Those with the money either own the businesses that provide the things that we need or have significant if not disproportional influence upon them and how they work.
In a world now dominated by an obsession with wealth and profit, the motives that drive the businesses which have defining control over the way that industry and the markets work are solely focused on the bottom line. They drive the increase of net profit margins at every turn.
Man cannot have two masters. And any business that has lost sight of why it exists, whether it be to produce the best goods, the best food, the best services or the best experience, it will always be looking to make ways to improve those margins to keep feeding the greed and ambition of the people at the top or those on their way there.
In circumstances where commercial self-interest has consistently pushed an agenda of deregulation and so-called ‘freedom of the markets’, we find ourselves in a financial and economic maelstrom where companies at the top of any marketplace can charge and do what they want. Not because its morally right. But because the laws they have influenced into being, to be amended or to be removed tell them that they can.
The whole downward spiral is presented in the form of a narrative that tells the public at large that the markets will always look after everything if the reach of government is kept to the absolute minimum that it can be.
Yet this narrative fails to tell the same trusting public that it pushes power further and further into the hands and control of the very few who are at the top of this twisted money tree. And that the process of unhindered deregulation only leads to price rises and misery for the people at the bottom whilst the bank accounts swell and gift even more opportunities for control at the very top.
This system is based on the economic theory or philosophy called Neoliberalism. Ironically, even many of those speaking out against the way that Governments are working today, do not understand the realities of what giving control of the system to the bankers and the industrialists actually does.
The only saving grace – if you can call it that, is that the spiral downwards (which the neoliberals believe heads the other way for as long as they are in profit and making money) inevitably leads only to one place: A systemic collapse. Because you cannot break one end of a completely unbalanced society and think for even one minute that the other end of it can maintain its very questionable and unbalanced place.
Adam Tugwell 