As the logic of the prevailing economic theory demands, corporate managers eye only short-term profits and strive to grab greater shares of the market, disregarding all other things, or externalities, including the long- and short-term damage caused to the environment. To make things worse, no one in power cares about the externalities, because that is the institutional necessity of an unregulated market and the system to follow. "If you do not, you will be thrown out and be replaced by someone that will," Chomsky says.
This kind of mentality has created (and is still creating) huge problems in many countries and indeed for the very sustainability of the global economy and the human race.
The US, he says, is a typical example of "social engineering" by large corporations since the 1940s to maximize the country's waste, rather than conserve and replace fossil fuels. For proof, you just have to recall the "great American street car scandal" in Los Angeles in the mid-20th century, in which some big auto and oil companies joined hands to kill the electric-powered streetcar system and replace it with gas-guzzling vehicles.
Does he see any change and hope at all? Chomsky shakes his head and says large corporations still have tight control over social resources, something that even "kings and emperors" did not have. Vested interests still hinder change and social progress.
And change can only come through public pressure to dismantle the failed but yet to be discredited ideology. Today, people in the US are angry partly because of the continuing impact of the economic crisis. There is so much hatred and such a sharp decline in trust today that Chomsky describes it as dangerous and even compares it with the Weimar Republic in Germany.
But he says somewhere down the road of the present crisis, "we are going to have some version of the existing system, which would be modified". Long-term change cannot come in a day; "significant efforts" have to be made to depart from the present devastating path.
(Source: China Daily)
