“It [Capitalism] wins when Greeks are told that their only path out of economic crisis is to open up their beautiful seas to high-risk oil and gas drilling. It wins when Canadians are told our only hope of not ending up like Greece is to allow our boreal forests to be flayed so we can access the semisolid bitumen from the Alberta tar sands. It wins when a park in Istanbul is slotted for demolition to make way for yet another shopping mall. It wins when parents in Beijing are told that sending their wheezing kids to school in pollution masks decorated to look like cute cartoon characters is an acceptable price for economic progress. It wins every time we accept that we have only bad choices available to us: austerity or extraction, poisoning or poverty….
“Cutthroat competition between nations has deadlocked U.N. climate negotiations for decades: rich countries dig in their heels and declare that they won’t cut emissions and risk losing their vaulted position in the global hierarchy; poorer countries declare that they won’t give up their right to pollute as much as rich countries did on their way to wealth, even if that means deepening a disaster that hurts the poor most of all.” -Klein, Naomi (2014-09-16). This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate (p. 23). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.
We can see here the diabolical manner in which Capitalism has assimilated the prisoner’s dilemma –especially as concerns global Capitalism. It’s become a situation in which no one can make a move against it since Capitalism always has the option of moving somewhere else. We can see this (as Klein points out (in the way our free trade deals have allowed corporations to elude carbon control measures by moving their operations to regulation-free environments –and this is likely due to threats to politicians of shutting down operations in their respective countries and thereby destroying their economies. Of course, we could just burn or renegotiate those agreements. But then all the corporations would do is turn to the one or two countries that promised to do otherwise.
It has come to a point where either everyone (every country (has to create policies against the excesses of Capitalism together, or end up being suicidal in implementing such policies. This becomes especially acute in the United States in which each individual state has a lot of room to determine their own tax rates. This is why, for instance, while everyone knows that the only solution to our financial problems (in every country (is a progressive tax rate, no one social body can do it alone because it would only lead to corporations pulling up stakes and turning to environments that were more conducive to their demands. The same goes for such protectionist measures as tariffs. I mean it: every progressive policy I can think of (when I follow it through (only ends up in Capitalism striking back.
So it’s easy to see why so many of us would take the defeatist attitude of if you can’t beat it, work with it. On the uptick though, we finally have the clarity of recognizing that it is no longer a matter of an “emerging” oligarchy/aristocracy or an “inverse totalitarianism”. We just are under one while being too distracted by the Orwellian vision to see it. We work under the assumption that since this looks nothing like 1984, we must be safe. Yet we stand by and watch as global entities, that are beholden to no one state, dismantle our Democracies. We stand by and watch as America (propped up by a military power that is equal to the rest of the world (spreads its poison.
Take, for instance, Obama’s recent opening up of relationships with Cuba: an important and noble move on his part as far as I’m concerned. But in a recent episode of To the Best of our Knowledge “Inside Cuba” (ttbook.org/book/radio?page=8 (an issue came up that concerns me as well as the Cubans. As one interviewee brought up, they did not want to suddenly see McDonalds popping up all over the place. But their bigger concern was losing their access to healthcare for the sake of a more American style of healthcare policy.
And my advice to the Cubans is to be afraid. I mean BE VERY AFRAID!!! I can easily see advisors coming down there like horny young men trying to get a piece of tail and promising them everything. Of course it will start with something small that will work well for the Cubans. But it will only be a matter of time before they end up with a shit system like America’s that pays 3 times more per Capita than the Canadians while getting statistically lesser results and allows 45,000 people to die each year from lack of access.
It will be interesting to see what happens. And I really hope the Cubans reject it.