Capitalism
When Sitting Bull toured with Buffalo Bill's Wild West circus, he gave his earnings to the
street urchins he met, appalled that a society that could produce such wealth could
permit such poverty. He commented that white men were good at production but bad at
distribution, a criticism of capitalism that's still trenchant. In the wealthiest society the
world has ever seen, education, health care and housing are deteriorating into
speculative commodities out of reach for many, and the "economic recovery" — of what?
for whom? — is jobless. Capitalism and democracy are sometimes equated, but you only
have to look at the Bush administration, with its passion for unfettered corporate privilege
and loathing for civil liberties and public participation, to get over that fairy tale. Happily,
it's not overrated everywhere; Latin Americans are looking for more humane models,
from Argentines' surviving the collapse of their model neoliberal economy by creating
community alternatives to Bolivians' ousting a president who tried to sell off the nation's
natural gas, to the landless people's movement in Brazil.
Rebecca Solnit, author of
"River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West."
When Sitting Bull toured with Buffalo Bill's Wild West circus, he gave his earnings to the
street urchins he met, appalled that a society that could produce such wealth could
permit such poverty. He commented that white men were good at production but bad at
distribution, a criticism of capitalism that's still trenchant. In the wealthiest society the
world has ever seen, education, health care and housing are deteriorating into
speculative commodities out of reach for many, and the "economic recovery" — of what?
for whom? — is jobless. Capitalism and democracy are sometimes equated, but you only
have to look at the Bush administration, with its passion for unfettered corporate privilege
and loathing for civil liberties and public participation, to get over that fairy tale. Happily,
it's not overrated everywhere; Latin Americans are looking for more humane models,
from Argentines' surviving the collapse of their model neoliberal economy by creating
community alternatives to Bolivians' ousting a president who tried to sell off the nation's
natural gas, to the landless people's movement in Brazil.
Rebecca Solnit, author of
"River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West."
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