Perhaps it is true that job cutting is an economic necessity during a recession, but if that is so, then how does one get from there to the notion (sometimes espoused by our sillier pundits) that our economic system is a pure blessing?
Wouldn’t that one fact alone — the fact companies are more or less required to ditch some of their employees when things get rough — lead us to question the notion our economic system is an unqualified success?
Some day, we humans might come up with an economic system that serves us more than we serve it, but I don’t think that day has come yet.
Advertisement
My StumbleUpon Page
I think most of those who opinions we hear that our economic system is a blessing are well served by it. We generally hear establishment opinions mouthed through financially comfortable (and imo self satisfied) pundits.
I don’t think there are too many people lining up in the dole office who think it’s a blessing.
It’s hard to believe our economic system fails to provide most of us with at least some benefits. Yet, recognizing such doesn’t seem to preclude improving the system.
Perhaps this gives money for welfare? A kind of safety net for the unemployed.
It interests me, Nita, that no tribal people would allow one of their own to starve if they could help it, but modern societies, for all their wealth, are often unable or unwilling to provide a safety net for their less fortunate members. I think it’s just human nature to take care of the less fortunate members of our group, but I guess we don’t always feel everyone in our society is a member of our group.
Tribes don’t get as big as contemporary states (nations, US states, even most cities) do. With tribes, even if you don’t know a given individual very well, at least he/she is a familiar face. Modern societies have gotten too populous for that. An abstract-able person is easier to disregard. Modern societies tend to be less unified as well.
Saying I understand – not saying I approve.
- M. \”/
Sounds like a very good explanation, Meowlin. Thanks!
The “free market” system, or, more accurately, the sort of misty-eyed admiration of it, is terribly flawed. The system puts the sharks and the guppies in one big tank, and (under the “conservative” view) says that the success of the sharks and the failure of the guppies is part of nature’s plan. Economic Darwinism is just the rich getting richer.
Re twoblueday above: Hear, hear.
Of course (continuing the metaphor), if the “sharks” are stupid enough to gobble up too many of of the “guppies,” eventually they’ll run out of food and starve too.
- M. \”/