Market of death

Is anybody surprised about the continuing revelations about the poisons being sent over in Chinese-made pet food, toys, toothpaste? Why? This is the free market in action. It’s nothing specifically “Chinese;” it’s the “invisible hand,” that will-o-the-wisp of Adam Smith’s, elevated to a religious mantra. It’s the inevitable corruption, oligarchy, and authoritarianism that marketism results in when not overseen by a democratic polity. It used to be standard operating procedure right here too, which is why we have an FDA, an FCC, an EPA, and so on. Which is why the radicals on the right who occupy these desks now work to undermine the old rules, and bring back the adulteration, the pollution, the toxins. You, your children, your pets, are irrelevant. Short term profit, y’all! Profit is all, so much more important than lives, communities, the very planet itself.

Now, for an example of actually-operating capitalism, where capital and the state it partially or wholly owns act together, there’s no finer example than ARAMCO, our oil boys in Wahhabi Arabia, the inheritors of the copper barons, mine owners, and others on the “mineral frontiers.” There was no discernable difference between the State Department’s team in Arabia and the oil firm (and the Company, since the CIA was all over the place), while the corrupt, autocratic, feudal local regime provided the muscle when the workers got uppity. You know, things like wanting to see the movies the American workers got to see; to stop being called “coolies” and “ragheads”; to get better living conditions; to make the same salary; in short, to stop being discriminated against in the segregated whites-only oil camps. The strikes that eventually came – after petitions, work stoppages, and a bus boycott before Montgomery (!) failed – were soundly beaten back, with the strikers carted off to torture chambers as agitators, communists, etc. Old story.

As I write, there’s a coalmine collapse in Utah: the lives of six miners are at stake in a mine that’s gotten 300 safety citations in the last three years. The mine owners and their tools, like the Senator from Coal, Mitch McConnell, maintain unsafe conditions year after year because they gamble that profits now are well worth the risk of other lives later… or as in Utah, right now. The owner of this particular collapsed mine seems like a real piece of work, ranting about the United Mine Workers and global warming and insisting it was an earthquake. He did have one good point: he’s providing the filthy shit that feeds our insatiable electrical need.