Late-Stage Capitalism is Real

Nobody loves refinancing my DoorDash debt at 12% APR more than I do.

I used to believe that anyone who used terms like “late-stage capitalism” or “the neoliberal status quo” to criticize the socio-economic structures of Western civilization was not to be taken seriously.

I was wrong.

A few days ago, the food delivery company called DoorDash announced that they will be offering a “buy now, pay-later” option so that rational economic decision makers can spend $30 that they don’t have on a meatball sandwich they can’t afford, instead of getting their fat ass off the couch to buy groceries or pick up their microplastic-infused slop themselves.

It does not take much cognitive effort to understand how making it easier to go into debt in order to pay for DoorDash is not an economic “innovation” that should be celebrated, and there is no shortage of new memes that reflect this understanding.

At a certain point, economic innovation doesn’t produce any real increase in human wellbeing. In fact, it’s obvious that certain economic advancements do just the opposite.

Hyper-addictive smartphones, easily accessible pornography, flavored nicotine vapes, credit cards with astronomical interest rates - the list is endless.

Libertarians who defend this stuff will go on and on about the rational individual and how it’s immoral to restrict access to these life-affirming products because it implies that some people know what’s best for others.

Well let me be clear - if you are going into debt to order DoorDash because you don’t have the cash on-hand to pay for it, you do not know what’s best for you.

“BuT wHaT iF sOmEoNe iS DiSaBleD aNd NeEds tO gEt ThEiR fOoD dElIvErEd!”

Shut up, nerd. That’s not who’s using this product.

We need to implement systemic rationality

There is no such thing as a rational individual in an economic system predicated upon hijacking your nervous system through chemically addictive products and artificially low-friction services like food delivery.

A continuum exists between heroine, gambling, high-interest loans, and addictive foods. If you believe it’s acceptable to regulate heroine because of it’s nature as an addictive product, you should recognize that it is not categorically different to apply that same logic towards economic products that take advantage of people’s compromised rationality.

I can tell you that as someone who used to smoke weed and buy flavored vapes, living in a city where both were illegal absolutely reduced my ability to do those things. It’s in infringement on my freedom, sure, but some (emphasis on “some”) level of paternalism in a society is actually good.

It’s a form of “systemic rationality” - laws and regulations that bias people in favor of making rational decisions that they wouldn’t otherwise make.

Libertarians will get upset about this, but that’s ok. Because the only person dumber than a socialist is a libertarian.