ネオリベの帰結か、有事の際のプランBの欠落か

平時のときの改革の方向性は間違っていたとは思っていません。ただし、有事の際の切り替えプランを用意していなかったことは考えが足りませんでした。

— 橋下徹 (@hashimoto_lo) April 3, 2020

Scientists have been warning of a pandemic for years, insistently so since the SARS epidemic of 2003, also caused by a coronavirus, for which vaccines were developed but did not proceed beyond the pre-clinical level.

Market signals were clear: There’s no profit in preventing a future catastrophe. The government could have stepped in, but that’s barred by reigning doctrine: “Government is the problem,” Reagan told us with his sunny smile, meaning that decision-making has to be handed over even more fully to the business world, which is devoted to private profit and is free from influence by those who might be concerned with the common good. The years that followed injected a dose of neoliberal brutality to the unconstrained capitalist order and the twisted form of markets it constructs.

Market signals were clear: There’s no profit in preventing a future catastrophe. The government could have stepped in, but that’s barred by reigning doctrine: “Government is the problem,” Reagan told us with his sunny smile, meaning that decision-making has to be handed over even more fully to the business world, which is devoted to private profit and is free from influence by those who might be concerned with the common good. The years that followed injected a dose of neoliberal brutality to the unconstrained capitalist order and the twisted form of markets it constructs.



And rightly so, according to neoliberal doctrine. As Milton Friedman and other neoliberal luminaries have instructed us, the task of corporate managers is to maximize profits. Any deviation from this moral obligation would shatter the foundations of “civilized life.”

パンデミックの危機は以前から、警告されていた。
もっとも、ネオリベ政権のもとでは、国民の健康についても民営化。そして、民間の企業は利益を最大限にするのが使命。

人工呼吸器の確保は、民間企業の利益にならいので、政府は十分な人工呼吸器の確保をしてない。

かくして、現在の悲劇に至る、とチョムスキー。

アメリカの場合には国民健康保険の問題もある。