03 January 2020 - Pandemic Profits

Systematic problems kill civilizations.


In the 1900s humans were rightly afraid that nuclear war and nuclear winter could end humanity: All the nuke may only kill mega millions of people directly, but the impingement of systems was (is) the greater danger. Without command and control of armies and financial markets the ability to mass produce food, goods, and services would kill the vast majority of the rest of humans in quick time. If the theory of nuclear winter proved true, then the ability to feed billions of people may be impaired for decades and humanity would be, at best, thrown back to the stone ages.


What if the ability to prevent disease amongst billions of people living closely together were irreparably harmed? The efficiency of cities to create progress cannot be understated. Cities are only possible if humans can live close to one another without undue risk of disease and death. Read this article about pharmaceutical companies profiteering off the emergence of diseases. Consider what happens if there is a new infectious disease which causes an epidemic every year. If it leads to a pandemic every few years, then humans will rightly spread out, the cities will empty, and so many other systematic problems will get worse.


Things that get worse if pandemics are frequent:

  • Lots of people die from diseases, of course, making all healthcare which relies on insurance more expensive

  • Growth is fundamental need of capitalism as we know it. Combined with already low birth rates, frequent pandemics leads a net loss of humans. Without an ever growing supply of labor and consumers capitalism itself will change in ways unimagined.

  • If people move away from cities then they may occupy arable land, cutting the food supply.

  • If people move away from cities then they may travel more, and all of their goods certainly travel more; transportation costs will rise.

  • If good and people travel more then, depending on how the transportation is powered, global warming may be accelerated.

Can you think of other problems which might stem from more frequent pandemics?


How would you reduce the ability of corporations to profiteer from pandemics, thus reducing their occurrences?