My guess is they get fed human grade dog food, like the Farmer’s Dog or whatever competitors VCs are funding these days. It’s somewhat abhorrent that dogs in some neighborhoods have easier access to human grade food than many humans do, either in the same or adjacent neighborhood. VCs aren’t funding healthy food stores to replace the bodegas and smoke shops. Well, that’s capitalism, I guess.

Back to these mid-sized fluffy dogs. They’ve finally supplanted the french bulldog, or “frenchie”, that has been the hipster wannabe (sad to be a wannabe of a trend that faded long ago…) standard for the past 10-15 years. I don’t know if the frenchies met the end of their lifespan and were replaced, or if maybe the pandemic caused a whole new generation of sheep to realize they needed a dog to be herded by.

Regardless, you’ll see them all over these neighborhoods. They’re mostly black and white, some are mid-brown. They’re all basically the same though.

Not that the sheep notice the similarity, though. Each sheep thinks theirs is the cutest and that every passerby should stop and melt over how cute their oversized stuffed animal is.

Never mind that it was the fifth such animal the passerby passed on their one block walk between the coffee shop and yoga studio, on the way to buy some over-priced linens at a store with a carefully chosen, strong single word brand name.

The sheep’s eyes are pleading the passerby to notice how undeniably cute their dog is.

I just wish they’d pick up their dog’s poop. Not cute, but necessary.

Of all the trends the sheep fleece into, this one to me is the saddest. Dogs aren’t human (Really, they’re not…they’re not even children…really…) yet they are living beings. These living beings have been turned into a trend. Sad but true.

Yet they’re not a trend that can be stashed away in a closet or more likely thrown away after the next trend comes along, like all black and white that has given way to super bright fluorescent colors.

Well, at least I hope they’re not.

If they were, the dogs would join the other shelter dogs who should have gotten adopted. Instead, they were left in the shelter by the sheep who so blindly and unconsciously had to have the dog that matched their vegan Birkenstocks, to sleep at the foot of their bed dressed in Brooklinen.

It’s sad and even sadder when the sheep feel the need to be herded inside “Service Dog Only” stores. I guess they need help weaving through the countless aisles of vegan, gluten free, hand-crafted and artisan food options, for the sheep and their dogs.

The sheep game the system so they can be herded through the aisles, feeling self-conscious each time someone doesn’t comment on how cute their four legged trend is.

What is to be done?

Learn more about Niky here.

David talks a lot about Neoliberalism. It turns out he, quite literally, wrote the book on it. For quite some time, I had no idea what Neoliberalism was. I had concepts, based on an inaccurate interpretation of the word itself.

I now understand Neoliberalism to be a coordinated movement to save the ruling elite’s declining percentage of society’s total wealth. From what I understand, it started dropping in the 1970’s. Neoliberalism was the response, intended to reverse the decline.

The other concept that sticks out to me in these early days of understanding is the one of self-sufficiency. The way I understand it, the Neoliberal movement advanced the concept that individuals are “on our own” in society and that if they can’t “make it”, i.e. it’s their own fault. This feels like a convenient way to justify that “have’s” having so much and the “have not’s” having so little.

I look forward to learning more as I work through the book.

It must be made up of intangibles.

What’s a brand? Is it not simply the name of a company?

Yet company doesn’t sound ephemeral enough. How can a company be aspirational?

A brand can though, can’t it?

At least that’s what the marketers will tell you.

And you’ll see them trying to make this true everywhere you look in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

Companies, through the veil of brands, trying desperately to convince passers-by that they’re not buying a thing. They’re actually buying a “lifestyle” or “experience”.

Buy this thing and become part of the “family”. Whatever that means. This advertising tries to exploit humanity’s primal need to be part of a group.

It’s awful.

Yet who questions it?

Not the people buying the brands sold by the companies.

Why do they do this?

Do they really believe the markup between what something cost to make and what it is sold for is justified by the brand’s “intangibles”?

Maybe not. Yet it seems like even if they don’t truly believe it, they choose to believe it instead.

Sheep live in flocks and flocks needs shepherds. The companies gladly shepherd these willing flocks from one aspiration to the next, to feed an insatiable hunger that no amount of grazing on over-priced consumer products can satisfy.

And this fuels the shepherds’ never ending quest for growth. That’s a story for another time.

Learn more about Niky here.

A few years ago it was the breed that wore Canada Goose jackets. If they were in the neighborhood when the Canada Goose kills campaign went on, they probably removed the fur lining of their hoods. Maybe they did this in a show of remorse, more likely out of embarrassment or fear.

BTW, unfortunately, even if you remove the fur lining the damage has been done already. The animal who sacrificed what you removed is already dead.

If they travel in couples, they wear matching jackets, while driving their steel grey Land Rover with a steel grey Weimaraner in the back seat. I’m assuming the back seat is covered by a pricey sherpa cover, to avoid damage.

More recently it was Birkenstock. Last spring or summer a new Birkenstock store opened on North 6th street. Like a good flock, they sheep dutifully bought one pair after another.

Those who wanted to really show their independence bought plastic ones or even plastic WHITE ones!

Of course, that uniqueness didn’t last long. We’re talking about SHEEP here, remember!

Before you knew it, the sheep were padding around the neighborhood trying not to get their new Birkenstocks dirty. They were everywhere, doing, I imagine, what the people who chose to put the store in the neighborhood were hoping for.

Put the store in a trendy neighborhood. The trendy sheep buy them. Then the tourist sheep see their trendy sheep cousins wearing them. And the tourist sheep by them too. The tourists return home and their sheep friends see them, then buy them…

And so it goes.

Then TRADER JOES!

Has there ever been a more anticipated store opening in the neighborhood? The rumors have been circulating for 5+ years.

One day, there it was! A truck was unloading Trader Joes shopping carts.

The sheep pulled the phones from their wool and started snapping pictures, to dutifully post on social media.

Free sheep advertising!

Then the store’s sign went up. More sheep pics.

The the grand opening date was written on a sheep-friendly chalkboard. Even more sheep pics.

And on and on…

Anyway, the sheep are here and ready to serve any capitalist shepherd wielding an “aspiration-ally” priced good ready to be consumed or even a free shopping bag.

In Williamsburg, the sheep come cheap.

Learn more about Niky here.

Do you see it?

FYI, I’m Niky, a social utopian. This is the anonymous place where I write about Marxist exploration, capitalist critique and crypto optimism from the County of Kings.

Today’s economy requires “growth” to live. Where does growth come from? Growth comes from consumers. What does consumers do?

Well, they consume.

Consumer spending accounts for the majority of growth in the US economy. Many quote a 70% number, then of course others dispute it. I imagine this is true for other major world economies too, yet haven’t even done a rudimentary google search to semi-verify this.

Think about it. The economy is driven by people buying stuff.

What are they buying? Are they buying value? Not really, they’re buying stuff.

Stuff that’s made to a bare minimum quality standard and of little if any value. Stuff that’s built to break or become obsolete after a certain period of time, so that it can be replaced with more stuff.

The concept of value’s been thrown out the window. I believe Maria Mazzucato’s book, The Value of Everything, chronicles this. Yet I’ve been scared away by it’s length and depth, at least until I can focus some serious attention on it.

So people need to buy stuff for the economy to survive. The stuff people buy needs to increase for the economy to grow.

Fortunately for us, there’s an army of marketers out there pushing more and more stuff on us every day. They’ve infested every imaginable and smallest channel of our attention with messages that highlight and play off of all of our imagined insecurities.

So we buy the stuff they push, to fill the hollowness inside of us.

That stuff will never fill that void. The void is a black hole. It never becomes full. It’s a marketers dream and the lifeblood of our consumer-spending fueled economy.

Why don’t more of us see this?

Well, we’re too busy of course.

We’re too busy chasing the money to buy the stuff and toss it into the direction of the black hole, economy fueling vortex.

Plus, we’re way too bought into it. We can’t imagine a different way of doing things. Doing so requires uncertainty. Uncertainty is scary. Doing things differently may very easily completely blow up our worldview. That’s not scary, it’s terrifying

So we have this effective combination of mindless money chasing and the fear of the uncertain unknown. It’s much, much easier to keep our heads down, pat ourselves on the back and keep running for dear life in the same destructive cycle, day after day.

This is also fortunate for our economy, as this unconscious cycle continues to fuel it and keep the house of cards intact. Or maybe it’s more like a hot air balloon that needs the gas to light the fire to heat the air to keep the balloon afloat.

Our destruction fuels the house of cards’ construction. It’s a zero sum game.

If we woke up and tried to do it differently, the house of cards loses its fuel. Maybe that fuel could be used to ignite a better human existence instead.

Ok, not really. This is an anonymous experiment.

Let’s see if it allows me to speak more freely about topics that might otherwise be highly criticized, basing the criticism more on the personality behind the ideas than the ideas themselves.

My name’s loosely based on the utopian socialist Nikolay Chernyshevsky. I’ll be exploring his ideas over time through my reading What Is To Be Done.

It seems like Nikolay was exiled for his thinking. Maybe writing this blog anonymously might help me escape the same fate, not from Siberia but from our polarized society generally and somewhat sensitive crypto communities more specifically.

Here I plan to write in an unstructured and free flowing format. Topics I’ll explore include my ongoing and nascent (at the time of writing this) Marxist study, a contemporary critique of the excesses, inequality and other ailments of modern capitalism, through a crypto-optimist’s lens.

The writing will be heavily informed from time spent in the County of Kings, Brooklyn, New York, particularly the Williamsburg neighborhood. Over the years I’ve watched capitalist excess exert a stranglehold on the neighborhood, fueled by unconscious, ego-driven aspiration and greed.

And all of this will likely change over time, as my writing and thoughts evolve. Let’s see where it goes…

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