My dear daughter,
What can we say about Economy these days? The impression I have is that countries are more interested in attracting foreign investments than building up their own investment capability to improve their population’s living conditions.
It’s as if all the money lies with private parties whose identities are mysterious. Even giant tech companies have to dance to the tune of their omnipotent investors.
These investors appear to be concerned with their profit and nothing else. It doesn’t matter if 99% of the world’s population falls to poverty or if global warming provokes mass extinctions, destroys countries’ abilities to produce food or make half of the Earth’s surface uninhabitable. As long as these dozen or so families are alright for the time being, the rest of civilization can go to waste.
They also care little about democracy, government stability or social institutions. In this age corporations have more money and political power than entire countries and their single goal is to sell more, to keep people consuming and not thinking, not questioning, not demanding their rights.
How did it get this bad? People gave corporations that power, certainly; but things are never that simple.
The History of XX century is the History of capitalism’s triumph over any other form of economical organization, no matter how local or small, and triumph against its own crisis cycle.
The system shows an incomparable capacity to generate and circulate riches , but it has no means of creating and maintaining well-being by itself. Massive amounts of data shows the free, unregulated market will concentrate income and produce misery. Profit has no moral, no environmental concern, no community consciousness. It takes our most aggressive feelings and puts them in service of savage competition.
How do people put up with it? Well, if you examine it close enough, there is no free-will. We are bound by our necessities and desires and the “market” has learned how to use this long ago. If you throw people a bone, they are less likely to rebel. So, an average app worker with a routine of 18-hour shifts will gladly accept his fate if he has access to an iphone and the wonders of online retail. He will think himself a privileged member of modern society.
There has been some balance in the aftermath of World War II with the establishment of strong social democracies in countries which were the core of the industrial revolution. Democratic institutions were able to combine the gains of capitalism with income distribution and the implementation of welfare. At least in those countries – in the rest of the world it was pretty much just exploitation and the increase of misery – they called it liberalism and defended it when it was in the best interest of rich countries. It has always been simple colonialism.
Even the welfare state is in jeopardy nowadays, due to the exponential power growth of certain economic groups and the resurgence of populism and fascism. These are subjects for future letters.
Love,
Dad
Aspergers Dad 