The True Value of a $50,000 Louis Vuitton Purse

I’ve been reading about the many national and international businesses downsizing, closing stores, laying off workers, going bankrupt….

My take: For much of the 20th century, and more so in the 21st, the world has been engaged in both gluttonous consumption and rank exploitation. Much of exploited labor is invested in meaningless production, often and ironically producing goods which the workers themselves can’t afford to consume, earning wages that are barely enough to be termed “subsistence,” producing stuff nobody really needs. Much of the world’s work is vacuous because, toward the furtherance of global progress for all people, it’s futile.

Are we witnessing the dismantling of an entire global system? Call it “crony capitalism” or “advanced capitalism,” its features should be ever clearer to even those who championed it in the past: a corrupt and grossly wealthy establishment that oppresses many and worse, composes and publicizes a narrative to obfuscate its own role, deflecting the blame elsewhere. Tar and feather me a “Marxist” if you want, but this goes well beyond his doctrine; it circumnavigates a messianic article of faith.

We are in the End Times. For spirituality to “flood” then bathe the world, this system is being unraveled. This frightening time of mass unemployment and anxiety sadly precludes progress toward a new system to fulfill the material needs of the messianic era.

How much cheap, disposable clothing does the world need? What is the true value of a $50,000 Louis Vuitton purse on pre-order? How much misery and want has been tolerated and perpetuated for that ever-receding grail–“style?” How much depravity have we become inured to in order to fulfill the obsessions of millions for the latest gadgets and luxuries? With the most advanced tools and tech at our disposal, we are bereft of justice, and progress is spotty. When considering what the world needs: clean water, stable food growth and distribution, decent housing, quality education—what the world is compelled to produce does not go toward these outcomes. But it will.