And Boom Goes the Capitalism
Yeah yeah, mm-hmm, “don’t talk about capitalism unless you can supply an alternative system that could provide equal or superior quality of life to as many people” yes yes very good.
I have so many subjects and thoughts to get in order, an ideological scrapbook of sorts, all of it geared towards a singular purpose: Reconfigure capitalism to the point where it (and herein lies the rub) leads to convergence rather than divergence in living standards. A bunch of other good things would come with that, too, many of them whirling around the space inhabited by the word “ethics” like enraged gannets sent on a pointless mission to the sheet-ice of a polar cap. They need the ice to be broken before they can make the water, and in this metaphor, the ice is called “what people talk about when they talk about human nature.”
Does this make sense? It doesn’t make sense. It’s very late and I’ve been chased by three thoughts all day:
Oliver North is theperfect spokesman for Call of Duty for reasons that only get more terrifying the more you think about them;
French food company Nutriset makes tens of millions in profit each year from selling emergency food supplies (mainly Plumpy’nut, which is used to save thousands malnourished children every week) to UNICEF and a select group of NGOs with sufficient purchasing power. Nutriset can do this unimpeded because it owns the (ridiculously broad) patents for Plumpy’nut and other emergency foods, and France is a member of the World Trade Organisation. Nutriset’s nationality gives it the right to assert its patents worldwide under the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS) legislation and bar competition, or not-for-profit groups, from producing its lifesaving foods at a drastically reduced cost. Children starve every day because of this, and TRIPS makes it unstoppable (it also prevents people in developing nations from being able to purchase cheap generic medicines because big pharma and its lovely R&D budgets tend to live within the WTO-loving West);
and finally, I read somewhere the other day that the man who invented the seatbelt that is still used in modern vehicles (I think he worked for Mercedes) only let go of its patent because he didn’t think anyone would use it. I don’t know if this is true or not, but it would not surprise me if it were.
I’ll come back next week and put this in order. Especially Oliver North’s deal with Activision. It tells us so much about the modern world and the place of media which are dependent on advanced technology, and none of it is good. So tune in next week for that, if you feel like it.
The work on Nutriset and Plumpy’nut will take much longer to collect and organise, but I’ll get round to that soon after. I’m barely scratching the surface with it at the moment. I’m really, serously apprehensive about what deeper research will reveal.
Also if someone could mail me a unifying theory of politics that takes into account the present rights and habits of the human population I’d really appreciate it. Thanks.
Sleep well x
