RE: Thread for the Analysis of Henry David Thoreau's Writings
July 25, 2019 at 3:18 am
(This post was last modified: July 25, 2019 at 3:18 am by Belacqua.)
(July 25, 2019 at 2:36 am)vulcanlogician Wrote: As I've argued before, Thoreau hated capitalism, but even if you LOVE capitalism, you have to admit, nature makes capitalism and free enterprise possible. Try opening a Wal-Mart in the sewer. I bet business there will suck. That's a good argument (capitalist or Marxist) for not turning the world into a sewer.
Here I think we have to differentiate between 20th century capitalism and the newer kind. For the most part, the way it works now the billionaires don't have to worry about any nature but their own estates.
In the olden days, Henry Ford had to pay his workers enough so that they could buy a car. He had a stake in consumers living fairly decent lives. As long as you make money from selling manufactured goods to consumers, this is generally true.
But the economy has been "financialized." Billionaires now make their money by buying and selling stocks and bonds and futures and exotic financial instruments. They don't have to make anything or provide anything for regular people. I suspect that even the Walton family (who owns Walmart) currently get richer due to finance.
In Rogue Economics by Loretta Napoleoni, she distinguishes between "stationary bandits" and "roving bandits." Stationary bandits can't bleed their victims totally dry, because they have to come back and rob them again later. This was the old way. Now that everything is globalized and financialized, roving bandits can destroy a region completely, to the point it will never recover, and move on. Chris Hedges' books about "sacrifice zones" in the US describe such places.
So a sense of place, something Thoreau valued, is also a victim of capitalism.
