering that guilt as it was for fiscal purposes)
So it’s basically fundamental attribution effect in action there. Second, some people will twist their perceptions so as to make the unethical behaviour feel more “right” to them. I’m pretty sure that’s how you get a Roosh or a Matt Forney, at least.
Those are all defensive mechanisms to protect the sense of self as a good person. Either “I had no choice and it wasn’t me anyways,” or “It’s actually not a bad thing.”
Which is exactly the sort of tortured squirming you get from MRA’s and the Alt Right.