A common perception among Americans is that our country is “great” because of the capitalist economy that has been the driving engine of the country since the mid-1800s. This message is constantly reinforced by almost every media outlet since, after all, most media outlets themselves are controlled by capitalists (lest you forget, the vast American media industry is owned and operated by only FIVE corporations). Beyond that, every politician from the lowliest town councilor to the President of the United States, Republican or Democrat constantly reinforces the message with their words and deeds because they receive almost all of the money that they use to run for office (plus a little baksheesh) from corporations.
And yet, capitalism itself is a remarkably destructive system. Under capitalism, practically every imaginable thing that can be produced is commoditized as much as possible through whatever means can accomplish it — economies of scale, industrialization, offshoring, cost-cutting, and even outright crimes, lies, and cheating. As far as capitalism is concerned, anything and everything is fair game in the blind pursuit of one and only one goal: profit. And once something can no longer be mined for profit, it is discarded in favor of the next profitable thing. In this way, capitalism becomes a juggernaut that simply chews up and spits out everything in its path, blind to any other consideration. To borrow from Star Trek, if I may, capitalism is not the Borg Collective, which assimilates every culture or technology it finds, it is the Doomsday Machine that simply eats every planet in its path.
Barack Obama’s campaign theme is “Change”, and lately every candidate running for President has also tried to demonstrate their claim to be the One True Representative of “Change”, but not a one of them will make a single meaningful change to the corrupt relationship between corporations and government because they are too far co-opted. This essay by a student named Ned Resnikoff was one of the finalists in a competition held by The Nation Magazine and in it he says that curtailing corporate power over the government should be the single most important change that the next President brings, because as long as our government is rendered impotent by its relationship to Big Business, the juggernaut will remain unchecked.
It needs to be acknowledged that the overconsumption of goods and resources that has been the single biggest hallmark of the American Era actually threatens the continued existence of the human race. The death spiral of consumption, which the capitalist system props up to continue its own existence, was unsustainable from the outset, even if people were not as aware of it as they are now. As we can no longer ignore its manifestation in climate change, depletion of resources, diminishing of biodiversity, and even military conflict (hint: Iraq is about THE OIL), we are powerless and will grow increasingly so without genuine change in the way business and government walk hand in hand.
Even though Americans are deeply acculturated to see capitalism as a positive force, the destructive nature of this system is not entirely hidden to us. A recent Harris Poll reveals that 84% of Americans believe that corporations hold too much power in Washington, a percentage that has been consistent across similar polling for 14 years. Further, the poll shows that over 85% of Americans believe that the largest corporations (oil companies, health care and insurance companies, car makers, and pharmaceutical makers) are the least trustworthy.
Sadly, the likelihood of this sort of change is close to non-existent, and as a result an entirely different spectrum of change will be the reality of life for our children and the generations that follow them. The “planet-killer” will eventually live up to that name, rapaciously plundering whatever it thinks it can consume until there is nothing left.
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