Of course I don't believe this applies to me, as I'm sure you think this doesn't apply to you; we've been taught manners, to care about our neighbors and to plan ahead for our futures, haven't we? But that's just the point: we don't even realize that we don't give a damn. Not really.
I agree with this fully, its sad how many excuses we all use to ignore the constant onslaught of atrocities that are going on in the world. Many of them propagated by what ever government we are a part of. We get so bogged down in the relatively tiny disturbances of our own world that we're too tired to think of anything else.
We take comfort in the lack of caring of those around us, and when we get called out on it, throw our hands up in the air and say what do you want me to do about it. I won't say that nobody cares enough, maybe that's true, but if they are they went off to doctors without borders or some similar organization.
The sad thing is, there's what, 1000? 10,000? fuck lets go all out say there are 100,000 people who collectively rule the entire planet. There are 8 billion people on this planet, that's still 80,000 citizens to every world leader. We absolutely could change things if we gave enough of a damn.
let the company be owned by all who work there. Let everyone who actually works there make the decisions in a democratic way. If the workers decide, you can be damn sure they'll protect their children and not dump the waste in the river.
While this is true, I don't think that is the best solution forward. Capitalism gets a lot of well deserved hate, but most of the innovations we have today are a direct result of capitalism. That form of competition is a great thing, Giving a damn or not, the world is better then it was in the past. Greedy bastards seeking profit are responsible for life easing technology, and life saving medicines. This kind of competition is a good thing and should be kept going in my opinion.
What's important is for the people to take the reins and stop corporations from massing untold power. To give a damn about the people that capitalism leaves in the dirt, and to take a tiny fraction of profits from the uber rich to pay for it all. I don't really care if rich people exist so long as the poorest still have all their needs met.
The problem with socialism (at least the way I see it) is in getting the start up funds to create innovative technologies. We have private companies researching everything from rocket launches to brain implants, these are things that took a massive amount of start up funds and had an equally massive amount of risks. I don't see us having these things if we decided on a socialist system. It works great for ventures that are certainly profitable with an achievable start up fund, but its a serious cliff to climb for serious innovations.
Definitely curious in hearing what you have to say about that though.