The New York Times touched on the core of the problem for a moment in this article (no paywall), but then failed to discuss what exactly it meant when pointing out that “[r]esource scarcity tends to unleash dark forces in human psychology and capitalism.” (para. 6). What do you think that means? How could the “tsunami” about to drown the world hit differently if our systems had been built to help each other rather than merely reap profit for a few? Would there be a world-wide depression at all?
The NYT article mentions a cabbage farmer leaving his produce to rot rather than take further losses trying to sell them. Will he at least freely open his fields for food to his workers and his community? Or will his personal capitalism allow starvation before resource sharing? I shop thrift so will not be affected by Walmart not having cheap clothes to sell. But those workers who will no longer have the meager slave “wages” they subsisted on can’t easily go back to a life before the “globalism” of capitalism, a life post “free-trade” agreements and USA’s covert and not-so-covert wars on any culture choosing an economic system except making the rich richer and the poor poorer. I ponder, will USA’s recent military decisions – in the longer term – expose to all “that man behind the current”, the industrialists/capitalists for the robber-barrons they’ve always been, in such a way that the “means of production” can not only be seized, but fundamentally changed for the better good of the earth and it’s inhabitants? I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Industrial Workers of the World Whatcom-Skagit Branch 