I found this bit especially insightful:

There are a number of components that make up the blanket healthcare system in the US, each subsumed by capital in their own way, contributing to an infrastructure defined by extremely patchy coverage, absurd costs and declining, uneven quality. The dilemma for capital, starkly revealed now by the willful sacrifice of thousands of lives a day, is between, one the one side, allowing for the expansion of the social wage fund that robust public health measures would require, and thus cut into the already suffering rate of profit, and, on the other, letting the general health of the populace decline to the point where it cuts into productivity. Historically, the US capitalist class has opted to thread this needle very close to the bare minimum, foisting more miseries and indignities onto the working class as increasing portions come to contribute to the economy not primarily as labor-power, but as “medical consumers.” The private healthcare industry has a unique position within the wider historical process of declining profitability and the suppression of the social wage fund.

I hadn't really considered the perverse incentive that entirely privatized healthcare systems create wherein some factions of capital actually benefit from the declining health of the labor force.

  • Multihedra [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    I read a good chunk of it a while ago, goddamn was it long (good, but still long).

    I should start over and finish it this time.

    • ned_ludd [he/him]
      hexagon
      ·
      4 years ago

      So long. Only just now finishing it after reading on and off like all day lol. I thought the section on the state of the financial sector before the pandemic was especially good. I have a basic understanding of that domain from college but hadn't followed it much at all recently. You don't see too many people drawing a clear through-line from the pre-Covid economy to the current depression. It's usually treated as a totally exogenous thing - which it is - but of course the structural stuff from before is critically important for understanding how this all might play out. Anyway, these guys really know their stuff!

  • ned_ludd [he/him]
    hexagon
    ·
    4 years ago

    I should mention it's written by the two guys who are guests on the Antifada's political economy episodes