Surviving Capitalism (Not) : If We Don't Change the Way Money Is Created and Distributed, Rising Inequality Will Trigger Social Disorder

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Friday, November 13, 2015

If We Don't Change the Way Money Is Created and Distributed, Rising Inequality Will Trigger Social Disorder

Click here to access article by Charles Hugh Smith from his blog Of Two Minds.

Because this writer is a true believer of the TINA principle, he can not see that the privatization of money, like most everything else of value, is an integral part of capitalism. However, he does see at least some of the adverse consequences that this private control of money causes.

One devastating consequence for workers especially is that they are the ones who suffer most when the bankers, central and otherwise, issue credit for production of goods and services beyond which consumers can afford to buy. That is precisely why we have experienced so many economic booms and busts.

But this is a relentless tendency of capitalist enterprise: obsessive investment in profit-producing goods and services--not to satisfy needed goods and services. That is why the industry of advertising is so critically required for this system to function: to inculcate the desire for goods and services beyond those that are needed.

An added bonus that the system of capitalism provides is the overwhelming political power given to those who "own" and control the most wealth. The latter inevitably tend to form a ruling class. I argue "tend" because it is not clear to me if this principle applies "inevitably" to the Russia and China whose governments have only adopted the system recently, and appear to be trying to control their capitalists in the service of the state, as they see it.