Flip it around a little: we need to take control over production to eliminate this pointless and even pernicious waste. There is such massive waste in this system, so much energy and resources and lives dedicated to harmful or wasteful activities, that never really touches a consumerist perspective.
For example, the for-profit healthcare insurance system in the US. If you fired 90% of them, ran a central insurance option through the government, and then paid every single person you fired the same just to do whatever they wanted, you’d actually make the system better and more efficient. That 90% are not just redundant, they are there to put up barriers for needed healthcare because that makes the company money.
The more you analyze any industry, the more you will find these attributes. The product that doesn’t need to exist and only does because of some other deficiency driven by capitalism. The massive bureaucies dedicated to monitoring workers so they don’t unionize, the massive bureaucies that must be duplicated across 50 companies because they each have to do accounting and taxes and payroll and answer calls even though they make the same widget.
On top of all of this is war and related imperialism. Entire countries are thrown into chaos, with this economic system as the root cause. Why is Venezuela so heavily sanctioned? Simply because they nationalized their oil industry so that the money made would go to Venezuelans. This ran against the capitalist imperialist ownership of Venezuela’s resources so they did their very best to destroy the country using economic means. Think of all the people forced into poverty because of this. Think of what they could have built instead. Now think of Iraq, its infrastructure bombed to nothing. We should center the people, but also think of all of the resources it takes to build a power grid, a clean water system, desalinization plants, roads, etc. All of that rubble because Iraq stepped outside the domination of US Empire, itself just an extension of global capital.
Through this we will decrease consumption as well, it is the natural outcome of not maintaining so much redundancy, of destroying so much of what is built, of being able to focus on real problems and developing real solutions rather than forcing humanity into pointless tasks.
Flip it around a little: we need to take control over production to eliminate this pointless and even pernicious waste. There is such massive waste in this system, so much energy and resources and lives dedicated to harmful or wasteful activities, that never really touches a consumerist perspective.
For example, the for-profit healthcare insurance system in the US. If you fired 90% of them, ran a central insurance option through the government, and then paid every single person you fired the same just to do whatever they wanted, you’d actually make the system better and more efficient. That 90% are not just redundant, they are there to put up barriers for needed healthcare because that makes the company money.
The more you analyze any industry, the more you will find these attributes. The product that doesn’t need to exist and only does because of some other deficiency driven by capitalism. The massive bureaucies dedicated to monitoring workers so they don’t unionize, the massive bureaucies that must be duplicated across 50 companies because they each have to do accounting and taxes and payroll and answer calls even though they make the same widget.
On top of all of this is war and related imperialism. Entire countries are thrown into chaos, with this economic system as the root cause. Why is Venezuela so heavily sanctioned? Simply because they nationalized their oil industry so that the money made would go to Venezuelans. This ran against the capitalist imperialist ownership of Venezuela’s resources so they did their very best to destroy the country using economic means. Think of all the people forced into poverty because of this. Think of what they could have built instead. Now think of Iraq, its infrastructure bombed to nothing. We should center the people, but also think of all of the resources it takes to build a power grid, a clean water system, desalinization plants, roads, etc. All of that rubble because Iraq stepped outside the domination of US Empire, itself just an extension of global capital.
Through this we will decrease consumption as well, it is the natural outcome of not maintaining so much redundancy, of destroying so much of what is built, of being able to focus on real problems and developing real solutions rather than forcing humanity into pointless tasks.