The root of all evil
Capitalism, says the blogger known as Lenin. Well, what else did you expect from him?
Similarly, the priorities of profit mean that companies respond to market demand, which is not the same thing as human need. It is need, backed up by purchasing power. If it makes more money to produce guns for warring states than it does to produce medical equipment and food for their populations, then the guns win every time. If it is more profitable to allow Africans to die from AIDS than allow the production of cheap drugs, then AIDS has a free run. If it is profitable to encourage farmers to inject their cattle with chemical substances that poison our milk, that is what will be done. If it creates higher returns to cover food with harmful MSGs that also make it very addictive, then your Happy Meal will be one MSG-covered motherfucker. And if it turns a quick buck to expose citizens to carcinogenous chemicals rather than pursue safer products, you get all the lumps. As the film The Corporation shows, corporations are legally bound to pursue nothing other than the maximisation of shareholder profit. This involves criminality on an epic scale (cue list of companies that have broken the law over the years), as well as the exploitation of people and planet. But, as companies are also “externalising machines”, that is to say, organisations structurally compelled to try and transfer costs to someone else, they rely on states to regulate markets, provide infrastructure, use their diplomacy and foreign policy to create good investment climates, fight wars that clear markets etc.