A political blog, written by a fiscal conservative, with socially libertarian views. Imagine if Hunter S. Thompson somehow had a baby with George Will, then they both drank heavily during pregnancy. I'm the result.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
The Health of Capitalism
Capitalism, like Julius Caesar, is slowly being murdered by a well-intentioned yet conniving coven of conspirators, each holding a knife, each plunging their blade into capitalism's torso, each thrust drawing more and more blood. With each angry stab, what was once a healthy body is deteriorating into a corpse.
Who mourns for capitalism? After all, it's the system that allowed slavery. It's the system that turned peaceful nations into warlike empires. It's the system that denied you a mortgage. It's the system that repossessed your engagement ring. It's the system that made your health care and your health insurance more expensive than gold-laced cocaine.
Capitalism breeds materialism. He with the most toys win. Consumption, consumption, consumption. It leads to sweat shops making sweatshirts, Wal-Mart forcing small businesses out of business, brand new brand labels that label us as shallow and materialistic.
In a recent TV interview, Michael Moore described capitalism as a system in which "The people have very little to say as to what's going on." And he's right. When a person chooses between Pepsi and Coke, neither company asks the customer what to use for ingredients. Neither company asks him how much a can of soda should cost.
When a man takes his family out to eat, he can't decide what's on the menu. Whatever's printed there is what's there.
When a healthy woman goes to her physician, she can't tell her doctor whether or not she needs to see him again in a week for yet another check-up.
When a family is looking to buy a new car, they can't call the factory and request that they make a more fuel efficient vehicle. The cars are already on the lot!
In 1985, when Coca-Cola decided to change the flavor of their soda, it wasn't the people's collective disdain for the taste of New Coke that removed the drink from the market. Didn't you know that it was all part of Coke's grand scheme to make people fall in love with their classic soda: eventually re-released and renamed Coca-Cola Classic?
The people had nothing to do with New Coke's death! How could people BUYING a product tell the company MAKING the product how to make it? And certainly people aren't more powerful than a multi-billion, multi-national goliath like Coca-Cola. It was all a classic Capitalist conspiracy.
Socialism is where you get choice. Just ask Barack, an intelligent man. The people have control in socialism. They control what everyone eats, what everyone drinks, what everyone buys. Socialism will give us free electric cars, and free health care, and free time. We won't need jobs because the government will take care of everything for us.
The great thing about socialism is that it has momentum. Once you get it started, it's almost difficult to stop it (as if you'd want to). You start off by taxing those greedy, cossack, rich swine who make $100,000+ a year. Then you spread that money around through necessary things like health insurance and car companies. Just like Barack has done and plans to do. And he is an intelligent man.
But why stop there? Once those rich people get taxed down to the level of the working class, there'll be no upper class to start businesses and employ the middle classes and lower classes. But what's fantastic about socialism is that we won't need employers! The government will employ people. In factories, and farms, and camps, and of course we need beefed up police departments to ensure nobody is hording personal possessions.
What's great about government involvement is that it usually makes things more streamlined, efficient, and cheaper. History books don't agree with this statement, but books can simply be altered to say that it's worked in the past. And so long as people believe in it, it will be true. Just like Tinkerbell can live so long as people believe in fairies.
What's even more phenomenal about government involvement in healthcare is that it will put a halt to ever-escalating costs. After all, health insurance grows more expensive as the quality of healthcare increases. Once the government steps in, the profit motivation will be removed, the quality will remain level, and therefore the price will remain level. So that's good. And if we're super lucky, the quality will drop, thus lowering the cost. Barack wants to lower the cost of health care. And he's an intelligent man.
Those big drug companies are the perfect examples of Capitalistic Monsters. Pfizer, the largest drug company in the world, had revenues in excess of $70 billion in 2008. And they only spent $11 billion of that to research new drugs!!! Companies like Pfizer should WANT government control. If that happened, they wouldn't have to spend a dime researching new drugs. Nobody would. And researching new drugs makes new drugs expensive. And nobody likes expensive drugs. Especially not Barack, an intelligent man.
What did capitalism do for you? It made you PAY for the computer you're reading this blog on. It makes you pay for the electricity that's powering the computer. It makes you work for the paycheck that you use to pay for that electricity. It makes you pay for the car to take you to that work. It makes you pay for the gas that takes that car to your work and to your vacation house down Cape Cod. It makes you pay for the beers you drink at the vacation house.
Worst of all, it makes you choose things. You have to go into the store and labor over which brand of chips to buy, or if you want 1% milk or skim. Then the prices. You never get to haggle over price.
You have to determine the price of that milk along with your fellow milk consumers. What a pain in the ass that is. That's no control! That's sharing control with other consumers. And who wants that?
And health insurance, that's the worst idea Capitalists ever came up with. The idea of spreading risk over a large group, thereby avoiding the potential of crippling costs that come along with unforeseeable and unanticipated medical catastrophes is just pure greed. It's people wanting to hang onto what's theirs. That's avarice in its purest form.
I mean what kind of system wouldn't give insurance to someone who is sick? A capitalist system. It's just like those diabolical greedsters at the auto insurance companies who won't insure a car that's about to go off a cliff.
I for one am glad that Barack is going to allow people with preexisting conditions to receive health insurance. It's polite. And it will surely reduce costs.
And I'm glad that Capitalism will be gone. Sure, I'll miss my computer, my car, Sam Adams Octoberfest, professional sports, quality movies, television, new medicines, new medical technologies, and my blog.
But I won't miss the lack of control I feel when I have to buy gas to take my car wherever I want to go. I won't miss my evil health insurance company making me pay premiums so that in the off-chance I contract H1N1 I'll only have to pay a $15 co-pay for my treatment. I won't miss MetLife doing all the legal legwork for me when I got into a hit & run accident a few months ago.
I'm glad we have a President who cares so much about us, and is so smart and wise. I'm glad he's supported by people similarly wise as he is. Hopefully the people of this country listen to him and his designs. Hopefully they give him license to cut his dagger of wisdom across Capitalism's throat. Because he is, of course, an intelligent man.
Here's to inspiration...
Et tu, Barack?
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