by The United States economic system is not an absolute free market system. Although the market is labeled as “free”, it heavily regulates key-components within itself while ignoring other, more-detrimental industries such as: the fast food, natural resources, pharmaceuticals, and, most importantly, the healthcare system as a whole. Not regulating or nationalizing these core-components of the domestic market has been a direct cause of many serious problems within American society.
The Food Industry
Take the fast food industry, as an example… Allowing the fast food industry to run rampant, with little to no regulation from the states, has been very destructive to the citizens of the United States. The obesity epidemic has been absolutely detrimental to the young Americans, who are attempting to thrive in this modern age. We can assume that enabling your fellow citizens to digest excess sugars and unnecessary fats throughout their up-bringing, is, of course, going to bring the side effects like obesity, which itself can lead to: isolation, anxiety, depression, and other side effects associated with low-esteem and maladaptive behaviours.
To “push back” on one of the arguments against regulating the fast food industry… One of the more-topical arguments states:
“It is all an individual’s decision to consume toxic food, therefore regulating it would be unjustified, and an overstep of state intervention”.
If the case would be that the toxic food was priced within the same range as healthy food, that argument might have more teeth to it, but that is not the case. The case is that the fast food industry purposely lowers the quality of food to be able to sell it at a lower price range, and at the same time, it makes the food more-addictive with sugars, high-cholesterol fats, and toxic preservatives. The goal here is not only making certain types of food more-addictive, but also, making the food cheaper so the industry can appeal to the impoverished or poor class in society.
The main component, that makes this situation so dire, is the price range of healthy food compared to unhealthy food. A salad can range from $4-5 USD, whereas a burger from, say, McDonalds can be as low as $1 USD. This incentivizes impoverished peoples to consume unhealthy food. This phenomenon is the main reasons for why the US has one of the highest obesity epidemics in the world.
Another core aspect of this is soda comparative to water. The situation is the same, where a large soda can be bought for one U.S dollar, bottled water can go for up to three U.S dollars, making the economic choice feasibly easier going with the soda. The only, conceivable way to counteract this dilemma is for the state to step in, to regulate the fast food industry.
Either the STATE should incentive the fast food industries to use more healthy ingredients, or the state should close the price gap between healthy and unhealthy options. Either way, the STATE needs to step in to regulate these multinational companies, who are purposely poisoning the population of the United States.
The Pharmeceutical Industry and Healthcare Sector
The pharmaceutical Industry being private is, by far, the most detrimental thing to American society. Allowing medicine, in general, to be a commodity to be bought and sold, and allowing companies to make a profit off of this commodity, enables the some of the major problems we are bearing witness to in this modern age, including, but not limited to: the Opioid epidemic.
The opioid epidemic was not by and large, started by people going out and buying heroin from a shady black market, or criminal. These peoples’ addictions started from doctors willingly handing out pills like candy.
Then when the doctors can no longer supply these people’s addictions to these narcotics, the people turn to a cheaper alternative, a more illegal alternative like heroin, or meth.
When you let companies have free rain on making profit off of drugs, you will not have companies working for the betterment of the collective people, but instead, for the betterment of their profits.
For instance: why would a pharmaceutical company produce a cure to a disease or condition, when instead, the company can profit off of a drug that only limits the effects of the disease or condition? This way, they make more profit and willingly trap people with this condition into a unwritten contract, like a pet needing food from its owner (one must also wonder about the extent to which veterinary pharmaceuticals are also subject to a similar dynamic in terms of managing rather than curing a disease or condition).
Creating a system of drug addiction and mental slavery has caused the population to be perpetually-addicted, perpetually-unhealthy pets. This kind of a dynamic drastically lowers quality of life. The free-market pharmaceutical industry creates a drug-addicted society of slaves and must be extinguished.
I would suggest completely nationalizing the healthcare and pharmaceutical industry. That is truly the only way for the impoverished collective to break their metaphorical chains of enslavement. The collective must not allow the privatized healthcare sector to profit off of their suffering.
Natural Resource Management
Finally, the question of natural resources.
The privatized management of natural resources yields similar consequences as privatized pharmaceuticals. To trust a profit-based corporation to properly harvest natural resources has been absolutely destructive to the environment, especially in the American continent. Unregulated logging alone has killed tons of ecosystems, only for the net gain of companies.
Only the STATE can be trusted to properly harvest the resources from the environment, without pillaging those resources completely; for the STATE has a vested interest in the collective and the country in mind.
Only the STATE can properly harvest resources without killing the environment; for the STATE ideally has the well being of the citizens in mind, instead of a company only being interested in the net gain of the resources.
The STATE has the collective of the people in mind.
No ideal STATE would harvest resources so excessively to a point where the air quality would be so toxic that a collective of citizens would be uncomfortable in their living space.
But why should a corporation care? A profit based economy only benefits the company and not the collective… For private interests, the greed of money outshines the moral duty of the collective.
