It struck me earlier today, that our system of market-based Capitalism just might have a few flaws,
-- not least of which is that those "Corporate Persons", are by design, missing a few ingredients:
like foresight,
like compassion,
like community,
like a heart,
like a soul ...
North Dakota oil boom causes rents to soar, forces seniors to leave beloved longtime homes
by Associated Press, on WashingtonPost -- Nov 14, 2011
WILLISTON, N.D. — After living all of her 82 years in the same community, Lois Sinness left her hometown this month, crying and towing a U-Haul packed with her every possession.
She didn’t want to go, but the rent on her $700-a-month apartment was going up almost threefold [$2000] because of heightened demand for housing generated by North Dakota’s oil bonanza. Other seniors in her complex and across the western part of the state are in the same predicament.
[...]
It’s an irony of the area’s economic success: The same booming development that made North Dakota virtually immune to the Great Recession has forced many longtime residents to abandon their homes, including seniors who carved towns like Williston out of the unforgiving prairie long before oil money arrived.
[...]
“Grandma can’t go to work in the oil fields and make a 150 grand a year,” said A.J. Mock, director of the Williston Council for the Aging. Many of the seniors who are moving out “have lived here their entire lives and wanted to live here until they die.”
Grams should have planned better. Grams should have known that the Big Oil juggernaut would one day lay claim to her life-long neighborhood, uprooting its economy from the bottom up.
Afterall the Machine MUST be fed ...
To those "Corporate Persons" -- were all just resources, waiting to be mined someday ...
Who can put a Price on Human Dignity? Well they can, it's about $2000 a month in rent.
Who can put a Price on the Environment?
What is it worth, to our long-run well being?
What is it worth to our children? ... to our species?
What is Human Dignity worth?
Apparently not a lot -- whenever there's a quick profit to be had.
The Free Market run by corporate persons, will never price it adequately nor fairly -- the Free Market is forever stuck within its own short-term Time Horizon. From which nothing escapes the gravitational pull of its Commoditization engines. Nothing except their buckets of money ... or is that more like wheel barrels full?
Until we stop giving polluters a "free ride" for the long term costs of their pollution -- costs to be borne by our children, by untold future generations.
Until we put a "fair price" on CO2 captured -- chances are, not much will change; at least not change fast enough. The forces of Supply and Demand need their short-term incentives.
Until it is no longer acceptable for the Captains of Industry to breath out their smoke, into our living-rooms ... into our planetary living space; until they can no longer freely dump their waste into our aquifers ...
Until the Market-makers can no longer blame Market-forces, for their own cold, clinical, corporate decisions.
Until individual people actually start to matter again, there will be no escape, from the cruel logic ... of short-term laws of Supply and Demand.
How will us movable, mere humans -- ever escape such an irresistible Market force?
It's either move on, move over, or get cast aside ...
It's either get in line -- or get caught in the gears, of whatever the Market will Bare ...
Collateral Damage has always been the hidden price of progress cost of profits for those corporate-types. ... It's us human-types who end up paying those unseen costs, silently, somewhere in the cosmic background.
Welcome, to the Machine ...
It doesn't have a soul, either.