Let’s not forget that a large part of the inflation, and especially on food and housing, was driven by pure greed and opportunism from the capitalists that control those basic necessities. And that’s something that could have been prevented with tools that capital permitted under Ronald Fucking Reagan.
it’s an eternal battle. every once in a while we pass legislation to try and reign in corporate power. like for example the anti trust act in the early 1900s
the issue is that public attention is temporary. eventually we move on to the next crisis and people forget. grow complacent.
corporate interest, however, is eternal. it’s persistent and never gives up. it keeps pushing, infallibly, in order to weaken the structures meant to reign in their power. whether by legislation/policy (AT&T and friends unilaterally killing Net Neutrality some years back, Disney signing into law expansion of copyright, etc) or through more subtle methods (buying politicians and getting people into positions of power that have no intention of enforcing the laws)
this is inevitably what happens with every democracy. eventually the vigilance fails and the structures of power are hijacked by opportunists.
although having said all that, I don’t think greed had much to do with the inflation we saw. Sure, some companies took advantage and raised prices more than they needed to just to inflate that extra juicy profit margin.
but realistically we’re headed to war and war means massive government spending which means inflation
You’re separating government from the capitalists and I don’t think that’s an accurate way of looking at the world. Capital will eat itself even more voraciously than it does right now without some mediating force on itself. Government isn’t a hedge against capitalism that mediates its excesses. It is a PART of capitalism that mediates its excesses. The anti-trust act wasn’t for us; it was for them.
But the reality that capitalism is a fundamentally unstable system can’t be fixed by blunting it. And as the rate of profit goes down, the very restraints that capital put on itself to ensure its survival must be destroyed in pursuit of that profit.
i think most legislation is explicitly for the capitalist class. that much we probably agree with
but i do think every once in a while, when there is a ton of pressure and the elites are scared, they throw a bone to the working class.
it happened with the antitrust act, it happened with the New Deal, and it happened in the 1960s with the Civil Rights era and the end to Vietnam
yes, capitalism will eat itself. it’s what we’re essentially seeing right now in slow motion. but there is something there in democracy beyond just capitalism. even if it’s buried deep down and impotent
