The western manifestation of capitalism is a bastardised creation
Let’s agree to use the US as our model for the sake of this argument, although is not a true version of the free market system. It’s close, but it gets fuzzy at the government – business interface. The true laissez faire system is a brutal environment. There are no government bailouts. No company is ‘too big to fail’. Banks that make bad lending decisions are simply allowed to go under, and new, more prudent lending bodies take their place. Capitalism is pure Darwinian evolution. Only the strong, the most agile, the best adapters survive. There are no tariffs or subsidies, taxation is minimal, and the market is allowed to determine the rules of the game. Nobody came to the aid of the horse-drawn carriage industry when its existence was threatened by the rise of the automobile.
Western capitalism is weakened by governmental intervention. Quantitative easing and other massively disruptive action creates bubbles and other unnatural imbalances that fundamentally damage the system. These actions are designed to maintain the status quo, effectively keep the 1% at the top of the pyramid. If the position of the prevailing elite is threatened, governments and central banks invariably intervene. Those with enough money to invest in hedge funds such as Bear Stearns should have been wiped out by the crash of 2008. They should no longer be wealthy individuals. The same applies to the victims of the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme, all rich investors seeking huge returns on their capital.
The Coronavirus is a once in a lifetime event. It is standard for one sector of an economy to take a hit from time to time. A high local currency might hit a nation’s tourism sector. Lower commodity prices might hit its mining sector. Drought might ravage its farming sector. This latest crisis is hitting every sector, at the same time. Other than the funeral business, virtually every single sector, industry, company, sole trader, and partnership is threatened with annihilation. On the very front line – hoteliers, airlines, restaurants, cafes, bars, gyms, and retailers. Next in line – anything deemed non-essential.
This is the death of capitalism as we know it. Governments are stepping in to the breach with stimulus packages and handouts, but then what? Where is this money coming from exactly? Tax revenue will drop to zero eventually? When the virus finally clears, what will be left? Will any small businesses have survived? Who will make our coffee? Will there be a Starbucks monopoly? Will this event cause a complete societal reset? A capitalism version two?
Who does the Coronavirus benefit? Globalists have long dreamt of a one world central government ruled by a single currency. They would prefer a digital currency so that cash cannot be hoarded and utilised in transactions beyond their control. Head globalist in chief, former Jeffrey Epstein associate, Bill Gates recently expressed a desire for a ‘digital certificate‘ that could identify which global citizen had been vaccinated with which mandated vaccine.
This would be a tattoo of some type? Or perhaps a microchip, inserted beneath the skin, that could be loaded with all sorts of personal information – health records, bank balance and the like. The Chinese lead the world in this area. All citizens are assigned a ranking on how compliant they are, how likely they might be to form a dissenting view or rise against the ruling party. All transactions are monitored, all communication occurs via government controlled mediums, history is rewritten, information is owned.
Thousands of Swedes have already volunteered to have chips injected into their hands. The benefits are apparently amazing. Nobody ever forgets a password, or loses their house keys, the data is all encrypted in their personal chip.
One thing is clear. The world economy has never faced a challenge of this magnitude. Unemployment is likely to hit Great Depression levels. A huge percentage of businesses will disappear. And when we’ve been allowed to leave our homes, we will face a very different world. Will it be George Orwell’s 1984? Will privacy and personal freedom be lost forever? Or will our humanity shine through, and we emerge to rebuild the world in a beautifully chaotic way, where we can choose our medicine, speak our minds, disagree with whomever, pay with physical cash, and start businesses that rise and fall on their merits?
The final line in 1984 is a particularly disturbing sentence. It is perhaps the most unnerving sequence of words ever penned. It pains me to rewrite them, but I must.
“If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.”
George Orwell 1984
G G Novack – Political Correspondent, Travel Editor, Critic