For some time now I have this feeling that capitalism is an epic fail. Putting short term profit over everything else just can´t work out. Try to measure everything in monetary terms is just insane.But just yesterday I realized how right I was. The officer at the customs service told me that my car has lost 137.5% of its worth. Why? Because it is almost twenty years old. How can something loose over 100% of its worth? Do I have to pay something when I give my car away? Do human beings also loose worth when they get older? When they can´t or don´t want to work any more? Do we value things as what the are, or only the use the thing has for ourselves? Is Super Justy just a peace of metal with weels, which can bring you from A to B? Or is it more? What about all this wonderful experiences I made with Super Justy? The journeys I made, and the places I discovered, drifting sessions, a police chase, offroad actions, solo choir singing venue, all the funny hours with friends, who drove with me. The St.Christopherus sticker on the glove box, which reminds me of my grandparents. Do all this have no worth? For sure it has. But you can´t value it in money. And thats the problem of capitalism. That everything has to be valued. Oder auf gut, alt, österreichisch: Was nichts kostet, ist nichts wert!
So if capitalism says to me my car has lost 137,5% percent of its value. I say "I will destroy you"
I am not that kind of car fanatic, or someone who hangs on inseperable to the past. It would be sad in someway to leave the car here in Iceland but still you have to take things as they come.
But this story led me to write down some critique on our economic system in general.
Companies make patents on nature itself to make money out of it. Farmers get sued because they have genetical modified crops on their fields they didn´t even planted there. People can´t afford esential medicaments because pharma companied have patent rights on the active substances. Oil companies are more likely to pay stakeholders dividends than investing in proper security. In Austria over two third of all values is owned by only ten percent of the people. While in the US almost a third of the population is massively overweighted, in other parts of the world over 16.000 people die because of hunger. Every day. But thats completely logical in this system. Because profit is the number one criteria for desicion making.
You can call me naive, but I like the idea that people are basically good. That they are good in their heart. That they want to create a lively society for everyone. And it is the system, we have constructed, we are living in, and we are reinforcing every day with our actions, that is bad. But people are blind, stupid and masochistic. They can´t capture the interrealationships, they can´t see the whole system. They are afraid of a change. They let divide themselves by the minority of people who benefit from this system. There are wars, racism, xenophobia. The people need education, they need to see the world, know other cultures, get cosmopolitan, feel the nature. Get citizens and members of the one world we live on. This even sounds quite hippie to me. But. What would be the alternative? Going on like now?
"This is the story about a falling society. During the fall she says to herself, to calm her down, again and again: Until now it went quite well. Until now it went quite well. Until now ... it went quite well. But the fall is not important. It´s the landing."The future may be frightening. Or exciting. But either way you see it. Don´t loose the focus on the things, which makes you happy. Your family, your friends, the nature, to laugh and to see a rainbow once in a while.
