Moving the Goalposts on Late Stage Capitalism

Third World Problems, Coming for the First World

(Note: this post may seem a little dark! Didn’t mean it to be. Just came out that way. Will be following up in a series of subsequent posts that are more oriented to solutions. This one highlights a particular dynamic we’re all gonna experience more of, so figured it was worth mapping first)

Was with the fam over the holidays and we got up early to catch a flight. Only to arrive at the Austin airport to find lines snaking out the doors and onto the sidewalks. I navigated us through the sliding glass to find the Clear line, which I’d signed up for during COVID as a lazy man’s TSA Pre-Check.

(registering for Pre-check, was, for me, always like that bluegrass tune where one hillbilly points out to the other that his roof’s leaking. Then his neighbor responds “well, when it’s raining it’s too wet to fix it, and when it’s sunny it’s as good as any man’s.” Whenever I’m at the airport, I don’t have time to stand in a TSA application line, and when I’m home I never think about it. Forgive me)

Only problem–the Clear line was also jam-packed and led us right back outside. We were victims of the company’s success. Any benefit of pay-to-play iris scanning had now been erased by excess demand.

Too late, I realized that regular ol’ Clear had been upstaged by Clear Plus, a newer shinier version that combined PreCheck with its own subscription service. So the regular one was now next to useless, even as they continued to over-enroll unsuspecting newbies in it, and upsell members to the pricier one that still (kinda) worked.

Fortunately, I was able to wiggle us through to a less-busy gate and get us onto our plane in time. But I’d damn nearly wrecked the trip by not planning for that unforeseen two hour queue.

We landed for a long layover in Mexico City and that’s when I pulled out my second travel hack to try and keep my family comfortable. The AmEx Centurion Lounge. That too, I’d signed up for during Covid as a slightly safer and quieter place to hang out during layovers.

In the same way I’d always punted on TSA PreCheck, I’d also resisted getting hooked into any loyalty programs with major airlines that would’ve (eventually) granted access to their lounges. I wasn’t keen on any of them, and only ever wanted to buy the cheapest flight to get someplace. This lounge program seemed a possible solve for all that.

But as we got to the front desk of the supposedly luxe Centurion “Membership has its Privileges” lounge, I realized that they too, had re-traded their deal. When signing up you were promised all sorts of bennies and perks, along with the obvious ability to have family come inside with you.

Apparently, too many folks had signed up for the AmEx card as well, and there weren’t enough seats in their lounges to welcome the new crowd. Now you had to do $75,000 of business with them each year to have guest privileges re-extended! Otherwise they cost $50 a pop. And oh yeah, BTW, those really nice buffets that used to be complimentary are now cash on the barrel too.

So why share this decidedly #firstworldproblems story?

For exactly that reason. Problems are coming to the First World.

And come tough times in the future, many of our Get Out of Jail Free cards won’t work anymore. A U.S. passport, a Black Card, a TED tote bag, won’t get you nearly as far as you imagined. If you don’t have your own PJ and security detail, you’re gonna be hopelessly mismatched for the occasion.

Services are breaking down. Crowds and chaos are going up. Middle class folks are increasingly willing to stump for premiums of convenience and even mildly perceived exclusivity.

(don’t worry, the actually well-off are across the tarmac at the private terminal. They jumped ship years ago).

Too many folks are wanting out of the rat race. Those who can are willing to try and buy their way out. Only to realize that membership no longer has nearly as many privileges, and there’s always another door behind the one you just squeezed through.

• We see these kinds of diminishing returns with I-70 traffic jams leaving Denver every Friday. The Tesla, Subaru, Sprinter van hordes hit the mountains to recreate (formerly a ski bum/dirt bag pursuit). When everyone’s trying to get away from it all at the same time, weekend warrioring becomes as stressful as your weekday commute.

• We see it with box seats and VIP packages to watch everyone from the Eagles to Taylor Swift. Anything to get you up and away from the hordes on the floor.

• Or “Lightning Passes” at Disneyworld to skip the lines.

• We see it with the rash of ski resorts “going private”-where shutting out the public, spiffing up the food and bev to charge fewer people more as “members clubs” seems an increasingly viable strategy for survival.

• We see it with the rise of Soho House and the fall of WeWork.

The 10% became the 1% which is rapidly becoming the .01%.

As long as you can hang on and not get dropped by the pack, you can continue to draft off folks for whom words like “curation” “concierge” and “exclusivity” count as foreplay.

But get dropped? And its a long slow slog back to mass-market civilization.

The real point of all this is to realize “holy shit, this is what folks in the developing world have been experiencing for decades!” Only now, the floodwaters are licking at all of our toes.

Folks in the Global South signed up for huge amounts of debt, agreed to what those fancy World Bank and McKinsey consultants told them they need to do to modernize, and maybe someday soon, hoped they might finally arrive at the prosperity they were promised (like the Clear line and Amex lounge, but even better).

Only by the time they arrive, the goalposts have been moved. Those in charge had retraded the deal.

The hot ticket invite to the neoliberal party they were so desperate to snag? Where they’d pay down their debts, create more domestic abundance and raise the standard of living for their people? Well, turns out, by this hour, it’s only latecomers and losers still milling around. The open bar closed an hour ago, and all the canapes are crumbs.

What they really needed to do, was score a ticket to the after-party. That’s where the real action is…

(on Mars)

Because that’s the thing. We’ve all been sold on the promises of Late Stage Capitalism.

Whether it was the seductive suburban dream of an actual Chevy Suburban, a backyard trampoline and vacations on a Carnival cruise.

Or something much more pressing. Like financing aid and development projects for your struggling nation, or international contracts for your cash crops that are supposed to lift you out of poverty.

Or even the promise of an inclusive multi-cultural democracy–where violent protest is scorned and “civic responsibility” is championed. Behave, wait your turn, and you’ll get yours soon enough.

But what’s increasingly clear is there’s not enough soon enough. And it’s unlikely to turn around in the near to middling future.

For seventy odd years of Mad Men-meets-Wal Mart marketing, that shell game promise held up. We all kept at it. Watching the blur of hands. Certain we were keeping track.

Wait our turns, play by the rules, and get ours soon enough.

Only now, they’re running out of shells to hide the bean under.

Even if you guess right, you’ll still lose the bet. It’s always been rigged. That’s why we call them “Shell Games.”

So when folks get gripped about how the world will end, and start reading about all sorts of scary scenarios from Mad Max to nuclear winters. Take some cold comfort in this:

It’s already ending.

No idea about the impossible to predict bangs yet to come.

But the whimpers? The whimpers are here already. (you just have to listen)

So keep this in mind as you navigate the world this year. Notice any situations that promise some form of filtering, selectivity or convenience for a premium.

And how, if you’re a part of the former bourgeois 10%, you actually look for and respond to those incentives, as safer, more convenient consumer experiences.

Pay attention to how public options are increasingly presumed to be undesirable or dysfunctional and renting access to better service is valued.

Listen also to the Global South. And how their tone has changed at places like the COP climate conferences. These days, they’re not asking for more loans. Now they are plainly calling out the raw deal that was globalization. They want to get paid for problems they’re facing that they didn’t create.

They played by the rules, and when they stayed in the game, there were no more chips left for them to cash. The winnings had been pocketed ages ago.

***

And, lastly, watch for the folks at the top retrading their deal as too many folks make it through the Labyrinth of Globo-Capitalism.

After all, the king never expected anyone to slay the monster. Let alone find their way home.

Who’da thought there’d be such a long line of us and so little room at the top?