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?
Curious. What do you believe the foundation of value is?
Wealth isn’t generated by the sheer force of bootstraps. Corporations need a relatively stable and reliable currency, infrastructure, an educated population to become their employees, laws to protect their intellectual property and enforce their contracts. Business requires a stable and functioning society. In order to have wealth, both individuals must agree to that society’s laws and pay the taxes for its upkeep.
Unless you want to create a Galt’s Gultch on some deserted island somewhere, your wealth is not yours alone and you did not generate it entirely on your own.
@Josh
I can’t tell you how many people in the neighborhood I grew up in used every kind of social service available while not even bothering to get off their asses half the time, and I even knew an old man once who used to get beaten up by young people who wanted his social security check. Half of my family abuses the system; when my aunt was still alive, her husband made about $80,000 a year, but she still received disability because she had “anxiety.” My cousin does nothing but drink and he used to get all sorts of government assistance. I used to know a man who worked for a rental car company and he drove foreigners all over the place. They used to tell him all sorts of things about how easy it is to get medical care and the like if you weren’t even a citizen in this nation. Wanna guess how much they had to pay? But if you’re an American, try to get medical care that isn’t grossly, disgustingly expensive, and probably of questionable quality to boot. I see hardworking people all over getting their money taken from them and placed into the hands of people who may as well be sitting around drooling with their thumbs up their asses.
@Mig,
Your personal experiences are anecdotes and are biased by way of being observed from a single perspective. Ignore them, if you love the truth.
Aaand time to go to dinner and a friend’s house. I will check in later if you are still around, because you seem to be making progress. At least there’s less invective overall. (And fewer seagulls)
Have a lovely evening, if not.
I guess Mr. Migtow (I refuse to shorten their pseudonym to just Mig, the brave workers of the Mikoyan-Guerevich design firm deserve at least that much respect!) would classify me as a “drain on resources” and as a dangerous lefty to boot. I’m pretty sure that the 1300 euros I get from the government each month is a huge drain on society. What a useless eater I am, eh? 34 years old and already obsolete… Huge sarcasm for the preceding by the way, as if that wasn’t clear already.
Although I do have to admit that I am left-leaning, politically speaking. Not that there’s anything wrong with that these days. ^_^
@ monzach
Now I want to watch ‘Firefox’.
WHAT IN THE NAME OF
*breathe deep* *breathe again* *count to ten*
I wish I lived in the same planet as these guys. Sounds like a nice place, shame it’s not real for anyone else out here. That’s all I have to say about the subject before I start foaming through my mouth.
@Alan Robertshaw
That is genius. Their heads will simultaneously explode, implode, and some-other-kind-of-plode.
@Alan Robertshaw
Wow, that’s a good reference! ^_^ The MiG-31s in the movie are pretty neat, although personally I was always a bit partial to the MiG-29 of the real world, mainly due to the “striking cobra” attack manouver developed for them.
Yes…I am a huge Soviet military nerd. 😉
What did I miss?
Oh. Some just so stories about all the people living it up on government assistance.
I love how right wingers always magically know exactly how much everyone makes and exactly how much everyone who’s getting some sort of government assistance is getting and exactly what they buy with their EBT cards. How does this always happen? How do they always know?
It’s funny how the people who fancy themselves the most rational of all the STEMlords always rely on second hand gossipy anecdotes to form their opinions.
@ monzach
That’ll be handy if there ever comes a time when “You must think in Russian!”
@Alan Robertshaw
Luckily I’m very well-versed in the Human Wave Doctrine…
(That joke makes more sense if you’ve played the Hearts of Iron series of grand strategy games.)
And by ‘Think in Russian’ you mean just say something in Russian ;). I mean does saying something in another language the same as thinking in that language?
@ monzach
The submarine in Firefox is the same one from Ice Station Zebra so in my head Firefox is a sequel. I like to imagine Patrick McGoohan set up the Russian end of the operation.
@Alan Robertshaw
That’s a pretty interesting theory…a FILM THEORY!
Ahem…sorry. ô_ô
It does make a strange kind of sense that those dastardly Russians were behind it all, though. Incidentally, I really think that Alistair MacLean’s works, and the films derived from same, go swiftly downhill once he’s done with World War 2. His Cold War stuff is mediocre at best and just raging anti-Communist propaganda at worst. 🙁
@Mig
They infiltrate society and places of authority from the lowest levels up to the highest. They cloak themselves in the language of fairness and democracy in order to impose their rules on others; like most totalitarians, they use the strength of democracy against itself in order to subvert it.
Wait…HOW do they ” impose their rules on others”, using “the strength of democracy against itself in order to subvert it”?
Ah, here we are:
As it currently stands, one cannot express certain attitudes that they find displeasing without them exposing the person to the world via the internet and costing them their job
Examples? By this I mean examples of people being fired over mere differences of opinion, not online harassment, threats or blatant bigotry or misogyny – behaviors that, if only for PR reasons, companies prefer not to be publicly associated with. Go figure.
they’re busy shaking down major corporations and bullying them with their endless campaigns to bring about egalitarianism in video games and other forms of media.
I’d ask for examples again, but instead I ask: where does this power to “shake down major corporations” come from? Are these video game consumers telling companies what kind of content they want? If so, what is wrong with that? If not, what the hell are you talking about?
@ Fabe
Being able to speak a language doesn’t mean you generally think in that language. For example, I’m part of a little Hearthstone practice group and one of the members is German. He thinks about Hearthstone in English though because that’s the context in which he learned the associated concepts. He’s actually better at articulating those concepts in English than in German, even in his own head.
@Josh
Silly Josh, if you were a Worthy Person, that job offer would have appeared on a silver platter descending on a cloud, written on a scroll tied with a silk ribbon, while harps and trumpets played in the background.
That’s how the world works, right?
@ monzach
I think the films are OK for a lazy Sunday diversion, so long as you don’t think too hard (“Hang on, where did they get that helicopter?”). Having said that, I’ve seen ISZ about two dozen times and I’m still confused as to which side everyone was on.
Wait, what? I agree that sheer numbers don’t make a position right: if (hypothetically speaking, not suggesting any country is actually like this) 90% of a country’s population consists of straight people who mildly dislike the idea of gay marriage because it means having to change the way they think of and use language in relation to marriage slightly while 10% consists of gay people who really want to be allowed to marry the person they love, then absolutely, the fact that 90% are against gay marriage doesn’t mean that the right and democratic thing to do is not allow it. But the thing is, I’m pretty sure the left is not only very aware of this but have long been the ones trying to make this point to everyone else.
Note that, just as a majority wanting something doesn’t make that right, nor does a minority wanting something. How, then, do we judge what is right? I’m not sure what your answer is (though, if you’re still around, I’m genuinely curious), but the left (and I among them) would argue that you need to take into account how possible courses of action and states of affairs affect everyone. I’m not quite sure what you have in mind when you say “they use their sheer numbers and power to enforce what they believe is right in bald defiance of the rights of others”, but I think there may be some confusion. It sounds as though you think “what they believe is right” is “what will directly personally benefit them” or “the scenario which would most closely match their idea of utopia (purely in terms of their own direct experiences)”, but it’s a pretty fundamental left wing principle that everybody’s rights should be taken into account when deciding what should be done. So what the left believes is right should already have weighed up everyone’s rights, and if it ends up “baldly def[ying]” some people’s, then at least in theory that should only be because every other possible way of doing things has an even worse outcome in terms of some people’s rights.
(Yes, people are not perfect. Of course there will be a few people claiming to be on the left and only considering what’s good for them, just as in any group there will be people identifying themselves as members without meeting the definition. And of course people are not perfect assessors of the implications of all possible situations on people’s rights, so even with these aims the left may still end up in practice supporting policies that infringe on people’s rights more than they need to, because they hadn’t realised some of the implications, hadn’t been aware of the existence or importance of those rights, or hadn’t thought of an alternative that avoided the infringement. But (a) hopefully this doesn’t happen very often, and (b) the left should be more than willing to engage in debate and listen to anyone with another perspective on how the proposed policy will have a negative effect on certain people, or a better alternative policy.)
What specific things do you have in mind that the left has advocated that would involve “majorities […] trampl[ing] on the feet of minorities”? Is it just the things you mention in the following paragraph? These all (apart from the last) seem to fall into the category of “things being banned because consuming them has, or is believed to have, detrimental effects on health”. If a minority of people wish to consume these things despite the health effects then yes, that would be a majority seeking to impose their will on a minority, but only one very specific form of it. So it doesn’t indicate that this is a general problem for the left, rather than a specific issue of banning harmful substances.
In any case, taking this specific category, I’m not convinced this is a position adopted by all those on the left anyway. I’ll admit to not being familiar with the policies of specific leftwing groups relating to unhealthy food, tobacco, and alcohol, but I do know that plenty of leftwing individuals, groups, and parties are in favour of legalising some or all currently illegal drugs, and I would imagine their views on other unhealthy substances would be similar. One data point is not particularly useful, but for what it’s worth, I’m a left wing person against banning substances that are only harmful to the consumer (although in favour of education and campaigns to try to persuade people not to consume them).
As for cows, no-one of any political stripe is going to “force [anyone] to eat more because of methane gasses”. Eating more cows means breeding more cows to be eaten which means more methane gasses. Eating fewer cows in order to lower methane emissions (and reduce the amount of land needed to feed each person) would make much more sense, but I don’t see this as likely to be a legal requirement unless and until we reach an emergency situation. (At which point, yes, a minority’s rights would be subordinated to the majority good – in this case the right not to die from starvation or the consequences of global warming would pretty clearly trump the right to eat beef regardless of which of the would-be beef-eaters and the in-danger-of-death group was the majority and which was the minority, even supposing they were indeed non-overlapping groups.)
Eating cows being banned for reasons of animal welfare seems even less likely to happen, but again, if it did, it would presumably be because a majority of those elected to the legislative body in question believed that cows’ right not to be killed and not to suffer trumped people’s right to eat beef. Once again, in this hypothetical situation, the argument would be not that beef should be illegal because there are more cows than people who wish to eat beef, but that it should be illegal because cows’ suffering in becoming beef is greater than people who want to eat beef’s suffering in not being able to do so.
@Alan Robertshaw
Yeah, the films are fun to watch for sure. I went through a phase of MacLean fanboying in the late 1990s though, and still have about half a shelf of novels in my bookshelf. Being the sort of person that I am, I don’t want to get rid of the books, though, so they will eventually have to be read again… *shudder*
I…I even have the sequel to “The Guns of Navarone” which retcons the original novel completely out of the picture and just assumes that you know the plot of the movie. All the characters have completely new backstories, it’s madness I tells ya.
@OoglyBoogles:
Loved your poem on page 1!
@weirwoodtreehugger:
Amen to that! I’m no economist, so I don’t know why things are this way, but it seems that there are always many more unemployed people than vacant jobs. Which works well for employers, who can expect a good pool to select from, but much less so for the unemployed, who can apply and apply and apply for things and be repeatedly passed over.
My brother has found it very difficult to find employment, despite applying for plenty of (not particularly skilled) positions. He’s now self-employed, but that was only possible thanks to my parents (who both helped with getting that set up and, since he lives with them, mean that he doesn’t need to earn enough to support himself from that employment). Not everyone has parents who are either willing or able to help like that!
That doesn’t take all his time, so he volunteers at a charity shop and at a stately home. Personally, I’m in favour of Universal Basic Income, so we can all find the way that works best for us of contributing to society, without ever having to worry about how we’ll feed ourselves and keep a roof over our heads, and without any stigma if our way of contributing happens not to be one we can get directly paid for.
(I realise there would be some people who would feel no need to do anything terribly beneficial to anyone else with their lives if they had a guaranteed income. I don’t think there would be very many of them, and I’m quite happy to live with that because a) I’d rather they got something without contributing back than starved to death, b) I’d rather they got something without contributing back than everyone else had to put up with the present system just to avoid them doing that, and c) there are also a small number of people – of all income levels – getting something without contributing back as it is anyway, so, unless there’d be dramatically more of them with a Universal Basic Income, it’s not like it’s not something we have in the present system anyway.)
Hooray for unintentional honesty. I mean of course you can’t tell us because there’s no fucking way you’re actually privy to that information, cupcake. Cultural attitudes say people on public assistance are lazy moochers so when the people in your neighborhood are not where you can see them, you assume they’re behaving according to your preconceptions of them. Thanks again for front-loading your biases for us.
@Scildfreja
You can purchase a commodity, good, or service through fiat money; fiat money is produced for nothing and has pretty much no labor imbued within it. One could have convincingly argued that money *did* have labor imbued within it, back in the day when you needed to go digging for gold, but that no longer seems to be the case. If labor alone is the foundation for the value of a good, service, or commodity, it stands to reason that it should trade for something which was produced via a commensurate amount of labor. However, fiat money is produced for practically nothing, and yet is still capable of being traded for things with significantly more labor imbued within them.
Value is not determined by labor alone, because one also has to deal with the fact that commodities can be used to produce other commodities; manufacturing commodities requires labor, machinery, raw material, and various other intermediate goods that you might be in need of. The commodities that you are using in order to produce commodities were themselves the products of labor and other commodities. You can keep going backwards all you like, but in the end you’ll just end up realizing that virtually everything you’ve done has required the use of a commodity somehow; while labor may be an integral part of a commodity’s value, it definitely can’t be the only part, given that you had to use commodities with labor/commodity values within them in order for your labor to be valuable in the first place. Some machines don’t even need to be powered by labor at all; they can be powered by natural processes like wind, water, or solar power.
While human labor may be important, it overlooks another issue; what makes human labor so important compared to the labor of animals? If labor is the sole foundation of value in a commodity, it stands to reason that animals that help in the production of commodities ought to be given a fair shake. If we can cheat a cow, horse, bison, donkey, etc., out of the fruits of his/her labor, what makes humans any different? You might say that it’s because we treat animals like commodities, but that just brings us to the question of why shouldn’t we consider humans commodities? Though you might find it ethically questionable, empirically speaking, it’s hard to say that human labor is somehow magically superior to animal labor.
You also have to pay attention to the subjective desires of the people who are looking to purchase a commodity. When water is abundant, people are less likely to spend a lot of money trying to get it, but when it’s scarce, people get thirsty and are more likely to part with a higher amount of money to get it.
This is one of the guys who accuses Anita Sarkeesian of being a con artist. Hypocrisy, thy name is Breitbart!
@Migging and Towing: I don’t advocate abusing the system…not in the slightest. I do, however, take issue with you putting anxiety in scare quotes. Anxiety is a real problem and, for some people (those with severe cases, those who need medication but sometimes can’t get it), can get in the way of a productive life.
In short, the system shouldn’t be abused but anxiety *is* a real problem.
@Everyone else: Anyone for banning MarkyMark or are we still having too much fun with him? How about All That Migging and Towing?