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New Rule: Not Everything in America Has to Make a Profit
How about this for a New Rule: Not everything in America has to make a profit. It used to be that there were some services and institutions so vital to our nation that they were exempt from market pressures. Some things we just didn't do for money. The United States always defined capitalism, but it didn't used to define us. But now it's becoming all that we are.
Did you know, for example, that there was a time when being called a "war profiteer" was a bad thing? But now our war zones are dominated by private contractors and mercenaries who work for corporations. There are more private contractors in Iraq than American troops, and we pay them generous salaries to do jobs the troops used to do for themselves -- like laundry. War is not supposed to turn a profit, but our wars have become boondoggles for weapons manufacturers and connected civilian contractors.
Prisons used to be a non-profit business, too. And for good reason -- who the hell wants to own a prison? By definition you're going to have trouble with the tenants. But now prisons are big business. A company called the Corrections Corporation of America is on the New York Stock Exchange, which is convenient since that's where all the real crime is happening anyway. The CCA and similar corporations actually lobby Congress for stiffer sentencing laws so they can lock more people up and make more money. That's why America has the world;s largest prison population -- because actually rehabilitating people would have a negative impact on the bottom line.
Television news is another area that used to be roped off from the profit motive. When Walter Cronkite died last week, it was odd to see news anchor after news anchor talking about how much better the news coverage was back in Cronkite's day. I thought, "Gee, if only you were in a position to do something about it."
But maybe they aren't. Because unlike in Cronkite's day, today's news has to make a profit like all the other divisions in a media conglomerate. That's why it wasn't surprising to see the CBS Evening News broadcast live from the Staples Center for two nights this month, just in case Michael Jackson came back to life and sold Iran nuclear weapons. In Uncle Walter's time, the news division was a loss leader. Making money was the job of The Beverly Hillbillies. And now that we have reporters moving to Alaska to hang out with the Palin family, the news is The Beverly Hillbillies.
And finally, there's health care. It wasn't that long ago that when a kid broke his leg playing stickball, his parents took him to the local Catholic hospital, the nun put a thermometer in his mouth, the doctor slapped some plaster on his ankle and you were done. The bill was $1.50, plus you got to keep the thermometer.
But like everything else that's good and noble in life, some Wall Street wizard decided that hospitals could be big business, so now they're run by some bean counters in a corporate plaza in Charlotte. In the U.S. today, three giant for-profit conglomerates own close to 600 hospitals and other health care facilities. They're not hospitals anymore; they're Jiffy Lubes with bedpans. America's largest hospital chain, HCA, was founded by the family of Bill Frist, who perfectly represents the Republican attitude toward health care: it's not a right, it's a racket. The more people who get sick and need medicine, the higher their profit margins. Which is why they're always pushing the Jell-O.
Because medicine is now for-profit we have things like "recision," where insurance companies hire people to figure out ways to deny you coverage when you get sick, even though you've been paying into your plan for years.
When did the profit motive become the only reason to do anything? When did that become the new patriotism? Ask not what you could do for your country, ask what's in it for Blue Cross/Blue Shield.
If conservatives get to call universal health care "socialized medicine," I get to call private health care "soulless vampires making money off human pain." The problem with President Obama's health care plan isn't socialism, it's capitalism.
And if medicine is for profit, and war, and the news, and the penal system, my question is: what's wrong with firemen? Why don't they charge? They must be commies. Oh my God! That explains the red trucks!
180 Comments so far
Show AllMost pharmaceuticals were developed with taxpayer funds through the National Institute of Health.
Anyone who is against "socialized medicine" should immediately stop taking their prescription drugs and demand medicine that was developed through the mythical "free market" with private funding.
http://www.netmagic.net/~franklin/AHC07b.html
Go Bill. New rule - you rule.
Joe
I got rid of my children becase they were a cost center, rather than a profit center, negatively impacting the familys' bottom line.
I have been on a socialized health care plan as a member of the military, and single payer (medicare), and was/am satisfied by both plans. Socialized and single payer Penicillin work just as well as the private stuff.
Determining what has to make a profit and what doesn't . . . is where politics enters.
A creed holds that politics should be kept out of all decision-making related to economics . . . at least politics not serving the interests of the boss class.
We are never going to change health care for profit until we get over this mass psychosis for profit we suffer from.
Good and entertaining article. Even if one assumes that capitalism offers some benefits, that should not preclude consideration of the possibility that, like most things in life, it is best taken in moderation as an excessive dose would likely prove toxic.
It's just common sense, isn't it Bill? It should be obvious to everyone, just like keeping water a public utility should be obvious.
The Max Baucus', Larry Summers', and Wall St. big shots would cry "foul" if Americans actually got what they need: single-payer health care. "It will hurt the economy to have Medicare for All! Think of the job loss!"
Funny how none of these talking suits bemoan(ed)the loss
of working class jobs when auto plants downsized/closed, when small businesses did the same, when the unemployment
(that IS defined as not having a job, isn't it?)rates went up along with retail prices.
It's not the loss of jobs our government is concerned about.
It's about the loss of $$ for the already wealthy.
"Funny how none of these talking suits bemoan(ed)the loss of working class jobs when auto plants downsized/closed, when small businesses did the same, when the unemployment (that IS defined as not having a job, isn't it?)rates went up along with retail prices."
Very well put.
q
"Jiffy Lubes with bedpans."
Hilarious!
"When did the profit motive become the only reason to do anything? When did that become the new patriotism?"
Those are easy questions to answer: the presidency of Ronald Reagan.
q
Well put.
In my opinion, the problem is that many Americans have been brainwashed to believe that democracy is only synonymous with capitalism (or even crony capitalism as we have it today in US). The irony is that social democracy that is predominant in most European democracies as well as other developing countries is more responsive to the needs of humanity in the long term.
China has clearly demonstrated the absence of any linkage between capitalism and democracy.
q
What is particularly ironic about that is that Clinton gave China most favored nation trade status after pledging that he wouldn't, during his first campaign, because of China's terrible human rights record. The argument then was that bringing unfettered monopoly capitalism was the same thing as bringing democracy. It would bring China "to our level." At the time, I said that it would indeed bring us eye to eye, but not in the way that we expected. Sixteen years later, eight of which involved blatant Republican (and, let's be honest, Democratic) contempt for an open, democratic society, I think I was proven right.
If one considers foreign policy in the calculation of a nation's human rights record, I would argue that the US already had a worse record than China when Clinton gave them most favored nation trade status (and the US record has only gotten worse since). But the Chinese will do business with anyone, not hypocritically blathering on about the other country's human rights record, so the Chinese decided to do business with the US regardless of the US record.
You also left out the part where arrests are for-profit as well with 89% of drug enforcement agencies being 'self-funded'. Bust a pot head and seize all of their assets.
Americans aren't really concerned about a profit as much as corporations are. Unfortunately the voter continues to elect corporate-friendly politicans, so nothing will change for awhile. Until the public realizes that government is suppose to represent 'we the people' and not Big Oil, Big Pharma and the MIC, then we're all doomed.
"89% of drug enforcement agencies being 'self-funded'"; for me this is a incredible statement, can you supply a source for this information??
http://www.fear.org/chicago.html
do your own google search if you need to. forfeiture laws give the police a reward every time they 'bust' a druggie, they allow the police to take everything from a person who might or might not be selling drugs. The us dea is going after Marc Emery because he sold pot seeds, (but mostly because he founded the Canadian Marijuana Party, and calls for the end to the drug war) they claim that every seed is the equivalent of a full grown plant and call the canuck the largest pot dealer in North America. If Marc takes a plea deal he'll be in jail for about a decade, if he fights in court they'll charge him with enough 'crimes' to put him in jail for a few centuries.
Just watch a couple of episodes of "COPS" where they are filming in Broward Co., Fla.
Gah, that's where I was born and raised...but thankfully escaped from.
Maher asks when this happened. He should know very well when it happened: When Ronald Reagan told America to "go for it". It was Reagan who put everything that wasn't nailed down up for profit making. And that meant prisons, right at the same time he kicked the idiot drug war into overdrive. A coincidence? I hardly think so. It was just another way in which the right could rob us of all extra money. Health care? Another way to rob us of all extra money.
And that has been the point, to eliminate the middle class while at the same time making a mint for their own pockets. Why would they want to cripple their own country in such a way? Because the right sees the 60's as a thing to be avoided. They want ORDER above everything else. They want no accountability for themselves in power and ORDER. They don't like people in the streets demanding things like equal rights and actual freedom, they want ORDER. They think that this country almost fell apart during the 60's, because their sense of ORDER was threatened. Their sense of ORDER means that they can pick on and marginalize anyone they want to, minorities, gays, women, and whoever else they want. These people should not be allowed to demand what the constitution promises to everyone. The right fears accountability and fairness above all.
The right sees cannabis as one reason why the 60's happened. If those people weren't hopped up on weed, they NEVER would have even imagined going against the grain and demanding their rights under the constitution, would they? So cannabis had to be made even MORE illegal. And if they could turn a profit on it at the same time, all the better. So the prohibition was kicked into overdrive. Authoritarians HATE it when people have freedom. They can't handle people doing things that THEY don't like. It doesn't matter whether those people are actually hurting anyone or not, they must be PUNISHED, regardless of the fact that the authoritarians really should have no more power than anyone else in society.
Meanwhile, they are having affairs with their interns, their campaign staffers, of are trying to pick up strangers in airport men's rooms.
WJM, I would agree with everything in your above post, with the possible exception that this rip-off/authoritarian power grab came from Nixon rather than Reagan. Nixon is the motherfu*cker who established the DEA, and it was intentionally to fight the counterculture (aka damm hippies.) Conservatives and authoritarian personalities go hand in hand along with religious fanaticism and bassackward ideals. These bastards never smile (ever see a consevative newspaper columnist with a smile on his face?), and yes, like individual freedom only as far as they can control it. They have their vice/drug laws, based on "Christian" virtue (yet have their mistresses, high $$$ call girls/boys aka Jeff Gannon, booze and cigarettes), but cannot allow anyone who has different preferances to have their own (anything other than what was listed previously.) How can they force their agenda on the rest of us? They steal our money and use it against us.
I agree that Nixon started it, but Reagan kicked it into overdrive. Remember him saying that drug users were the problem in this country, along with the "welfare queens" and the poor? At the same time he said that he started the piratization of public services, one of those being the prison and probation systems. And that was on purpose. The right has been trying to kill off the middle class for decades, and they are doing a fine job of it. This is just one way, but it's a cumulative plan to charge us MORE for everything that we used to get as gov't services at a FAR lower rate.
Nixon was no angel, not by any means, but I don't think that even he had in mind to make the majority of us suffer the way that Reagan did, and nowhere near what W and company have done. But Reagan really kicked the screwing into overdrive. Nixon at least started the EPA and opened up both the Soviet Union and China. Reagan didn't do anything but screw us all.
While I agree with you that Reagan was an evil, senile, authoritarian motherfu*ker, I really question how much actual power he had (kinda like Bu$h II.) While he may have officially supported the class war, and it did indeed kick into overdrive during his administration, remember, there was an even more evil presence behind the scenes...George H.W. Bu$h (as VP.) I really think that Bu$h I was the one responsible for the Iran hostages being held over until after the election, Iran-Contra, the huge increase in the drug war funding (remember, he was the past Director of CIA, and the CIA is well known for its involvement in drug trafficing...thus, by increasing drug war enforcement they increase prices for illicit drugs), and the beginining of massive de-regulation of the financial markets. In other words, I think Reagan was a puppet. A pathetic one to be sure, but still a puppet to bigger dogs. The bottom line regardless is...the only good republican is a DEAD one. Ever since Reagan...we have been seriously fucked!
Profit is a noble pursuit only to the extent it promotes efficiency and benefits the greater good.
Bill offers us examples where the pursuit of profit can become a liability to the greater good. There are other examples too, where spillover costs must be absorbed by the community at large, such as smokestack and chemical industries. Consider Bhopal. Consider the long term liability of nuclear energy.
Personally, I believe that no profit is ever earned that doesn't come at some cost, be it an opportunity cost or cost realized through the lack of the best use of resources that could be better utilized elsewhere, or something else.
We need a new measure of profit, and a new corporate directive, that better accounts for the true costs or benefits of a given enterprise, both immediate and long term. As it is now, my lovable but sly uncle Vinny has much too much incentive to cheat, lie, steal, or worse, in order to turn a dime. That less than noble motive needs to be curtailed, not rewarded.
Don’t tell the paranoid right wing folks. You are basically defining democratic socialism. Socialism in any form has evolved greatly since it was invented. So has the American system. We now do not practice overt slavery and more or less popularly elect the President. The other examples of so-called socialism, particularly in the old Soviet Union and China, were “socialism” in name only, just as our system is “democratic” in name only. What is needed here, just as it has been correctly applied in Europe and elsewhere, is a national policy making sure profit benefits society. Guns (wielded by government agents), Byzantine bureaucracies, and authoritarian methods are NOT needed, but popular participation and exclusion of corruption by corporate special interests ARE absolutely necessary. Joe McCarthy is still leading the Republican party, with his freezing, ghostly hand firmly around Rush Limbaugh’s tiny daddy bits. Despite the noise from the resulting constant screaming and whinging, normal folks actually support these REASONABLE aspects of socialism without knowing their actual ideological definition. Defining, and stopping or regulating commercial activities that impoverish, or even kill members of the majority class of people may be socialistic, but are highly democratic, and should not be curtailed just because they terrify the conservative worshippers of wealth and oligarchy. Their mantra that anything is good as long as it makes a bundle, is clearly immoral. And their view and definition of socialism are as dead as McCarthy. In fact, they were just as dead long before he was.
"... normal folks actually support these REASONABLE aspects of socialism without knowing their actual ideological definition."
I agree, but I think the general conversation degrades very quickly as soon as we start to use ideological references/definitions. Such labels are normative by nature and have been well perverted from their deeper more thoughtful meaning by conservative talking heads, for three decades now, to the point of lacking any positive connotation whatsoever for the average American. I believe being able to better interpret and discuss specific issues and the related details on their own merits, apart from using any catchall ideological terms, is the only way to overcome the negative implications those labels evoke in the minds of the ordinary folk, whom are less capable of empirical analysis, but yet must be won over.
cosmobilly, what you call "spillover costs" are also called "externalities". You and me cannot 'dump' our personal waste in a public place - but an industry can, while appearing to be doing it legally. That's because the laws are made by the powerful. Yes, might IS right. Otherwise, there should be laws existing by now that would put a stop to most polluting activities - or at least put a hefty price on pollution. Actually, I take back the 'you and me' part - because we do emit CO2 more than our fair share, expecting this to be absorbed by forests - which are actually a common resource for all. They don't teach in economics class about all this, though.
If we truly look at the reasons for maintaining the armed forces, they are way beyond what some countries need for their 'defense' alone. The military is essentially there to insure the profits of corporations - but the expenditures are to be born by the public. Maybe it's time to put a price on everything - that way we'll know why exactly we are paying for something and who exactly is benefiting.
"Maybe it's time to put a price on everything - that way we'll know why exactly we are paying for something and who exactly is benefiting."
Okay, here's a start (from Buckminster Fuller):
One of the world's greatest oil geologists, Francois de Chadenedes, was asked if he could write an accurate scenario of nature producing petroleum on planet Earth, and after a year, he came up with a scenario with all of its time increments and pressure conditions spelled out. Next he was asked to figure out how much it would cost nature per each gallon of petroleum calculated at the (1980) retail rate for that much energy for that length of time as charged us by public utilities. The cost came to well over a million dollars per gallon.
For this reason, all fossil fuels should be considered a part of nature's own savings account, deposited in our "Earth bank" and not to be stolen by exploiters. Everyone knows (?) that we should live on our income and not our savings account.
Since 60 percent (or more today) of all the jobs in the USA are not producing any real wealth --- i.e. real life support. They are in fear-underwriting industries or are checking-on-other-checkers, etc. The majority of the jobs occasion the individuals using 3 to 4 gallons per day in their automobiles to go to and from work --- at true cosmic costing this means four million dollars per worker per day. Planet Earth's energy account would save $500 trillion a day to give all the non-wealth-producing workers their full pay to stay at home.
Old Peculiar, I didn't realize that fossil fuels' true price would be THAT high - I knew they were orders of magnitude more precious than what the market determines its value to be. There are other things in nature that we take for granted - like the job done by the honeybees and the trees. Even losing a significant portion of trees or honeybees would wipe out so much of life. You are right about drawing down from Planet Earth's savings account - wealth that should belong to future generations.
The loss of bees scares me, personally. I see it as an omen.
Fuller (in 'Critical Path' which I highly recommend to all) goes on to point out that - as of 1980 - all mining can and should be stopped since we have enough scrap metal, located in more cost-efficient, above-ground areas, to recirculate into a 100 percent regenerative system. He goes on to point out that blockages in that recirculation occur when "money-making people, seeking special economic advantage for themselves, hold back the flow of regenerative essentials to increase their prices."
Mining is one area where the brutality of the so-called developed nations comes through clearly - but hidden from their own population since all the ugliness takes place in a poor country far away. While the citizens might imagine theirs is a nation that respects and champions human rights, these rights are routinely trampled on in the course of business by their own companies operating mines in other countries - often by propping up some brutal government.
Old Peculiar! I just have to say one of my favorite refreshments, with which I suppose you are familiar :-)
The type of true cost analysis you describe is essential to understanding how conventional profits are illusory at best. If we think of Newton's laws of motion, and of money as an object in motion, I'm sure we could discern every alleged profit to have an equal and offsetting cost.
Alcyon, I quite agree that everything has a price tag, but determining that price could be problematic.
I'd like to believe it could be enough to realize how profits don't actually exist in the greater scheme of things. In the short term, at the very best, accounting-based profits should be used to indicate future or yet to be realized liabilities, and as such should be reserved for the common welfare instead of for individual self-aggrandizement.
Ezekiel was a prophet! Daniel was a prophet.! What do you folk got against the Prophets!!
Nice one!
Great article Bill. Insurance is the biggest socialistic practice in our country. We all pay a little bit to be sure we're covered in case we need it. However, instead of us getting our care, we're denied, forced to jump through hoops and the profits continue to find their way to the top of the employment line.
Insurance companies destroyed the concept of socialism in our country thanks to profit making. Wait, maybe I should only assume that they intentionally took advantage of the socialistic principles of helping most and turned it into helping the few. If I can be literal, it's kind of like fraud.
"The CCA and similar corporations actually lobby Congress for stiffer sentencing laws so they can lock more people up and make more money. That's why America has the world;s largest prison population -- because actually rehabilitating people would have a negative impact on the bottom line. "
I wasn't aware of this, but of course they do. How sick is that? I knew that American courts gave rediculously long sentences, but I thought it was out of pure vindictiveness.
"In Uncle Walter's time, the news division was a loss leader. Making money was the job of The Beverly Hillbillies. And now that we have reporters moving to Alaska to hang out with the Palin family, the news is The Beverly Hillbillies. "
Very droll.
"The problem with President Obama's health care plan isn't socialism, it's capitalism. "
Very true. As the "public option" is modeled on your failing private system, it is being set up to fail.
Last night we watched part one of "Century of the Self" by British documentary film-maker Adam Curtis.
Originally produced for the BBC, "Century of the Self" follows the formal development of the idea, first by US corporations and then by the government, that the mass of common people should be manipulated by appeal to subconscious emotional triggers, rather than persuaded by rational argument.
Edward Bernays, a nephew of Freud who coined the phrase "public relations" because the term "propaganda" had a bad name, played a key role in this development.
Episode one goes through the FDR presidency. Curtis frames Herbert Hoover as the first president to explicitly adopt Bernays' theories, believing that his team of technocrats had solved the problem of capitalist over-production by turning citizens into "consumers" who would endlessly be induced to buy things they do not actually need. The stock market crash of October 1929 proved Hoover wrong, and the Great Depression proved his team incapable of managing the aftermath with their theories.
FDR is framed as explicitly rejecting these theories, turning the US toward democracy and public investment rather than manipulation and corporate rule, "saving capitalism" but keeping it in its place. Unwilling to accept any subordinate role, the corporate classes began a massive, decades-long effort to undermine democracy and create a consciousness that "government is the problem", and that "democracy" means business should be freed from all regulation.
i have not seen episodes 2, 3, or 4, but clearly this effort to undermine popular support for democratic government and eliminate all blocks to the emotional manipulation of mass consciousness culminated in 1980 with the election of Ronald Reagan, point person for the corporate re-taking of the USA.
i recommend everyone to view "Century of the Self". You can find it on You Tube.
Interesting, thanks.
I've made it through 4 parts. I want to 2nd that recommendation. And what's very interesting is that these evil SOB's knew exactly what they were doing, and saw nothing wrong with it.
Bernays, and especially Lee, were both radically anti-democratic. The whole notion of "engineering consent" was an answer to the age-old problem of rulership: how to control this rabble! This was not just an attempt to solve an economic problem in capitalist theory. This was an application of a form of knowledge that would essentially aim for nothing less than the complete injection of a produced "truth" into the human mind. Modern marketing really began with Lee's rahab of John rockefeller, once considered the most despised person in America and the author of all manner of atrocities. Lee took the challenge, and was largely successful. We haven't been the same since. And it's no coincidence that we haven't had a powerful, progressive labor movement since, either.
This can't help but rub off on the legions and generrations of students of marketing and advertising theories that have vomited forth from the first elaborations of psychological theory into economics.
To manipulate people at this level--and to do it knowingly, whether it's for shoes or votes--is a direct and powerful repudiation to the notion of self-rule. This is why I have nothing but contempt for people who work in this business anywhere.
Thanks, i had not yet heard of Ivy Lee. What a toad...
i learn more here every day!
That sounds VERY interesting. Gonna have to check it out. Thank you for the post, WEBWALK.
Who really believes the US healthcare system is captitalist. It is collectivist in the hands of non-governmental plutocrats.
It is time to put a stop to it. Prez Obama obviously knows that a single-payer plan will cover everyone. The loss of logic on his part is that he opposes it. Wasn't he once a New Party candidate?
Who really believes the US healthcare is a system? How is a bunch of bloodsucking leaches a system? How is mass congressional bribery a system? One man profits by plunder and all men lose.
All this could have been solved if we had just brought royalty back to The Hill. Give Senators and Representatives Knighthood and a lifetime appointment and mayb they won't act so greedy.
thong-girl
this is true.
a "chamber of commerce" and its derivatives such as "Hospital Associations of america" , AMA, Insurers Group of America, etc...
are really the equivalent of LABOR unions...
except that these "UNIONS" among profiteers runs the show to exploit and dehumanize and enslave people.
that's the FUNNY thing about American mindset:
people - on a national level are trained to "fear" or look away FROM LABOR unions - which represents THEIR interests as HUMANS working....
in order to be open to exploitation by ANOTHER UNION - that of the profiteers in the business complex.
what a mess, isn't it?.
as the asiatimeswriter - henry ck liu - said in articles:
"The globe is dictated by a system across national boundaries that protect and enhance the interest of MONEY CAPITAL....it is what amounts to a Global MONEY CARTEL......what it needs is a GLOBAL LABOR CARTEL"..
it is amazing that through the capitalist system - the MAJORITY of human beings who labor are servile to a few individuals in the globe who really are parasitic and are not even NECESSARY for society to function properly.
capitalism is the SYSTEM that enhances this ILLUSION of their being necessary as "capitalists" and "creators of wealth".....
when in reality - they offer NOTHING more than PIECES OF PAPER and signatures that are worthless if there were no people to believe in them or use them.
that's the clever method of capitalism really - insinuating MONEY CAPITAL into an economy by human beings - and then TAKING OVER like a parasite.
This is big news, but not as big as the fact that Obama must answer to the military, and, according to G.Gordon Liddy, on the Chris Matthews show, there are generals and high level Pentagon folks who don't even recognize Obama as President. That last part ought to land Mr. Liddy in front of our top intelligence gatherers to find out who the traitors are in the Pentagon and to whom they do answer? Imagine if an ordinary solider said something like that.
Now even bigger news, but what doesn't even show up here, is what the driving force was that got us into the war with Iraq, and made Dubya risk his soul in the process. After years of speculation about oil, which never really explained the severity with which Bush pushed and lied to get us into Iraq, we now know there was lots of evidence that U.S. troops, under Papa Bush, committed Hitler-like atrocities - massive slaughter and graves that were then moved and hidden by Dubya to prevent the besmirching of ol' man Bush. Ah, the sins of the father.
thong-girl
TRUTHFULLY said by Maher.
Hi thong-girl,
Would you mind providing your source(s) for "we now know there was lots of evidence that U.S. troops, under Papa Bush, committed Hitler-like atrocities - massive slaughter and graves that were then moved and hidden by Dubya to prevent the besmirching of ol' man Bush."
I'm interested in knowing where you got this information, and if true, why I've never heard anything about this in mainstream or alternative media.