The current form of capitalism “without limits” is in a deep abyss. For many years, capitalism has taken everything it can reach. It destroys natural resources and damages the environment, it takes away not only time and energy, but even hopes and dreams from people. It’s only resources for capitalism that should bring profit to the chosen ones.
The basic idea behind the current version of capitalism is as simple as three kopecks: people should only know that their work should bring as much profit as possible. And they have to believe that their work is what society needs. It’s not easy, but try to convince yourself that excessive consumption is one of the meanings of life. What many people think is described by the famous Upton Sinclair joke: “It’s hard to make a person understand something if they’re paid to not understand it.”
This is the reason for the existing absurd cargo elective, in which the rich are increasingly rich and explain it with manna from heaven. And even the environmental crisis does not prevent their wealth from growing. Even if the whole system collapses, as it is now when faced with a pandemic. The American food system clearly reflects this collapse.
Problems arose at the very beginning of the pandemic, when it became clear that working conditions in meat processing plants contributed to the spread of the disease. By the end of April 2020, about 5 tons of workers had fallen ill and dozens of factories had closed. Millions of animals were destroyed not for food, but to reduce financial losses. At a time when famine was spreading, Americans saw that the system did not care about problems that did not concern balances.
Before the pandemic, 37 million Americans, 11 million of them children, were food insecure. In June 2020, Feeding America’s National Food Bank Network estimated that an additional 17 million people were at risk of joining. An April survey of mothers with children under 12 showed that the percentage of those who ran out of food and didn’t have enough money to buy more jumped from an already terrible 15-20% range to about 40%.
Did that change anything? Millions of animals were killed in vain, while millions of people lacked adequate food. That’s the result of “right business decisions”.
Many Americans are in a very difficult financial situation right now. A report published in 2019 showed that almost 40% of Americans can’t find $ 500 without a loan or sale of their property. Another study showed that 49% live from paycheck to paycheck, and this was before the coronavirus led to more than 46 million unemployment claims. And at the same time, the overall fortune of American billionaires rose by more than $600 billion. Jeff Bezos made $24 billion during that time.
If you look at it from a racial point of view, that is, equality, then this ugly picture becomes even more grotesque. Black and Hispanic families have many times less savings than white people. They are more likely to rent housing with insufficient legal protection than they will own. Evictions are just as likely as jail time, and they are many times more likely to have evictions.
Back in April 2020, almost a third of tenants did not pay their rent on time, which is much more than in 2019. State authorities have imposed a moratorium on evictions as the wave of unemployment spreads, but these protections are coming to an end. With the global pandemic, millions of people will be thrown onto the streets. Why?
The answer is simple: if we did otherwise, we would disprove the main premise of capitalism – profit. Its ideology is a circus pony with one trick that knows only one answer: more.
For years, millions of people have struggled to survive in this ruthless economic system that calls the crisis your personal failure. Everyone knows that’s a lie. The pervasive inequality in which Americans live, in a system that promises abundance to everyone, is a choice of disaster and intentional collapse that is simply imposed on people.
It’s time for a rethinking
The current system dies, but it doesn’t die a quiet death. You can try to support it and get something even scarier in the end, or you can fight to build something good. Change happens in societies that are moving towards equality and justice. Everyone has to learn from them, no matter what state your society is in. Society is in a difficult state, but the opportunity is still there.
Kenneth Boulding once stated that “if a man thinks there can be unlimited growth in a limited environment, he is either crazy or an economist. Amsterdam, for example, walks away from this madness by taking Kate Raworth’s “doughnut economy”, which explains how to meet everyone’s basic needs.
If humanity can’t live within the limits of the planet, it’s an unfortunate project. If it is not possible to provide for everyone’s basic needs, then it is not worth calling it humanity. It’s all worth considering in the context of the current pandemic. When most people sat at home in quarantine, the people who fed them and cleaned their garbage were extremely important, but not for capitalism.
If you consider a pandemic to rethink economic systems, you have to start thinking about what we value and who should be rewarded. At the very least, we have to think about the people who are the most important ones, who should be able to provide for their lives.
To give you an example, we can recall the recent reports about a cure for COVID-19 by Gilead, Remdesivir. The study of the drug showed that it reduces the hospital stay by about four days, as well as mortality and serious adverse events by 5-6%.
When Gilead set the price at $2,340, it was met with indignation. Gilead chairman and CEO Daniel O’Day wrote an open letter in which he described it as an act of charity. As he put it, Gilead usually “evaluates a cure according to its cost” and using Remdesivir would save each patient in the U.S. about $12,000 in hospital costs. I don’t think that’s convinced anybody reasonable.
Compare that to the choice of Jonas Solk and Albert Sabine, who developed polio vaccines and made their discoveries in the public domain. Their work led to the eradication of polio.
Salk and Sabine gave up their personal wealth. In comparison, Gilead took $70 million from the state budget to develop their drug, and then earned thousands of dollars from taxpayers to get what they had already given him.
That’s “normal” but absurd capitalism as we know it. It is necessary to get rid of basic services and research from corporate control. Another example is universal basic income. It guarantees everyone a reliable income stream. If we could build a system based on this, there would be more unselfish researchers like Salk and Sabin.
The coronavirus pandemic has dramatically exacerbated the tyranny of the economic system. Americans are faced with the choice of whether they should regain their independence