If this is revolution let it be so. It's not as if we can stop this now. The virus is here and so are people. Yummy squishy stupid lovely people (just keep your distance folks). All the better to incubate in. A virus bred in the test tubes of fast tracked capitalism. Poured into poverty and ghettos. Bred not by comic book supervillains or fiends but ordinary people who want to get by. A very avoidable misery, a very cyclical misery that can only end with the coughing death of this mode of production. It is just a sad, sick, tragedy that those who will pay the price are the least among us. Not the privileged politicians backslapping their own over what their mouthpieces call "a gamble".
A gamble. Like a spread bet, or a speculation on the price of food for a millionaire dining on the impossible. Our lives, a plague, a gamble. I wager 400 quatloos on a stimulus oriented toward big business and not the so-called 'big society'. When we all arise from our shelters there must be an accounting. A very big accounting.
Paul Mason puts it succinctly here.
Further discussion, from an in depth Marxist perspective here:
Now I hear supermarkets have instigated purchase limits: two tins of mackerel (or whatever) per customer. You might think I agree. Actually, no. I shop once a week (likely to change) as such I need to buy more than this limit. I eat mackerel, for example; one tin a day. That means I need 7 tins a week. So now how will that work? Could I eat something else? Depends what's available and whether it would also impinge on the limits likewise.
This shouldn't be a problem. The supply is there, but, because our supply chains clearly can't cope with pandemics, and because the people have lost their minds, it is. I have some sympathy with the latter; people aren't trained to cope in this situation. Reason must prevail however, proscribing to people what they can eat, which effectively is what is happening here - rationing, isn't the answer. It doesn't need to be the answer. We have got to work together and the government has to maintain supply. I do not wish to appear unreasonable but I I still need enough, we all do.
In fact I worry about rationing. If they, god forbid (though he can't rule out), bring out ration books then we will be told what to eat and how much. If you eat a particular diet (if you're a vegan for example) you are going to struggle. Maybe people can exchange their purchases, but I don't trust the government on nutrition as on anything. They've been pushing sugar and carbs for years; a diet that made me sick for two decades without a clue. I know better now and I'd like to keep it that way. I don't expect fried angel feathers and the golden caviar of paradise. I do expect healthy real food. In my case that's meat, a little dairy, eggs (which are currently rarer than actual Faberge eggs), and some veg. I'll wipe my arse with my hand if I have to.
What an epitaph. See you tomorrow.
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