Nah. At the end of the day it’s candidate A vs. B. Once they’re all corrupt you still have to decide between them and pick the lesser evil as you see it. They’re creatures of ambition and incentives, and the corruption is a feature of the system. It sucks but what can you do but vote for the corrupt dems or the corrupt republicans?
A far less compelling narrative is to handwave it away as "it's not really the system." The hyper-competition that capitalism breeds (for relatively little benefit) is the moral bane. More specifically, the recent history of touting capitalism while demonizing socialism has caused this shift, as opposed to the era of the New Deal, when social safety nets and public works were promoted as a net good. While there is a bill to pay for some programs (such as Social Security), the broader approach has largely been vindicated. Capitalism has produced severe wealth inequality, benefiting only a select few and breeding blatant corruption.
Not to defend the down votes, but it's not just one thing. The article praises the attitudes of Mexicans and French folk, both of which are also capitalist countries.
It's capitalism to an extent, sure, but it's also the culture of a country.
There are few, if any, countries which have taken capitalism to the same extremes the US has. The concept of a country which is so at the mercy of capitalists that people will beg you not to call an ambulance for them when they’re injured is incredibly foreign to me despite living in the UK, a country renowned for its financial sector.
Which I guess is to say yes, it is the culture of a country, and the culture of the US strikes me as money above all else.
I have no idea why people blame capitalism for things like a lack of socialized medicine (which I support for the record).
It's the American emphasis on individual freedom that results in a lack of government mandates for healthcare. Nearly everyone has healthcare, adding the small percentage who don't to the existing government-run system would not be a major financial burden, and cases like the one you cited are effectively (but not literally) zero.
Historically, there's been a tug of war between people who feel like you should be able to take the chance of financial ruin over an unlikely event and those who think the state should be protecting those people from themselves, leading to the disaster of a system we have currently. That's pretty much the explanation.
How do you know? Because you watch and listen to capitalist propaganda all day? And, on what do you compare? Do you compare it against poor people's lived experience in the U.S. that never get a second of media attention -- like the millions of unseen faces living under bridges in the U.S?
Your narrow privileged view is disgusting, evil, and feeding the beast of empire. Shame on you.
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