I loved growing up in a deeply Christian evangelism-focused culture. Religious evangelism often gets a bad rap – as many evangelists are extraordinarily terrible at doing their job – but at the center of the evangelical’s calling is the desire to grow in deep relationship with all sorts of people, build new connections, share new ideas, and learn from one another. I learned from missionaries, teachers, and other very smart people how to do this well, and I think it’s a skill that serves me well.

As an adult convert to Anti-Capitalism, my evangelical skill set has been especially useful as I engage with my relatives and long-time friends, many of whom are deeply in favor of protecting free markets, in addition to being deeply Christian. Our common desire to share new ideas & learn from one another has meant that having classic “tough conversations” often leads to deeper intimacy, growth and tolerance. The “Capitalist Christians” and the “Socialist Christians” have learned to live in harmony. Even at our Jesus camp:

Just like every good Christian evangelist has their elevator pitches & bite-sized explanations for key concepts (“Hello ma’am – do you have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ?”), every good post-Cap evangelist has their own nugget-sized conceptual explanations. As the lyrics in the tweet above denote, espousing the moral failings of “context agnostic capital” is one of mine.

Here’s what I say: Context agnosticism is the product of Privatized Means of Production and Universally Communicable Currency, and is a way of expressing distance between you and the effects of your money. Say I am Apple. If you give me money to give you an iPhone, then you’re enabling me to do whatever I need to do to get you the iPhone, even if that involves poisoned mine workers and factory workers committing suicide. Exploitation to the point of death is not off the table; the only constraint is that it can’t cost more than you gave me. Our exchange is about what each of us gives & receives: whatever happens behind the scenes does not need to concern you. But rest assured: as markets will always tend towards maximum efficiency, it’s likely to include some horrific human rights violations.

Ethically conscious users are the exceptions which prove the rule; certain exchanges amend the mandate to do “whatever I need to do” by demanding that the goods received be fair-trade, or organic, or sustainable, etc. But the limits placed on these goods still point to the attitude those with money have in this mode of exchange: “get me what I asked for, and don’t bother me with the other details.”

Interestingly: in computer science, context agnosticism is not considered bad at all, and its efficiency often makes is a sought after architecture. We call it “microservices”. Instead of building a huge, monolithic system of programs designed to handle many different requests, webpages, databases, and calculations, a microservices architecture focuses on having many small programs, each which only do one thing, and having a succinct way to talk to each other. Maybe I’m a program in charge of giving you a picture when you give me an Id number, maybe I’m a program in charge of telling you whether or not a social media post has any explicit words in it, etc. When many of these programs are able to communicate correctly, you have the makings of a large system, made up of very simple parts. Like capitalism, the motto is “get me what I asked for, and don’t bother me with the details.” As mentioned above, this attitude always tends towards efficiency – in computer systems, there are applications where microservices work really well.

Feeling like I was hearing “get me what I asked for, and don’t bother me with the details” from the salespeople, leaders, and clients was actually one of the reasons I left consulting. Folks who organize and orchestrate payment for complex computer systems need to be bothered with the details – they can’t do their job well if they don’t know them. Additionally, there are certain details which often get ignored: I’ve gone through enough projects to understand that making overseas developers work nights and weekends is built into the assumptions for when a project’s budget gets tight.

Starting from “Get me what I asked for, and don’t bother me with the details”, it isn’t a very far leap to “I must be comfortable, regardless of whether other people are comfortable” or even “…regardless of whether other people die”. That the latter sentiment is embedded in the former is what makes capitalism so sinister. This assumption of exploitation within our social contract is something I’ve always considered as floating below the surface: something that exists in the social milieu and which we’re all aware of, but not something that is ever publicly acknowledged, and especially not something to which pro-capitalist cheerleaders would cop.

I was intrigued then, a few weeks ago, when I saw a flurry of statements and sentiments which seemed to acknowledge that death is an inherent of properly functioning capitalism, and that compromises must be made in the face of the current Coronavirus pandemic. It started with the president saying “our country wasn’t build to be closed” – as doing so would sacrifice the comfort of wealth-holders – and further escalated when the Lieutenant Governor of Texas signaledthat senior citizens should be willing to face risk of death in order to stabilize the regular flow of capital. Many members of “VC Twitter” – venture capitalists famous for being assholes – piled on in support of the sentiment that the health of the market which supports the country should supersede the health of the literal people in the country.

The vocalization of this sentiment seemed obscene: not merely because of it’s disregard for human life in which – as discussed above – we all participate in and condone, but because it goes so far as to name the sentiment explicitly, after we’ve all agreed that it should remain unspoken. Speaking about the widespread popularity of pornography in American culture, Rolling Stone reporter Evan Wright said “the relation between a Calvin Klein ad and a hard-core adult film is essentially the same as the relation between a funny joke and an explanation of what’s funny about that joke”. I think same structure applied here is revealing. Like sex, the fact that capitalism demands death is an unspoken universal truth underpinning much of what motivates and helps operate the wheels of commerce – but to shine light directly on that underlying truth seems offensive and improper. We operate in a world where facing reality is abstracted away.

No current society, religion, or political group is without flaws; choosing which structural iniquities to brush under the rug seems to be a universal coping mechanism for tribes of all shapes and sizes. In my own personal experience, I don’t think I’ve ever observed an ideological consistency which permeates the group structure in which it is housed. Everyone has their own unspeakables.

But, as has been demonstrated through the recent acknowledgement of capitalism’s blood lust – even when individuals try to hide these structural flaws, they always sneak out and manifest in the structure. Allow me continue to draw the parallel between sexual and economic exploitation. One of my wife’s recent blog posts cited a powerful Andrea Dworkin quote: “rape is not committed by psychopaths or deviants from our social norms – rape is committed by exemplars of our social norms.” That is to say -those who exemplify our human condition are those who will acknowledge that which we have agreed not to acknowledge. A structure’s flaws dictate its resonant frequency, and under the right conditions, that frequency (and those flaws) will be revealed. Thus, in crisis we have pundits advocating for voluntary human sacrifice.

Incidentally, the problem of how an alleged rapist was able to become president becomes immediately trivial in this framework.

Okay! Time for another computer science concept. Actually this one’s a twofer. Conway’s Law states “any organization that designs a system will produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organization’s communication structure.” Here’s an example: if my software company consists of many small, independent teams, that are each good at one thing, and we all have a good way of communicating with each other – we’ll end up with microservices. If we all work in the same office and it’s not clear who has what responsibilities and everyone is repeating each others work, we’ll end up with a mess that contains millions of lines of code too many.

Many systems thinkers espouse Conway’s Law as a truism within software engineering, but it is also applied more broadly: that systems reflect the patterns and structure of their creators. I think there is evidence of this based on the discussion above, at least within the realm of representative government. Just as the configuration, values and culture of a software product team will inevitably be baked into the product they produce, so too will the hierarchy, values and prejudices of a citizenry be baked into its legislative body.

The prevalence of Conway’s Law has led to the emergence of a niche but notable strategy for building software: the Inverse Conway Maneuver. The theory here is, once you know what you want the architectural structure of your product to be, you should then shape your organization to match that structure. If you want to have microservices; break up your teams, and dedicate their roles.

So let’s give power back to the people. Once you identify what shape you want to give your legislative body; mold yourself into that shape. If we have citizens who don’t give money to homeless people, then we can’t be surprised when social structures fail them as well. If we don’t take pains to avoid emitting carbon, we can’t be surprised when the EPA is unwilling to do the same. Seeing the executive branch, cable news, and business leaders suggest human death as the lesser of two evils should give us a chance to reflect: regardless of whether they are near or far, whose life have I devalued in my pursuit of comfort?

This is grassroots democracy.

To pivot existential crises: I’ve actually been very excited recently. I just got a new job working not as a consultant but now as a full time programmer. I’m helping maintain the donation & member management systems at The Sierra Club, which is one of the oldest large scale environmental protection organizations in the world. My desire to move into a more active role in helping fight climate change came from pondering some of the thoughts that have coalesced into what’s written above. So far I am finding the work deeply fulfilling – I feel like I’m lending proper shape to the structure.