I am now basically living by virtue of social security and my father's wise investing and generosity. But I have guilt about how many corporations increase in value due to labor rights violations and environmental destruction in other countries, while we remain largely oblivious to how the first world exploits the rest of the world.
What if consumers could see the entanglement of our cell phone purchases with the fate of children in coltan mining in the Congo who are facing violence, the rape of their mothers, and not being able to attend school; or as we stood in line to order a hamburger we would reflect on the fact that due to our heavily meat-based diet we are dependent upon a system of raising livestock that is the single largest contributor of greenhouse gas emissions globally; or we would witness the working conditions of the Bangladeshi sweatshop worker as we’re about to purchase a new shirt; or as we turned our heating system on we had a vision of the skin problems and respiratory diseases afflicting communities living on or near land owned by multinational coal mining companies; or as we pulled out or credit card to buy new cotton pants we realized that over 200,000 unsubsidized Indian farmers had committed suicide because they couldn’t compete with the heavily-subsidized cotton growers in wealthy nations; or looking at the menu in a restaurant we would witness the mental health problems of slaughterhouse workers, and so on?
We are sheltered from these realities, and they weigh on me as I watch the present administration subsidizing the rich while loosening environmental protections that will eventually harm all of us. We live in a mixed economy, which is neither purely Capitalist nor socialist enough to effectively address inequality. When conservative pundits argue that the solution to our economic problems is a "pure" free market they are pinning their hopes on the the least stable, most lopsided aspect of mixed economies. Market-based economies today inevitably favor those with massive amounts of financial capital over those with cultural capital or only their labor to sell. At least Marxism seeks to provide a transformation of personal consciousness to bring an end to human alienation and selfishness. Equality will not be achieved without fraternity and liberty.
So these are the thoughts that keep me awake at night.
