
You don’t understand small talk if you think it has no functional purpose. Small talk has several purposes.
One, it sends a bunch of signals. I see you. You see me. Neither of us are threats. We have a shared language.
Two, it’s how you find deeper topics to talk about. “What did you get up to this weekend?” “Oh, hung out with my friend. We saw a band I like - All Dogs - do a surprise anniversary show. You do anything big?”
Three, it lets people choose their level of engagement. “Cool, sounds fun. I stayed in, watched some TV” signals minimal interest vs “All dogs? Never heard of them but I love live music. What’s their genre?” signals interest, and now you can a little deeper on music.
If you just plunge directly into deep stuff that’s like skipping foreplay and lube. It’s probably going to make people uncomfortable.
Capitalism is giving bad outcomes. Labor is divorced from the results of their work, and people who contribute little to nothing (or less than nothing) grow wealthy.
We don’t need to go all the way to full communism in one shot, but I’d like to think most of us can agree the current system is unacceptable