Capitalism, free markets, free enterprise and other bilge
Much of the economic pathology that can be laid at the feet of U.S. virulent 'cowboy' brand of capitalism has two primary effects at work:
i) the incessant crass commercialism of everything - yielding a lowest common denominator culture and "minds" to match it.
ii) A continuing enhancement in inequality - with ever fewer slices of 'pie' for the lowest 80% while the top twenty percent gorges itself on 94% of the resources.
This sets up de facto economic warfare amongst all groups in the lower echelons, pitting one against the other for the few scraps that remain.
As Charles Reich poignantly notes in his book, Opposing the System, Crown Books, 1995, p. 22:
We have built a machine for dehumanization of such force and destructive power, thorough its accumulated assaults on human dignity, that we are creating kinds and degrees of damage to human beings beyond anything ever known, with totally unforeseeable consequences
Reich then describes the visceral 'dog-eat-dog', endless economic warfare that ensues between people in the never ending quest to 'make it' and not be left behind. A tragic game wherein every one has a 'market value' and all abiding principles, social or moral, are reduced to economics. Alas, the cost resides in devastated marriages, familes and communities.
By comparison, the endemic socialist, communitarian structure of Barbados (for example) promotes a healthy growth of the social commonweal and the belief that what is done for the benefit of one, or a few, redounds to the benefit of all. Hence, the imperatives for low cost housing, national health insurance for all, free education through college.
In the U.S. capitalist system, it is more rank competition that prevails - and that engenders a perpetual creative destruction that ravages precious resources. In Barbados, with few resources, each must be maximized. There isn't the quantity to allow duplication or other squandering in wasteful competition. In the U.S., the exact opposite holds. Huge amounts of resources are yearly squandered in competitive games- that have only one or a few 'winners'.
A ten-thousandfold raw material base may produce one or two products that are successful in marketing or whatnot. In Barbados, nationalization of most resources ensures that the raw material factor is ten fold or less.
The island simply lacks the resources to conduct anything approaching the scale of ecological insanity inherent in U.S. 'creative destruction'. (A faux euphemism if ever there was one).
In effect, U.S. capitalism creates a self-destructive, wasteful culture that translates into a self-destructive and wasteful social pattern. People are 'marketed to' for temporary friendships - say merely to network for the next job - then dropped. Or, if a neighbor suddenly become unemployed - and knocked out of the current consumerist culture - they may be jettisoned as friends. They no longer share the same 'buying' interests (or power) after all.
What fun are they at cocktail parties, or even barbecues? Who wants to hear about their pathetic inability to keep up with the latest market crazes?
Repeated untold millions of times, one gets an entire toxic culture, and diseased society. This is, in effect, what we are seeing when we re-enter the U.S. after long stays in normal countries. Countries that hold the commonality in esteem, rather than attempting to fracture it into millions of pieces.
Must capitalism overall inevitably be like this? Maybe not, as Adam Smith actually conceived of a beneficent form in his 'Wealth of Nations' whereby a support and safety net society underpinned the economic system. In a Smithian version of modern day capitalism for example, a universal health care system would be a 'gimme.' (viz. ""What improves the circumstances of the greater part can never be regarded as an inconvenience to the whole", p. 755, Vol. I)
On the issue of "free enterprise" that no longer exists other than in name only. As Maxine Baca-Zinn and D. Stanley- Eitzen observe ('In Conflict and Order', p. 343) :
"The American economy is no longer based on competition among more or less equal private capitalists. It is now dominated by huge corporations that, contrary to classical economic theory, control demand rather than being responsive to the demands of the market."
It is also interesting, according to a Wall Street Journal report last year, that more than 57% of individual enterprises fail by the end of the first year, 66% by the end of the third. Of the "successful" individual enterprises more than half only operate at the breakeven level.
As for "free markets" that's another myth. Huge global multi-nationals now control markets and dictate choice. What doesn't fit in with their edifice, won't appear anywhere and hence not represent an ab initio choice. A Baltimore Sun report in 2002 note for example, that since passage of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, 91% of communities have been reduced to having only ONE cable company - which obviously can charge whatever the hell it likes.
This is no "free market"!
Neither is health care really a "free market". Thus, when people are likely to need to rely or purchase into it the most - with catastrophic illness- they are most limited in their choices. In addition, most providers (HMOs) limit what can and can't be done under the contract. In addition, people with chronic or congenital conditions are often excluded ab initio.
Neither is the market 'free' in terms of work or employment. Because of centralization of many corporations - and application of the same Managerial structure to all, the same rules generally apply.
Workers therefore have no choice in setting their terms and conditions of employment. It is 'take it or leave it'. They cannot decide whether they will allow themselves to be spied upon in restrooms (by company video cameras), or be forced to give urine for 'drug tests' (when CEOs and managers do not), or be tracked on their computers all day by specialized 'info systems', or sworn to subscribe to an 'off hours-out of office' code of behavior.
Nor do they have a choice when suddenly the company announces that 10% of all their pay will now have to go toward medical benefits costs. (Because of the CEO deciding to migrate to a new, cheaper HMO plan.) Nor can they complain if this new plan has them paying ten times more for prescriptions, and limits the number of office visits - say for counseling.
What we're now seeing is more and more the emergence of coercive markets, which are destructive to everyone but the wealthy corporate interests able to purchase legislative leverage.
As author Charles Reich poignantly notes in his book, Opposing the System, Crown Books, 1995, p. 22:
"A free market produces results that favor the health of society as a whole, because an essential balance is maintained. But in a coercive market, the balance is destroyed, the earning power of work and the standard of living of workers declines, and society as a whole is devastated while those with economic power gain an ever more unbalanced share of the nation's economic wealth."
As Morris Berman notes in his new book, 'Dark Ages America' most of what we've been sold about our economic system is simply not true. It is PR for the masses. It is schlock, piffle, and codswallop. To the extent people buy into and believe it, they are in the throes of false consciousness and their opinions, etc. cannot be trusted. They are dummies being operated at the ends of assorted strings pulled by the corporate oligarchs and overseers.
