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what's up guys michael here now if you
are a human being on planet earth with
access to the internet there's a good
chance that you've seen or at least
heard about squid game the south korean
show which is on pace to become the most
watched thing ever on netflix explores
what happens when a group of down on
their luck people get the chance to earn
a life-changing amount of money by
playing children's games this sounds
light and fun until the point in the
first episode where you find out that
losing these games means you're getting
murdered on sight
combining murder and red light green
light is on its face pretty bonkers so
unsurprisingly there's been lots of
speculation about what the show is
trying to say and what questions it's
asking about contemporary life some have
noted at similarity to the hunger games
or the japanese film battle royale while
others have noted similarities to
parasite in its class commentary and
while none of these takes are wrong we
think that there might be something more
interesting going on in squid game
specifically via its sadistic made up
game the show creates a metaphor about
the very real role that debt plays in
our society in particular we think it's
saying that we're all already prisoners
of debt even if we're not currently
playing a game of marbles that might get
our friend murdered and this system of
debt isn't just something that started
with the invention of credit cards it's
an intrinsic feature of society going
all the way back to the days when
christianity was considered a new and
edgy religion the scientology of its
time if you will so let's get into the
wonderful world of debt in this
wisecrack edition on squid game are we
all prisoners of debt and spoilers ahead
for squid game a show that you've
probably already watched in one city
but first we want to tell you about
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now back to the show first a quick recap
gion is a kind of aimless guy living
with his mother weighed down by so much
gambling debt that he can't afford to
buy his own daughter a birthday present
while trying to escape his creditors he
meets a sharp-dressed guy who offers to
play a little game with him that
involves throwing paper cards slaps
across the face and lots of money little
does he know that this is a tryout for
more games violence and money soon gun
is kidnapped gassed and taken to a
secret island there he and a bunch of
other desperate folks get to sleep in
the world's tallest bunk beds while they
play children's games in the hopes of
making bank murder ensues players drop
like flies alliances form and then
brutally break a group of disgusting
americans wearing shiny masks come to
spectate and by the end we learn that
money is not in fact a cure for the
malaise of modern life who would have
thought now on its surface squid games
themes seem anything but subtle there's
one group of super desperate people
playing deadly games in hopes of
improving their lives and another group
of super rich freaks enjoying the
psychopathic version of american ninja
warrior that ensues class disparity at
its most blatant but what really makes
these characters and the show
interesting is the way in which the
participants in the game are all there
specifically because of their staggering
debts whether incurred through gambling
smuggling a loved one out of north korea
or making sketchy deals with mobsters
and this taps into something about
contemporary south korean economic
culture where massive personal debt has
become a common feature of life everyone
seems to owe money whether by way of
student loans mortgages or ill-fated
cryptocurrency investments and debt and
income inequality have skyrocketed in
tandem per the conversation household
debt in south korea has risen sharply in
recent years to over 100 of its gdp the
highest in asia the top 20 of earners in
the country have a net worth
166 times that of the bottom 20 a
disparity which has increased by half
since 2017. so in the context of the
show's setting the anxiety and panic
surrounding debt seems all too relatable
even if you're not licking a sugar
cookie to save your life and a society
constructed around credit and debt isn't
unique to either squid game or south
korea as of spring 2021 total american
household debt was 14.6 trillion dollars
that's 14 with 12 zeros and four commas
and according to a 2021 cnbc report the
average american has a chill
hundred 90
sixty dollars in debt what's more as of
the first quarter 2021 the median
american household had almost twice as
much debt as income meanwhile average
student loan debt in america has doubled
to 36
635 dollars since just 2007. while
payments have been temporarily suspended
without interest since 2020 they're
about to pick back up also did you
notice how we stopped paying back our
our debt for almost like two years and
nothing bad happened and society
continued to function like normal
we weird how that worked out anyway the
point is that we've normalized a society
in which having tons of debt is just a
thing we do and it's precisely this
presupposed normalcy that makes squid
game feel so chilling and so real
because the rules of the game don't
differ too much from the rules of our
own economic world we see this when the
darth vader of squid game assures the
players that they're participating in a
truly democratic egalitarian experiment
where everyone has equal opportunity to
win
or you know get murdered and while this
sounds absurd this same logic is at the
heart of a society where credit and debt
are painted as some kind of equalizer
take a look at any credit card ad or
bank loan website and you'll see that
via credit you can finally be free free
to finally get that fancy degree free to
drive the car of your dreams free to own
a home and even free to get a loan to
help you pay off the 10 000 medical debt
you have from taking a ride in an
ambulance that one time it's no
coincidence that one of the most used
credit cards in america is literally
called
freedom but this belief in the magical
power of credit and subsequent debt
isn't a new thing in fact according to
anthropologist david graber and also one
friedrich nietzsche the debtor creditor
relationship is a fundamental part of
christianity and western society as a
whole graeber notes that christians
practically say as much every time they
recite the lord's prayer and ask god to
forgive us our debts as we also forgive
our debtors and it's no surprise that
one of the squid game players is a
fervent christian constantly taking
prayer breaks and showing how his
indebtedness to god parallels the
other's indebtedness to various shady
lenders
what's more this transfer of the feeling
of religious indebtedness to that of
financial indebtedness is sums up here
by italian sociologist and philosopher
maurizio lazarato if in times past we
were indebted to the community to the
gods to our ancestors we are henceforth
indebted to the god capital we see this
religious illusion in the second episode
the giant piggy bank has an ethereal
glow to it and the players stare in
reverence as if they were gazing up at
the face of god himself like christ for
the sinner this magical piggy bank is
capable of redeeming the lives of these
indebted mortals and like religious
fanatics who are willing to kill others
or harm themselves for the sake of
earning spiritual credit from their
chosen deity inside the squid game we
see people willing to commit horrible
acts and in the process they lose their
own humanity all for the promise of
redemption through capital
again not different from the way people
in the real world can lie cheat and
steal their little hearts out all for
the sake of financial gain lazarado
calls this new brand of human defined by
relations of debt the indebted man he
describes indebted man in relation to
the near universal use of credit cards
through consumption we maintain an
unwitting relationship with the debt
economy we carry within us the creditor
debtor relation in our pockets and
wallets encoded in a magnetic strip on
our credit cards indeed this little
strip of plastic hides two seemingly
harmless operations the automatic
institution of the credit relation which
thereby establishes permanent debt the
credit card is the simplest way to
transform its owner into a permanent
debtor an indebted man for life in squid
game we see indebted man and woman left
and right all with problems created by
credit and debt that they hope to solve
through the magical piggy bank and while
the show mostly focuses on the misery of
indebted man we also see the odd
existential misery experienced by
creditor man we eventually learned that
the old man player number one is
actually the host of the game he
switched to being a player because of
the deep joylessness he experienced via
having too much money ah poor little old
rich baby man but indeed many argue that
south korea's debt-based financial
crises have destroyed civil society as
jun tsuk-jin a drama critic and literary
scholar told the new york times south
koreans used to have a collective
community spirit the times adds that the
financial crisis in the late 90s asia
undermined the nation's positive growth
story which june says made everyone
fight for themselves this cutthroat
ethos is hardly unexpected lazarado
argues that the creditor-debtor
relationship not only alienates us from
each other but makes it acceptable for
creditors to punish debtors past
centuries this punishment was quite
brutal as graeber notes in colonial days
an insolvent debtor's ear was often
nailed to a post and the original dead
daddy nietzsche explained that in some
societies there were estimated prices
for each body part and the ancient
creditor could literally cut off a limb
or two depending on how much they were
owed and oh boy do we see some flesh cut
and shot and stabbed and beaten and
thrown off various tall towers in squid
game the masked leader and minions
running squid game island repeatedly
absolved themselves of responsibility
hey they're just playing by the rules of
the game and the players messed up
fittingly lazarado notes that when it
comes to talking about debt the media
politicians and economists have only one
message to communicate you are at fault
you are guilty like those overwhelmed by
debt in the real world players in the
game are reminded that it's their fault
that they're here they signed the
contract after all much like someone
naively signing a predatory home loan
it's telling that after voting to get
the out of the game in episode 2 almost
all of the players soon return out of
guilt desperation or a toxic mix of both
and this blame game played out during
the 2008 u.s financial crisis where
greedy and selfish debtors were blamed
for defaulting on predatory loans they
never should have been given in the
first place meanwhile the big banks that
made billions speculating on these high
risk loans got their own glowing piggy
bank from the government to make sure
they were okay we see a similar logic in
the rhetoric surrounding student loan
debt where 18 year olds are deemed
guilty for signing on for high interest
loans after being told their entire
lives that a prestigious college degree
is a prerequisite for a lucrative career
and of course in the character of ceng
wu we see how even having a great
education isn't going to keep you out of
trouble but also
and we'll never forgive him for what he
did so if squid game is a sort of
metaphor for our debt riddled age where
we're all trapped in a financial system
that we supposedly freely entered into
and from which there is seemingly no
escape does the show give us any clues
at how we can break out of this twisted
game
not really because even after giune wins
the game he's not happy the
life-changing money he's earned doesn't
change the horrors by which he got it
much like how winning in our current
system is never detached from the losing
of others for every well-suited wall
street superstar there are thousands of
others just trying to make their
mortgage payments eventually we see gian
with his fancy new haircut seemingly
decide to take the system down so should
we all dye our hair a super bowl color
and hit the road to seek revenge against
the financial systems that has trapped
us in debt kind of
a lazarado sees the oppressiveness of
debt as akin to the oppression early
industrial workers faced in factories
where they were forced to work
unreasonable hours under dangerous
conditions and so he thinks that if we
want to break out of being indebted
humans that the most urgent task
consists in imagining and experimenting
with forms of struggle which are as
effective at bringing things to a halt
as strikes were in industrial society
the squid game even alludes to such
strikes
notes that the stale thinking of
capitalists and politicians only
register the language of crisis and
combat rather than trying to win the
game then lazarado thinks we have to
figure out how to shut down squid game
island and its cutesy interior design
entirely but there's also another side
of the struggle for lazarado and that's
the internal struggle against the guilt
associated with debt he says this not
only means annulling debts or calling
for default even if that too would be
quite useful but leaving behind debt
morality and the discourse in which it
holds us hostage he equates this to
nietzsche's call for an atheism that
rejects the guilt associated with
spiritual debt but in this case he wants
us to learn to reject the system of debt
that makes us feel guilty for our own
financial shortcomings and geun's
newfound swagger seems to indicate that
he's given up all the guilt and shame
associated with his debts he seems to
realize that this guilt just kept him
from focusing his righteous rage on
those who are really behind this sick
game so will we see him successfully
take revenge against the architects of
the squid game in season 2 or are we in
for some sadistic red rover only the
netflix gods could say for sure but what
do you guys think is squid game saying
that we're already stuck in a game based
on credit and debt where nobody will
really emerge a winner or
are we just trying to rationalize our
collective student loan debt let us know
what you think in the comments thanks as
always to our amazing patrons and don't
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thanks for watching later
[Music]
that's the best thing about cowboy just
blame anything
honey i didn't mean to cheat on you but
capitalist accumulation gave me a desire
to prove my masculinity via sexual
conquest so as you see capitalism
cheated on you not me
okay
oh that's recording now so that's that's
that's the thing we have great