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EP. REVIEW: Deca-Dence

The clearest point of this seven-layer-dip of symbolism is Deca-Dence's ongoing unsubtle relationship with capitalist systems. We're only ‘allowed’ to do whatever we want at the behest of the value those in charge find in it, whether it's entertainment or utility.

What was even the reason for killing Kaburagi's avatar when they know his real body is on the ship and will still need to take care of it there? Just to get rid of evidence or something? It seems overly dramatic for a cold corporation.

Still, the idea that a weird post environmental catastrophe post apocalyptic world with literally no government (not even the banana republics that the United Fruit Company dealt with) and no competition is specifically a critique of capitalism as opposed to real world alternatives to capitalism that the society in Deca-Dance resembles is bizarrely uniformed.

I'm an idiot for doing this, but here we go...you seem to be operating under the assumption that capitalism generates competition rather than, eventually, generating monopolies. But that's what capitalism does, and has done, consistently, in real life. What this show depicts - a mega corporation that controls virtually every aspect of its workers lives - is based on the real-life phenomenon of company towns, just blown up to a global scale.

Now, I don't want to deny that some of the controlling features of this society have some parallels to the Soviet Union - Lenin's "Party Vanguardism" was just another word for oligarchy, and concentration of power into a little cabal of politicians leads to bad results, always. But if you really think a show about a giant corporation that owns its workers and gamifies every bit of their existence (including even prison) to keep those workers in competition with each other rather than going against them as they exploit them isn't about last-stage monopolistic capitalism....I don't know what to do with you.

To be fair, there isn't a single system that doesn't end up creating monopoly (except some sort hypothetical system that would be based on randomness) and capitalism is probably the best at delaying monopoly (communism literally start as a monopoly). And things like company town existed in every system too (that was literally all feudalism was and most communist system ended up with a version of those too). Also things are pretty muddle since the company is making the heybots rather than hiring them (lol, have we already gotten to the point where people discuss worker rights for robot?).

But again, this is clearly a criticism of capitalism because no one is going to make a show criticizing communism/feudalism in 2020.

meiam wrote:

To be fair, there isn't a single system that doesn't end up creating monopoly (except some sort hypothetical system that would be based on randomness) and capitalism is probably the best at delaying monopoly (communism literally start as a monopoly). And things like company town existed in every system too (that was literally all feudalism was and most communist system ended up with a version of those too). Also things are pretty muddle since the company is making the heybots rather than hiring them (lol, have we already gotten to the point where people discuss worker rights for robot?). But again, this is clearly a criticism of capitalism because no one is going to make a show criticizing communism/feudalism in 2020.

Communism is just workers owning the companies they work for - basically everything as coop, so no need for centralization or monopolies. Communist countries argued they were working towards communism (either because they really believed it or for propaganda, depending on who was in charge) but by their own self-definition they were socialist, i.e. state-controlled economies. Which are monopolistic, but in a highly democratic society that wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing...but Leninism advocated for oligarchies, not democracies, and cracked down on anything that tried to decentralize their power. I know that might seem pedantic, but words do have meaning - there are a lot of economic models that just haven't been tried, period, and I'm not convinced by any means that capitalism is the best model.

And in terms of the bots being constructed, I admit I am not clear at this point in the series how digital vs physical vs organic the bots even are. They started as cyborgs but however many generations on are they still the same people, immortally prolonged? Newly created people? Are they fully digital or is there some organic element left to them? I mean, "workers as capital" is a whole 'nother thing in the history of capitalism (glances awkwardly at her own country's history of slavery) and the term "robot" comes from a work by a Czech writer examining those themes, so...

Two things. Based on the ending of this episode, it seems like killing the body denies him access back into that account. And leaving a corpse for the Tankers to potentially find would give them an explanation for Kaburagi's sudden disappearance and maintain the illusion of the game.

EDIT: Another central motif, that I don't think is very specific: bugs are to be squashed out. This theme recurs over and over -- the crushing of human individuality and maintenance of good, standardized digital ranker-citizens & human NPCs, and analogizing this to stamping out 'bugs' in software -- but is not very specific to capitalism or any other economic system (indeed, well-known admirers of capitalism -- like Ayn Rand, for example -- are often quite fond of this trope). Maybe it is more notable that it is quite specific to the role technology plays in Deca-Dence? After all, the alienation of humans from their lived experiences as they invest more deeply in digital substitutes is a theme that can be explored quite independent of macroeconomics, even if the alienation-through-commodification this technology seems to have induced does sound more like Marx than other famous dead men.