There’s still this sense that if you’re vaccinated, you’re good to go.
Inevitable when we gave up on half-assed lockdowns because the vaccine would be here in a few months anyways.
In hindsight, the most unbelievable part of any disaster movie (Armageddon, The Core, etc.) is the notion that capitalism would have any sort of semi-competent response to an existential crisis.
There’s still this sense that if you’re vaccinated, you’re good to go.
It's true though. Based on American cultural values up to and including now, you are good to go if you're vaccinated (your grandmother, someone else's kid, preventing future superbugs etc is another story)
You know exactly what those values are, and there's no contradiction here.
Nah, a giant asteroid impact is still the sort of problem capitalism can solve. Some aerospace company makes a pile of money fixing that one, so it gets fixed. We didn't have any trouble producing vaccines under capitalism either.
Problems that need collective action, or to reduce production, are the sorts of things that capitalism falls over at.
A company could make a pile of money from carbon capture technology, renewable energy, rebuilding flood-damaged areas, etc., too. The profits could even go to companies that currently benefit from the fossil fuel economy, which would mitigate a big conflict.
The issue I see is with problems that require politicians representing the people's interests to take the lead, not capital. The political organs of capitalist countries have become so subservient to capital that they're incapable of setting the agenda, even in ways that could easily be turned to benefit existing interests. So the public good, if it gets addressed at all, gets addressed a day late, a dollar short, and thoroughly half-assed. This is what we've seen with Covid, and it's what we've seen (to an even sloppier extent) with climate change, too. The collective action problems you describe are one species of this, but I think any crisis requiring decisive, immediate political action is a pretty bleak scenario under this advanced stage of capitalism.
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Inevitable when we gave up on half-assed lockdowns because the vaccine would be here in a few months anyways.
In hindsight, the most unbelievable part of any disaster movie (Armageddon, The Core, etc.) is the notion that capitalism would have any sort of semi-competent response to an existential crisis.
It's true though. Based on American cultural values up to and including now, you are good to go if you're vaccinated (your grandmother, someone else's kid, preventing future superbugs etc is another story)
You know exactly what those values are, and there's no contradiction here.
Nah, a giant asteroid impact is still the sort of problem capitalism can solve. Some aerospace company makes a pile of money fixing that one, so it gets fixed. We didn't have any trouble producing vaccines under capitalism either.
Problems that need collective action, or to reduce production, are the sorts of things that capitalism falls over at.
A company could make a pile of money from carbon capture technology, renewable energy, rebuilding flood-damaged areas, etc., too. The profits could even go to companies that currently benefit from the fossil fuel economy, which would mitigate a big conflict.
The issue I see is with problems that require politicians representing the people's interests to take the lead, not capital. The political organs of capitalist countries have become so subservient to capital that they're incapable of setting the agenda, even in ways that could easily be turned to benefit existing interests. So the public good, if it gets addressed at all, gets addressed a day late, a dollar short, and thoroughly half-assed. This is what we've seen with Covid, and it's what we've seen (to an even sloppier extent) with climate change, too. The collective action problems you describe are one species of this, but I think any crisis requiring decisive, immediate political action is a pretty bleak scenario under this advanced stage of capitalism.