The Market Virus

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Updated September 2:

In the comments section, huy notes that, while he is a social democrat, he still sings the praises of the free market system. He points out drug companies and IT as two great industries.

I disagree:

Private drug companies are crap! Have you ever seen a more horrid bunch of gangsters and criminals? Here in the US they are all just crooks.

They keep harmful drugs on the market and refuse to pull them. The only way to pull them is to sue them over and over, and even when we do that, they still keep them on the market a lot of times. These people are just flat out murderers. And when they get too pissed about being sued, they get their bought and paid for Congressswine to legislate "tort reform", which means no more suits.

Or SLAPP suits, in which you get sued for suing the POS corporation! They fake their studies, lie on their data, and buy and pay for doctors to lie for them. The whole medical field is becoming seriously corrupted by the big money behind these scum companies, and the # of doctors going corrupt as a result is really frightening. It's a serious problem as even our best medical journals are in danger of being corrupted.

Furthermore, it has been conclusively proven that we pay much higher prices for the same drugs that other nations in the West get for much cheaper. What advantage do we get from these high prices? Much higher profits for drug companies on US sales! I'm sure your average US consumer is delighted by that! Or maybe, if his mind is truly market-infected, he is delighted by that.

The IT companies? It's hard to say. Microsoft is an illegal monopoly, was one, and will be one into the foreseeable future. It's hard to imagine how much damage they have caused to computing.

Intel is a monopoly on CPU's with similar major issues for consumers, notably outrageously high prices and forced install of Intel chips by computer makers.

On the ground, there is no competition in broadband. The glorious days of dialup competition are gone forever. You have the cable monopoly or the phone DSL monopoly. They are both evil, and neither has any competition but the other.

The cable monopolies are not regulated at all, and cable is insanely overpriced.

The phone monopolies are barely regulated at all anymore, but some are better than others. The worst of all are the huge ones like ATT, which desperately needs to be regulated.

An unregulated private monopoly is pure evil and needs to be smashed or at least heavily regulated.

Capitalism in the US has created a Gramscian hegemony whereby a vast number of folks identify with the capitalists and the market. Once you do that, all regulation and control by the state is out the window. Very rightwing capitalists own all of our media and use it try to slam pro-corporate, pro-monopoly bullshit into our heads 24-7.

A lot of workers and consumers, especially once they start getting some money, "go corporate" in their minds and essentially support the whole human-hating, society-hating, worker-hating and consumer-hating agenda of the corporations.

Our lack of government involvement in broadband and cell phones has meant that we spend outrageously high prices for shit service.

Other nations have involved the state heavily in their cellular and broadband systems. They pay dramatically lower prices than we do and get dramatically faster speeds and more features.

We're just sitting here in the US getting screwed because we worship these corporate pigs who are reaming us. Why? Because the ideology of "the market" has infected every aspect of American life. Even the people who should be protesting getting screwed by these corporations are singing their praises even while they are getting reamed.

Their minds have been colonized by a virus. The market virus.

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