1 post tagged “underpants gnomes”

underpants gnomes

This is from wikipedia's "I WILL SUE YOU IN A COURT OF LAW IN TRENTON, NEW JERSEY -- and Other Bad Jokes and Deleted Nonsense" and it's quite clever

referring to the South Park Episode Underpants Gnomes

Beyond this simple explanation of a three-step business plan, the Underpants Gnomes symbolize the basic idea of the Marxist theory of exploitation as explained in Capital Volume I. In this book, Marx explains (and excuse me if this is over-simplified) that the capitalist starts only with a commodity (underpants). By the end of the day his commodity has doubled and thus turned into capital. Yet, no one can see what the steps in-between simple commodity and capital are. Marx's explanation is simple: the exploitation of labor. By only paying the laborer a set price for an unlimited amount of labor, the capitalist is then able to "suck" the extra capital out of the free amount of labor from the laborer. Thus, the capitalist now has two commodities that he can turn into capital: the original commodity that he started with (the underpants) the exploited labor of the laborer. Thus the capitalist has stolen the laborers commodity, his surplus labor, and sold it to make capital. The "???" that the underpants gnomes simply cannot see is the exploitation of labor. It is especially ironic that the rest of the episode has to do with the corporate takeover of a family owned business, and other, pro-capitalist ideas. As the people of Southpark finally realize though, the price paid for of a "fair" economy is that of a mediocre product...Tweek Coffee. Without allowing for competition, the people of Southpark never realize that there may be better Harbuck's coffee out there. In its own way the episode is making a case for the capitalist economic system.

awesome!