Profit Kills (Again)

February 9, 2023 at 12:01 am (Uncategorized)

I’ve watched with horror and a growing anger the death toll in the aftermath of the 7.8 earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria just a few days ago. The count stands at over 12,000 with numbers expected to rise. Commentators, politicians, and journalists wring their hands asking why? Insurance companies and businesses look to “acts of God.” (which says something about their God), but the truth is far simpler: Profit Kills

In 1999, Internationalist Perspective published an article in their journal called “Profit Kills.” It’s worth quoting the opening paragraph in full (and indeed reading the entire article):

The engineer was interviewed amidst the rubble of the
earthquake in Turkey. “How many of these buildings would
still be standing if the proper materials would have been
used in their construction?” the TV reporter asked. “All of
them”, the engineer answered with a tired voice, “all of
them”. Thousands were killed in Turkey and hundreds of
thousands made homeless, not by an earthquake but by
profit. The purpose of building houses in this society is not
to shelter people. It is to make profit. If this can be done by
providing people with a sturdy home, fine. If not, the
cheapest materials are used to knock together houses that
are doomed to crumble when the earth moves in Turkey or
Taiwan, when a hurricane hits Florida or when rivers
overflow in Mexico or China. The builders plead
innocence. If they followed proper procedures, they say,
their rates of profit would be so low that investors would
shun them, and they could build no more houses and
millions more would have to live in shanty towns. Would
that be any worse?

Almost a quarter century later, has anything changed? If anything it’s worse. And it will continue unless it is stopped.

The likely tens of thousands dead; the survivors left with nothing; the communities beyond: all this suffering can be placed at capitalism’s door, at a system that for far, far too long has in “normal times” allowed so-called natural disaster like this to occur, and in less normal times plunged the world into war.

What’s needed is not better laws, better inspectors or better governments, but an uprooting of a system which prizes profit, the pursuit of value over human lives, over human existence. It may sound utopian, like a pipe-dream, but it can be done. The world can be transformed by working people; the working people who make up the vast majority of humanity. To do otherwise is to prepare for future tragedies.