How then shall we think about the economy?
The mass poisoning of society by Pharma and other industries renders obsolete many heretofore existing models of economic activity
Jeffrey Tucker (President of the Brownstone Institute) linked today to a fascinating article on the 300 year anniversary of Adam Smith’s birth and his impact on the founding of the United States. I also recently started re-reading Robert Reich’s The Work of Nations (1991), that was the intellectual audition that got him appointed Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration. So I’ve been thinking a lot about “the nature and causes of the wealth of nations” as Adam Smith once phrased it. And I’m struck by how different our economy is from the Scottish economy of the 18th century and even the U.S. economy in the early 1990s.
In an earlier era, political economy focused on international trade, markets, the distribution of capital, taxation, the appropriate role for government, the division of labor, and the structure of corporations (amongst other topics). Later, left political economists focused on the role of private property, unions, and the impact of discrimination while right political economists focused on entrepreneurship, production, and prices. Political economists were attempting to answer the question, ‘How should we best organize the rules of society so that individuals, families, and nations can thrive?’
But all of that seems beside the point now, as the United States has undergone a radical economic restructuring over the last few decades.
The United States is now organized around producing:
poison (Pharma, pesticides/plastics, Frankenfood);
war (military contractors),;
energy (oil, natural gas, coal, solar, wind), and
forgetting (the big media industries that produce stories that narcotize society into ignoring how bad things are).
Big Finance provides capital for all of this and Big Tech/Big Data provide vast surveillance systems that give the ruling class unprecedented insights into the thoughts, feelings, and actions of every person in the developed world — that they then use to manipulate behavior.
Because these big industries own the political and regulatory system we are now living under a new form of fascism — not a partnership between industry and government but government as a wholly owned subsidiary of industry.
In the short term, this structure is great for increasing the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
First, Pharma poisons everyone with vaccines — a $50 billion industry pre-Covid, now closer to $100 billion annually in the U.S.
That causes widespread injury and now families/government/insurers have to spend money on asthma inhalers, Epi pens, Risperdal, ADHD meds, cancer surgery, epilepsy drugs, fertility treatments, etc. Those treatments were a $500 billion a year industry pre-Covid, now it’s probably closer to $1 trillion a year because of blood clots, heart disease, and strokes from mRNA shots.
Because Pharma and other poisonous industries cause neurological injury, this drives up the cost of education as now we need more instructional aides and school nurses. Across society, demand increases for psychologists and police officers. Neurological injury also drives up other costs such as supportive housing for those who cannot live with their families — ancillary, non-medical costs are a $250 billion industry currently that will rise to $1 trillion a year in the next few years. And those who fall through the cracks of social services system end up homeless which is another huge cost for society.
Pharma is upriver from everything that happens in our economy because they begin poisoning almost everyone in utero so everything that happens after that is in some way shaped by Pharma’s toxic chemical assault. And the ruling class is getting rich from this ongoing mass poisoning system (that creates the autism industry, the ADHD industry, the cancer industry, the diabetes industry, etc.).
It’s not just Pharma. Lots of industries in the U.S. are like this. The coal industry destroys mountains and pollutes streams throughout Appalachia and then one needs to pay for remediation of the contaminated drinking water and the health and educational impacts on poor communities. The pesticide atrazine alone is causing hundreds of billions of dollars of injury in the United States and that’s just one chemical amongst hundreds of thousands. If all of these industries were forced to pay for their harms they would be bankrupt but because they own the political system they can keep that from happening, for now.
If one only looks at Gross Domestic Product, the mass poisoning economic system creates the appearance that everything is fantastic. That’s because we pay ten times for everything (once for the initial poisoning event and then 10x for addressing all of the harms). So it appears that we are producing ten times more stuff — which should be a sign of prosperity — but we’re not. We’re maiming people and then keeping them barely alive until they have no more money and then society allows them to expire. Honestly 10x is probably an underestimate, I bet the actual number is 100x.
If Pharma and other poisonous industries had never entered the picture (if they had been properly regulated in the first place), there would be several trillion dollars less “economic activity” in the United States each year. But individuals, families, communities, and the nation would be vastly happier and healthier than they are now. We appear rich (in terms of dollars and cents) but, because we are pursuing such a catastrophic economic model, we are actually desperately poor (in terms of health and happiness) as a nation.
Pharma and other poisonous industries are mining our bodies for profits. It is the worst possible economy one can have and the greatest transfer of wealth to the ruling class in history. Right now the U.S. economy embodies the worst aspects of colonial conquest combined with a turbocharged fascism that is vastly more sophisticated than the Italian and German systems during World War II.
Because the primary industries in the United States produce poison and misery, the ruling class also requires a vast cultural system to produce ongoing amnesia about our situation. So countless streaming services and social media companies figure out how to capture our attention 24/7/365 so that we never actually stop and think about what is being done to us. Endless shows about heroic doctors and movies that dramatize the lives of CIA-type operatives glorify the very industries that are making us miserable. The mainstream news media is a vast propaganda system that trains us to understand events via certain approved narratives, assures us that we are living in the best of all possible worlds, and goes to great lengths to punish and ostracize any critical thinkers.
So when politicians or academics talk about taxation, trade, labor unions, debt, or any of the other topics that formerly occupied the minds of political economists, I just have to laugh. None of that matters if one does not stop the ongoing mass poisoning system first. But this obvious remedy to our problems as a nation is a tall mountain to climb because the poisonous industries own the political system and so many of the cultural creatives (those who would usually be engaged in the counter-culture) are employed in the business of distraction and forgetting.
Those are my thoughts for now. I will have much more to say in the coming weeks about what we do about all of this. I don’t think it’s hopeless because 1.) the problem is so obvious, and 2.) societal collapse has already begun. But for now I just want to put down a placeholder to say that the entire way that we think about the economy has to change, because we are living in the era of the iatrogenocide.
Blessings to the warriors. 🙌
Prayers for everyone fighting to stop the iatrogenocide. 🙏
Huzzah for everyone building the parallel economy our hearts know is possible. ✊
If you are able, please donate to Robert Kennedy Jr. and Ron DeSantis — the two presidential candidates with the best understanding of this situation.
In the comments, please let me know what’s on your mind.
As always, I welcome any corrections.
I loved your post, and was with you until your suggestion that readers donate to Kennedy. This alone tells me that you're on board with the genocide of innocent Palestinians at the hands of the murderous zionists. Sorry brother... but you really need to reconsider your position on Kennedy. I was with him 100%, given his work with CHD and Waterkeepers Alliance, but his support of Israel for their crushing assault on Palestine is unforgivable. 22,000 dead innocent civilians, half of which are women and children, and another 20,000 or more buried under the rubble and for what? So Israel can turn all of Gaza and the West Bank into a parking lot so they can build the Ben Gurion Canal? How many dead innocent children is enough for you? 20,000? 50,000? Listen to the leadership of Israel: "Every dead child is a dead future terrorist!"
Suggest you have a look at this as you might be unaware: The Real Reason Why They’re Killing Palestinians (Silk Route) Richard Medhurst https://www.bitchute.com/video/Cu8iuwpWdby8/
Spot on!