There is a story that we are told from morning to night, repeated to us at school, on television, in newspapers, at work, in bars. It is so insistent that most people have come to believe it is an absolute truth, as obvious as the sun rising in the east or trees growing towards the sky. The story is this: capitalism is the engine of human progress, the only one possible. in my opinion, this is a colossal hoax.12Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWYZ68PeuI6
If we ask supporters of capitalism what a company is for, they will answer that it is to satisfy people's needs, to create wealth, to provide jobs, to advance society, but the truth is that it is to make profits. Now, I'm not saying that companies don't satisfy people's needs, but that's not their goal. The crucial point is that people's needs and corporate profits often do not go in the same direction, and when the paths diverge, it is always ordinary people who lose out.
To give a few examples of what has just been written, there are diseases such as malaria and yellow fever that kill millions of people, mainly affecting the poor in Africa, Asia, and South America, people who live on a few euros a day and cannot afford to buy medicines. The result is that private research into finding cures for these diseases invests almost nothing, while billions of euros are poured into creating anti-wrinkle creams, medicines for hair loss, and supplements for those who already have full stomachs. All this because those who worry about wrinkles and hair loss have money to spend, while malaria patients are bad business. It is not profitable to invest money in them, nor is it even worth thinking about. The market has already condemned them to death. The capitalist system is built to ignore those who have no money.12Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡb4W7IVpn9I
The point is that in capitalist society, production is not based on what is needed but on what is profitable, and since what is profitable often does not correspond to what is needed, millions of people die or live in squalor while the privileged, who can find nothing better to do, smear creams on their foreheads. This is not progress, it is a waste of human lives, resources, and intelligence. It is time wasted on designing and producing drugs that cure non-existent diseases while ignoring those that tear the world apart.12Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡM8Cmxa40dH
Some will talk to me about charitable foundations, about philanthropists who invest in forgotten diseases. They exist, but they are drops in the ocean. Philanthropists are band-aids on an infected wound; they do not cure the disease, and the real disease is profit as the only guiding light.
And let's not even mention inconvenient inventions. During the 20th century, extraordinary technologies were invented, such as engines that can travel hundreds of kilometers on little fuel, materials that are as light as feathers but extremely resistant, batteries and light bulbs that can last for decades. These are all inventions that never entered our lives because someone decided that we shouldn't have them. It's a recurring pattern: an inventor, or more often a team of researchers at a university, develops a revolutionary technology, then a multinational corporation buys the patent with the absurd goal of putting it in a drawer. This is not a conspiracy theory, it is fact, and in economics it has a specific name: patent hoarding.
To give a few examples of inventions that were covered up in the 1980s, two inventors, Stan and Iris Ovshinsky, created a nickel metal hydride battery that could have revolutionized electric cars. The patent passed from hand to hand and, incredibly, ended up in the hands of oil magnates. The result is that the development of electric cars has been delayed by decades. Today, there is even a lawsuit underway by the state of Michigan against several large oil companies accused of hindering renewable energy by buying patents and not using them. A few years ago, Harvard University developed lithium batteries capable of being recharged ten thousand times and lasting fifteen years. Considering that our phone batteries start to malfunction after a thousand recharges, we can say that this was an extraordinary invention, so much so that the news spread around the world. The journalists who covered it wondered why we still don't have this technology in our smartphones. Of course, those batteries cost more, about four times as much as the current ones, but they last ten times longer, so why don't we use them? The answer is that battery manufacturers are in no hurry to market a product that lasts so long. If they did, people would buy fewer batteries and their profits would plummet. What's more, multinational cell phone, tablet, and computer companies don't want their devices to last long. It's in their interest for us to buy a new smartphone every two or three years. When a battery breaks, many people think about the cost of a new one and the time wasted finding an identical replacement. Then, so as not to feel left out because they have an old cell phone or PC, they decide to buy a new one. It's the same story with light bulbs. At the beginning of the 20th century, they lasted much longer, whereas today they last an average of 1,000 hours. This is because in 1924, the big multinationals in the electrical sector formed a cartel called Phoebus, whose main objective was to standardize the life of light bulbs at 1,000 hours. Anyone who produced light bulbs that lasted longer was fined. Those who did not pay the fine were excluded from the cartel, and since the cartel controlled global production, this meant the closure of the company. Italian newspapers also reported on this story.
Let's talk about something we've all experienced: we buy a new appliance and after two years, right on cue, it stops working, coincidentally shortly after the warranty expires. It all seems planned, and it is. It's called planned obsolescence. things are designed and assembled specifically to have a short lifespan, and if they can be repaired, the cost is almost equal to that of a new item. Everything is programmed to die, and this applies to products that cost a few euros as well as cars, computers, furniture, motorcycles, and even infrastructure. Think about it: the aqueducts of the ancient Romans are still standing, while some modern buildings and bridges are collapsing before our very eyes.
All this happens because, in the logic of profit, durability is perceived as a defect rather than a quality: if things lasted longer, people would buy less and the capitalists' pockets would deflate. This way of producing consumes our time and our lives. In order to produce and buy all this junk that breaks all the time, people have to work, and the time they spend in the factory or office is time they don't spend cultivating their authentic desires or with their families, living their lives. It's all wasted time. Let's think about it: working to buy products that break immediately and then having to work again to buy them again is not life; this is not progress.12Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNtGHAYDdo8
And then they tell us that competition is the engine of innovation, that companies fighting each other give us better and better products. This is also a hoax. In reality, if two companies in the same sector are fighting, as soon as one discovers something new, it patents it and, if possible, uses it to destroy the other. Trade secrets, patent wars, million-dollar lawsuits, all serve to slow down competitors, not to advance humanity.
There is a proverb we all know: unity is strength. if the brightest minds on the planet collaborated without secrets, without patents, without the logic of profit, many problems would already have a solution, many diseases would already have been defeated, hunger and suffering would be a distant memory. Instead, we work in competition, hiding discoveries, but in this way we prevent others from making improvements, thus slowing down progress rather than accelerating it.12Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEl6a1K9thK
Consider the world of software: there are programs developed openly, where hundreds of people around the world collaborate for free, and the result is that these programs often work better than those that are paid for. Imagine if this spirit of collaboration were applied to all sectors, to medicine, energy, and transportation. Surely many of us would happily live past 100 in good health.
Human potential in capitalist society remains unexpressed. What we could create can only be seen in science fiction books. To truly achieve this, we must overturn the starting point. We must produce what satisfies the real needs of people everywhere in the world. We must build objects that last as long as possible and can be easily repaired. We must devote only the necessary time to work, freeing up hours and years for real life.
My opinion on this subject is close to that of anarchists; everything we see happens because, in today's society, it is the capitalists who decide what to produce and how to produce it. They are the ones who decide whether to invest in a cure for malaria or in a new anti-wrinkle cream. They are the ones who decide whether to put a revolutionary battery on the market or in a drawer. They are the ones who decide whether our light bulbs last a thousand or ten thousand hours, and they do so based on a single criterion: their profit. I think that as long as entrepreneurs are the ones making the decisions, progress will be slowed down.12Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡb7ogSqshBt
Another world is possible, indeed, it is necessary if humanity wants to start living a life worthy of being called such, but to build it, we must first stop believing the stories they tell us.
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