- paul
> In response to Chuck's last two (stunning as usual) posts.
>
> 1. One would think, reading Chuck's posts, that the capitalists are
> shooting themselves in the foot by letting everything fall apart, but as
> Marilyn Waring observed ("Who Counts?") Capital makes money out of
> destruction and waste. An ordinary person looks around and sees waste
> (locked school playgrounds when kids need a place to play -- unheard of
> forty years ago), war, prisons, the "need" to privatize every failing
> service in sight, shoddy construction, shoddy work, and thinks that this
> system is collapsing; a capitalist looks around and sees ever growing
> sources of exploitation and making money out of nothing. The soul of
> capitalism is destruction and when that really, really sinks in, maybe
> we'll get somewhere.
>
> 2. I was at the San Francisco airport yesterday to pick up an exchange
> student from France. Other than the security folks and the vendors,
> there were no airport personnel ANYWHERE at the airport. I know this
> for a fact because I desperately needed them. There was an information
> booth, manned by a non-functioning computer terminal. There were maps on
> the wall, which neglected to tell you where you were and did not provide
> sufficient information. I was too flabbergasted to get angry. The whole
> point of the "service" economy is that of making you pay for services
> you used to take for granted. On the one end of the conversion process
> are the annointed ones who get the contracts and most of the money. On
> the other end of the conversion process are the workers who either get
> fired, outsourced, or deskilled....but who always wind up making less
> money for the same work.
>
> Joanna