How Come Nothing Tastes Good?

I was watching this interview with Bill Gates and he brought up one of the fundamental problems with our free market system, one that Adam Smith missed, which is: that the laws of supply and demand only govern those that have a substantial sway within the market. Despite the fact that the impoverished have more pressing needs and overwhelmingly outnumber those with wealth, there is no pure profit based motive to alleviate the needs of those suffering as long as they are poor. They have little or no representation within the marketplace and although there is high 'demand' for solutions to their problems, they lack the material wealth to serve as compensation. So they continue to suffer. AIDs is a pandemic ravaging Africa. Pharmaceutical Corporations could supply large amounts of antiviral drugs to prevent this humanitarian crisis but where is the intrinsic reward in altruism? One man can afford the luxury of philanthropy, along with the accompanying laudations and accolades, but a corporation has little room for charity. Those pharmaceutical corps. would rather develop new drugs to fight hair loss, or maintain erections, because that's where the money is. And therein lies the crux of the problem: our problems only require solutions if those solutions are profitable.

On a societal scale this fucks a lot of things up. Engineered obsolescence is the preferred mode of production. Heart disease is the leading killer in US, a problem which won't be solved because profit comes out both ends; doctors and hospitals make billions treating the problem and large corporations like Pepsi Co and Yum! Brands make billions creating the problem. We have the technological prowess to integrate into every car sophisticated machines that would eliminate drunk driving forever, but of course then the State and Local branches of law enforcement would have crippled budgets. We could have made cars more efficient decades ago, to consume less gas, run forever ect. but where is the profit in that? We have the technology to make a more equitable world, but we lack the adequate desire or motivation to follow through on that promise.

The real problem, as I see it, is that markets lack any form of ethical boundaries that would possibly guide or inform their decision making process to in anyway better humanity. Why make something that's good for people when you can create the Double Down Sandwich? At some point there needs to be humanistic intervention, for our sake, for the sake of our survival as a species. Lord knows how much profit motive lies hidden in war, hell that's how IBM got started, making proto computers for the death camps at Auschwitz. Clearly allowing markets to blindly pursue profit is not the best option for the aggregate 'human coniditon'. Goldman Sachs, Exxon Mobile, Nike, Enron, I can think of a myriad of contemporary conglomerates or corporations responsible for cutting corners at the cost of the consumer.

But unfortunately it is more complex than simply just blaming capitalism or even the individual agents of capitalism for the woes that assail us, the real problem is us. You and me. We choose to subscribe to a system that operates, in every advertisement, like my best friend is talking to me about his amazing new product that I need to have. That we allow ourselves to think that this product will enhance our lives, or that consumption will do anything other than cause more problems requiring monetary solutions. When did it get so bad? When did childhood obesity become a pandemic? When did we completely lose focus on the substance of reality, to the point where we allowed ourselves to become just consumers? We are just as guilty as the soulless bankers, politicians, and executives that we demonize for destroying our world. We are worse even, because we have a choice, but out of our indolence and our groupthinking mentality we allowed ourselves to be pandered to, we bought the lie -hook line and sinker. We put our trust in figures that were obviously trying to deceive us and then we were surprised and hurt when they actually did.

There was a folkloric tradition that a vampire could only enter a house where he (or she) had been invited in as a guest then, and only then, could it come and go as it pleased. I don't think we should blame the vampire for draining our blood, after all it was us that told him "make yourself at home"

- DJV