THE DECAY OF CAPITALISM
By
Richard Davis

GUILFORD- It’s not an economic downturn and it’s not a recession. So what is really going on with the economy? Why are we not hearing the truth about why economies from small households to large countries are in trouble?
Part of the reason has to do with the fact that the media are fixated on reporting details about the obvious or the most dramatic. They rarely spend the time to dig below the surface, content, for example, with reporting about the race for the money instead of explaining what qualifies a person to become president.
We read stories about mortgage foreclosures and bailouts for investment companies. Stories about the high price of fuel have appeal because they affect all of us. Don’t get me wrong, we need to hear these stories, but they are just symptoms of a larger problem.
It’s as if the body of humanity around the globe was suffering from a fatal case of the now extinct smallpox virus. All people are noticing is that there are these crusty bumps that seem to just pop up. The stories are about the bumps and not about the fact that the disease is killing all of us.
The disease in this case is greed. It’s that simple. We are experiencing the inevitable effects of the evolution of capitalism. As much as I would like to blame Bush and his misguided bunch, they are just carrying on the tradition that was started before they arrived. They have accelerated the pace of the disease by creating a climate that sanctions high level officials to ignore laws that they don’t like.
The theories about capitalism are one thing. The rosy picture of working hard and entering the competitive marketplace and making a good life for you and your family may have been the promise but they have nothing to do with current realities.
The marketplace has become a place where competition is stifled, where the little guy is driven out of the arena and those with the most money get what they want. Bigger has become better and that has meant a near total corruption of political systems throughout the world from Italy to Iraq to the U.S.
A good example is the relationship between the pharmaceutical industry and American politicians. There are more drug company lobbyists than members of congress. That industry realizes uncontrolled profits benefitting the people who work in that industry, while holding the lives of the rest of us hostage to their greed.
Oil companies are hauling in the biggest profits in the history of their industry while people struggle to keep their homes warm during the winter. How fast do you think that problem would be solved if we forced oil company CEOs to live in New England homes at 55 degrees all winter?
The watchdogs of our society, a.k.a. politicians, have done almost nothing to reign in the fuel speculators who are playing a large role in fuel price increases. It is business as usual, and it is one of the most glaring examples of how capitalism is devolving as an institution and no longer meeting the needs of society at large.
How did we get to the point where we replaced ethical principles and a sense of common good with profits at any cost? It is the natural evolution of the capitalist system in societies without a soul.
Most of us want to believe that we are good and moral people who care about the welfare of our fellow American citizens as well as the citizens of the world. The numbers of those people are greater than the greedy, run amok manipulators but the only numbers that matter are the ones preceded by dollar signs.
Capitalism did have promise for improving society for all of us but something happened along the way. The intoxicants of money and power proved to be more of a motivating force than creating a society based on equality.
We will not slow down the disease of greed anytime soon and that means that the world economy will be getting much worse. We are not experiencing an inevitable economic downturn cycle, this is the real thing.
We are experiencing the decay and decline of capitalism and things are going to get ugly.