A response to the Buffalo News "Pipeline to Nowhere" Op-Ed

[Ed. Note: Being out with the flu, again, I am catching up on articles that are in the pipeline.]

The Buffalo News in its Sunday Editor's Column praised the efforts of speakers that made a presentation at the MST School on East Delevan Ave. about the horrors of crime and prison. The method used was a scare tactic that, quite honestly, doesn't work on some people, as noted in the op-ed.

Rather than praising the scare tactics, the editors should have criticized the economic system that makes incarceration a necessary means of controlling the population. The editors needed to criticize capitalism. Given that Warren Buffet, the “Oracle of Omaha” who makes his billions gambling on the stock market (the Holy of Holies of the capitalist system), owns the Buffalo News, it is very unlikely that this was, or ever is, going to happen.

Capitalism suffers from many fatal flaws, one being that it can not (actually will not) provide employment to everyone that wants (or needs) work. It needs a “reserve army of labor” (a fancy way of saying “unemployed people” ) to keep the wages and benefits of those that are employed down. It also needs the threat of being able to export jobs overseas to places where unions and other labor protections do not exist or are under strict control of the state.

Given this problem, capitalism needs a way to control the unemployed masses. This is known as prison. If the people had meaningful work that provided what they needed – food, clothing, shelter, medical care, education, entertainment, etc. - crime would go down and prisons would be unnecessary. Capitalism can (actually will) not do this because this would cut the profits to the stock market monkeys that howl and cry every time profits plummet or take a hit.

Therefore it needs prisons to control the masses. And thus the fear factor.. Capitalism thrives upon fear. If the workers do not produce enough, sales people sell enough, and work hard enough, then jobs will be lost and workers will have problems. Sad to say, this is a total lie and fabrication. The auto industry overproduces need by almost 50% every year and they still insist on increasing output. They also insist on increasing mechanization of the work force. And they wonder why they are not selling cars. (I think Samuel Gompers had something to say about this.) One can also look at the mounds of overproduced computers, other electronic gadgets, clothes, etc. for other examples.

So the Buffalo News holds the “carrot” of a job in the upcoming Buffalo-Niagara Medical Campus/Corridor and the Solar City jobs, IBM, Yahoo!, and other technical position in front of the school children. If they play by the rules, stay in school, and do what the capitalist's appointed task masters say, they can land one of these magical jobs and live in the idealized and romanticized capitalist world.

Let's face it – capitalism runs on false promises and fear.

Perhaps the students that were laughing were not laughing at the presentation.

Perhaps they already know that the system is a joke.