Markets, Viruses, Petroleum, 1% Rule = Democracy?

Frank Scott

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[dropcap]R[/dropcap]eactions to the incredibly debt ridden Ponzi Scheme that passes for thriving global capitalism range from joy over its positive nature in the cartoon version of reality presented by corporate media, to near panic over its pending doom from the best informed sources of the financial community. The sudden intrusion of a global health emergency beyond the normal one of people unable to afford health care has led to a sooner than expected market crisis with Wall Street fluctuations making president Trump’s intellectual state seem almost normal. The market drops a thousand points one day, rises two thousand the next, with sales of psychiatric drugs showing tremendous growth though only a few can afford to buy them.

 Meanwhile, a world that should have ended use of petroleum yesterday is still not only dependent on its continued use today but engaged in what is called a trade war that has extended from the USA vs. everyone - especially China - to Russia vs. Saudi Arabia. The important thing to understand is that whether global capitalism speaks English, Chinese, Russian, Hebrew or Arabic, it is ultimately the same; the rich minority buys cheap and sells dear to the overwhelming majority. Whether capitalism is run by fundamentalist free market fanatics, as has been the case for too long now, social democrats, as was the case in the recent historic past and should be again to avoid total disaster, or by communists as in china and in a slightly more beneficial way for the majority, reliance on market forces and individual profit guarantee ultimate loss and threaten the destruction of what they supposedly serve: the human race.

The all too slow move from petroleum-based fossil fuels to renewable sources of energy has seen a decline in the dreadful for humanity petro business. Nevertheless, in deference to its wealthy minority owners it has been bailed out, as much else that is useless, dangerous and menacing, by banking and finance. This profit creation based on destructive material forces and immaterially existing wealth in the form of a paper and electronic fictional substance called finance, has led to a current crisis in which the normal madness is compounded by further felonious assault on logic, reason and especially earth’s life support system. 

  As if presently failing to provide even for cosmetic sustenance of a majority weren't enough, with low paid jobs passing for “growth” in that more are available in what's labeled a "gig" economy but for less money and benefits, we now have a possible global epidemic that will put even more strain on the insane economy, but especially on its majority of service workers who have the lowest paying jobs with the least benefits and almost nothing to fall back on in times of sickness or crisis. That is, in the USA. Most other materially developed nations have health care for all their people, and in China, where this virus was first seen, all 1 billion 400 million people are covered. Our relatively tiny population has more than 25 million people with no coverage at all and millions more with not enough coverage to afford survival of a serious illness.

Through the brilliant scientific breakthrough called fracking, a more damaging environmental technique than previous methods of sucking petroleum out of the earth, the USA has become the major producer of this fossil fuel which plays a leading role in environmental destruction. This is only fair, as America leads the world in all the most “progressive” methods of profit growth, as in weapons of war and other violence in which we are so far ahead of other backward nations that they can’t even conceive of catching up to us. In fact, the overwhelming majority of them have no such desire.

At this historic juncture brought about by political economics and their subsidiary, nature, the USA faces an election in November in which the choices should be between continuing on the path of total breakdown and destruction or moving towards a radical change which could bring about long term hope not only for the nation but the world. The political forces of reaction, some of them being sold, in perverted language fashion, as “moderate”, and their minority ownership class are desperately trying to stop the movement toward radical change, even if it only offers a return to social democratic capitalism in the short run. But at least the public surge behind Bernie Sanders will put an immediate end to the more ruthless policies of sacrificing public health to bloody profit motivations that guarantee the best health care possible to the rich and their upper middle class servants, while the rest can drop dead if they aren’t covered by profit making corporate health care. That, and many other changes that can be established without total transformation of the system – which is what is ultimately needed –will be the least offered by a Sanders administration, so naturally, all the profiteers and their employees in politics and media are dedicated to stopping him, and more important, this movement. They cannot be allowed to succeed, since that would mean the greatest loss for the American people, and humanity.

The forces of public persuasion under control of America’s rulers have turned on all engines in herding voters into the camp of supporting the so-called moderate candidate – whom Trump would love to publicly tear apart in debates – but they must be denied. All arguments against Sanders which  call him radical or socialist are about as radical and socialist as feeding children before pets or taking care of the folks next door and down the street before those across  borders and oceans, or financing health, community and social justice before weapons of war and the murder of millions.

Continued support for a system that teaches the supposed logic of market forces which translate to milk being more expensive than gasoline, one of thousands of contradictions easily seen by people who are able to look at them clearly, will mean that not only a global epidemic or pandemic of a virus threatens us but the system that leaves us unprotected from that possible illness is far more dangerous than the illness itself. And as to idiocy of the milk-gasoline comparison, just reflect on what it takes to get either “product”:

 A cow can be milked twice a day, and it will continue to provide milk as long as it is fed and can be milked by a human with basic skills at doing what a farm kid once explained to an interviewer when asked how to milk a cow: “you just squeeze her teats is all”. While industrial methods which treat cows as products and reduce them to often dismal lives being penned up and milked by machines, the principle is still the same, and even a farm kid is capable of milking a cow. And the cow will provide more milk the next day and many many days thereafter. 

Petroleum, on the other hand, is not simply milked form the earth. It involves digging quite deeply, and machinery and technology far beyond the milking machines of dairy farms, and once sucked out of earth does not return the next day but only after millions of years. It also can be dangerous to workers, many more than are involved with cow milking, and also necessitates networks of technology, underwater pipes, national and international borders being crossed by such and then a refining process involving more machinery and technology before it comes to us as gasoline.

Ask a child, whether skilled at cow milking or just having common sense, which “product” should be more expensive at the market, and if that child says “milk” it needs mental help, or is on the way of becoming an economist who explains that market forces are the gods we should all worship. Multiply that contradiction by a thousand, and think about that not only when voting, but at all times when contemplating what the hell is wrong with reality and what you can do about it but only along with your fellow citizen members of the human race. Then, if you’re an American, demand that Bernie Sanders be the candidate of one of the two capitalist parties. He is the only one who can defeat Trump and more important, help begin the process of radical transformation of the USA to a nation run by and in support of a democratic majority of its people and not just a relative handful of billionaires, their millionaire servants and their well paid professional anti-working class flunkies.That isn't just called, but will be, democracy, in action rather than just word.

email: fpscott@gmail.com

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