25 Horrifying Images of the "Free" Market at Work

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/25-horrifying-images-free-market-work

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2014 Oxfam report "85 people own more than the poorest 3.5 billion people on the planet"

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2014 West Virginia chemical spill


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2013 Bangladesh garment factory collapse


2013 West Fertilizer Company explosion in Texas

[daleanime]

1. K&R....

[Nuclear Unicorn]

2. Yeah. Nothing bad ever happens under communist monopolies.

The problem with socialism is that the state is the producer and it refuses to investigate and prosecute itself.

THE NEW SOVIET THREAT: POLLUTION After 74 years of Communist mismanagement, the former Soviet Union is an environmental menace to the world. The cleanup will cost billions -- and guess who pays.

By Paul Hofheinz REPORTER ASSOCIATE Karen Nickel

July 27, 1992

(FORTUNE Magazine) – THE COMMONWEALTH of Independent States (CIS) is in even worse shape than you think. Sure, the former Soviet Union's economy is disintegrating, but that may not be its biggest problem. After 74 years of Communist mismanagement, the country that once spanned a sixth of the globe has become an environmental cesspool that is threatening its neighbors in Europe and Asia. Environmentalists are sounding the alarm. Says Kristen Suokko of the Natural Resources Defense Council, based in Washington, D.C.: ''If we don't deal with ((CIS)) environmental problems now, we won't have to worry about dealing with economic problems. The U.S., other nuclear nations, and the international community generally must take drastic and immediate action.'' At the economic summit in Munich in July, Germany and France will be pushing the world's leading industrial nations to commit billions of dollars in environmental aid | on top of the $24 billion of economic assistance they have already pledged. Russia and the other former Soviet Republics need help not only to start cleaning up but also to stop a pattern of environmental abuse. Under the socialist system, Soviet industry was built with little or no regard for the environment. Cars still use leaded gasoline. Manufacturing consumes more than four times as much energy per unit of GNP as in the U.S., reports the Battelle Pacific Northwest Laboratory. The sad irony is that this enormous waste has contributed significantly to global warming and other environmental problems without making life easier for the country's citizens. Russian households consume 90% less energy than their Western counterparts (they have smaller homes and fewer appliances), but this savings is rendered meaningless by the colossal wastefulness built into the inefficient military industrial complex

http://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1992/07/27/76680/index.htm

At least they were able to lower their carbon footprint by 50 million souls --




So, they got that going for them.

[Stonepounder]

3. So, just because Socialism is worse we should accept the evils of unfettered Capitalism?

Sorry, I think that is a really crappy argument. And evidently you are perfectly ok with 85 people owning as much wealth as half the planet? And so long as they aren't quite as bad as Pol Pot that's OK?

So, I guess it's OK for me to beat my wife, so long as I don't beat her as badly as someone else?

[ConservativeDemocrat]

6. Maybe we can simply say that it isn't the "system" that's bad

...but rather that it's the lack of checks and balances on it.

If you want to argue that private businesses should be watched by the government, I have no problem.

If you want to argue that the government should become essentially a private business (a.k.a. socialism), I'm not sure I agree.

In the first case, there is always a neutral authority to go to, that allows people to peacefully address abuses. In the second case, you're making the entity that supposedly provides oversight have a conflict of interest. That seems unlikely to work.

- C.D. Proud Member of the Reality Based Community

[heaven05]

20. oversight? neutral authority?

in theory, yes. PRACTICE, hell no!!!! "peacefully address abuses"??? Where the courts usually side with the corporation(s) perpetrating the abuses? BP only got fined because it affected so many people and such a large geographical area. That is still a rare occurrence. Your reality is not everyone's reality. And you have nothing to be proud of, in my opinion.

[ConservativeDemocrat]

23. I won't argue too much with this

I think it's pretty clear that there is a strong streak of plutocracy that runs through our current government.

However, proposing to "solve" this by making government and plutocracy one and the same isn't a good idea either. It didn't work for the Soviet Union. It's really not working well for China, compared to where they should be based on their world population.

- C.D. Proud Member of the Reality Based Community

[heaven05]

31. no argument from me

Last edited Fri Sep 5, 2014, 04:55 PM - Edit history (1)

none are without 'sin'. Just a fact that this system has been killing people the same as others on the planet. It's just that 'totalitarians make no pretensions about freedom, justice. No argument. This country just has to live up to it's ideals for just once in 250+ years. Never happen, no precedent.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

7. So just because Capitalism has pollution we should accept the evil of murderous socialist monopolies

Sorry, I think that is a really crappy argument.

When the state is the economic producer the state will never hold itself accountable. We need separation of state and economics the same way we have separation of church and state and for the same reasons. The state should remain separate so that it can oversee, arbitrate and if need be prosecute.

And evidently you are perfectly ok with 85 people owning as much wealth as half the planet?

In socialist monopoly dictatorships the party leadership owns everything and they enforce their monopolies at gunpoint. To even speak out about it -- as you would presume to do -- would mean imprisonment, torture and death. Even Wal-Mart doesn't have that power.

And so long as they aren't quite as bad as Pol Pot that's OK?

Why would you diminish what Pol Pot did just because the liars, manipulators, killers, hoarders and warmongers of the world fly a hammer and sickle rather than pretend to be free market?

News flash -- the world is full of bad actors. Some migrate to business, some politics. They ALL go to where they can assume the most power. Communism centralizes and monopolizes all power in one apparatus: the State. Which means it also maintains a monopoly on lethal force to impose law. The bad actors don't simply disappear because a few fools chant Marxist doctrine , they do what they have always done and always will do -- go to where the power is concentrated.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

10. Straw man alert!

There ARE intermediate stages between robber baron capitalism and Pol Pot.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

13. Thank-you for alreting us to the presence of the straw man you provided.

I do not advocate laissez faire / robber baron capitalism. In fact, I specifically wrote that the role of government is not to be a producer but to oversee, arbitrate and if need be prosecute. No, really; I actually wrote that.

[heaven05]

22. as a CYA ploy

that's all.

[heaven05]

12. huh?

excuses, excuses. How sad.

[eridani]

37. Socialist countries like Sweden do quite a bit better than that n/t

[Duppers]

5. Point scored!

Far too many members of the human species are totally despicable.

[LiberalArkie]

8. That is always the problem when the producer is the regulator. We are close to that here

with the telco's telling the FCC what rules they want. When the meat producers set their own rules. Just pick an industry.

I think what works is when localities own the electric, water and internet. They are still regulated nationally. but the profits stay home and can be reinvested at home. Nationally it hardly ever works, locally it does.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

9. "That is always the problem when the producer is the regulator."

Exactly.

[heaven05]

11. gawd bless capitalism!!!!

and people died, so what, right? Stalin killed more, right. And socialism is not communism.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

14. It's kinda scary when people just dismiss the death of tens of millions

in the name of totalitarianism. I've no use for mass-murdering dictatorships or those who advocate for them.

[heaven05]

19. me either

yet it is also scary when people dismiss millions of deaths based on lies and forcing 'democracy on people who have to love the 'american way' or die. How many deaths in the name of democracy and capitalism? Your meme holds no water. I have no use for people who are willfully, 'patriotically' blind to their own stubborn, obstinate ignorance of the facts.

[xchrom]

25. africans and indigenous people every where have been saying that for years

about 'free markets'.

you think you've 'discovered' something.

you haven't.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

26. The communists were every bit a bunch of colonialist bastards as the imperialists.

[xchrom]

28. you keep close tabs on the 'communists' but give the free marketeers a pass.

we didn't keep track of the dead indigenous people and africans who died for western markets -- but it's every bit as many as the 'communists' killed.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

29. No, I don't. I reject imperialism of every stripe.

Communism is nothing but an imperialist creed. It cannot exist in a world where people can dissent and make their own choices or elect a different government. At least in a properly free state we can vote the imperialists out of office. Communism is every bit the evil of fascism and for the same authoritarian-totalitarian reasons.

[Enthusiast]

32. +1 an entire shit load.

[snort]

18. Somebody needs to post a basic primer.

Way too much conflating going on. I'd do it but I suck at writing. The pukes have been pushing the notion that communism and socialism are pretty much 2 names for the same thing and its working.

[Enthusiast]

33. I hate to see it repeated on the DU.

As soon as the subject is brought up sockpuppets miraculously appear to confuse the issue.

[HughBeaumont]

15. You spelled "totalitarian" wrong.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/False_dilemma

[Nuclear Unicorn]

16. Either the state assumes economic production or it has no role, i.e. laissez-faire, or

or remains separate but with a robust ability for oversight. Maybe it's just me but the OP doesn't seem to cast either of the latter two possibilities in a positive light. I reject the first and second of the three prospects.

[Hissyspit]

17. Did you just imply socialism and communism are the same thing?

[hifiguy]

24. So many do.

It's a classic obfuscation argument used by right-wingers and other apologists for rapacious capitalism and plutocracy.

Democratic socialism is imperfect but clearly the best hope for the survival of humanity.

[Warpy]

30. That is because nepotism has them acting exactly like

capitalist oligarchies. The pure socialism envisioned by firebrands at the bottom is always a corrupt mess at the top within 20 years, mostly because the cast of characters there has merely switched uniforms to practice business as usual screwing the workers.

[heaven05]

34. "screwing the workers" brings to mind

waltons/walmart/fast food business/ they are all screwing their workers with substandard pay that has to be supplemented, especially walmart workers because I know one, by food stamps.

[hifiguy]

35. Socialism for the rich.

The worst of capitalism - and it is pretty fucking horrible - for the rest.

[grahamhgreen]

36. Socialist democracies are the best countries on the planet.

[heaven05]

4. yep

Last edited Fri Sep 5, 2014, 11:04 AM - Edit history (1)

who said it, raygun? "greed is good".

[toby jo]

21. Really.

It's good to be free to push up against boundaries, which the market does.

But when you hit those mutually agreed upon points of 'don't push anymore, it hurts', you gotta back off. Points like , hey, we don't have enough shelter, food, clothing, honest bankers, clean environment, etc.

Righties just glorify the push.

[hifiguy]

27. Kick!