Unregulated Capitalism can not build lives

The following was copied from the T&G editorial. I thought it was so well written that I felt compelled to share it. Over the past decade, I have gone before the city council, many times, and stated that Public Access, WCCA TV, is about building community through electronic media and empowering individuals with a resource that includes media tools, education, expertise, on a non-discriminatory basis. As I experience the city's consideration to change funding formula to support PEG, which could possibly mean less funding for WCCA, to see the city settle for a five year cable license rather than a ten year, to see a cable license with less benefit for the people than the last ten year contract provided, to see a final cable license that leaves the existing PEG channels pitted against themselves, it seems to me, that perhaps we are experiencing a microcosm of what Mary's editorial letter speaks so well about. Remember WCCA TV is more about building lives, and community through electronic media that it is about making that slick action tabloid news or making huge mega profits.Inclusiveness and Community is the heart of everything we do. Why is WCCA or even public access threatened? Perhaps Mary can shed some light on that.

"Capitalism at the core of society’s ruination

Our society is in profound crisis, for it is suffering from end-stage capitalism. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, America’s greatest president, had the instinctive genius to recognize that unless capitalism was counterbalanced by humanity, it would take the country down with it, for at its core lies sadism.

Absolute capitalism always leads to absolute social sadism, just as power without limits and accountability always turns diabolical.

Unregulated capitalism has turned America into a madhouse of the predators and the preyed upon, the shakers and the shaken down, the shills and their victims, a nation able to build only casinos and prisons because it cannot build lives.

When greed goes nuclear and profit becomes the only remaining social value, a mass psychosis develops. The society starts moving at the speed of greed, becoming increasingly manic, demanding work without rest and war without peace. Art and leisure are sacrificed to a concentration camp-style 24/7 work culture.

The need to punish, brutalize, imprison and extort grows more intense, for rage is a byproduct of end-stage capitalism. The society grows more unresponsive to the needs of the public, more authoritarian and abusive until the impulse toward a police state and the declaration of martial law become irresistible.

The society’s leader starts exhibiting signs of profound mental disturbance, claiming the powers of a sun god, while America’s flag flies for the torture of fellow human beings and imprisonment without trial or charges.

All that remains is the collapse into depression."

MARY JARVIS

Gardner