Tuesday 6 October 2009

A marriage made in hell

I just happened upon a hero of capitalism, Jean Nidetch, the founder of Weight Watchers. It is undoubtedly true that she is a hero of capitalism. She took a non-product, the weight loss diet and made an absolute fortune from it.

Usually capitalism takes something for as little as possibly can and marks it up as much as it can, in order to maximise profit.

She went one better. Like the weavers in this story.

What is a weight loss diet? Eat less, expend more. Give me money now.

That, my friends is a diet, do you perceive it's sheer intangibility? Ignoring the essential uselessness of weight loss dieting, the irony about it is that it is essentially communistic in character, and fails for similar fundamental reasons.

Dieting assumes that all people ought to eat more or less the same (inadequate) amount regardless, things such as individuality, don't count for toffee. Communism that all should have more or less the same as one another in terms of necessities status etc.,

The fundamental fail of both is that the central authority charged with making all this happen, in the case of the former the conscious mind and the latter the state cannot. They are too inflexible in the same way, neither were designed for the purpose of running everything, they are suited more to an overseeing and keeping an overall balance by plugging any gaps left by the more flexible forces designed to fulfil our needs.

A strange and unholy union.

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