Read the Beforeitsnews.com story here. Advertise at Before It's News here.
Profile image
By Of Two Minds (Reporter)
Contributor profile | More stories
Story Views
Now:
Last hour:
Last 24 hours:
Total:

The Lockdown Wouldn't Be So Devastating If Our Economy Wasn't So Rigged, Brittle and Exploitive

Monday, April 6, 2020 23:43
% of readers think this story is Fact. Add your two cents.


Oftwominds.com‘s eclectic range of timely topics include finance, economy, stocks, housing, Asia, energy, long-term trends, social issues, urban planning, work/tradecraft, health/diet/fitness, sustainability, Les Paul guitars and The Great Transformation ahead: www.oftwominds.com/blog.html.

An economy of rackets designed to enrich the few at the expense of the many is brittle because self-serving rackets snuff out competition, accountability and transparency.
What’s remarkable about the lockdown isn’t the hue and cry about the economic damage–it’s the absence of any critical curiosity as to how our economy became so fragile that only the wealthiest contingent can survive a few weeks on savings or rainy-day funds.
A healthy, resilient economy would be able to survive a few weeks of lockdown without a multi-trillion dollar bailout of every racket in the land. A society that wasn’t threadbare financially and socially would be able to function and accept individual sacrifices for the common good.
Rather than being organized to serve the common good, our economy and social order is little more than overlapping rackets: rigged “markets” operated by quasi-monopolies to enrich the few at the expense of the many; brittle bureaucracies bound by thousands of pages of mindless “compliance” and exploitive neofeudal structures in which debt-serfs are paid just enough to service their debt but not enough to afford skyrocketing costs for housing, healthcare, higher education, childcare, junk fees and taxes.
While everyone is busy screaming about the damage done by the lockdown, nobody’s asking why costs are so high that few can survive a few weeks on their own means. Nobody dares look at the soaring costs imposed by cartels and monopolies (including government and government-funded rackets such as healthcare and higher education) because it might shine a light on the money-trough they’re feeding from. (Crush every racket but mine…)
If costs weren’t so crushing, more households and enterprises might have savings. Empires don’t collapse because everyone ran out of money; they collapse when the costs exceed earnings.
Put another way, the skyrocketing costs of self-serving sclerotic complexity, a.k.a. convoluted inefficiencies imposed by institutions which lack any accountability, far exceed the gains in productivity and resource mining needed to pay for the productivity-draining complexity.
As for innovation–please don’t make us laugh. All the rackets work overtime to avoid being disrupted by the forces of productivity and transparency. Just look at higher education: all the technology was available a decade ago to radically reduce the costs of effective education, (as I outlined in my 2012 book The Nearly Free University), but the higher education cartel fought to maintain its monopoly on credentials, squandering hundreds of billions of dollars on layers of administrators and self-glorifying buildings.
I’ve been explaining How Healthcare Is Dooming the U.S. Economy for years. Now it’s becoming too obvious to deny. Sickcare Will Bankrupt the Nation (March 21, 2011).
Just as Wall Street destroyed the private-sector mortgage market by financializing it, healthcare has been destroyed by Corporate America’s financialization of what was once for the common good, turning it into a hollowed-out profit machine for the few at the expense of the luckless serfs who have no choice but to serve the Financial Nobility. (You can pick any health insurer you want–but there’s only two, heh, and their prices are the same: Kafkaesque in their opaque complexity, and high enough to bankrupt all but the wealthiest.)
An economy of rackets designed to enrich the few at the expense of the many is brittle because self-serving rackets snuff out competition, accountability and transparency. As I noted in The Convergence of Marx, Orwell and Kafka (July 25, 2012), Marx understood that predatory, parasitic Monopoly Capitalism melts any social norms that restrict its dominance into air, while Kafka understood that the the more powerful and entrenched the bureaucracy, the greater the collateral damage rained on the innocent, and the more extreme the perversion of justice.
Orwell understood that the State’s ontological imperative is expansion, to the point where it controls every level of governance, markets and society. Once the State escapes the control of the citizenry, it is free to exploit them in a parasitic predation that is the mirror-image of Monopoly Capital. For what is the State but a monopoly of force, coercion, data manipulation and the neofeudal enforcement of crony-capitalist private monopolies on powerless serfs?
Neofeudal exploitation has hollowed out the economy, leaving a fragile, brittle shell of rackets, self-serving cartels and institutions that have squandered the public’s trust in their greedy rush to accumulate as much private wealth as they can before the whole rotten corrupt structure collapses under its own weight.
Money and Work Unchained $6.95 (Kindle), $15 (print) Read the first section for free (PDF).

If you found value in this content, please join me in seeking solutions by becoming a $1/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

NOTE: Contributions/subscriptions are acknowledged in the order received. Your name and email remain confidential and will not be given to any other individual, company or agency.
Thank you, Michael M. ($50), for your superbly generous ontribution to this site — I am greatly honored by your support and readership.
  
Thank you, E.G.S. ($10/month), for your extraordinarily generous subscription to this site — I am greatly honored by your support and readership.
Go to my main site at www.oftwominds.com/blog.html for the full posts and archives.


Source: http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2020/04/the-lockdown-wouldnt-be-so-devastating.html



Before It’s News® is a community of individuals who report on what’s going on around them, from all around the world.

Anyone can join.
Anyone can contribute.
Anyone can become informed about their world.

"United We Stand" Click Here To Create Your Personal Citizen Journalist Account Today, Be Sure To Invite Your Friends.

Please Help Support BeforeitsNews by trying our Natural Health Products below!


Order by Phone at 888-809-8385 or online at https://mitocopper.com M - F 9am to 5pm EST

Order by Phone at 866-388-7003 or online at https://www.herbanomic.com M - F 9am to 5pm EST

Order by Phone at 866-388-7003 or online at https://www.herbanomics.com M - F 9am to 5pm EST


Humic & Fulvic Trace Minerals Complex - Nature's most important supplement! Vivid Dreams again!

HNEX HydroNano EXtracellular Water - Improve immune system health and reduce inflammation.

Ultimate Clinical Potency Curcumin - Natural pain relief, reduce inflammation and so much more.

MitoCopper - Bioavailable Copper destroys pathogens and gives you more energy. (See Blood Video)

Oxy Powder - Natural Colon Cleanser!  Cleans out toxic buildup with oxygen!

Nascent Iodine - Promotes detoxification, mental focus and thyroid health.

Smart Meter Cover -  Reduces Smart Meter radiation by 96%! (See Video).

Report abuse

    Comments

    Your Comments
    Question Razz Sad Evil Exclaim Smile Redface Biggrin Surprised Eek Confused Cool LOL Mad Twisted Rolleyes Wink Idea Arrow Neutral Cry Mr. Green

    MOST RECENT
    Load more ...

    SignUp

    Login

    Newsletter

    Email this story
    Email this story

    If you really want to ban this commenter, please write down the reason:

    If you really want to disable all recommended stories, click on OK button. After that, you will be redirect to your options page.