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Ok. The banks are sitting on two or three trillion, with a "T", of your tax dollars, dumped into their laps with no oversight, like the way we treat children seeking asylum at the borders, no tracking, no paper trail. This hoarding continues, even as more bailout billions are being diverted into the pipeline. There is no way the politicians are going to risk being seen as anti-Business, by Business, their true constituency. They'll claw the money from other programs if they have to, and they will have to. Whatever public spending is still in place on the table, as far as they're concerned. Business will grab it, if we let them let them. From that phrase you can see that it's the "most affected" by regulation -- the corporations seeking more profit -- that people need to attend to, not their wholly owned elected officials.
With unprecedented profits now so completely assured, what could Wall Street possibly want now, in return for loosening up a little credit? What has the government got to sweeten the deal? What is left to deregulate? What subsidies can it find to throw down those ravenous, slavering corporate jaws? To answer that, don't we need but look at specific threats to corporate profit? Not exactly. For one thing, there's nothing left to give them. And there's a pandemic on. Balance of forces in play, and all that. I think we're on a whole new playing field now.
What has been revealed in the last couple of months, in the Great Mirror of Pandemic? I mean, what has now been seen by the largest number of people in history, many for the first time, and for many, merely confirming their worst fears?
Massive wealth disparity, stunning levels of systemic racism, murderous abuse of legitimate asylum-seekers, massive sabotage of the national medical capacity, theft and resale of life-saving medical shipments (by FEMA no less!), massive, worldwide pandemic profiteering, a near-shooting war between political factions, the two-pronged corporate assault on education of underfunding and privatization, criminal negligence and abuse of public-water supplies, as seen in Flint, Michigan, and other cities (lead in the drinking water!? Isn't that still a horrible crime of mass murder or something? Where are the cops?).
To find this answer in light of all that has emerged into public awareness, I think we can look beyond the usual regulatory issues, tax-havens, casino banking, insider trading, predatory loans, shaky derivatives, presidential-crony pardoning, child-sex trafficking, opioid-crisis profiteering... Did I forget anything? Yes, lots; but there's not much of that stuff left anyway.
But now, the pandemic has put everything on the table: Inequality itself has become both a justice and a civil-rights issue, revealed in the widely disparate death rates among diverse communities. Privatization of schools, prisons, public utilities and essential government functions that have been sold off to unaccountable, unelected private profit-making corporations. Criminal pollution of air, land, water and our own bodies by chemical, energy, and agricultural corporations. Wanton destruction of ecosystems and entire human cultures world wide in the blind, insatiable quest for more profit at less cost. And let's go the distance here: willful destruction of Planet Earth, forever, by greenhouse-gas emissions.
Try to remember that this is structural: built-in. Part and parcel of our culture. Not just a few bad apples: a whole rotten, unworkable set of cultural rules. Meaning, a revolution can only produce a different set of slave-masters. Meet the new Boss.
Then there's the rising idea of a general strike based on all of the above. This is people-power. The one force Wall Street truly fears. With public sentiment heating up faster than global warming (and we had better hope so!), and the corporate machinery stripped of its cover by a microscopic bug, the balance of forces, as the authors say, is shifting. And Wall Street is already months into their capital strike. Some might say they are running short of options.
What might corporations fear from people-power, in reparations, retribution, restorative justice, criminal prosecution, or just tar, feathers, torches and pitchforks?
How about nationalization: how about "social" media, how about the internet, why should these necessities of public health and safety be in private hands, and subject to such overwhelming, unrestrained, pervasive, invasive surveillance? Business will whine that our data is their private property, and the profits from it are theirs to use as they please. It's none of their business! Why are they allowed to assert such pernicious nonsense?
What about the rising idea, and this among a great many serious economists today, of a Universal Basic Income? Many calculate that at 20% of GDP. We waste that much food every day. Why should so much of our human family be enslaved to inadequate wages, when it is their labor that makes for so much private wealth?
There is no reason for these sad realities, other than basic cultural structures: our own culture.
Business is banking on public apathy, and it is not showing up as they might hope. Example: "opening up" has not brought crowds of eager workers back to the assembly lines -- oops, those are all automated now aren't they -- motels, fast-food joints, hair and nail salons, massage parlors, tattoo shops, private prisons, dog-walking services, "security" companies... People know it's too soon for that. We know it ain't "a little flu".
The public, that is, the people whose voices can be heard, which is those of us who still have internet access, are talking to each other for once, instead of about each other with those trollbots on "social" media. The Surveillance Capital, and it is a bonanza now what with Zoom being the only way to communicate, may be immensely profitable for Eric, and Jeff, and Mark, or whomever. But with everyone looking at the same germ, it's hard to segment them into those little tiny demographics that made those three guys the owners of the world. Hard to automate an election when people are keeping in touch with each other, and not just with the system.
The other public, that is, the people with few options left, not even "social distancing" let alone "social" media, are not out of the game. Consider that when the Soviet Union collapsed, there were millions of people with even fewer options left, and they had nothing to vote with but their feet. But that wall came down. There's a lot more walls now -- and a lot more people with few options left.
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