Worshipping the god of capitalism has led to the worst banking disaster in the U.S. since the Great Depression of the 1930’s. The priests of the Holy Church of the Free Market have been tearing down government oversight of the U.S. financial system since the Reagan Administration; this along with the unleashed greed that always seems to accompany Republican administrations, not to mention Republican control of Congress, has resulted in a credit crisis that is threatening the global economic system. Who knows when the dominoes will stop falling, but it appears the already shrinking middle class will not escape the coming discomfort.
Colliding with and adding to the woes of the credit crunch for the U.S. and other advanced (capitalized) economies, the realities of peak oil are placing the world’s poor at risk of starvation. This is a direct result of free market capitalism. The increasing demand for biofuel in wealthy nations has led to increasing amounts of agricultural land being devoted to biofuel crops all over the world. The free play of the market means that the wealthy are able pay more for biofuel crops than the poor are able to pay for food crops. The result has been a decrease in the supply of basic food crops worldwide. This increases food prices globally. The rich complain, but the poor simply cannot buy at these higher prices.
The diminishing supplies worldwide of transportation fuel, even with biofuel supplementation, along with increasing demand for same is adding to the heretofore hidden transportation costs of food commodities.
What this means is that the wealthy and middle class are taking food out of the mouths of hungry poor people everytime we buy gasoline for our automobiles. This inherent cruelty of capitalism’s efficient engine of wealth creation is nothing new. But in today’s wired world it is simply more obvious. So what are we going to do? Are we going to keep buying those SUV’s. Are we going to keep driving them to church?
