Age of cancerous capitalism
The intensifying concentration of the wealth of the world’s super-rich is not so much a return to the US Gilded Age of the turn of the 20th century as it is the emergence of a global Cancerous Age of 21st-century capitalism (World’s super-rich are now worth $6tn, 3 November).
The cancerous dynamic is evident in a number of ways:
The inherent need for unending economic growth is increasingly outgrowing ecological constraints.
The relatively secure jobs in manufacturing associated with the Gilded Age that helped to create the so-called middle-class are being destroyed and either not replaced or replaced by insecure and lower-paid jobs, as well as by an increasing number of the working poor.
The now dominant role of financial capital in the global economy ensures that the ever-increasing growth in debt – along with the volatility of movements of capital – is the new, uncontrollable normal.
The growth of inequalities between nations shows no sign of slowing down, and is intensifying.
Just as a cancer in the body involves the destructive growth of tumours, so capitalism exhibits the same uncontrollable symptoms. It will take more than a rerun of a Roosevelt New Deal or a Beveridge welfare state to change this reality. It will take the economic, social and cultural equivalents of the surgery, radiology and chemotherapy used to deal with bodily cancers. Even then, of course, success is not guaranteed.
Stewart Sweeney
Adelaide, South Australia
• The philanthropic gifts made by the super-rich seem to be directed at things that enrich their own lives. Art galleries, sports teams. No mention of housing for homeless people, donations to women’s refuges or support for school lunch programmes in poor neighbourhoods. It seems that what counts as philanthropy when you’re a billionaire is getting “stars, sheikhs … all in the same room talking about the ball” – spending their vast wealth on their own fun.
Susan Grimsdell
Auckland, New Zealand
Conspiracy theories abound
Jonathan Freedland (3 November) rightly points out that conspiracy theories “only distract us from the real threats we face”. How well proven by Carole Cadwalladr on the same page, who attributes Trump’s election victory and Brexit to – what else? – a conspiracy.
More or less clandestine interventions to favour one side in these two contests did in all likelihood occur. However, considering them as the main factors in the outcome illustrates perfectly Freedland’s point. The elephant in the room is the rejection by vast segments of the electorate of anyone associated, rightly or wrongly, with the establishment, compared to which foreign interference is a small mouse indeed. But the Weekly keeps addressing in great detail the mouse, while neglecting the elephant.
Giorgio Ranalli
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
• An article suggesting that Trump, Assange, Farage and Bannon are linked in a clandestine network was placed on the same page as one claiming that conspiracy theories are a dangerous diversion. Was this a comment on the first article?
Stephanie Betz
Kambah, ACT, Australia
Libraries are a precious asset
Your back-page essay by Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett on the need for libraries (3 November) speaks volumes. Anyone who is deaf to the growing popularity of libraries in an era of advancing technology has obviously not visited one recently.
How else can one account for the 34 million users of New York City’s 212 branches in 2016, or the almost 10,000 visitors each day to Montreal’s bilingual Grande Bibliothèque, touted as the most frequented library in North America?
Besides offering free, quiet and comfortable havens stocked with hard-copy and digital resources that promote literacy, libraries exist as community hubs where young and old can meet to share the riches that their hard-earned taxes have provided them. It is more than ingenious, then, that in New York there is a move to enlarge local branches and build low-rent housing in the floors above them, thereby tackling two of the biggest problems of urban life: limited access to lifelong learning, and the burden of homelessness and poverty.
Richard Orlando
Westmount, Quebec, Canada
• Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett failed to note that the biggest advantage of the public library is the restriction on the borrowing time for a book to three weeks (my Canadian experience). Far from a negative restriction, this forces me to begin reading soon after withdrawing the book and to finish it in the time available. Many books I have bought remain in my bookshelf for months or years because there is no pressure to read them.
Tim Moore
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Briefly
• Reading Everyone is distracted all of the time (27 October) I experienced an emotion I had felt before. About a year ago a young friend of mine at university told me that a mutual friend of ours (also at university) had passed her driving test and received 83 Facebook “likes”. On the same day another young person in the same group had finished chemotherapy. She received 11 “likes” and one handwritten postcard. I was overwhelmed with sadness, both then and now.
Cherry Treagust
Portsmouth, UK
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