..or perhaps I should say it is failing us as a people. This is because there is no moral component in the American capitalist system. Corporations do not get involved with community or social life as there is no money in it.
Insurance companies refuse to insure people who need medical care from the get-go. They drop people who are too sick to insure any longer. Profit and the concerns of the stockholder are the only standards for their policies, not the health and well-being of fellow citizens.
Manufacturers have shipped their factories overseas. This left many communities devastated and jobless. This weakens our society and removes a solid base from the national economy.
Mergers and acquisitions have decimated many good American companies. American capitalists intentionally buy good firms, some with famous names, and proceed to strip them of their assets and sell what is left. Millions of dollars are made this way. It is legal, but it is anti-social and hurts the nation.
This blind loyalty to the profit goal and the shareholder is what concerns me about the privatizing of military activities. There are thousands of private contractors performing a variety of support and logistics for our men and women in uniform. I believe these contractors have no serious interest in winning, or ending war quickly. Why should they? No one wants to work themselves out of a job, especially one that pays so well.
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Lincoln,
ReplyDeleteEverything you say is true. Capitalism (in its current form) is letting us down and leading us down the wrong path. Yet still, I maintain hope for America in particular and humanity in general. Why? Because I like to think that sometimes evolution, whether it is physical or social, moves a step back before it moves forward. The problem is that during that backward time, untold numbers of people will suffer before the realization takes hold and the pendulum swings again. I believe we are in such a time now. My proof? 30 years ago, we elected a president who told us what we wanted to hear, and promised us everything would be OK with no effort on our part to make things better. That somehow, the fact that we were born in the USA was all that was necessary for us to be on top. But now, while his heir apparent, is making alot of money with her books and folksy speeches, I have full confidence that she will not be elected to any national position. While we are still not ready for the real truth about what we need to do to get back on track, we (the nation as a whole) at least knows that her brand of governance will not work again.
And, finally, I have hope in our greatest resource, the young people of today. They already possess an understanding of the environment that our generations had to consciously learn, and social constructs about each other that will further reduce the petty prejudices that prevent our race as a whole from treating each other as individuals.
While we can be disappointed that we may not see the progress that we expected, remember I am of the flower power, make love not war generation, we can at least continue to spread the seed among the young in hopes that it takes better root in the future.