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As much as the removal of privatized prisons was a great move for California, the people of color who have had massive chunks of their lives stolen away by legal slavery deserve compensation for the time they spent for nearly no reason at all.

California (and the rest of the United States) needs to take responsibility and provide compensation for these people. Not just monetary-- these people are entitled to a job, a house, a life, and so much more. There needs to be a formal initiative to help people whose lives have been ruined by blatant racism get the help they need to continue living their life and allow them to pursue happiness.

[communistsoapbox-blog]

Capitalism Ruins Art-- and How You Can Help Fix It

People always talk about how Communism ruins art, progress and technology. Without the incentive to create, who will create new things? Without the struggle to survive, how can progress be manufactured?

Yet, it seems these days people willingly ignore that a vast majority of the issues we face in popular culture such as new movies or new video games are a direct result of Capitalism and its inevitable destruction of human art and emotion. The masses complain about ‘live-action remakes’ and ‘endless sequels,’ they complain about ‘micro-transactions’ and ‘lootboxes’ but hardly ever do they come to the conclusion that the current state of Capitalism is what created the environment in which these products have thrived and will continue to thrive.

Capitalism ruins art because the continued drive to make more and more money despite already having plenty, has become the near-sole motivator for creating art (and don’t worry, I’ll talk about indies in a moment). A popular example of this is Illumination Studios, a company that has made bank not because of their desire to create art that has a positive impact on the human race-- but to produce more money. 

All of their films are specifically engineered to create the most amount of money with the least amount of time, effort, and money possible. As a result, despite being commercially successful, Illumination Studios has created a wide library of movies that have entered popular culture notorious for their horrendous quality. And despite this, other studios are following Illumination’s example. Not because Illumination is a pioneer in human art and expression-- the contrary actually. Illumination is a pioneer in creating a product to harness the most amount of profit possible, and everyone wants in on it. The film and animation industry has not only seen a sharp decline in the quality of content, but in the originality of content. Movies exist solely to make money now, this is the lesson taught to us by Illumination, Disney, Sony, Warner Brothers, and many more. 

Despite this being a major concern for everyone who pays attention to the film and animation industry, there is very little call to address how money is affecting the production of these films and what we can do to fix it. China is now beginning to overtake both the United States and Europe in box office revenue (do not take this as a compliment to China or its government-- only evidence of Late-stage Capitalism’s decay of art and emotion), yet people still wonder how this can be... when the answer is right in front of us.

Video games are not exempt from the effects of Late-stage Capitalism. AAA games have reached a level of disturbingly low quality with the advent of Fortnite, Assassin’s Creed, Fallout 76, and so on. Bugs in Bethesda’s Games have become so common, they’re a meme in popular culture. Yet somehow, we continue to let them go unaddressed. Professional game reviewers (such as IGN) still give these games high scores, because if they didn’t, how would they collect revenue from the companies who made the games?

Furthermore, the structure of games and their economic models have become increasingly hostile towards the consumer-- entire games built around the model of making a profit and not making the game actually good or fun. Fortnite employs some of the nastiest anti-consumer methods to implore not just gamers-- CHILDREN, into spending massive amounts of money around a product riddled with quality issues with the express goal of squeezing money out of unsuspecting kids who only see a game and not a complete scam. EA continually creates games with an insane amount of micro-transactions and withholds so much content from the full game just to get the consumer to pay more money-- and the consumers hand it to them on a silver platter so they may continue to exist and produce more and more games of similar caliber. The ever-present focus on obtaining the most money possible has turned games into money making machines with the express purpose of tricking the consumer into buying more and more and more. Even Nintendo has hopped onto the bandwagon with the disaster of a game known as Mario Kart Tour.

Our only salvation in a day and age where popular culture is ruled by the same handful of companies that continue to shovel effortless garbage into our faces so that we may hand them the world on a silver platter is the growing indie scene for games and media. Please, take time to engage with and consume content created by the average citizen at home-- not the gigantic corporations who want nothing more than your wallet. There are very real people out there with stories to tell, people whose voices are never heard, trans-folk, people of color, the disabled, and more. Countless games, movies, comics, and books exist, so I ask that you stop giving your money to corporate ventures and interact with those who truly deserve it. 

Despite what I have provided, art is not dead. It will continue to exist for as long as human emotion exists. Now is not the time to sit and watch as our society decays. I ask that you listen to what I say and not only consume indie content but I encourage you to create indie content of your own. The world gets better with every new piece of art within it, and you deserve to have your stories told. Write your books, make your movies, produce your games. The world is yours and today there are more tools than ever to make it easy for the average citizen to simply... create. And that’s all I want to see. A world that... creates, again.

Because we truly need it.