free market capitalism

The earth is burdened by the tsunami of plastic refuse that will never degrade. Government needs to protect us from capitalist enterprises delight in externalizing costs to our detriment and their short-term benefit.

Corporate concentration of income and wealth are core features of capitalism. From its earliest cheerleaders like Adam Smith, the drive for corporations to get ever larger and in the doing drive their competitors out of the market was noted and warned against. John Oliver provides a thorough and amusing introduction.

A Note on Jobs & Unemployment Original publica —>> read more –>>

Reich’s latest cartoon does a good job of describing the changes in the US economy, weaker on the underlying political campaign by the rich and corporations to restructure the economy to their benefit. Worth the 6 minute viewing time.

Brazil is the newest scene of massive marketing campaigns to replace local food and local diets with ultra-processed industrial foods. This is beginning to repeat the mass experiment in bad eating habits that the US has already experienced for two generations.

The US economy is still the largest in he world and it makes us one of the richest nations on earth. We think of it as the most dynamic, innovative, technologically advanced in the world. The trends of the last decade show that there is much to be concerned about.  

Capitalism is driven by a single internal logic that requires the transformation of people and nature into commodities to produce profits. This logic is amoral and the system, excepting for external controls by government and social institutions, just churns on.

For all of the chest beating about the bold risks taken by capitalists, the capitalist time horizon is very short when compared to the many years of work that have gone into almost every significant scientific and technological advance. Without extensive government investment in activities that deliver longer term success, the capitalist system will simply eat its seed corn until it is gone.

A consistent chattering point in American discussi —>> read more –>>

The Democratic Party must absorb the reality of our situation. We need to develop and express some outrage at the current healthcare providers. None of this will happen as long as Democrats are taking money from the rich and corporations. If there is a single lesson from the Bernie Sanders campaign it is that with messages and programs that reflect the needs of the vast majority of Americans, you can raise enough money to fight off the Republican Party and its wealthy and corporate sponsors. Time to start now.

Companies must externalize as many costs as possib —>> read more –>>

If we want to offer an alternative analysis we need direct language that does not refer to thinking and issues from 150 years ago that invites immediate suspicions that those speaking are academics and intellectuals who by definition are not connected to the day-to-day realities of American life.

Read the keystone essay: What Is Market Capitalism —>> read more –>>

Keystone Essay What Is Market Capitalism and Why D —>> read more –>>

AmericanDelusions is changing. AD started out focu —>> read more –>>

The solution to our healthcare fiasco is first to recognize its true nature and then to face down those who are consuming a fifth of our economic output while producing profoundly bad results.

The word “regulation” has been used as an epithet and rhetorical sledge hammer by Republicans and the centrist Bill Clinton Democrats as part of a general campaign to discredit anything that the government might do. This is part of the decades long political strategy of the rich and corporations to puff up the delights of “free markets”.

Every company seeks to get someone else to pay for as many of its costs of doing business as possible. The laws of capitalism require this. If all of Stickles’ competitors are similarly avoiding the costs of disposing of their waste concrete they must do likewise. Otherwise their cost of doing business would be higher. In the short term their profits will be lower. In the longer term they will be forced out of business because they will have to charge higher prices. This is so regardless of the moral values or sense of community of the owners of F.H.Stickles. This how capitalism works.

The title of this short book, only 130 pages, Buil —>> read more –>>

This 2015 movie by Chinese director Liang Zhao is —>> read more –>>

Ever since Ronald Reagan told us in his 1981 Inaug —>> read more –>>

My friend Joe Keenan recently sent me an article b —>> read more –>>