 So let's recap what the media taught us this week. The man that shot another man in cold blood is a heinous murderer that must be locked up. The man that rode a system that puts healthcare behind a paywall, condemning possibly hundreds of thousands to death, while enriching himself to degrees that would save thousands if properly distributed, is a fine upstanding pillar of society. In capitalism the ends justify the means. If you want to be cruel and evil, you better be successful at it. 25 comments
 By the way, if anyone asks if you know the culprits name. You do. His name is Robert Paulson.  @selzero And remember, always wear a Covid mask, it really can save your life in many different situations.  When I was quite young, my very perceptive mum told me this: "It doesn't matter at all what you do in this world, just so long as you make money out of it." This was back in the 1960s  @essjayjay @selzero If you kill one person, you;re a murderer. If you kill 10,000 or 100,000 governments will fund you to do it.  @Black_Flag @essjayjay @selzero Or at the very least they will make excuses for you and help in the cover-up. Can't look incompetent at avoiding it, you know. BTW, fortieth anniversary of Bhopal a few days ago. No relationship of course.  I would recommend a slight edit: "If you want to be cruel and evil, you better be *profitable* at it.” @LiveByReason @selzero how long can you keep doing good things that lose money? It doesn’t matter what you do, if you can’t turn a profit off it then you can’t do it for long. One additional thought: Non-profit organizations exist, and do good for long periods of time. You can't lose money forever, but you can break even indefinitely. Or you can seek donations to support the losses. Our capitalistic economic system has been colliding with our constitution for many years, driven by technology and greed. It has made us polarizingly ill. You have given a vivid description of the symptoms of our condition. Any ideas on treating our ailment without violence?  @Smalltofeds asked
I don't know, but I can guarantee that trying to treat it with violence will just kill thousands or millions of people and then entrench a new powerful and exploitative elite even more firmly than the old one, as has happened in every violent revolution in history that I can think of. 😢 @Smalltofeds Every other rich country (and most middle-income countries) managed to achieve universal healthcare through incrementalism rather than revolution, and found it entirely compatible with capitalism — after all, universal healthcare saves employers bundles of money compared to paying for expensive private health insurance in the U.S. In the U.S. unfortunately, the bureaucracy behind private health insurance became a major industry in its own right, so it's hard to displace. @Smalltofeds Capitalists should also love universal healthcare because it promotes entrepreneurship. When I decided to quit my job and try my hand at a consulting business in 1998, I had zero concerns about health coverage for my young family because of Canadian medicare. And students in Canada aren't afraid to graduate from university and lose their health insurance, because they're still covered when they step outside the academy into the working or business world. The Military Industrial Complex is driven by many of the similar factors you have noted. As Eisenhower put it, "The problem with @Smalltofeds Fully agreed, and I think it's telling that it's the former Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Western Europe who coined the phrase. American business profited massively from the Second World War, and was unable to wean itself off the government spending afterwards. They may talk capitalism, but is really a very toxic variant of socialism (since arms makers rely primarily on government funding rather than the free market). A concept for your consideration. Wars exist at all levels , as we are learning at lightning speed. It would appear we are not evolving quickly enough as a species to understand that all of them are settled by communication and negotiation. The sliding scale must favor TALK Not SHOT. @selzero Murder is always wrong. The victim can be a terrible person (and likely was in this case), but violence isn't the solution. The U.S. already has too many people who think they can settle any problem, personal or political, with the barrel of a gun, and the death toll from mass shootings (orders of magnitude higher per-capita than other other rich country) tells its own grim story. I think it's irresponsible that some people online (not you) are celebrating and encouraging that. |
Gregory's Server
@selzero The vg Stellaris has energy as a sort of currency as far as I recall. So what we call rich people could be called people who we spend a lot of energy on.