We spend our days doing what we are told. Jumping through hoops set out for us by the status quo. We are told go to school, we are told to become educated, we are told to get vocational training, we are told to go to University so we too can become "productive members of society". We get a job pay taxes and have our priorities moulded by the economic imperatives forced upon us by society. Why should the average person care that the FTSE of DOW Jones is failing, or that the media has declared we are on the verges of financial meltdown? The reason we care is because free market capitalism is the paradigm that society has sanctified and enshrined to become dogma. We have been fed this idea from the very day we start school. Children are told that through hard work and due dilligence they too can become lawyers, bankers or doctors and can become wealthy. This dream holds a monopoly over our lives and is reinforced at every turn by the politicians who seek to homogonise our lives. Binge drinking is a problem, smoking is a problem, drugs are a problem. Despite all this interference in our lives where is the health warning for capitalism. I would like to see £10 notes with similar health warnings to cigarettes.
"Warning - Money can seriously damage your health, compromise your values and seriously reduce your capacity for free thought"
The idea that armageddon will ensue due to congresses failure to back the $700bln bailout is one I find difficult to swallow. The reason there is panic is because influential and powerful people stand to lose a hell of a lot of money, where as poorer people stand to lose their homes. Which snake in the grass encouraged the average person that getting a house with an expensive mortgage was a neccesity? The notion that home-ownership is essential, is prevelent in the UK and America. No doubt encouraged by the banks and financial institutions who encouraged people to engage in obscene amounts of debt and got them further involved in a system which cares little for them. Now thanks to unfettered Capitalism these people who were sold a dream, have ended up buying a lie, thanks to the recklessnes of men in suits.
How could these people know any better? All through their lives they have been told that this is progress. Maybe Fukuyama was right - This is the end of history. But hopefully not ours friends.
