Capitalism ♥ death

[imomus]

In today's Guardian Naomi Klein publishes an article entitled Allure of the blank slate.

"Last summer," says Klein, "in the lull of the August media doze, the Bush administration's doctrine of preventive war took a major leap forward. On August 5 the White House created the office of the coordinator for reconstruction and stabilisation, headed by Carlos Pascual, the former ambassador to Ukraine. Its mandate is to draw up elaborate "post-conflict" plans for up to 25 countries that are not, as yet, in conflict. According to Pascual, it will also be able to coordinate three full-scale reconstruction operations in different countries "at the same time", each lasting "five to seven years".

Klein goes on to outline how the US plans to use wars and natural disasters as opportunities to privatize industries and channel aid resources through favoured foreign advisors and contractors. ("In January Condoleezza Rice horrified many by describing the tsunami as "a wonderful opportunity" that "has paid great dividends for us".) She compares this reshaping and restructuring to a new colonialism. The trouble is, it doesn't improve life for the people living in the disaster-struck countries:

"Three months after the tsunami hit Aceh, the New York Times reported that "almost nothing seems to have been done to begin repairs and rebuilding". The dispatch could have come from Iraq, where, as the Los Angeles Times has reported, all Bechtel's allegedly rebuilt water plants have started to break down, one more in a litany of reconstruction screw-ups. It could have come from Afghanistan, where President Karzai blasted "corrupt, wasteful and unaccountable" foreign contractors for "squandering the precious resources that Afghanistan received in aid".

It's ironic that we're going round the world forcing capitalism on people when it's becoming increasingly clear that capitalism is not good for your health. Russia is a case in point. The communist system ended in 1990. Did life expectancy for Russians increase as they entered the new capitalist period? No, it started to decline, and sharply:

"Age-adjusted mortality in Russia rose by almost 33% between 1990 and 1994. During that period, life expectancy for Russian men and women declined dramatically from 63.8 and 74.4 years to 57.7 and 71.2 years, respectively," reports The Journal of the American Medical Association. As to why, JAMA can only speculate: "Many factors appear to be operating simultaneously, including economic and social instability, high rates of tobacco and alcohol consumption, poor nutrition, depression, and deterioration of the health care system."

Russians Abroad takes up the grim story. "In 1992 the sex ratio was 884 males per 1,000 females; in the years between 1994 and 2005, the imbalance is projected to increase slightly to a ratio of 875 males per 1,000 females (see table 7, Appendix). Gender disparity has increased because of a sharp drop in life expectancy for Russian males, from sixty-five years in 1987 to fifty-seven in 1994. (Life expectancy for females reached a peak of 74.5 years in 1989, then dropped to 71.1 by 1994.) Projected changes in life expectancy are negative for both sexes, however. Mortality figures that the Ministry of Labor released in mid-1995 showed that if the current conditions persist, nearly 50 percent of today's Russian youth will not reach the retirement ages of fifty-five for women and sixty for men."

The contrast with the early years of the Soviet Union is stark. According to the Population Reference Bureau:

"For the first 40 or so years of its existence, the USSR enjoyed a remarkable improvement in health conditions, despite civil wars, internal repression, and world war. By the early 1960s, life expectancy had caught up with that in the United States."

Richard Wilkinson, of Nottingham University Medical School, has researched into the relationship between inequality and poor health. An account of his research outlines his findings. "Those who would deny a link between health and inequality must first grapple with the following paradox. There is a strong relationship between income and health within countries. In any nation you will find that people on high incomes tend to live longer and have fewer chronic illnesses than people on low incomes.

"Yet, if you look for differences between countries, the relationship between income and health largely disintegrates. Rich Americans, for instance, are healthier on average than poor Americans, as measured by life expectancy. But, although the US is a much richer country than, say, Greece, Americans on average have a lower life expectancy than Greeks. More income, it seems, gives you a health advantage with respect to your fellow citizens, but not with respect to people living in other countries.

"We lack data on the relative health of the richest tiers in different countries, but it would not be surprising if even the wealthiest Americans paid a personal price for their nation's inequality.

"The solution to the paradox, argues Wilkinson, cannot be found in differences in factors such as quality of healthcare, because this has only a modest impact on health outcomes in advanced nations. It lies rather in recognising that our income relative to others is more significant for our health than our absolute standard of living. Relative income matters because health is importantly influenced by 'psychosocial' as well as material factors.

"Once a floor standard of living is attained, people tend to be healthier when three conditions hold: they are valued and respected by others; they feel 'in control' in their work and home lives; and they enjoy a dense network of social contacts. Economically unequal societies tend to do poorly in all three respects: they tend to be characterised by big status differences, by big differences in people's sense of control and by low levels of civic participation.

"In market societies, the wealthy regard themselves as 'winners' in life's race. They enjoy high social status and considerable autonomy, both in the workplace and in their domestic lives. By contrast, people on low and moderate incomes are made to feel like 'losers'. They have no symbols of affluence to flaunt, they occupy subordinate positions in the workplace and face a great deal of uncertainty and insecurity. The way this humiliating lack of status and control weakens their health is by putting them under much higher levels of stress than the better off. One of the signs that people are under intense stress is the prevalence of behavioural pathologies such as obesity, alcoholism and drug addiction."

Yet another argument for the merits of post-capitalist slow life, I think. Let's get to work reconstructing the world before Condi Rice and Carlos Pascual can get a foot -- or a scythe -- in the door.

Comments

[lust4death.livejournal.com]

I've always thought It was sad how people in the US are almost brought up believing that other countries don't even exist. Aside from that, i've experienced this firsthand here. When you have an HMO card, doctors treat you like a 2nd class human and make you wait hours upon hours to get 2nd class treatment. However, when you have a PPO insurance card, its like waving around a wad of $100 bills to them.

A friend once told me that at this one dentists office, and they said "no, we won't validate your parking" and when they saw her PPO card, they adjusted their tone to "Why of course we'll validate your parking sweetheart!"

In contrast, capitalism does good things for medical research. Large pharmecutical firms don't develop new medecines out of the goodness of their hearts if you know what I mean. Its the invisible hand thing that adam smith talked about long ago.

[miguelstentacle.livejournal.com]

you post these anti-capitalist entries but have no answer. your what-it-seems-like-an-answer is as good as a child's: a fairy tale of equality and a fair chance for everyone. but the bottom line is, the fair chance, unfortunately, is derived from opporutnity and the will to see that opporutnity through. as with you, momus, you would not have the ability to sell your music online and offline without these liberties; liberties you seem to fight against for what it seems like a common good. but perhaps this "common good" is just a vehicle to drive the image of what you want others to percieve the Brand of Momus to be.

perhaps. :)

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I am really enraged by what I see happening -- the widening gap between rich and poor, this triumphalist sweep through the world of a system which is by no means the best social organisation we could have. However, I don't see it as all-or-nothing. Small and simple adjustments can have big effects.

There's always a mix of raw capitalism and government -- even the Reconstruction Bureau Noami Wolf talks about is, after all, a government initiative. Government can temper and tamper with capitalism, it can try to engineer greater equality, it can incorporate in the form of social legislation some of the principles and achievements of socialism, as the government here in Germany does. There are also alternatives on the level of how we organise our personal lives. We can refuse lives of obsessive work and high stress. We can keep an arm's-length distance to the stresses of the market, of subordination, etc. We can be self-employed or part-time workers.

[badspelling.livejournal.com]

not my journal but...

quite apart from the fact that Momus does offer an answer of sorts (see his theory on post-captialist slow life), you seem to be completely missing the point.

In fact, it's the imposition of one person's supposed solution on another that's the problem here.

also, "equility (sic) and a fair chance for everyone"-- a fairytale? What a nice sentiment. I hope i meet you.

[badspelling.livejournal.com]

I share your anger. Obviously here, in Britain, we have an election from which I feel completely disenfranchised and it's been causing me to spend almost everyday questioning, researching, reading just trying to work out what's happening and what I need to do to feel like I'm being true to myself.

The anger and helplessness is making me swing from position to position. the more I read about stuff like "The Project for the New American Century", the more I feel people (like us maybe?) from the other side of the spectrum need to form into harder, more active groups. go on the attack as it were.

then, I read or listen to someone like Chomsky and realise that attack is the last thing we should do, at least in that sense. the best attack is the soft attack of a personal life full of humanity and free from hypocrisy. You can change things, however slowly, by doing exactly what you say above, by living your life as the example. It's something I need to keep focusing on. I keep watching "The Good Life" re-runs.

[seanthesean.livejournal.com]

hmmm, looking for answers from conceptual art pop stars is foolish is it not? almost as foolish as looking to politicians for answers. just because equality & a fair chance for everyone is most likely a pipe dream, or at least not a good idea, doesn't mean that capitalism, the valuing of economics above all else is a good idea. that version of capitalism hasn't even been tried out for that matter. capitalism doesn't insure liberties either, you're buying the line, but not seeing it for what it is. a load of nonsense. to dismiss momus' political leanings as branding is ludicrous as well.

i would add, that restriction & control produce the greatest art, because it is the process of the human mind, working desperately to work with or escape from these traps that gives us the glory of our existence. struggle.

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

Yet, if you look for differences between countries, the relationship between income and health largely disintegrates.

Playing the Devil's advocate here, but was this comparison between industrial countries or did it include "third-world" countries? Because I'm a happy, non-stressed specimen of the capitalist underclass and I'm presently enjoying a quality of life that is, compared to much of Communist China or rural India, positively astronomical.

[cementimental.livejournal.com]

>you post these anti-capitalist entries but have no answer.
Nonsense. Since when can you only ever mention a problem to other people if you already have the solution!? Since people started talking about politics on the internet, that's when.

[(Anonymous)]

I think that the United States is entering what might diplomatically be described as a new phase of its history, driven by its need to acquire what remains of the world's natural resources, chiefly oil. It's clear that the war in Iraq was started under false pretenses; that the destabilizing effect of the coming oil crisis was forseen, and that invading Iraq was a means to an end: extending the life of oil-dependent industrial economies of the west. A succession of wars similarly waged, in Africa, the Middle East/Asia Minor, South America, and Asia, will undoubtedly follow, and the so-called "developing world" will face massive upheaval in order that consumers in the west can continue to buy plastic products, drink clean water, and drive their vehicles. The developing world might have the last laugh, however, as societies least dependent on the global economy will be the ones best equipped to survive in a post-oil world.

[(Anonymous)]

It must be so sad for Leftists to hear even from their own that, under wicked old capitalism, the poor are getting richer, not poorer.

Oh definitely! I'm constantly hearing them say that this is indeed the problem. Because it's leading to people consuming too much. And they are becoming too "Americanized."

As I've told you, I'm in Costa Rica. And we get a lot of goofy leftist college girls vacationing here. Ultra granola wicca nature goddesses. And they don't like all of this globalization because they gripe that it's "destroying cultural diversity with globo-mono-culture." You'll find variations of this kind of thinking in Naomi Klein's book NO LOGO, which is mindless but an excellent description of the mindset. They are angry about the cultural imperialism that leads a peasant kid to buying a pair of nikes. Poverty is good, it keeps things as they are. Tradition. Diversity.

It's really a horribly patronizing outlook, which can be summed up as: "these people shouldn't have money because if they have money they'll no longer be cute little zoo creatures for me to admire as something different than myself. They'll be like people anywhere." Imagine a big nature reserve/zoo/park in the developing world where a bunch of native animals are kept in "their" natural environment. Now imagine the same with people. That's precisely what these leftists want.

And they've got some skilled rhetoric to back this up. They accuse "multinational corporations" of "preying upon" "poor people in the developing world" and announce themselves as the protectors of those people. Which is about as condescending as you can get, but it's for the native's own damned good. Because the natives are fooled by these wily corporations (no one could ever want a pair of nikes were it not for "brainwashing") and the higher consciousness leftists feel that they understand what the natives should be doing better than the natives themselves do. It's a religion. A religion of people obsessed with what other people are doing.

And as far as religiousity goes, there's another very interesting aspect. These leftists hate the SIN more than the SINNER, and look at the SINNER as being redeemable. What I mean by this is that they hate the companies, they hate globalization, they hate seeing a poor kid wearing nikes. But that kid is just a VICTIM. They don't hate him. They hate the sin of mono-globo-capitalism that has taken him over. Much like an old time priest might assume that a wicked person was possessed and needed an exorcism, these religious fanatics see the poor kid and think he needs to be "awakened." He's been "possessed" by advertising in some magical way. He can be redeemed, but he needs to repent. And we need to do all we can to save his soul.... It's quite supersitious. It's interesting how you can see man's religious nature so clearly in self-professed secularists.

I've not owned a pair of Nikes for years. The last pair I had wasn't great, and just as brands benefit from loyalty they can lose big when that loyalty is lost. I became brainwashed into buying other brands of shoes. But I recently went out and bought a pair of Nikes. Some leftist had sent me a bunch of materials encouraging me to boycott Nike.

And this led me to what I called the Nike Test. Show someone a poor kid from the developing world, clearly in a very, very poor neighborhood. And he has on a very nice pair of Nikes. There are two basic reactions: 1) Wow, that's cool that a poor kid in a remote part of the world can afford to have some of the most advanced shoes ever made, a shoe put together and distributed by an incredible harmonization of human effort in several countries. 2) that poor kid is a victim. He should only wear locally made shoes, even if they are of much lower quality and he doesn't want them. He's clearly brainwashed and it's just insidious. The leftist will find a victim where a conservative sees someone with expanded opportunities and enhanced connection with the rest of humanity -- AND more comfortable shoes!

[(Anonymous)]

link http://heghinian.blogspot.com/

[rfmcdpei.livejournal.com]

In the case of the Soviet Union, life expectancies (as the article hints but doesn't say) have been declining since the mid-1960s. This is a consequence of bad Soviet policies (underinvestment in the health sector, high rates of alcoholism and injury), and becomes apparently when you compare Estonia and Latvia with Finland. Before 1940, all three republics were on the same relatively high levels, but after a generation of Soviet rule Estonian and Latvian vital statistics began to deteriorate.

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

This is true.

Bad breaks and sheer economic mismanagement had more or less eradicated the Baltic economy by the seventies. Economic planning looked good on paper but was a practically complete mess. The Karelian economy, according to my data, did even worse because it was more or less directly micromanaged by Russian Gosplan bureaucrats. If Yuri Andropov had lived, and went on with the limited free-market reforms the KGB proposed, things would've held up together a bit longer than they did.

Finland, which pursued capitalist social-democracy, went into an economic decline in the early nineties partially because the Soviet Union was such an important trading partner. It was pretty bad because the Soviets had been buying a lot on sheer credit since the late seventies.

[mcgazz.livejournal.com]

> Yet another argument for the merits of post-capitalist slow life, I think.
Or an argument for the merits of post-capitalist Communism.

I'd love to live this wonderful 'slow life', flopping about in sandals, growing a goatee and congratulating myself on how postmodern I am (or whatever it is people are supposed to do when they're slow living), but it's a long time before that becomes an option for someone unfortunate enough to be working class in Capitalist Britain. I'm overworked and underpaid, I don't get paid if I'm sick, and I had to go into debt to keep a roof over my head. Once I've worked all week, I have literally just enough to house, feed and clothe myself, and pay for public transport to work. Any tiny luxuries are subject to astronomical amounts of duty (it'll be stress that kills me, because I can't afford to drink myself to death). Capitalism's insistance that private profiteering is always preferable to state ownership, and that consumption and property, rather than income should be taxed, is unlikely to allow us plebs much chance to downsize anytime soon.

[mcgazz.livejournal.com]

I'll weigh up that argument while I'm tattooing the Nike swoosh onto your face.

[yanatonage.livejournal.com]

You're responding to a generic brand of undergraduate angsty leftism, which we can all agree is kind of annoying. What you aren't responding to is anything in the preceding post; how market governments tie value systems to not only our esteem but our physical health. I think that brand experiences can be perfectly sublime; I love my green pumas and bright red Adidas. I don't think that the corporate-mono-whatever the fuck enforces any kind of aesthetics, but it does force us to prioritize our lifestyles in dangerous ways in order to put food into our mouths.

[daoistraver.livejournal.com]

wouldn't a wealth tax be much better than an income tax, though?

Fair Trade vs. Free Trade

[becki1111.livejournal.com]

One of the best things about Milwaukee is this place:

http://www.alterracoffee.com/

It exclusively sells fair trade coffee, and has managed to maintain its status as a thriving coffee supplier in the Mid-west. Conscience and capitalism need not be mutually exclusive.

This is,of course, one small example, but as someone else commented (sorry, I don't remember your name or user ID off hand) Chomsky's idea of living a humane life can be effective.

See this site for additional, hopeful news...

http://www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/fairtrade/coffee/

Individual pressure can make a difference.

Imagine a world where all of Starbuck's coffees were fair trade...(granted they would still be pushing the family owned cafes out of business...so I guess that is a bad example).

That's all very nice, but we need a revolution

[(Anonymous)]

The slow life, it's a nice idea, but as long as there are the happy few who control the planet's resources, things will only deteriorate. Condy Rice is not the problem, she's a servant of the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie will not step down because an enlightenend minority politely asks them to do so. We need a revolution.

Yes, yes, the truth is an old-fashioned thing.

Hiram

[seanthesean.livejournal.com]

interesting & largely true points, however, i don't think your ideas benefit from the left//right split you use here. most of these sorts of granola wiccan girls you've got coming down to costa rica are most likely part of the shrinking american middle class who experience life as a sort of utilitarian roller coaster of experiences, all events lined up for them. it is also amusing to me that you see the liberal as the one who wants to preserve the old order of cultures across the world, while the conservative is there seeing the bright side of all things, admiring these nikes.

[mcgazz.livejournal.com]

How would that work?

[daoistraver.livejournal.com]

if you can calculate someone's income, it can't be that much harder to calculate their net worth.

Then charge a percentage. Much like income tax. Only much, much fairer.

Re: Fair Trade vs. Free Trade

[facehead2k.livejournal.com]

I can attest that Alterra is everywhere except in the chain stores. Yay! Milwaukee got props for something!

While Starbucks suffers the slings and arrows of most everyone I know, I do get pounds of their fair trade coffee on occasion to support their stock of it, and while I prefer my cafes weren't corporate, Starbucks is the only coffee hustler offering health insurance to its part time workers. So, I go to both. And if they drop their benefits or fair trade coffee, then they won't be getting any of my money.

Re: Fair Trade vs. Free Trade

[becki1111.livejournal.com]

Yeah, and they offer health insurance benefits to gay and lesbian partners of employees.

I still prefer the locally-owned cafes, but Starbucks has done some decent things.

Are you from Milwaukee?

Re: Fair Trade vs. Free Trade

[facehead2k.livejournal.com]

I just moved here in September from Chicago.

[jimyojimbo.livejournal.com]

I kind of understand your point. But I'm not sure how it would be fairer...

As a really really simple example, take someone who went to live somewhere cheaply and living "the slow life", giving up a well paid job to be, say, a musician. Musician has a low income but low outgoings. The only expensive posessions are a computer, keyboards, mics, mixing boards etc. Not hugely expensive, just a home recording set up. Wouldn't all of this stuff be included as part of net worth, and thus the musician would be taxed on it regardless of a meagre income. Is this the kind of thing you mean? At what point would the musician have to sell the equipment with which she was making her "slow life" just in order to pay this worth tax?

Apologies if I'm all confused and stuff :)

[caoilte.livejournal.com]

Annoying as what you describe is, you're far worse for copy and pasting your washed out rebuttals of it across the internet. Find something original to say or at least some real people to get angry with. Any fool can blither on about tired stereotypes and you don't even bother to tailor your tracts to a word momus has to say.

[petit-paradis.livejournal.com]

Re: Fair Trade vs. Free Trade

[seanthesean.livejournal.com]

it's interesting to see starbucks take so much flack, when the demise of the small, funky cafe in america went hand in hand in with the demise of the seedy arcade, the smokey smoke shop & the dark & dusty used book shop. it was a cultural shift that the economic engines pursued.

The Lovely Nature of Dualism

[acertaindoebear.livejournal.com]

Two angels cavorting on the head of a pin.

"Ari, I don't really know, sometimes."

Ari descends, gets a little hot, and listens to Aeone: "I mean, the USA seems to have 'conquered' hunger and that is something to be proud of, I think."

Ari nods, her gown flitting about her and rises in a little escadrille.

"But...perhaps Capitalism fails because it hasn't cured %100 of the hunger in the USA," notions Aeone.

Ari giggles, and passes fair.

"Oh yes," says Aeone, "I have failed my dancing. I missed one step. I shall be purged?"

Ari grins, "Only if you ask nicely. Remember that Siddartha bloke? The one with the inquisitve mind?"

Aeone recapitulates the dance steps. "Yes."

Ari laughs and graces over the edge of the pin, "Maybe they should have a pain olympics. Compare each country's pain and only choose which one passes or fails."

Aeone finally chuckles. "Oh yes. Get them champing and chomping. Ahh, but that's only a small portion of the world. Remember Syria?"

Ari nods, "What a wonderful place. 'Keep your blood light' indeed."

Aeone and Ari continue to dance, while Uranus and Neptune cavort above their heads.

[rciaodree.livejournal.com]

Momus: It seems that you, Paul Krugman, and I have similar concerns on our brains these days: see here (http://www.livejournal.com/users/rciaodree/48738.html). (The post and Krugman's recent pieces focus on America's health care crisis.)

[hulegu.livejournal.com]

There were many, many good reasons for Gorbachev's policies of Perestroika and Glasnost, one of which was the appaling standard of living in the Soviet Union by the early 1980s:

• Cars (per 1,000, 1983) — USA = 540, Hungary = 118, Poland = 87, USSR = 36.
• Telephones (per 1,000, 1984) — US = 76, Czechoslovakia = 22.6, E. Germany = 21.1, USSR = 9.8.
• Meat consumption (kg, per capita, 1984) — E. Germany = 94, Czechoslovakia = 84, Hungary = 78, Bulgaria = 75, Poland = 64, USSR = 60.
• Infant mortality (in first year, per 1,000, 1985) — USSR = 25.1, Poland = 17.5, Czechoslovakia = 15.3, USA = 10.4, E. Germany = 9.2.
• Life expectancy (1964) — men = 67, women = 76.
• Life expectancy (1988) — men = 62, women = 73.
(Source: Boettke, P. J. Why Perestroika failed: The Politics of Socialist Transformation (1993), p23.)

In many regions of the USSR the CPSU had become a hotbed of corruption and venality, encapsulated by the formation of regional party ‘mafias’, epitomised by Haydar Aliyev (Azerbaijan), Dinmurkhamed Kunayev (Kazakhstan), and Akhmadzhin ‘the Godfather’ Adylov (Fergana region, Uzbekistan).

Gorbachev wrote, in his book handily titled 'Perestroika': “At some stage—this became particularly clear in the latter half of the seventies—something happened that was at first sight inexplicable. The country began to lose momentum. Economic failures became more frequent. Difficulties began to accumulate and deteriorate, and unresolved problems began to multiply.”

It is arguable that the standard of living would have remained as it was had the USSR survived the evenements of 1990/91 - they would most likely have fallen, much as it has in fact done.

Here endeth the lesson.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

So are we to conclude that there's something akin to "going out of fashion" or "hitting a midlife crisis" that happens to societies, and that has nothing to do with their political systems?

[hulegu.livejournal.com]

The Soviet Union wasn't simply a political system - it was an economic system because, as any Marxist-Leninist fule know, man is a product of his economic environment. The Soviet Union failed because the economic system, not the political system, failed. The UK political system does not derive its strength from its control of the economy, and therefore (unlike the Soviet Union) can ride out depressions, boom-and-bust cycles, negative equity etc. Moreover, consumer control of the economy is far stronger in, say, the UK than it ever was in the Soviet Union. Put bluntly, liberal democracies can influence the economy, but they cannot control it.

[(Anonymous)]

It's ironic that we're going round the world forcing capitalism on people when it's becoming increasingly clear that capitalism is not good for your health. Russia is a case in point. The communist system ended in 1990. Did life expectancy for Russians increase as they entered the new capitalist period? No, it started to decline, and sharply:

It should be obvious that giving people more options in their lives means that some of them will take the lesser options, and eventually kill themselves. This is due to a lack of cultural understanding about the ramifications of personal decisions. How does this make capitalism worse? You're just putting the decision in other people's hands, otherwise.