Capitalism is on Life Support: Why It’s Time to Pull the Plug and How We Will?

Abstract

It costs a great deal to keep a corrupt economic system alive when it is on the brink of death: it costs justice, equality, morality, progress, and - of course - a considerable amount of money. We have been paying that price as a country and as a planet every day for almost a century - since (at the latest) 29 October, 1929. This analysis uses the prolonged metaphor of capitalism's survival being only thanks to life support, and explains why it has cost significantly more than traditional life support for a person, and why every day it will continue to, until the plug is finally pulled. It explores the idea that well-intentioned but ultimately misguided leaders - capitalism’s doctors, if you will - have been keeping capitalism alive every time it crashes with the help of the “bandages” of socialist measures, but that those band-aids can only do so much. The analysis suggests that they will only prolong, not prevent, capitalism’s steep decline into causing widening socioeconomic divisions, a perpetually dying planet, and a largely out of touch affluent class that can and often does exploit systems and workers, and explains how this conclusion was reached. It argues that it is inevitable that such a system fails, and that it would be more ethical and practical for the system to end soon.