Profit Is Not A Dirty Word

On 1st October 2013, David Cameron started to draw up the lines of the 2015 UK general election by saying that profit is not a dirty word. This may indeed be true in some cases, particularly the small businesses that expand to employ more local workers to stimulate the local economy. The notion of generating profit to benefit local communities in terms of business and commerce and the overall wellbeing of a town or city is a good thing.

But when you use profit to kill off the competition, to benefit share holders at the expense of communities, to manufacture using the cheapest labour from abroad and deny employment in the place you want to sell from, to ignore community wishes by imposing yourself on them through expensive legal wrangles with the local council, to beat down producers and manufacturers, effectively stealing their profit to offer low prices without losing its profit. Then profit is more than dirty; it is cancerous.

The effect of profit can be realised readily through the UK energy industry. Natural gas is priced at the same level as oil, even though there is no particular correlation. Energy companies charge around 5% for the administration of people’s energy bills but this is taken out irrespective of cost variation. Bills go up quickly whenever oil prices rise but never come down.

Nestle, the CEO who says that water is not a basic human right but should have a monetary value, Steals water from areas in Pakistan and make entire villages uninhabitable.

Monsanto, who on their own website attempt to justify suing farmers for doing what farmers should be doing, also sue farmers whose land becomes accidentally contaminated by Monsanto products.

Scientists find a cure for cancer but because pharmaceutical companies cannot patent dichloroacetate, they have no way of profiting from it. Did you know there was a cure for cancer? Did you realise that the big pharmaceuticals are happy for you to die until they can find a cure with a profit margin?

The mainstream media won't tell you because they are owned by large money making corporations.

Large corporations in today’s society have become a malignant growth that threatens to wipe out any competition and has no care for people or environment. Profit is generated for the sake of profit, without consideration of the consequence it may have on local communities or even nations. And if David Cameron truly believes that profit is not a dirty word, then he must travel the same way that corporations must go; consigned to the rubbish heap of terrible ideas. There is plenty of evidence to demonstrate that profit is as disgusting as it can get.

And this is before we even begin to talk about investment banks, playing with trillions of (select currency unit) that make the cost of housing out of the reach of millions, pricing food out of the mouths of poor people and even selling debt on the promise of greater profit later.

As I understand it, the world is now run by 10 enormous companies, in which the game of monopoly plays out its final turns whilst all the other players, excluded so long ago, can no longer play. The consumer’s role is simply to spend what little money trickles down their way on what they decide we should have.

On 1st November 2013, the 99% (we the people) protested through various groups, such as anonymous, the occupy movement and the People’s Assembly, to make governments aware that we are no longer passengers on their corrupt journey. We reject the oligarchy, the large corporations, the austerity measures where we pay for debt we did not create. It would, in fact, be a simple and easy gesture for the 1% to reset the worlds economy by paying off all government debt tomorrow. But that is not the rules of monopoly and they would rather send millions of people off to die in a senseless war to stimulate the economy and generate yet more debt, rather than set up the board for a brand new game.

Not that we should ever want to play monopoly ever again. The experiment has proved that mega rich people and mega corporations create huge imbalances in the economy and starvation, destitution and poverty. The system, in short, is well and truly busted.

When the Federal Reserve was created in 1913 it was to stabilise the banking system. Now it produces money out of thin air to keep banks going in their quest for profit. Not even the tiniest percentage benefits the people or their communities. And yet the people and their communities will be expected to pay the price when it all goes wrong.

At the bottom end, people in the UK find their minimum wage jobs are not even living wage jobs. High Street shopping venues fill up with betting shops, estate agents, charity shops and fast food outlets. Gone are clothing, butchers, fishmongers, bakers, greengrocers and niche shops that could only survive on patronage and passing trade. Parking your car is virtually impossible. So people are forced to shop in the supermarkets, large department stores, shopping malls designed solely for national and global players.

To profit as a small business is a good thing. But the REAL economy, around 8% of the world’s money is stifled. Banks want to charge extortionate interest rates to small and medium sized businesses because they know the business paradigm is stack against their survival. If we really wanted our small and medium sized businesses to revive communities and flourish, we would have a bank dedicated to lending only to them at an interest rate designed only to cover the continuation of the bank’s reason for being. In other words the bank does not profit for share holders or for expansion, other than to service the growth of small and medium sized businesses in their catchment area.

Ed Milliband promises a price freeze on energy bills. This is a classic example of politicians tinkering around the edges of a much bigger problem. If this is Labour’s big play for the general election, they are not worth voting for any more than the Conservatives.

Liberal Democrat, UKIP, English Democrats and all the other small parties have the same problem with trying to work within this dying debt dependent monetary system. They are not worth voting for either.

Several attempts have been made to create a ‘none of the above’ option for disenfranchised voters to have a meaningful vote. In recent times this has not had a great impact of voter intention. So this means that for Ed milliband in 2015, he will be able to continue the ‘Labservative’ reign for another 5 years; although the poison chalice of running a country through a deep depression will soon lose it’s lustre.

Albert Einstein, a genius it is said and so maybe worth listening to, once said that, ‘insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results’. Swinging our vote from Labour to Conservative and back again has achieved the same thing time and again. They have had their time and their game no longer works. The world needs a new money system, a new type of political stewardship and an end to the nasty affair with usury.

Before financial gain, the word ‘profit’ was also defined as benefit. For David Cameron that is a particularly disgusting word. Perhaps the question we must be certain of before the next UK general election is who profits and who benefits? Will it profit you to vote for more of the same and expect that the result will be different this time?

Is that not just a sign of insanity?