Global Capitalism Has Written Off The Human Race
Paul Craig Roberts
Economic theory teaches that free price and profit movements ensure
that capitalism produces the greatest welfare for the greatest number.
Losses indicate economic activities where costs exceed the value of
production, thus investment in these activities is curtailed. Profits
indicate economic activities where the value of output exceeds its cost,
thus investment increases. Prices indicate the relative scarcity and
value of inputs and outputs, thus serving to organize production most
efficiently.
This theory doesn’t work when the US government socializes cost and
privatizes profits as it has been doing with the Federal Reserve’s
support of “banks too big to fail” and when a handful of financial
institutions have concentrated much economic activity. Subsidized
“private” banks are no different from the former publicly subsidized
socialized industries of Great Britain, France, Italy, and the former
communist countries. The banks have imposed the costs of their
incompetence, greed, and corruption on taxpayers. Indeed, the
socialized firms in England and France were more efficiently run and
never threatened the national economies, much less the entire world,
with ruin as do the private US “banks too big to fail.” The English,
French, and communists never had to print $1,000 billion dollars
annually to save a handful of corrupt and incompetent financial
enterprises.
This only happens in “free market capitalism” where the capitalists,
with the approval of the corrupt US Supreme Court can purchase the
government, which represents them and not the electorate. Thus, the
taxation and money creation powers of government are used to support a
few financial institutions at the expense of the rest of the country.
This is what is meant by “markets are self-regulating.”
Several years ago Ralph Gomery warned me that the damage done to US
labor by jobs offshoring was about to be superseded by robotics. Gomery
told me that the ownership of the technology patents is highly
concentrated and that breakthroughs have made robots increasingly human
in their capabilities. Consequently, the prospect for employment of
humans is dismal.
Gomory’s words reverberated with me when I read RT’s February 15,
2014, report that computer and robotic experts at Harvard have
constructed mobile machines programmed with the logic of termites to be
self-organizing and able to complete complex tasks without central
direction or oversight.
http://rt.com/news/self-organizing-termite-robots-172/
RT doesn’t understand the implications. Instead of raising a red
flag, RT gushes: “The possibilities are vast. The machines can be made
to build any three-dimensional structure on their own and with minimal
instruction. But what is truly staggering is their ability to adapt to
their work environment and to each other; to calculate losses,
reorganize efforts and make adjustments. It is already clear that the
development will do wonders for humanity in space, hard-to-reach places
and other difficult situations.”
The way the world is organized under a few powerful and immensely
greedy private interests, the technology will do nothing for humanity.
The technology means that humans will no longer be needed in the work
force and that emotionless robotic armies will take the place of human
armies and have no compunction about destroying the humans on whom they
are unleashed. The picture that emerges is more threatening than Alex
Jones’ predictions. Faced with little demand for human labor, little
wonder thinkers predict that the rich intend to annihilate the human
race and live in an uncrowded environment served by their robots. If
this story has not been written as science fiction, someone should get
on the job before it becomes ordinary reality.
The Harvard scientists are proud of their achievement, as no doubt
most of the Manhattan Project participants were about their achievement
in producing a nuclear weapon. But the success of the Manhattan Project
scientists was not very nice for the residents of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki, and the prospect of nuclear war continues to cast a dark
shadow over the world.
The Harvard technology will prove to be an enemy of the human race.
This outcome does not have to be, but free market ideologues think
that any planning or foresight is an interference with the market, which
always knows best (thus, the current financial and economic crisis).
Free market ideology stands in the way of societal control and serves
the short-term interests of powerful and greedy private groups. Instead
of being used for humanity, the technology will be used for the profits
of a handful.
That is the intention but what is the reality? How can there be a
consumer economy if there is no employment? There cannot be, which is
what we are gradually learning from the offshoring of American jobs by
global corporations. For a limited period an economy can continue to
function on the basis of part-time jobs, drawing down savings, food
stamps, and extended unemployment benefits.
However, when savings are drawn down, when the heartless politicians
who demonize the poor cut food stamps and unemployment benefits, the
economy ceases to provide a market for the offshored goods that the
corporations bring home to sell.
Here we see the total failure of Adam Smith’s invisible hand. Each
corporation in pursuit of greater managerial “performance bonuses” as
determined by profits did its part in producing the destruction of the
US consumer market and greater misery for all.
Adam Smithian economics applies to economies in which capitalists
have some sense of commonality with other citizens of the country like
Henry Ford did, some sense of belonging to a country or to a community.
Globalism destroys this sense. Capitalism has evolved to the point
where the most powerful economic interests, interests that control the
government itself, have no sense of obligation to the country in which
their business entities are registered. Except for nuclear weapons,
international capitalism is the greatest threat humanity has ever faced.
International capitalism has raised greed to a determinant force in
world history. Unregulated greed-driven capitalism is destroying the
jobs prospects of First World labor and the ability of Third World
countries, whose agricultures have been turned into export monocultures
serving the global capitalists, to feed themselves. When the crunch
comes, the capitalists will let the “other” humanity starve.
As the capitalists declare in their high level meetings, “there are too many people in the world.”
(Source: Bullion Baron)
