One of the fundamentals of capitalism is that workers must be dominated by business by seeing to it that the fundamental source of availability of the basic necessities and even luxuries  comes through money and businesses which thereby have a tight control of life itself since the central source of money remains through wages for work. The US constitution is rather vague about its guarantee of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness since most of these are intricately tied to having money, and all businesses have a firm grip on who gets money and how much of it  can be acquired by individual workers, No matter what type of government is in power, the actual social ecology which controls the life of working people is the totalitarian formalities of any operating business which can, at the whim of the managers, control pretty much all of the lives of those employed.

Fundamental to any business operation is its profitability and the considerations of the life qualities of the employees is of concern to the business only insofar as it relates to the profitability of the business and the guarantees of life qualities of the average workers in documents such as the US constitution are of small consideration to business requirements on profitability. All this is openly recognized and never really challenged.

The only social instruments the general population has to safeguard their life qualities are through government regulation and organized labor and both these social instruments have been severely limited by the fact that the legislative and executive arms of the government, for the bulk of the last century and much of this one has been under the control of the major businesses which finance much of the operations of the electoral system and therefore dominate just about all of government legislation.

The only era in the economic dynamics of the USA wherein the power of labor organizations had a major effect on the relationship of the working force to business was during the administration of Franklin Roosevelt before, during and after WWII and that was permitted because the financial crash of 1929 when the controlling elite clearly demonstrated that the powerful wealthy, whose fundamental motivation was unrestrained greed, had little if any considerations for the economic health of the nation. The myth of the success of communism in the Soviet Union frightened the wealthy elite and permitted the growth of labor organizations which, by the raw power of labor strikes , fostered federal regulations that permitted the growth of a middle class which had sufficient income for a decent wage. Also federal controls of the profit system to guarantee social legislation for decent working conditions and a relatively good regulation system to prevent the social disasters of a system inherent  in the economics of unrestrained profits and greed.

When Harry Truman gained the presidency he initiated the long withdrawal of federal support of labor and its victories for decent government which culminated in the totally anti-labor administrations of  Reagan and both of the Bush presidencies that have done their best to destroy labor’s gains. Since the electoral system has become a hugely expensive enterprise through the economic domination of politics by the large corporations, both major political parties are now total puppets of the wealthy elite and democracy has deteriorated into a complete farce in the USA. The Soviet Union never achieved the classical promise of a government by the masses and always was a totalitarian fraud although it matured into a world power with sufficient strength to destroy Nazi Germany in WWII.

Although the brunt of the legislative system of neoliberalism was most evident in the USA the post WWII, economic power of the American corporate military complex dominated much of the world and lead to the  antisocial destruction of the social gains of public health and education of the post WWII era, the inherent self destructive economics unhindered by proper legislation of governmental regulatory systems inevitably resulted in the monstrous financial fiascos of the 2008 banking disasters. The quick Obama rescue which donated many multiple trillions of dollars to the criminals who caused the catastrophe with no consideration for the huge number of the general population who were robbed by the banks of their basic incomes openly demonstrated that the federal government was controlled by the  wealthy elite and the same illicit games began again.

The Trump presidency was the partial result of the massive dissatisfaction of much of the US population with the Obama administration since Hillary Clinton gave strong indications that federal subjugation to the financial sector was her prime objective and Trump posed to be the bull in the china shop to make some sort of turn around.  Trump finally revealed himself to be a complete fraud in this matter and totally inept as any kind of effective national leader.

In the last couple of decades there has been much advancement in automation and robotics and in times like now when the traditional work force presents major difficulties because of expense and the fundamental conflict of economic necessities in human sustenance and its conflicts with profitability, the elimination of human labor in production becomes an attractive goal. There is still quite a way to go before this can be attained, but the current problem of the pandemic is a strong spur to move it along. But beyond that, the fundamental relationship of earning money for work gone totally destroys the mechanism of the market place. If people are shut out of earning money to purchase the results of production they must get money from somewhere else to maintain the system. This is the basis for the growing interest in a universal income so that the population can purchase the results of production, but this is resisted by the wealthy elite since it destroys their main weapon in controlling the general populace. If everybody has the funds to live a decent life the wealthy and their somewhat idiotic sense of superiority out of a life of luxury loses a great deal of social force and exposes the most peculiar aspects of money as a prime value. Most of civilization from its very beginnings seems to have required a hierarchical social structure and if everybody can live freely absent of oppression wealth loses a great deal of its value.

This brief summary of how we arrived into the relative helplessness of our entire world civilization before a microscopic enemy is strong indication of human self deception towards its puny abilities when confronted by the immense resources of an unknown universe.  Life itself seems to be a rare phenomenon requiring very special, and perhaps, unique circumstances of this unusual planet within an unimaginably vast universe. What remains outstandingly obvious in our current difficulties is that humanity has never, within its entire existence, managed to understand and react sensibly to the demands of its very special environment to see to it that all its members can acquire what it needs to live an enjoyable and creative life. We are, of course, not unique in this. The twin forces of biological creativity and the most necessary  destruction of forms that cannot derive basic necessities from the environment must be eliminated to permit the success of better attempts. Even ants, who have existed far longer than humans, fight wars as do we. But they have been blessed with the ignorance of nuclear weapons and their manipulations of their environments have not been powerful enough to destroy much of life on the entire planet. There is wisdom in the fairytale of the sorcerer’s apprentice but the apprenticeship of humanity has no sensible sorcerer to rescue it when things get really bad.

The nature of life, therefore, requires punishment to force it to learn to succeed. The most important event in science in any endeavor is to learn that it is wrong, and to value that to discover what might be right. It is wonderfully educational and follows Nietzsche’s understanding that what does not destroy you will make you stronger.

Humanity is replete with immense stupidities and ignorances, especially amongst its most powerful sectors of economics, finance, government, and the military, and much of its traditional preoccupations. Its latest years have presented a small fragile gateway into our solar system and opened the possibility, in the somewhat distant future, to the much more vast universe. If anything is sure, it is most likely we will meet challenges far more fierce than any we have encountered so far in this most insignificantly tiny  bit of space we have dealt with so far. Hopefully they will make us stronger.