Disaster Industry

The richest country in the world, with the biggest and best equipped military in the world, has just lost two 20 year wars against two of the poorest countries in the world. That should say something about the decline of American hegemony.

Furthermore, America has around 4 percent of the world's population and some of the best medical equipment and personnel in the world. How can it be then, that America has 20 percent of the world's Covid cases? Could it be that "the American way" of doing things and of organizing society is failing? I think it is, and I think the mightiest country in the world is dragging the rest of us with it. You see, America is the prime exporter of capitalism, an economic system that, in the end, has only one way to measure for success: profits. During the pandemic, often times we see in the news reports about failing supply lines. What we don't hear about is how capitalism is responsible for these long and fragile supply lines. When businesses, for profit's sake, move their production facilities to low wage countries, these long supply lines are a natural consequence. These businesses refuse to spend the money needed to maintain these supply lines, or even the national infrastructure, to safeguard the ability to transport the goods we all need, again, for profit's sake.

The global supply lines will crumble even further under the pressure of natural disasters as a consequence of climate change. Droughts, floods, fires and the likes will hit the low wage countries of the global south, near and far east first, which are the regions that stand at the very beginning of the global supply lines; it's where the natural resources needed for our high-tech lifestyles are found and mined. These problems, covid-19 and climate change, can only be solved with collective action. They span the globe, so they need a global collective effort to overcome. And that's simply not possible in an economy where the means of production are owned privately. Instead, these private owners will look for ways to reduce costs or even make profits in the face of these problems.

Moody's, an American business and financial services company, was included in the Fortune 500 list for the first time this year. It's close to acquire Risk Management Solutions (RMS), a leading global provider of climate and natural disaster risk modeling and analytics. This is so typical. America is the richest country in the world, yet it is the home of millions of people who flatly deny these two global problems. Millions of them believe covid-19 is a hoax, don't trust the vaccines, and are not convinced that human activities are a driving force behind global warming. Yet it is Moody's, a company as American as you can get, who acquires Risk Management Solutions. Not to help solve climate change, mind you, but to make more profits by selling pertinent insurance data and analytics.

"Today’s leaders face a complex, interlinked world of risks and stakeholders,” said Rob Fauber, President and Chief Executive Officer of Moody’s. “In the context of a global pandemic, the climate crisis and increasing cyberattacks, our customers must manage a wider range of risks than ever before. We are excited to add RMS and its team of world-class data scientists, modelers and software engineers to the Moody’s family to help accelerate solutions that enable customers to build resilience and make better decisions."
_{source: Moody's}

This is just one sign of many yet to come; with increasing natural disaster we'll see a fast growing disaster industry, instead of the much less profitable disaster prevention industry... Watch the below linked video for a comprehensive report on these matters.

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