S2. Chapter 19: Late Stage Capitalism (Who’s Stealing Your Time?)

What happens when we mistake overworked and exhausted for virtue? 
Lloyd Dobler turns to the Tao Te Ching to examine why Americans are so tired, so rushed, and so starved for time with the people they love. Blending spiritual commentary, political critique, and dry Gen X humor, Lloyd asks what it would mean to design a life—and a society—where human beings matter more than productivity metrics. This is not a productivity hack. It’s a meditation on refusal, presence, and reclaiming time. 

Inspired by Liza Featherstone’s piece in Jacobin titled “Americans Want More Time To Spend With Their Loved Ones. Capitalism Doesn’t Let Them."

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Inspired by Liza Featherstone’s piece in Jacobin titled “Americans Want More Time To Spend With Their Loved Ones. Capitalism Doesn’t Let Them."

Transcript

And welcome back, for chapter 19.
I’m Lloyd Dobler.
And this is The Tao of Lloyd —
a podcast where I take one chapter of the Tao Te Ching at a time
and use it to figure out, among other things,
why the things we love most in life
are always the first things we’re told we don’t have time for.

According to a Pew Research Center Survey,“about nine in ten Americans” say spending time with family is one of the most important things in their lives.

Nine in ten.

That’s higher than religion.
Higher than exercise.
Higher than my middle-school fantasy of Kristy McNichol asking me to roller-skate at the snowball dance, right after I recorded the high score on Ms. Pac-Man in the arcade.

That Kristy McNichol one is only the most important thing in 8 out 10 people my age.

But I digress.

Liza Featherstone’s piece in Jacobin titled “Americans Want More Time To Spend With Their Loved Ones. Capitalism Doesn’t Let Them,” points out something simple and quietly devastating:
Americans want more time with their loved ones.
And our economic system won’t let us have it.

Not because we don’t value family.
Not because we don’t value friendship.
But because we’ve built a system that treats time together as an inefficiency.

So, Who decided you don’t have time for the people you love?

Let that question linger and work on your subconscious mind as we enter the reading and meditation section of the chapter.

(Bell chime.)

Let yourself get comfortable and allow your eyes to float closed to start the journey within.
Or don’t. I mean maybe you are not used to slowing down and doing nothing, but maybe you can consider that a bit of seditious activity in this hyper optimized world. So just close your eyes and take a deep breath in. and let it all go. Let something go. Let’s go.

This is Chapter 19 of the Tao Te Ching.

Throw away holiness and wisdom,
and people will be a hundred times happier.
Throw away morality and justice,
and people will do the right thing.
Throw away industry and profit,
and there won’t be any thieves.

If these three aren’t enough,
just stay at the center of the circle
and let all things take their course.

and that was chapter 19 of the Tao Te Ching.

(Bell chime.)

“Throw away holiness and wisdom,
and people will be a hundred times happier.”

Lao Tzu basically says: stop handing out gold stars for holiness and wisdom, it just makes everyone weird.
The second someone’s called a saint, I start quietly inventorying my sins.
The second someone’s called wise, I assume I missed a class, a book, or an entire lifetime.
The master doesn’t do rankings. No saints, no sages, no spiritual honor roll.
She just shows up as herself — and in her presence everyone feels at home.

And when Lao Tzu talks about home,
Imagine the place where you’re not ranked, rated, optimized, or improved.
Where you don’t have to earn your place.
Where time loosens its grip just enough for you to breathe.
Which is why it matters who gets access to it—and who doesn’t.

And when something that basic starts to feel scarce, it’s usually not an accident.

It is a compliance mechanism of life in late-stage capitalism.

Late-stage capitalism is when the system “works,” but only by draining the people inside it and calling that productivity.
It’s basically a vampire.
Everything has a price; your time, your attention, and eventually your silence, and compliance starts to feel like adulthood.

Consider the holidays.
They can generate a lot of stress.
Or so we are told. 
Every year, we’re told it’s stressful.
Too much travel.
Too much family.
Too much togetherness.

But again, looping back to the Pew research study:

Most Americans don’t dread being with their people.
They miss it. Again: 9 out of 10, remember?

And this has nothing to do with party affiliation or any other subgroup.

Democrats, Republicans and Independents.
Cis, trans, and non-binary people alike.
Petulant Proud Boys, Green Party Granola Girls, and Anderson Cooper drunk on New Years Eve.
Anti-Vaxxers and Archie Bunkers.
Blue-check pundits, Neighborhood Facebook moderators, and Dee Snider from Twisted Sister..
Overeducated baristas, Underpaid teachers, and uber drivers (and let’s be honest: in late stage capitalism that is the same person)

no matter how you slice it
We all want the same thing.

Our people.

Family, broadly defined.

And yet, most of us are exhausted.
Overworked.
Rushed.
Scheduling love like a luxury item.

Again, circling back to that Liza Featherston piece in Jacobin: 
Americans work hundreds more hours a year than people in Germany, France, Sweden.
We have the fewest paid family leave days in the developed world.
We’re the only rich country with no guaranteed paid time off.

One in four workers gets zero paid vacation days.

Zero.

That’s not a scheduling issue.
It’s what happens when people are treated like software licenses—
useful while active, disposable when exhausted.

What is the way out of this? 

For one answer to that question, I’ll share a short clip from the pilot episode of this project, and a lesson learned from, of all places and 1980s film with Matthew Broderick. Really.  

[Audio Drop: modem static → robotic voice: “SHALL WE PLAY A GAME?”]

LLOYD DOBLER (VO):
Back in the summer of ’83, I was sneaking candy into Return of the Jedi for a second viewing—when my friend pulled me into another theater in the multiplex, where Matthew Broderick’s character in WarGames—David Lightman, a teenage hacker with a dial-up modem and too much free time—was breaking into a military supercomputer.

[Audio clip]
WOPR: “SHALL WE PLAY A GAME?”
David Lightman: “Uh… love to. How about Global Thermonuclear War?”
WOPR: “Wouldn’t you prefer a nice game of chess?”
David Lightman: “Let’s play Global Thermonuclear War.”
WOPR: “Fine.”
David Lightman: “All right!”

And just like that… the world almost ended.
Jets scrambled.
Submarines launched.
The line between pretend and apocalypse disappeared with a blinking cursor.

Turns out the game was real.
The system was live.
The stakes were human.

Now—I don’t know if the supercomputer in WarGames was Buddhist, Taoist, or just a Pentagon monk who read one too many Noam Chomsky footnotes.
But what I do know is this:
It didn’t start enlightened.

At first, all hell breaks loose.
David—the hacker kid—has a dial-up modem, Ruffles in one hand, Ally Sheedy in the other, and he just boot-kicked the nuclear football into DEFCON-1 like it was an arcade token.

So they haul him into NORAD like Ferris Bueller’s black bloc cousin.
One minute he’s grounded, the next he’s humanity’s last hope.

And the supercomputer?
That humming doomsday mainframe?
Still running Global Thermonuclear War like it’s Tetris for sociopaths—except the blocks are nukes and the score is body count.

No one could override it.
No one could talk it down.

So they gave it one more game:
Tic-Tac-Toe.
Simple. Harmless.
Just Xs and Os in an endless, unwinnable loop.
Game after game.
Draw. Draw. Draw.

It chewed through Tic-Tac-Toe like a latchkey kid with a Walkman full of Iron Maiden, hopped up on Pop Rocks and Reaganomics.

Then it took that same logic
and ran it through every nuclear scenario.
Draw.
Draw.
Draw. Draw. Draw.
No win. Only loss.

It saw the futility in Tic-Tac-Toe, then turned that clarity inward—
ran the same logic through every missile launch simulation and realized:
empire’s just Tic-Tac-Toe with narrative propaganda and a kill switch.

And then…
It clicked.
No win. No point. No play.

That’s wu wei, baby.
The art of non-action.
The refusal to force.
That’s the dancer becoming the fucking dance.
The deep knowing that sometimes the best resistance is stillness.

And yeah, that’s a hard truth to metabolize.
Especially when you’re raised to believe quitting is weakness, stillness is laziness, and compliance is maturity.

But look at what we are up against.
Project 2025 and the MAGA movement are white fear, reincarnated as Mussolini with a spray tan and a MAGA hat, demanding the head seat at a table they already flipped over.

They’ve taken the operating system of American Exceptionalism—
all that manifest destiny, white-savior, bootstrap bullshit—
and rebranded it as MAGA:
Monetize Anger, Grift Audiences.
Steve Bannon’s wet dream.
A nation-state as clickbait funnel.
A polite little plan to dismantle democracy from the inside out.

This isn’t new.
This is empire on autopilot.

And we need more than a strongly worded Facebook post or a well-attended Saturday march.
Don’t get me wrong: we need a diversity of tactics, and those can still be part of the mix.
But to push back against the very human urge to comply in advance,
we need a spiritual firewall.
We need a brick to smash through the Overton window.

Like Ursula K. Le Guin said:

“We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings.”

And, I know:
flipping this whole system is like trying to meditate in a Chuck E. Cheese
with a smoke machine and a broken skee-ball counter.

But the alternative?

All this anticipatory compliance?
It’s making the job easier for them.
You don’t need a dictator when everyone’s already enforcing the rules on themselves—
terrified Marco Rubio’s AI snitchbot is combing through your feed
and handing your name to ICE.

So yeah—the supercomputer ran the numbers.
War was a draw.

[Audio clip]
WOPR: “Strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess?”

The only winning move is not to play.

For your consideration my friends. 

The only winning move is not to play.

From the edge of empire
and the center of self 
this is The Tao of Lloyd