Mike Bloomberg sees the planet as a cash register

[bdamomma]

Mike Bloomberg sees the planet as a cash register — and that’s tilted his politics towards authoritarianism

article here

https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/mike-bloomberg-sees-the-planet-as-a-cash-register-and-thats-tilted-his-politics-towards-authoritarianism/?utm_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=3842



snip of article

When wealth accumulation is your only guiding ideology, it is easy to overlook inconvenient facts; as it is for former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s long-standing blind spot for China and its authoritarian political system.

For decades, as the bi-partisan neoliberal global free trade imperative took hold, Americans were told by political elites that, with a firehose dose of capitalism, China would lose its authoritarian edge.



Ah, free and unfettered enterprise, informed by the logic of the market, would gradually democratize China as the free exchange of goods gave way to the free exchange of ideas.

Yet, we see in the unfolding coronavirus saga, a Chinese government that punished Dr. Li Wenliang, an ophthalmologist for trying to warn local health officials about the coronavirus he had caught while working at the local hospital. He was accused by security officials of “making false comments” and “severely” disturbing the “social order.”

[dchill]

1. For Mike Bloomberg, the planet IS a cash register.

[mr_lebowski]

2. There's nothing inherently liberating about Capitalism itself ...

Capitalism as a system plays perfectly well with autocracy, slavery/indentured servitude, and large masses of frightened and oppressed proles.

Most rich Americans look the other way because they profit from China's horrific human rights abuses. China (and much of Asia) is mostly a lot of slave labor they can profit off of, and they don't GAF.

[former9thward]

3. Capitalism can't function under any of those systems.

Which is why early capitalists in Europe starting overthrowing monarchy/church control in the Middle Ages. Clashes between the two groups led to people coming to the so-called New World or North America where we eliminated the monarchy and the U.S. eventually because the top economic power in the world.

You say most "rich Americans". No it is most Americans period. People like being able to buy cheap products made in Asia. So, yes, pretty much everyone looks the other way. I don't see either party saying those products should be banned.