The FIRST is capitalism. Let me explain: we see ads on TV, the classic is a law office telling us about the Camp Lajeaune water lawsuit and lamenting 'profits over people.'
'Profits over people' is not just a left-wing trope. It is an actual legal precedent, brought forth in a MI Supreme Court ruling in 1919 against Henry Ford. It seems Ford raised the wages of his people on the factory floor so they could afford to buy the cars they made. The Dodge brothers sued Ford on the basis that these 'excessive wages' were irresponsible because they deprived them of PROFITS to which they were entitled as shareholders. And they WON.
Officially, this doctrine is called 'Shareholder Primacy' and what it means on the ground is that if you are the CEO of a publicly traded company, your ONLY job is to protect and increase shareholder profits. Period. So, your first act will be to bust the union, if there is one. You will also cut corners on benefits, try and steal the pension fund if you can legally get away with it, turn a blind eye to any wage theft, and compromise safety on the floor. You will also challenge every workers comp claim, and fight against any legislation or regulation designed to help workers. And you will spend capital to automate as much as possible.
As to consumers, you will cut costs by using less costly (and lower quality) materials, and shrink the size of the packaging but leave the price the same (Brits call this 'shrinkflation'). Also, if your product is dangerous, if it hurts a few people sometimes (think Ford Pinto and J&J talc), you will do a cost/benefit analysis and make a decision as to whether it is better FOR SHAREHOLDER PROFITS to simply pay off the people who sue or recall the product and incur the cost of fixing it. Seriously. We can find a number of examples of this.
Concerning the environment, the CEO of the publicly held company will foul the environment as much as they can get away with because environmental damage the company does not have to pay for is called an 'externality.' And, if there is a spill, the company will work hard with members of Congress they have corrupted with campaign donations to pass the cost of cleanup onto the taxpayers so SHAREHOLDER PROFITS aren't hurt in any way. Ever wonder why Republicans apologized publicly to British Petroleum after its massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico? They wanted to pass the cost of cleanup onto us taxpayers, that's why. And that darned Obama instead made BP pay $20 billion.
This is coupled with the Chicago supply-side (we call it 'trickle down') economics which holds that if you cut taxes for corporations, they will create so many new jobs that the greater number of workers paying payroll taxes will offset the corporate tax shortfall. Now, think that through - this is a systematic transfer of wealth (oooh! A wealth REDISTRIBUTION). Essentially, it puts more of the burden (at this point 86% of the burden) of running the federal government on to taxpayers, while corporations saw their tax contribution to the federal government go from ~35% back in the 1960s and 70s down to 6.8% today. Maybe even lower - I haven't looked at this data for a couple years.
Ah, you ask...how to these scamps get away with stealing us blind like this?
If you obtain and read the memorandum Lewis Powell wrote to the US Chamber of Commerce at its request way back in 1971, you will get some good insight. It is colloquially known as the 'Powell Manifesto,' and lays out the entire plan for a corporate/Republican 'news' (propaganda) network by building out talk radio, and creating a Republican 'news' network. This is why operatives like Rove, Rumsfeld and Cheney had the snake Reagan kill the old Fairness Doctrine in 1987. This pocket veto opened the door for Fox 'News' and later the growth of massive right-wing syndicates like the Sinclair Media Group who gobble up local channels and force the newscasters to read national news from their scripts. Also, have you noticed that networks like CNN no longer take emails from us? The Hill and Huffington Post cut out comments? There is a reason, and it is that the monied groups (I lovingly call them billionaire parasites, and every billionare really IS a failure in tax policy) push back on truth HARD, and they do not want readers to realize that a large number of Americans don't agree with the content - both 'factual' and polemic.
This is why the right-wing's (it is called NeoLiberalism, don't you know - why? Maybe to fool us) mantra is 'privatize, deregulate and gut the New Deal. Lately, we have heard that key Republicans have promised to shut down the government if Democrats don't agree to massive cuts in Social Security and Medicare, have we not?
And, of course, we can round all this off with the constant drumbeat that government is bad, bad, bad, bad, bad...Reagan also started this by saying that the government isn't the solution, it's the problem. This is why some of the right wing-nuts hate government so very virulantly - they do not see, due to exposure to YEARS of propaganda, that the real enemy is the billionaire parasites and Shareholder Primacy.
So ends my soliloquy on capitalism. Now to population.
The SECOND factor I brought up was overpopulation. The earth could still support us but if you go to sources like World Counts https://www.theworldcounts.com/, you will see that around 9 million people die per year of hunger related causes in the face of trillions in amassed wealth (by the few), and that we need 1.82 planet earths presently to support us all.
So, yeah. Capitalism and its attendent pollution (lots of info on that in World Counts) and the carbon induced climate change that threatens to make this planet uninhabitable is one factor, and overpopulation another.
When, we wonder, will our species GROW up, put aside pride, greed, anger, hate, war, and all the rest, and start organizing around keeping the earth in good order, controlling our population growth, and ensuring that people have enough.
Remember John Lennon - You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one...
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