Ironies of Capitalism
Communists said capitalism would die due to it’s inherent contradictions. It was inevitable, they said. Yet they weren’t willing to wait for it’s inevitable collapse, because apparently, like many end-timers, they wanted to help the Inevitable get a freakin’ move on.
John Maynard Keynes said, “Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.” Just set the greedy free and we’ll all live better? Well, that was tried. And that failed. Before trickle down economics, they called that the Sparrow Theory. Feed lots of oats to the horse and he’ll poop out a few undigested kernels for the sparrows.
Not sure about the contradictions of capitalism, but I have noticed a couple of ironies. American corporations, wanting maximum profit above all else, moved to Communist China where they could lower their labor costs to $300 a month per worker. Then they blamed US workers for not being more “competitive.” American manufacturing was gutted, China flourished, and now China will probably surpass the US economy soon if they haven’t already. Now we’re supposed to be ticked off at those darn Chinese when the problem was a direct result of American corporate greed. Capitalists enriching communists, communists kicking capitalists’ arses with capitalist investments. Ironic.
When the Covid pandemic hit, various nations tried various degrees of lock down. The lock down, as you recall, was to slow the virus so that ICUs would not overflow and dead patients be lined up on gurneys in hospital corridors. Because that’s a terrible photo op. The lock down was lifted because they thought they had enough ICU rooms, not because the virus was conquered.
Locking down cost money, we don’t know the money cost yet, but it will be steep. Yet what is a life worth? Pitiful politicians had to make choices without admitting that the question was money vs. lives. One nation, Sweden, decided to lock down loosely, keeping businesses open. It made for an interesting national experiment. Some in other nations thought Sweden was right, because quite frankly, they believe money is more important than lives.
As it turns out, the case and fatality rate in Sweden has surpassed those of all the other Scandinavian nations combined. That’s not the ironic part. The ironic part is that is that now more nations are easing up, no tourists want to go to Sweden and they are losing about $3 million daily. Putting money over lives cost them lives AND money. Ironic.
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