wsj.com/articles/coronaviru … 1584659306
“yet these claims are fantasy. here’s the lesson of the virus so far: relying solely on government bureaucracy is insane. to the extent america is weathering this moment, it is in enormous part thanks to the strength, ingenuity and flexibility of our thriving, competitive capitalist players.”
you need only ax yourself this: is it either illogical or inconceivable to imagine a country (or even a world) that could sustain itself and its functionality while at the same greatly reducing its active economic productivity. the same question in different words; could a country implement social distancing, sheltering in place, or even martial law - as measures to prevent the spread of the virus - and still function? absolutely. but only if things had been done differently for decades prior to the outbreak of the pandemic. it is quite conceivable that governments, had they the respective control of economy and the markets, been able to direct productive efforts toward developing both the medical technology as well as commodity surplus and stockpiling necessary to accommodate a situation like this and be sufficiently prepared for it in advance.
now the numbnutts who wrote this article not only lacks any knowledge of this, but even defends the very system that is responsible for this lack of preparedness as the thing that will come to our rescue.
but here’s how what he’s saying appears to make sense. because the government, in its current crony/nanny state to serve the interests of big capitalism, is incompetent, he’s right to say that it can’t help us and might as well botch the whole thing if it tried. but this is a different structure of government than the kind that would exist in a bonafide socialist system… so his example is a red herring… but a very effective one. readers, who have been brainwashed by conservatism for centuries to believe that government is ‘evil’, buy into this uninformed bullshit propaganda… and remain all the more complacent to the foibles of the free market and the parasites that control it.
again, ax yourself if it is possible to be prepared for a pandemic like this had things been done differently.
capitalism, being motivated only to work for immediate profit, is not inclined to produce things for circumstances that might become a reality in the future… because what might be valuable later on isn’t what’s valuable right now. that, in a nut shell, is the fundamental problem with capitalism at this very moment.
now watch how, because the system has such a stranglehold on economy, the very capitalism that is responsible for not being able to address this crisis effectively, will use the crisis to empower itself yet again. instead of government being able to seize control of the private sectors and demand mass production and distribution of what is needed, it will bail out the big companies (give them more money!?) so that they don’t go bankrupt during a shelter in place scenario. it’s a stalemate; so long as private companies employ the people, they have to be protected so that productivity is guaranteed… and the government continues to feed the very thing responsible for the lack of the necessary productivity to prepare for a crisis like this. if that ain’t the dumbest thing i’ve ever heard, i don’t know what is.
the fact is, these cockroaches will tell you anything to keep you from noticing what a complete joke capitalism is when it is called to work in favor of working, middle class people. even as we speak there are lobbyists and advisers whispering in the orange man’s ear: don’t shut businesses down, man. send everybody back to work so the economic wheels keep turning. so what if a few million die. it’s got to happen. how else can we sustain ourselves?
and the truth is, there is no other way, because the mess that capitalism has gotten us in cannot be corrected as fast as it would need to be to prevent the travesty that must happen to keep everything going.
i dunno. couple things might come out of this. either this will prove to be the nail in capitalism’s coffin… or… the minds of the middle-class are already so entrenched by conservative ideological brainwashing that they might actually believe that if it weren’t for capitalism, we’d not have been able to get through this disaster.
i’m a skeptic, so i put my money on the latter.