No one can earn a million dollars honestly.
William Jennings Bryan, 1860 – 1925,
an American lawyer, statesman, and politician, three times the Democratic Party nominee for President of the United States.

The decadent international but individualistic capitalism in the hands of which we found ourselves after the war is not a success. It is not intelligent. It is not beautiful. It is not just. It is not virtuous. And it doesn't deliver the goods.
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Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest [sic] of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.
John Maynard Keynes, 1883 – 1946,
a British economist whose ideas, called Keynesian economics, had a major impact on modern economic and political theory, as well as on many governments’ fiscal policies.  

So far, we have noted many deficiencies in the capitalism which we practice.  The purpose behind such a look is to encourage thought and action about how to make capitalism work better.  So we look at more deficiencies.

The community lesson in this issue of E-News talks about the largest beef recall in United States history.  One source has reported that the slaughterhouse intentionally violated the law when the government inspector assigned there was away on other business.  “Flashback Quarterback” in this issue talks about the difficult situation for patients who try to understand medical billing.  On Sunday, February 17, “Sixty Minutes” talked about Trasylol, a drug manufactured by the medical mastodon Bayer.  One doctor who was interviewed said that a thousand deaths occurred for every month that Bayer delayed pulling Trasylol from the market.  

The fundamental problem here is threefold:  

·        first, the relatively unfettered pursuit of wealth;  this is aggravated because of the relative lack of funding which would keep our US Department of Agriculture and our US Food and Drug Administration, “FDA,” independent and alert;

·        second, the accumulation of wealth by a relatively few;  in Bayer’s case, this would be its shareholders;

·        third, our lack of information about options, e.g., there is a much cheaper alternative to Trasylol, and our inability to identify emergencies quickly, e.g., we do not know how bad a drug is until the FDA choose to tell us.

As for the first problem, the capitalism which we practice in America never tires of seeking out new markets.  It would be impossible to say, “You do what you want in Nevada , but leave us Californians alone.”  The second problem is difficult to address because those who have wealth become the shareholders, and the shareholders become more wealthy, excluding a large number of people, of stakeholders, from participating in decision-making and from sharing in the wealth.  Finally, the lack of information to make informed choices and to react quickly to emergencies is aggravated by the lack of transparency in the corporate sector and the unrevealed inducements, like commissions, to medical practitioners to collaborate with corporations.  

Making capitalism work for the community is very much an uphill battle, a steep uphill battle. 

March 6, 2008