Decades of rampant free-market ideology and excessive deregulation have left the United States with a broken public education system, a rapidly crumbling infrastructure, and an ever increasing underclass while affording less than one percent of our populace the means to amass over forty-five percent of our national wealth. Ours is the only industrialized nation in the world that does not provide for the basic medical needs of its population, nor does it provide affordable higher education to all of its citizens as do most of our global contemporaries.
Why? Unbridled greed at the very highest levels of corporate America.
The American working class has been shrewdly manipulated over the course of several generations. Our ignorance was established and is maintained by a ruling class of corporate elites employing a variety of means including rampant consumerism, factionalism fueled by ignorance and fear, monetary inflation and exorbitant interest rates in banking, and an endless stream of corporate controlled entertainment designed to keep the masses lulled into a blissful state of apathy or churned into a seething mass of hate for all who are “other” — the ones who aren’t like us and must be always be feared and hated. They’re called wedge issues for a reason.
Wage laborers, that vast segment of humanity that keeps the industrial machine of the world functioning, have been lied to and manipulated by an elitist, power drunk minority for so long that most of us don’t even question modern, global capitalism anymore, much less notice the devastating results of its free market reign of terror. Generations of incessant lies and media manipulation have produced a population divided against itself; too busy working to maintain our pitiful lives and too deep in debt to spend much time questioning authority or challenging the status quo. In short, they’ve got us right where they want us.
We have become slaves on the corporate plantation. Middle and upper level management, only slightly better off financially than the workers they supervise, are nothing more than overseers willing to sell their souls for a slightly bigger pile of crumbs. The self-employed are no better off, they simply owe their meager existence to a different facet of the corporate beast in exchange for a slightly modified means of subsistence.
Free marketeers believe with the zealotry of a Shiite jihadist, that all commercial transactions should be totally unregulated and that any action likely to produce bigger quarterly profits must be implemented, even if doing so destroys millions of lives in the process. Capitalist fundamentalism preaches a gospel that free markets provide the greatest possible equity and prosperity for the most people and that any regulation of market process hinders the growth and progress of society. Adherents to laissez faire commerce have convinced themselves that those members of society who cannot prosper within their system are simply too lazy to make the necessary effort and should be starve in the gutters. Recent history proves beyond any reasonable doubt that such beliefs are utterly false.
In the late 19th century, when robber barons with such notable names as Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, and Morgan founded financial empires which still exist today and amassed their fortunes, social Darwinism ruled the day — survival of the fittest, let the masses be damned! That period, much like today, was an era characterized by massive global immigration, wide spread poverty, and overt exploitation of the laboring class.
The robber barons regularly and notoriously misused the legislative arm of government for their own empowerment. The early railroad industry’s use of legislation to gain rights of way — saving the time, trouble and expense of paying for much of the land they needed — is a prime example of such abuse. Lower expenses equal greater profits and thus greater power and influence. This was the era of rampant sweatshops and widespread child labor, and it ultimately, though often violently, led to the rise of the early labor movement.
Only when our nation teetered on the brink of a working class social revolution, brought to bear by the widespread appeal of socialism during the early twentieth century; only then did the capitalist elites – forebearers of the modern executive class – begin to agree to labor’s demands; paying lip service to the unions with such minor concessions as a forty-hour work week, paid over-time and holidays, and stricter child labor laws, all while buying off as many leaders of the movement as possible, setting the stage for the neutralization of organized labor in America.
Many historians today credit FDR with saving capitalism because free market capitalism is unsustainable and always results in destruction of environments and the exploitation of resources, including human beings. Roosevelt didn’t save capitalism, he just put it on life-support and bought the elitists a few more decades to pillage the planet and explore new and better ways to entrap and enslave the laboring masses.
Today we find ourselves living through events eerily similar those of the early decades of the twentieth century. As the economic melt-down progresses, more and more people are beginning to realize just how badly we’ve all been duped. Free markets in and of themselves do not, never have, and never will address the human issues inherent within a highly advanced, densely populated civilization. While the vast majority of our citizens are slaving away at making a living; producing the goods and providing the services that we all need, a very small percentage of the population, the corporate executive class, is hoarding wealth far in excess the true value they contribute to society.
Why do we tolerate such absurd social inequality in the richest nation in the world?
If the wealthiest among us didn’t insist on living like royalty, didn’t see themselves as kings of the world, the United States government could easily afford to offer universal health care to every American citizen. Every qualified student, young and old alike could be offered a world class post-secondary education without receiving a mountain of debt with their diploma on graduation day.
If the elitist minority would see fit to live like the rest of us and share the wealth of the nation they have spent generations looting, we could have a society the likes of which the planet has never seen. America would once again be worthy of its legacy as the greatest nation on earth. But that would mean giving up a great deal of power and much of the extravagant, unnecessary wealth the rich now possess; an idea the dysfunctional monsters at the top of our economic pyramid scheme will not even consider.
The blind faith American society placed in barely regulated, market driven capitalism over the last hundred years or so is now proving beyond any reasonable doubt to have been misplaced and unfounded. The Randian prophets of rational self-interest have been exposed as the charlatans they really are. Free, unregulated markets are inherently opposed to the fair distribution of resources, and while the advent of international free-market capitalism has indeed raised millions of people out of abject poverty, the negative consequences greatly outweigh the positive effects for the vast majority of humanity.
A few generations ago, American entrepreneurs usually went into business with two primary goals: providing a valuable product or service to their neighbors and making a comfortable living for themselves and their families. Your family doctor was most likely a member of the local community, as was the dairy farmer who supplied your milk and cheese, the contractor who built your home, or the clerk who served you at the local store. The possibility of amassing great wealth in the process of building a thriving business was secondary to the goal of providing the best possible product or service to one’s community. In the past several decades however, that business model and the community values which fostered it have been replaced with a modus operandi that places reaping massive profits in the shortest time possible before all other considerations. Those who enter the commercial arena today without the ruthless mindset of a corporatist quickly find themselves licking their wounds by the side of the road and trying to get the license number of the truck that hit them.
The time has come for mankind, especially Americans to liberate ourselves from the insatiable pursuit of ever greater profits and instead focus our attention on ensuring that everyone has enough. If we can break the chains of our corporate bondage, stop worshiping the false prophets of greed, and focus our efforts on understanding one another, learning to coexist and sustain our humanity, there may just be a ghost of a chance we can find a way to build a better world from the ashes of the old.
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An earlier version of this essay appeared at A World Of Progress.
