Now Playing: we seem to have made of health and well being a commodity
Topic: Health & Science
Open Markets
The rules to play by are hidden in one corner under a bag of sh*t - precisely where the corporate capitalists and their lip service want them. That corner is the one least likely visited by anyone with a fuse short enough to be lit by awareness of snake oil marketing and market manipulation.
I see the most rapid solution as that of moving the discussion out of the realm of governmental political discourse and into the realm of word-of-mouth indignation at specific corporate practices or specific corporate entities themselves.
Scale and size are more important in generating publicity and ill will toward a corporate entity or practice rather than a hope for some direct legal action against a specific illegal, unethical or self-serving corporate behavior.
As a union member, I stopped shopping at Walmart a few years ago. In fact my cheap computer here is the last thing I've ever purchased at Walmart.
Walmart's treatment, manipulation and abuse of it's employees is now sufficiently imbeded in public awareness that there has been an impact.
I'm not satisfied with the size of that impact and wish that the corporate reputation were more sufficiently sullied as to facilitate some dictation to Walmart by a coaliton of labor and consumers. But for now it will do.
Gathering, rallying and organizing potential boycotters - or the threat or imminence OF a specific boycott - are things I see as having the potential of waving a club at market abusers.
But none of what I write can I suggest as viable solutions because of the simple fact that we as market participants, as corporate marks, as rubes, consuming gullibles and manipulatees are left to our own devices to get the shell gamers to play more fairly.
This because economic think tanks are not trustworthy. Their funding sources and all that.
Back to Open Markets. I personally do not see the open market as even a legitimate source of delivery of health services and health care. In having already put our communal health condition at the mercy of an open market, we seem to have made of health and well being a commodity - the ownership and distribution of which can be obtained, monopolized and ... to quote your word ... rationed.
Our health, our health care and especially that heroic life-saving aspect of health care where our collective skills are superlative (as opposed to preventative health care where our collective skills are inadequate) are something of which we need new dialogue ...
... to discuss whether it belongs in the open marketplace at all ...
or not ....
I think not.
