Douglas Rushkoff : We Wish to Inform You That Your Death Is Highly Profitable

The longer we pause from business as usual, the more time we all have to reevaluate the economy we’ve been born into. Yes, we need food, water, shelter, and maybe a communications infrastructure. But not a heck of a lot else. At times like this, we can see the value in farmers, teachers, and doctors… but all those guys in suits going to the city to trade derivatives, make marketing plans, and coordinate global supply chains? Not so much. The real danger here — what the billionaire preppers understand — is that any one of these “black swan” phenomena could be “the event” that destroys our willingness to keep running on the hamster wheel. They want us to go back to work, but for what?

They say it’s to save the economy, but they’re not talking about the real economy of goods and services. The American economy they’re concerned about is based primarily on debt. Banks lend money to businesses who then pay it back, with interest. Where does the interest come from? Growth. Without growth, the whole house of cards comes down, along with the wealthiest among us. We all have to believe in order to keep the hope alive and billionaires in their bunkers.

As far as the ultra-wealthy are concerned, the virus to be afraid of is less a medical challenge than a memetic one. We are waking up to the fact that we’ve been slaves to an exponential growth curve for the past 40 years, at least, and really much much longer. And we’re witnessing how the same exponential growth that gave the billionaires their fortunes is responsible for the fact that 40% of Americans have less than $400 in the bank for an emergency. The need for exponential growth also explains how we surrendered basic manufacturing and food resiliency to tenuous global supply chains. Sure, we can go back to work, but we can’t even make our own respirators.

Imagine if our main reason for returning to work was to make and do the things people actually needed to live good lives, instead of simply doing our part to keep the wealthy safely protected from the rest of us.”