Disaster Capitalism is the Republican Plan

Disaster Capitalism = Predatory Capitalism = The Republican Plan.

This is the Republican ideal. It’s their goal. It’s the reason they like government to “get out of the way”. So their friends in the private sector can loot the vulnerable. This isn’t to say private business is all predatory, but lack of oversight and the chaos of unpreparedness tends to declare open season on victims of disaster.

This long read from Naomi Klein is worth sharing

The Right loves unpreparedness because it strips the vulnerable of all defenses and sets them up for profiteers to prey on.The Right, the GOP, and Wall Street see disasters as a profit opportunity. That’s why they see government as the enemy.

The Intercept describes how Houston was intentionally left unprepared

Republicans––not all of Republicans but certainly the leadership and the dominant wing of the party––see problems as an opportunity to exploit the vulnerable for profit.

There are also disasters that unfold more slowly and broadly and don’t need a giant storm to monetize. Our unfair system of housing in this country is a disaster that’s been in place for a hundred years. It was put in place by Jim Crow laws in the South, and by Jim Crow members of Congress who dominated federal rules and regulations. The racists used to dominate the Democratic Party until Humphrey and LBJ drove them out in the 50s and 60s. Those racists were welcomed with open arms by Nixon’s Southern Strategy, and the Republican Party has been White Folks Central ever since… with the occasional person of color included for decoration.

Predatory mortgage contracts designed to fleece people of color have come back because of bigotry in this Republican Congress and Republican dominated state legislatures:

Chuck Collins writes about how unfair housing enriches the few Loan sharking is back, thanks to this Republican president and this Republican congress.

Human Misery = Great Profit Opportunities!

A conservative columnist for the Chicago Tribune says Hurricane Katrina was a blessing in disguise. I’ll let that sink in. What does she mean?

Conservatives are pleased when bad things happen to other people. Hurricanes create investment bargains! Human misery = profit opportunity!

Which explains why Rick Santorum drew applause from the conservative base when he said rape could be a blessing in disguise. Bad things happening to other people can be translated into good things happening for you if you are paying attention, if you're right-thinking and sufficiently heartless.

It’s happening in Greece too. Crisis and misery tends to draw vulture capitalists eager for quick profits and easy bargains. If you discover someone is down for the count. Why help them? Why not use them as a stepladder to a better life?

This is the core idea behind Disaster Capitalism. Disaster = Profits

Republicans, conservatives, the 1%, venture capitalists. They all view terrible events happening to other people as great business opportunities for themselves. The Guardian wrote about this bizarre investment class cheerfulness while New Orleans was still underwater.

Because the ups and downs of fortune are just the natural course of events. The downturns may seem awful to those nobodies experiencing it firsthand, but they are too shortsighted to see the bounty being reaped by the blessed few God has put in a safer position. The investment class is wiser and more able to view these ups and downs philosophically. “Let things unfold as nature intended. Let the weak fail. It makes America stronger to weed out the less deserving and the unlucky." That’s a common view among the 1%. Disaster for others represents a windfall for them.

But their opinion changes when the disaster happens to them. (Through no fault of their own, of course.) When they face difficulties help must be sent immediately. Because they hold hostages. We are all hostage to the fortunes of the rich. If they fall they fall on us. Here's a list of the huge corporate bailouts working Americans have paid for, and corporate CEOs have put in their own pockets. Still, it had to be done. The alternative would have been worse.

Timely help in New Orleans might have been a good thing too, but it would only have helped regular people. Most of whom had negligible net worth.

The important thing is to rescue property. And in New Orleans what the money people discovered was letting the poor drown made it possible to scoop up bargains. Property on the cheap. Blocks of soggy historic downmarket houses ready to be cleared out and replaced with warehouses for Walmart and other corporations, or with more attractive apartment blocks suitable for new, more prosperous citizens more likely to be Republicans.

Killer Business Model

Excellent article in the Washington Post about how furniture rental companies gouge three times the value of the furniture from people who can't afford to buy. This is called the Genius of Capitalism.

Faced with a need or a shortage, do you set about filling that need, that shortage, or is your first question how to exploit the shortage to the fullest advantage?

Is human vulnerability something to take advantage of?

Is poverty a profit opportunity for your company, the deeper the poverty the greater the profit?

Is someone else's helplessness part of your business model? When you see helplessness do you feel sympathy or greed?

Is helpfulness a naïve and foolish custom? Is it unbusinesslike to include generosity or humane consideration in your business plan?

Let’s imagine you manufacture flotation devices, lifesavers they’re called. It costs money to make them, so you sell them for a price. Naturally.

But here’s a business model: you provide flotation devices to lifeguards. Call these lifeguards sales agents and pay them a small commission. Then when someone is drowning don’t have your agent throw them a buoy free of charge, let the market set a price. Dicker with the floundering. Or rent the device to the person fighting for his life, loan the use of the buoy at so much per second. They’re really eager to rent, so set that rate as high as you can. Plus interest, compounding every second.

This is what’s known as a killer business model.

Hey Romney––Disaster Isn't a Business Opportunity

Even Republican governors are praising Obama's handling of Hurricane Sandy. Such a contrast with the guitar strumming response we got from a recent Republican president. Romney has urged shutting FEMA down altogether. There's a difference between the two parties. Mega-disasters like this remind us of the importance of good government that works for everyone. Sometimes we really need it.

At Raw Story.

The Washington Post.

Under a President Romney this hurricane's aftermath would look a lot different. Instead of FEMA being ready, fully equipped and on the ground, Romney would open the devastated areas up to the "magic of capitalism". Disasters are a business opportunity in Romney's eyes. An opportunity for profit, and you can imagine how prices could be affected by sudden mass shortages. Don't worry, his friends on Park Avenue would win a bidding war for bottled water, and would probably do well selling their excess. If you think about it, Mr. Romney, looting is a business opportunity, we just don't condone it.

Worth reading and sharing with your fence-sitting friends.

A very good post on the New York Times blog.

At The New Republic.

Also this, also at TNR.

Want irony? Remember "Heckuva Job" Brownie? The man who ran FEMA for Bush, who fumbled the Katrina response, whose previous experience before his government job was running a horse show association? (Maybe he knows Rufalka...) Brownie has criticized Obama's handling of Hurricane Sandy, saying he responded too quickly... Story reported by The Hill newspaper.

I think it comes down to something I saw on a wall last week:

"ObamaCare. RomneyDon't"

Corporatocracy

There isn't a Doctor Evil plotting world domination in some remote bunker. No, it's done at Davos and Jackson Hole and the Bohemian Grove, whenever the rich and powerful get together over cocktails. They know each other, they do deals, they share interests and goals. They own us. Now there's science to prove it.

Do you think these very well organized corporations don't know how to rig wages worldwide?

Do you wonder if, maybe, they collude to profit from shortages and panics? If they profit from them, do you think they might be tempted to cause them?

Ever suspected that drug companies might actually conspire to cause shortages to keep drug prices high? How clever. (They're so carefully protected by the Republicans that Obama has had to use executive orders to fix the problem.)

Did you realize these very rich corporations also know how to avoid taxes? They're actually pretty good at it.

The word for this kind of dominance is "oligopoly". It's the opposite of a free market and very anti-democratic.

This is what the 99% are angry about. Too big to fail is too big altogether. It makes the world economy unstable and unworkable.

Profiting from Misery, Privation and Disaster

As families huddled to worry about jobs, food and rescuing the family home, Goldman Sachs was gleefully talking about financial crisis as profit opportunity. Who are these people? Are they the type who go through victims' pockets at the scene of an accident? It isn't limited to Goldman, or Wall Street. Many of the vultures lurk in hedge fund compounds in Connecticut, picking the bones of the fallen––when possible helping them fall before picking their bones. This story from BusinessInsider is particularly chilling.

This paragraph from the Guardian caught my eye.

"But a new theory is emerging among traders and economists. The same banks, hedge funds and financiers whose speculation on the global money markets caused the sub-prime mortgage crisis are thought to be causing food prices to yo-yo and inflate. The charge against them is that by taking advantage of the deregulation of global commodity markets they are making billions from speculating on food and causing misery around the world."

In other words, crisis is more profitable than stability. If that's the opposite of what most modern economies base their prosperity on, that's fine with the speculators who profit. Picture a cat playing with a mouse.

Real Economics describes the center where global food speculation takes place, the Chicago Board of Trade. Some will point out the necessary mechanism of the Chicago Board; it gets food where it's needed in an efficient fashion through the market system. But what happens when the market makers realize they profit more from inefficiency, from shortage, from panic? Markets need to have a superego to rule their id, an Apollonian side to keep the Dionysian under control. We need responsible, humane governing institutions, which is exactly what Republican radicals in the U.S. Congress are trying to shut down and disempower.

The World Food Programme paints an ugly picture of the profitability of global hunger.

The role played by speculator manipulation of supply is no secret in the fuel category (from McClatchy News)

What is the result? More of our limited consumer dollars are locked into chasing fuel and food, leaving less for other areas of spending. It works like a heavy stone tied to the ankle of the economy. What makes it harder for 300 million Americans fills the pockets of the speculators, which means hedge funds, banks, Wall Street, the folks who fund the Tea Party.

Do market makers actively precipitate disaster in order to profit from it? There were plenty of shills pushing the profit opportunities in the BP oil spill––even if they didn't cause it.

But you have to wonder sometimes. In the week Dick Cheney's memoir hits the shelves this question should strike all of us: what influence did Dick Cheney, the former chair of Halliburton, have on the awarding of billions in war contracts to his old firm? Did he want the war to happen for private business reasons? Iraq was a war virtually made for Halliburton. The U.S. protectorate supervised the collapse of the Iraq system, the destruction of all its institutions and their subsequent privatization. Is Iraq the perfect model of Disaster Capitalism? (This Amy Goodman-Naomi Klein interview caught the drift as it was happening in 2005, but the reporting never reached the mainstream press.)

The ruling ideas behind what Naomi Klein called The Shock Doctrine aren't conservative. They are the opposite of conservative. They are radical. They are anti-patriotic. They are anti-institutional, anti-national, anti-citizen. They are against the notion of functioning societies and economies because breakdown is what makes these operators rich. Wide public failure is their opportunity. Your hunger is their feast. And increasingly, these are the people at the controls at the centers of the so-called Free Market.