Capitalism Sucks

Yet, for decades now, we have failed to similarly question, challenge, criticize and debate our economic system: capitalism. Because a taboo protected capitalism, cheerleading and celebrating it became obligatory. Criticism and questions got banished as heresy, disloyalty or worse. Behind the protective taboo, capitalism degenerated into the ineffective, unequal, crisis-ridden social disaster we all now bear.

Capitalism is the problem – and the joblessness, homelessness, insecurity, and austerity it now imposes everywhere are the costs we bear. We have the people, the skills and the tools to produce the goods and services needed for a just society to prosper. We just need to reorganize our producing units differently, to go beyond a capitalist economic system that no longer serves our needs.
~ from Occupy Wall Street Ends Capitalism's Alibi by Richard Wolff ~

As I have advocated many times before, the idea that we can tame the capitalist system to make it more humane for the 99 percent is unrealistic...and unworkable. No matter what legislation is passed and regulations are adopted, the corporatists will find ways around them. They don't do this because they necessarily are e-v-i-l people -- though some of them certainly are! -- no, they do it because the system demands it.

Capitalism is bound up in the concept of profit and short-term profits for the shareholder reign supreme. You can't look too far down the road at potential long-term profits because a different capitalist may swoop in to take your legs out from under you! So you must concentrate on getting all you can get now and work to externalize any costs you might incur.

To insure that your profits are as high as they can be AND to externalize any costs onto an unwilling public, you must control the government. Fortunately, that's easy to do as you can bribe -- legally and otherwise -- anyone who hopes to serve. Those who eschew your largess will probably not get elected in the first place and, even if a few sneak through, they will be so marginalized as to be wholly ineffective.

I realize that many of the readers of TRT are not big fans of socialism and so I won't push that ism on you. But what we should know by now is that capitalism is the root of the world's economic crisis. Capitalism -- by its very nature -- subverts democracy.

The time has come to try something else that embodies and embraces democracy, not continue with a system that tramples on it with glee!!