Our Frustrations Run Far Deeper Than Covid Lockdowns

The reality is the roulette wheel is rigged and only chumps believe it's a fair game.

It's easy to lay America's visible frustrations at the feet of Covid lockdowns or political polarization, but this conveniently ignores the real driver: systemic unfairness. The status quo has been increasingly rigged to benefit insiders and elites as the powers of central banks and governments have picked the winners (cronies, insiders, cartels and monopolies) and shifted the losses and risks onto the losers (the rest of us).

We now live in the world the 19th-century French economist Frederic Bastiat so aptly described: "When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it."

As I noted in The One Chart That Predicts our Future, ours is a two-tier society and economy with a broken ladder of social mobility for those trying to reach the security of the technocrat class and a well-greased slide for everyone who trips and slides from relative security down to the ever-expanding ALICE-precariat class: assets limited, income constrained, employed.

As Bastiat observed, those rigging the system to benefit themselves always create a legal system that lets them off scot-free and a PR scheme that glorifies their predation as well-deserved rewards that are the natural due of their enormous appetite for hard work and innovation.

You know, hard work and innovation like this:

JPMorgan Makes $1 Billion From Gold Trading After Paying $1 Billion Fine For Manipulating Gold Trading.

Embezzling a couple billion dollars also earns you a get out of jail free card: none of the perps in Wall Street's skims, scams and frauds ever gets indicted, much less convicted, and none of Wall Street's legalized looters ever goes to prison.

And this is a fair and just system? Uh, right. Meanwhile, the reality is the roulette wheel is rigged and only chumps believe it's a fair game. Those who know it's rigged have essentially zero agency (control / power) or capital to demand an unrigged game or finagle their way into the elite class doing the skimming.

The net result is soaring frustration with a patently unfair system that's touted as the fairest in the entire world. Gordon Long and I do a deep dive into the frustrations with systemic unfairness in our new video, The Frustrations of Unfairness Are Reaching a Boiling Point.

The key takeaway in my view is the unfairness isn't limited to the economy, society or politics-- it's manifesting in all three realms. It isn't just frustration with domestic issues--the global economic order is also a source of unfairness and powerlessness.

We each drew up a list of specific drivers of unfairness / frustration. Here's my list:



And here's Gordon's list:



There is much more in our presentation. These are the dynamics that are tearing apart our social cohesion and that will soon start destabilizing the economy--regardless of how much "money" the Federal Reserve prints.



If you found value in this content, please join me in seeking solutions by becoming a $1/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

My new book is available! A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet 20% and 15% discounts (Kindle $7, print $17)

Read excerpts of the book for free (PDF).

The Story Behind the Book and the Introduction.


Recent Podcasts:

The Frustrations of Unfairness Are Reaching a Boiling Point

AxisofEasy Salon #31: The Covid Episode (1 hr)

My COVID-19 Pandemic Posts


My recent books:

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook coming soon) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $5, print $10, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Pathfinding our Destiny: Preventing the Final Fall of Our Democratic Republic ($5 (Kindle), $10 (print), ( audiobook): Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake $1.29 (Kindle), $8.95 (print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 (Kindle), $15 (print) Read the first section for free (PDF).


Become a $1/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

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NOTE: Contributions/subscriptions are acknowledged in the order received. Your name and email remain confidential and will not be given to any other individual, company or agency.

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Why I'm Hopeful About 2021

What we need is not a return to the corrupt, tottering kleptocracy of 2019, but a re-democratization of capital, agency and money.

I'm hopeful about 2021, and no, it's not because of the vaccines or the end of lockdowns or anything related to Covid. The status quo is cheering the fantasy that we'll soon return to the debt-soaked glory days of 2019 when everything was peachy.

The problem with this "brand" of magical thinking is that stripped of self-serving PR, the world of 2019 was an autocratic kleptocracy stripmining the planet to enrich the few at the expense of the many. Viewed through this lens, what's hopeful isn't returning to an autocratic kleptocracy but moving beyond it.

The most hopeful thing in my mind is that the Status Quo is devolving from its internal contradictions and excesses. Here's the status quo in a nutshell:

The solution to too much debt is more debt.

The solution to autocratic elites hogging wealth and power is to give the elites more wealth and power.

And so on: every status quo "solution" boils down to doing more of what's failed spectacularly because it serves the interests of the few at the top of the wealth-power pyramid.

The Great Reset is a perfect example of this insanity: now that we've destroyed the planet with our private jets, greed and corruption, give us even more power over you.

The status quo is a perverse, intensely destructive system with powerful incentives for predation, exploitation, fraud and complicity. That's the world of 2019; do we really want to go back to that? And even if we could, how long would it last? Another year or two? And at what cost to social cohesion and the planet?

A more humane, sustainable world lies beyond the Status Quo. The problem is those reaping the immense rewards of the privileged insiders will fight any reform tooth and nail, so the only real way to advance the interests of the common good is for the rigged, rotten, corrupt, unsustainable status quo to crumble to dust.

I know many smart, well-informed people expect the worst once the Status Quo (the Savior State and its kleptocratic banking / corporatocracy partners) devolves, and there is abundant evidence of the ugliness of human nature under duress.

But we should temper this Id ugliness with the stronger impulses of community and compassion. If greed and rapaciousness were the dominant forces within human nature, then the species would have either died out at its own hand or been limited to small savage populations kept in check by the predation of neighboring groups, none of which could expand much because inner conflict would limit their ability to grow.

The remarkable success of humanity as a species is not simply the result of a big brain, opposable thumbs, year-round sex or even language; it is ultimately the result of social and cultural associations that act as a "network" for storing knowledge and relationships-- what we call intellectual and social capital.

I have devoted significant portions of my books--

Survival+: Structuring Prosperity for Yourself and the Nation
(free chapter PDF)

An Unconventional Guide to Investing in Troubled Times
(free chapter)

Resistance, Revolution, Liberation
(free chapter)

A Radically Beneficial World: Automation, Technology & Creating Jobs for All
(free chapter PDF)

Inequality and the Collapse of Privilege

Money and Work Unchained
(free chapter PDF)

Pathfinding our Destiny
(free chapter PDF)

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(free chapter PDF)

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet
(free chapter PDF)

--to an explanation of how community, sustainability, the public good and self-reliance have all atrophied under the relentless expansion of the autocratic Corporate-State kleptocracy.

The social capital and "return on investment" earned from investing time and energy in community and other social networks has been replaced by a check from the Central State--an MMT/UBI (Universal Basic Income) transfer payment that surely beats the troublesome work of investing in community in terms of risk and return.

The net result of the Savior State dominating society and the economy is the rise of a pathological mindset of entitlement and resentment--the two are simply two sides of the same coin. You cannot separate them.

Once self-reliance has been lost, so too has self-confidence been lost, and the Savior State dependent--individual and corporation alike--soon distrusts their ability to function in an open market.

This is a truly sad, self-destructive state of affairs, and deeply, tragically ironic. The calls for "help" quickly lead to dependence on the Savior State and corporate monopolies, and that dependence quickly breeds complicity and silence in the face of repression and predation by the State and its corporate partners.

In a very real sense, citizens relinquish their citizenship along with their self-reliance and self-worth once they accept dependence on the State. Citizenship in the original Greek concept was not simply the granting of rights to do as one pleased; it also demanded a commitment to serve the interests of the many via personal sacrifice.

I often mention that the U.S. has much to learn from so-called Third World countries that are poorer in resources and credit. In many of these countries, the government is the police, the school and the infrastructure of roadways and energy. Many of these countries are systemically corrupt, and the State is the engine and enforcer of corruption.

Rather than something to be embraced and lobbied, involvement with the State is something to be avoided as a risk. As a result, people depend on their social capital and community for sustenance, support, work and connections.

This is not altruism, it is mutually beneficial.

Once a community dissolves into atomized individuals who each get a payment from the Central State, then they no longer need each other. Rather, other dependents on the State are viewed as competitors for the State's resources.

These atomized, isolated individuals have a perverse relationship with the State and what remains of the community around them: lacking the self-worth earned from work or engagement/investment in a community, then their only outlet for self-identity is consumption: what they wear, eat, drink, etc. as consumers. This lack of purpose and meaning is destructive to well-being; we all want to be needed and valued by our circle and society.

This dependence on the State and corporate monopolies also serves the State's goal, which is a passive, compliant populace of dependents, and distracted, passive workers who enrich the owners of corporations with their labor and pay their taxes to the state. This dependence on the State and a hollow consumerism are ontologically bound: each feeds the other.

The era of debt-based consumption as the engine of "growth" and "prosperity" is coming to an end. Adding debt no longer creates growth; it actually takes away from the economy by expanding debt service (interest payments).

The vast majority of developed-world people have had the basics of life since the late 1960s -- transport, food, shelter and utilities. The "growth" since then depended on cheap, abundant oil and a consumerist mentality in which one constantly re-defines one's identity not from social investments in the shared community but from consumption of corporate goods and services funded by credit.

Not coincidentally, this dominance of consumption as the only metric for "growth" (as opposed to, say, productive activity) has been paralleled by the dominance of the Central State.

The end of credit-based consumption will be a very positive development, as will the devolution of the Savior State. The Savior State is like cheap oil--both are at their peaks and are starting their inevitable slide down the S-curve. The world they created was not as positive for human fulfillment and happiness as we have been told.

Indeed, study after study has found that people with the basics for life, a higher purpose that requires sacrifice and a tight-knit community are far and away happier than isolated, atomized, insecure consumers, regardless of their wealth and consumption.

This potential to re-humanize and re-democratize our economy and society is why I am hopeful. What we need is not a return to the corrupt, tottering kleptocracy of 2019, but a re-democratization of capital, agency and money. More on that later this week.





If you found value in this content, please join me in seeking solutions by becoming a $1/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

My new book is available! A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet 20% and 15% discounts (Kindle $7, print $17)

Read excerpts of the book for free (PDF).

The Story Behind the Book and the Introduction.


Recent Podcasts:

AxisofEasy Salon #31: The Covid Episode (1 hr)

My COVID-19 Pandemic Posts


My recent books:

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook coming soon) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $5, print $10, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Pathfinding our Destiny: Preventing the Final Fall of Our Democratic Republic ($5 (Kindle), $10 (print), ( audiobook): Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake $1.29 (Kindle), $8.95 (print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 (Kindle), $15 (print) Read the first section for free (PDF).


Become a $1/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

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NOTE: Contributions/subscriptions are acknowledged in the order received. Your name and email remain confidential and will not be given to any other individual, company or agency.

Thank you, Simon S. ($10/month), for your outrageously generous pledge to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

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The One Chart That Predicts our Future

That our "leadership" reckons "bread and circuses" is what the stripmined bottom 90% want is beyond pathetic.

There's one chart that predicts our future, and no, it's not related to Covid--it's related to capital, specifically the concentration of capital and power in the hands of the few at the expense of the many.

The chart is a map, courtesy of Brookings, showing the roughly 500 counties Biden won and the roughly 2,500 counties Trump won. This might seem like a chart of political polarization, and superficially that's clear, but the real polarization is economic-financial: there are two economies in America, and there's very little commonality in the two economies.

70% of America's economy is generated in fewer that 500 counties; the other 2,500 counties are left with the remaining 30%. The nation's productive capital is even more concentrated in a few hands and regions, and since income and political power flow to capital, the financial disparity / inequality far exceed the 70/30 split depicted in this political map.

Ownership of capital is concentrated in the hands of the top 10%, as the chart of equity ownership reveals, but the concentration is actually much more limited: the top 0.1% control so much wealth / capital that they "own" virtually all the power.

I hope it's not a big surprise that America is now a rigidly two-tier society and economy. If you're an executive at a big Wall Street investment bank, you can rig markets and embezzle billions and you'll never face any personal legal consequences such as being indicted for fraud and being imprisoned.

But try being an employee at a local credit union and embezzle $5,000--a prison sentence is very predictable.

If you're one of the 500,000+ people busted for possessing cannabis in the U.S. every year, then you're not rich and powerful, because when the spoiled-rotten child of the rich and powerful gets busted, the charges are quietly dropped, or cut to a modest fine and a misdemeanor, etc.

"Justice" is for sale in the U.S., along with rigged markets, political power, healthcare and everything else. Why should we be surprised that the economy is also two-tiered?

The lower tier of the U.S. economy has been decapitalized: debt has been substituted for capital. Capital only flows into the increasingly centralized top tier, which owns and profits from the rising tide of debt that's been keeping the second tier afloat for the past 20 years.

The saying follow the money is only half-right--more importantly, follow the capital because income and power flow to capital. As this RAND report documents, $50 trillion has been siphoned from labor and the lower tier of the economy to the top-tier elites who own the vast majority of the capital: Trends in Income From 1975 to 2018.

What's missing from the political map is the staggering percentage of residents in the wealthiest 500 counties who are precariats living paycheck to paycheck, the ALICE Americans: Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed.

As I've often observed here, globalization and financialization have richly rewarded the top 0.1% and the top 5% technocrat class that serves the elites' interests. These elites and their capital are concentrated in urban counties, and the feedback loops are self-reinforcing: the capital in the urban counties attracts more capital and talent (skilled labor), bleeding the other 2,500 counties of skilled labor and capital.

America has no plan to reverse this destructive tide. Our leadership's "plan" is benign neglect: just send a monthly stipend of bread and circuses to all the disempowered, decapitalized households, urban and rural, so they can stay out of trouble and not bother the elites' continued pillaging of America and the planet.

There's a lot of big talk about rebuilding infrastructure and the Green New Deal, but our first question must always be: cui bono, to whose benefit? How much of the spending will actually be devoted to changing the rising imbalances between the haves and the have-nots, the ever-richer who profit from rising debt and the ever more decapitalized debt-serfs who are further impoverished by rising debt?

As I explain in my book A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet, people don't want to just get by, they want an opportunity to acquire capital in all its forms, an opportunity to contribute to their communities, to make a difference, to earn respect and pride.

That our "leadership" reckons bread and circuses is what the stripmined bottom 90% want is beyond pathetic. This map dictates our future, which is the pendulum of wealth and power being concentrated in the hands of the greediest, most rapacious few reaching an extreme and then reversing to the other extreme. How that plays out is anyone's guess, but the pendulum swing to an extreme at the other end of the spectrum is already baked in: the way of the Tao is reversal.







If you found value in this content, please join me in seeking solutions by becoming a $1/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

My new book is available! A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet 20% and 15% discounts (Kindle $7, print $17)

Read excerpts of the book for free (PDF).

The Story Behind the Book and the Introduction.


Recent Podcasts:

AxisofEasy Salon #31: The Covid Episode (1 hr)

My COVID-19 Pandemic Posts


My recent books:

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook coming soon) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $5, print $10, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Pathfinding our Destiny: Preventing the Final Fall of Our Democratic Republic ($5 (Kindle), $10 (print), ( audiobook): Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake $1.29 (Kindle), $8.95 (print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 (Kindle), $15 (print) Read the first section for free (PDF).


Become a $1/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

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NOTE: Contributions/subscriptions are acknowledged in the order received. Your name and email remain confidential and will not be given to any other individual, company or agency.

Thank you, David C. ($10/month), for your outrageously generous pledge to this site -- I am greatly honored by your steadfast support and readership.

Thank you, Baber F. ($5/month), for your marvelously generous pledge to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Read more...

Vaccines--Too Little, Too Late?

Trust in institutions, authorities and Big Pharma is scraping the bottom of the barrel, and rushing these vaccines into mass use with extremely high expectations of efficacy is setting up the potential for a devastating loss of trust in the vaccines should they fail to live up to the claims of 100% safety and 95% effectiveness.

We're being assured by Pfizer and Moderna that their Covid vaccines are 95% effective and are safe enough to be injected into hundreds of millions of people. Before accepting these extremely consequential claims, let's look at the actual testing process and results.

In the Pfizer trial, half of the 44,000 volunteers received the vaccine and the other half got a placebo shot. Then the researchers waited around to see how many of the volunteers randomly came down with Covid. Pfizer reported that out of 170 cases of Covid, 162 were in the placebo group and eight were in the vaccine group.

So a total of 0.386% of the 44,000 volunteers came down with Covid by means unknown, and this tiny sample is the foundation of grandiose claims of 95% effectiveness? Note the incredibly small sample size. If even 3% of the test group had contracted Covid, the sample size would be 1,320 people--still a small number but considerably more persuasive than 1/3rd of 1% (170).

These results tell us very little about what we really need to know. Allow me to propose a test protocol that would tell us what we need to know.

Take 100 politicians, authorities and Big Pharma executives, give them two doses of vaccine and then have them serve 4-hour shifts in a crowded ward of severely ill Covid patients for a week, without any masks or protective gear. In other words, expose them to sustained, intimate contact with patients with severe cases of Covid, spending hours every day in a soup of virus.

If 100 people took the measles vaccine, would they hesitate to expose themselves to measles patients? No, because the measles vaccine is close to 100% effective. If the politicians and Big Pharma executives refused to participate in this trial, that would tell us all we really need to know about the effectiveness of their Covid vaccine.

But the trial isn't finished--not by a long shot. We need to know if the vaccinated people can still transmit the virus to unvaccinated people. So at the end of their shift, the 100 politicians, authorities and Big Pharma execs clean up and then crowd into a poorly ventilated bar with 100 unvaccinated volunteers, singing, dancing and breathing the same fetid air for two hours every night.

Next, repeat this trial protocol with another 100 people, 50 of whom have chronic conditions such as hypertension, metabolic disorders or COPD, and 50 who are 65 years of age or older. The only way we'll really know if the vaccine is effective for at-risk people is to do a rigorous test like this.

Third, repeat the trial protocol with 100 people who have autoimmune disorders or family histories of autoimmune disorders. There is no other way to discover the potentially harmful consequences of the vaccine on those with a propensity for autoimmune disorders other than a rigorous test of the vaccine, i.e. sustained exposure to the virus over extended periods of time.

Lastly, monitor all the volunteers daily for six months for any side effects of the vaccine. It will take years to really know what side effects may manifest, but six months would at least establish a baseline of safety.

The results of these trials would tell us what we absolutely need to know before we blindly inject tens of millions of people with these vaccines:

1. Will the vaccine offer rock-solid protection against sustained exposure to the virus?

2. Can vaccinated people transmit the virus to unvaccinated people?

3. Will the vaccine protect at-risk people without causing any adverse effects in the most vulnerable groups, including those with autoimmune disorders?

Let's also be aware of the limits of any vaccine, even one that's 95% effective. No vaccine will stop the rapid advance of the virus in the next few months, nor will it stop America's healthcare system from unraveling: U.S. Healthcare Is Unraveling (November 17, 2020).

The virus won't stop health care personnel from burning out and becoming too exhausted to go to work.

Nor will it make all the post-Covid symptoms of those who came down with acute Covid go away. These conditions will demand extended care on an unprecedented scale.

Let's also ponder the potential effects on public trust should the vaccine fail to live up to its advertised effectiveness (95%), or some of those who get the vaccine come down with severe side-effects, or suffer the misfortune of dying from unknown causes.

Trust in institutions, authorities and Big Pharma is scraping the bottom of the barrel, and rushing these vaccines into mass use with extremely high expectations of efficacy is setting up the potential for a devastating loss of trust in the vaccines should they fail to live up to the claims of 100% safety and 95% effectiveness.

95% effectiveness sounds good, but 5% of 300 million Americans is still 15 million people. Toss in the potential for side-effects and there's still a roulette wheel spinning that every individual will have to consider. Behaviors will not time-travel back to 2019, even with a 95% effective vaccine.

A great many people will decline the vaccine until they see how the first wave of volunteers fare. Another consequential number will refuse the vaccine for any one of numerous reasons. A third group will put it off because doubts remain: maybe a new vaccine will be even better.

The vaccines are too little, too late: too little is known about their mass effectiveness and eventual side effects, and it's too late to affect the current advance of the virus, the long-term consequences of those with post-Covid conditions or reverse time to the era before behaviors changed.





If you found value in this content, please join me in seeking solutions by becoming a $1/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

My new book is available! A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet 20% and 15% discounts (Kindle $7, print $17)

Read excerpts of the book for free (PDF).

The Story Behind the Book and the Introduction.


Recent Podcasts:

AxisofEasy Salon #30: Doc Searls on "That Weird House of Cards Feeling around Everything" (1 hr)

My COVID-19 Pandemic Posts


My recent books:

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook coming soon) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $5, print $10, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Pathfinding our Destiny: Preventing the Final Fall of Our Democratic Republic ($5 (Kindle), $10 (print), ( audiobook): Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake $1.29 (Kindle), $8.95 (print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 (Kindle), $15 (print) Read the first section for free (PDF).


Become a $1/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

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NOTE: Contributions/subscriptions are acknowledged in the order received. Your name and email remain confidential and will not be given to any other individual, company or agency.

Thank you, John G. ($10/month), for your outrageously generous pledge to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Thank you, Darren ($5/month), for your marvelously generous pledge to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Read more...

U.S. Healthcare Is Unraveling

The confidence that there will always be facilities and professionals to care for us is no longer realistic.

I've covered the systemic problems of U.S. healthcare for over a decade, and as a result I've attracted numerous healthcare professionals as correspondents. I've been corresponding with some for almost 15 years, and this correspondence has given me a sobering education in the realities of our fully financialized (and thus hollowed-out) healthcare system. I've shared many of the professionals' insights over the years, for example:

Can "Sickcare" Survive the Pandemic? (April 14, 2020)
Like the rest of the financialization machine, sickcare was never sustainable.

The hollowing out of financialization has been accelerating for over a decade. In effect, there are two tiers of healthcare: the "sickcare" system managed by profiteering, predatory, parasitic corporations and their non-healthcare managers/shareholders who are seeking the $30 million payday, the $300 million payday or the $3 billion payday.

The second tier is composed of the overworked, over-regulated healthcare professionals trying their best to provide care within the hollowed out, unaffordable dysfunctional, unsustainable "sickcare" system of rapacious cartels, compliance managers, debt deals, lobbyists, unsafe medications passed off as "safe," off-patent medications brought back under patent protection via pathetically transparent formula tweaks, billions of dollars of pharmaceutical adverts directed at patients, a practice that was illegal a generation ago, and so on in an endless profusion of skims, scams, rackets and corruption.

Needless to say, operating in a system that optimizes greed, profiteering and corruption and views healthcare as a profit-maximizing venture is difficult for everyone but the sociopaths at the top raking in millions. Those in the lower tier trying to deliver care are finding a system shredded by cost-cutting (i.e. profit-maximization), stripped of supplies and burdened by counterproductive standards of care and punitive compliance regulations.

The demands to treat the soaring caseload of Covid patients are pushing the system toward breakdown. As the chart of Covid hospitalizations shows, current hospitalizations are already 10,000 above previous peaks (70,000 compared to 60,000) and are estimated to reach 100,000 within a few weeks.



A significant percentage of health care personnel (HCP) contract Covid, and 4% of those who are hospitalized have died: COVID-19 Associated Hospitalizations Among Health Care Personnel (CDC.GOV)
Analysis of COVID-19 hospitalization data from 13 sites indicated that 6% of adults hospitalized with COVID-19 were HCP.

In addition to the very real risks to their own health, many healthcare professionals have parents, children or grandchildren to care for at home, and so the risks they face at work impact their families and that influences their life decisions. How much risk and stress can one absorb before it's no longer worth it or it's no longer possible to force yourself to endure another exhausting shift?

As shifts become longer, burnout becomes a real threat. Even before covid, burned out physicians were leaving, as this chart reveals:



Doctors Are Calling It Quits Under Stress of the Pandemic (NYT.com)
Thousands of medical practices are closing, as doctors and nurses decide to retire early or shift to less intense jobs.

Burnout Nation (May 14, 2019)

'I cry before work': US essential workers burned out amid pandemic
Essential workers reported stress caused by increased workloads, understaffing, fears over Covid and struggles in enforcing social distancing.

Why an OR nurse transferred to Covid ICU is quitting (twitter thread)

Most Americans don't seem to realize that once the Covid wards are full and the hospitals are understaffed, there won't be anyone left to provide care. As occurred in Wuhan, China, patients will be turned away because there are no more beds in Covid wards, and not enough personnel to staff temporary facilities.

Most people don't seem to appreciate the pressure being placed on overworked healthcare professionals or the consequences of mass burnout. At some point, people have to protect their own health and families, just like everyone else.

The confidence that there will always be facilities and professionals to care for us is no longer realistic. The U.S. healthcare system has been stripped of redundancy and buffers because neither served the almighty bottom-line. In effect, the system has been optimized to serve limited numbers of ICU and critical-care patients. There is no way to suddenly optimize this complex system for 100,000+ Covid patients and also care for the thousands of patients who are suffering from injuries or other critical conditions.

The exponential rise in cases will lead to an equivalent exponential rise in hospitalizations-- an increase that may well exceed the capacity of the system. Beyond this tipping point, the system-- like any system--breaks down and ceases to function.

Lastly, it's important to understand that demands for care will increase even if 100% populace eventually accepts a 100% effective vaccine (a dubious assumption for many reasons), as many of those recovering from Covid will require higher levels of care for months and possibly even years (Long Covid is poorly understood).

Medical costs of discharged German COVID patients 50% above pre-admission levels

Here are a handful of the dozens of posts I've written addressing systemic issues in healthcare:

Healthcare "Reform": the State and Plutocracy Stripmine the Middle Class (Again) (November 9, 2009)

The Inevitable Collapse of the "Healthcare"/Sickcare System (November 12, 2009)

Sickcare Will Bankrupt the Nation (March 21, 2011)

the Healthcare System Is Completely Broken (March 27, 2017)





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