Abe at Oceanoxia has a post up about oil industry lying for money – looting while the world burns. Mano has a post about about heartless CEOs and the lack of reasonable basic careers in the job market. Both of these posts are about the effects of under-regulated capitalism and hint at the consequences – ecological disaster and economic collapse.
They get me thinking about The Beast Itself – Capitalism. About this system of unofficial aristocracy, where the hyper-wealthy have bought and sold every national government in the world, where the basic drive to take care of one’s own has combined with corruption to produce a situation where no one imagines they are accountable, no one can see their little part in the lies that will kill us all as important. Hey, I recycle and donate to WWF in my niece’s name, it was only one little law I helped draft to weaken environmental protections, no biggy.
And so we race toward extinction like the movie Speed, but the only Keanu is that fucking dracula dating Grimes, and he has the useless power of daydreams instead of action boy muscles. No one here gets out alive. How many seconds was it to Mars? Only thirty? Easy-peasy!
Anyhow, we love us some rich people. Can’t live without this system. It’s the only one that’s realistic for human nature. Blah blah blah. And I’ll take that. With regards to the CEOs in Mano’s link, and the way they want to get away with never providing any proles an actual living wage, want to watch everyone but a tiny cadre of techslaves shrivel and scrape in the streets? I am perfectly OK with that, on one condition.
The government needs to actually provide for its people. Freeze all rent rates, give everyone not just a universal basic income, but a living wage to where employment is only for people ambitious enough to want nicer things in life, not a condition of survival.
Too much? Don’t think we can scrap all militaries and do exactly that, for every country in the world? Shucks. Guess employers will have to actually fucking pay us mendicants enough to live on.
What? Can’t afford the same rates you paid previous generations? Not even a fraction? No one except robot science mutants is allowed a living wage? Back to the first thing. The government has to care for us.
This ball is in play, and the longer the corporations and the governments play hot potato with it, we all get closer to social collapse. Mad Max shit. Your doubloons devaluing to where we put ’em in teeth again. Assuming anybody survives at all. If the atmosphere gets anoxic zones like the ocean is getting? That’s a rolling holocaust of biblical proportions. Nothing can save anyone.
Simple choice. Someone needs to provide for the people. Is it the government, or businesses? Because if it’s neither – if the people have to provide for themselves – you are not going to like what that fucking looks like.
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A basic living wae and you work if you want more has been one of my solutions for a long time. I’d add in really easy access to education any time you decide you want to up your skills too.
Thanks for the comment jazzlet. Solidarity! I try to respond to everything but had to duck out of the scene for a while. Hello there.
As a (global) society we face two main threats: socio-economically it is the unfathomable Wealth Gap, the other is the environment, including Climate Change. Both are entangled, the conncetive point: (neoliberal) Capitalism (including its byproduct, Consumerism).
I would like to say those issues are getting tackled. But they are not. Look around, media and the public alike are talking endlessly about… any other topics. Some are valid (racism, migrant crisis and mistreatment, MeToo etc). But they are missing the underlying structure that creates practically all those problems: Capitalism, again.
Somehow people have to learn that the environment is not just some “spoilsport annoying issue created by some stupid entitled bourgeois white folks who hate humans, especially brown and poor people” or some similar B.S. that seems to make the rounds in leftist circles. (I do not even mention what right wingers think of it, they just care for money anyway.)
If people do not even see environmental issues as vital and essential, it will be hard to do what has to be done. And it HAS to be done.
I agree with what you said about the Government. Tackling environmental and social issues would be so much easier if crucial industries would be owned by the public. There is a strategy behind the anti-government sentiment that makes the rounds on the right, not only in libertarian circles. But Government (flawed as it is – there is much room for reform and better candidates) should represent the people and work for them and in their name. Public owned means owned by the citizenry. That is a good thing! We, the regular people, should demand more public owned industries and services!
Government should play a bigger role, ditch the B.S. about “private enterprise is always better”, the selling out of public lands, services (education, transport, electricity) etc. Those “neoliberal” ideas are still perpetuated, even if they were proven wrong.
I think Government should actually nationalise several industries. For instance the chemical industry. It is highly dangerous (prone to accidents, pollution etc) and their products are potentially toxic for the consumer. That is not a good combination of facts for a profit driven industry. The Government could put up e.g. higher environmental standards. Also, since the pharmaceutical industry is part of it, the Government could produce and sell medicine for a reasonable price; the profits would go back to the state, i.e. the citizens. Insane that we are not doing this!
Some time ago I watched this video about “How privatisation fails” . As far as I remember it was pretty good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nP95Frc0v4k&t=38s