Investing for Retirement

[Martin Hash]

Capitalism has a little discussed side effect which is the promotion of the illusion of retirement: this thing called “investing” which substitutes for work, with no direct productivity. From this lack of effort on anyone’s part, people’s expectations are that they can live the rest of their lives carefree, producing nothing, in a lifestyle they could only dream about when they were productive, and expecting everyone else to be productive on their behalf.

The myth of retirement allows real Capitalists to take money from the naive who have been told they can get rich from doing nothing; which is partially true because it does makes rich people richer. Retirement literally relies on the old exploiting the young, and that’s considered okay into today's society. This is a new phenomenon, not even 100-years old; maybe it has been tried before but there aren’t any civilizations that did left to talk about it. What’s telling about the power of wishful-thinking is that when I tell someone the hard facts face-to-face, they are outraged, not even aware of the brutal logic of what I’m saying. In a world of fantasy brainwashing, truth is despised.