On one hand, this economic breakdown is way to complex for single source culpability; on
another, it was easy to predict as soon
as:
- U.S. corporations moved jobs to other countries;
- U.S. corporations moved offshore to reduce their U.S. tax exposure;
- corporations started to eat each other so
that big box retailers displace local ownership and remove local
economies;
- the financial sector turned from any sense of production to wild
speculation;
- the financial sector conjured money and value out of thin air.
- perpetual growth became a fundamental requirement.
Capitalism can probably work usefully as a tool of a social
democracy; but if it's going to require consumers, then it'll have to
empower a lot of potential consumers with sufficiently distributed discretionary
income. Reference the former blue and white collar middle class prior to
Reagan.
Now that unfettered and unrestrained capital has gone completely
global, it only gets worse for more people in more places.
As long as the value of life is measured at all by the stock price of
corporations devoted to maximizing short term profits at the expense of
everything else, the future is bleak indeed for civilization.
We can easily see the depraved degradation of civilization today,
- with the use of DU munitions across Iraq;
- with the use of extraordinary rendition and Guantanamo camps;
- with the U.S. prison industrial complex
- and the emerging Police State;
- with the poisoned environment including essential food, air, and water;
- and the enormous loss of other species.
Yes, you CAN blame capital itself; but even that is merely a symptom of humans sufficiently unevolved
and without spiritual guidance.
some snippets — or —
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