Sunday, August 13, 2017

Empire Files: Peter Joseph & Abby Martin on Abolishing Capitalism

I like Peter Joseph; he's real nice guy.  He was once a trader and he made a small profit out of it but it didn't suit him. He's incredibly idealistic and I wonder if human nature would ever allow such a system system that he advocates. He's brave and never falters in his believe which is the complete opposite of our present capitalist system.

Years ago lots of people did things for the common good, and penicillin was freely given away to the world saving millions of lives, but nowadays companies would charge the maximum they could get for it. There seems to be a very nasty greed in neoliberalism.

 The pharmacist Sir Alexander Fleming is revered not just because of his discovery of penicillin – the antibiotic that has saved millions of lives – but also due to his efforts to ensure that it was freely available to as much of the world’s population as possible. Fleming could have become a hugely wealthy man if he had decided to control and license the substance, but he understood that penicillin’s potential to overcome diseases such as syphilis, gangrene and tuberculosis meant it had to be released into the world to serve the greater good. On the eve of World War II, he transferred the patents to the US and UK governments, which were able to mass-produce penicillin in time to treat many of the wounded in that war. It has saved many millions of lives since.

A group of young people who were up and coming film makers called themselves, 'American Empire', and they put out some good videos. They stopped making videos as it took up too much of their time and so finding their videos is hard with a name like 'American Empire' as a whole ton of stuff comes up. They said in their videos that it was too late to save the world and capitalism would eventually destroy it, and then after that those that survive will never allow capitalism to reign again.




1 comment:

Dan Lynch said...

You have spelled out the basic problem with capitalism -- a capitalist society encourages greed and selfishness.

The Nordic countries seem to have found a healthy balance between socialism and capitalism, but they teach empathy and community ethics starting in grade school. No such mainstream culture exists in the U.S..