so many states are barely producing enough electricity now to keep the lights and air conditioners on this summer, with warnings of rolling blackouts or outright outages, how will we produce enough electricity to keep all of the electric cars charged?

Maybe their plan is for everyone to drive electric cars, but not have enough power to keep them on the roads. Or perhaps people will have to have perfect credit scores to plug them in for so many hours each day.

As for the medical industrial complex and going beyond the things made from oil there has been a push to wreck our health care by privatizing hospitals and asset stripping them for higher profits. And hedge funds that have been doing that have also been buying up doctor’s practices and gutting their pay and working hours.

And then there is how Biden is continuing Trump’s push to privatize Medicare and push people into Medicare Advantage against their knowledge and will. If you have seen a doctor connected to a DGE in the last 2 years before you qualify for Medicare they automatically enroll you in Medicare Advantage. See article for description of DGE, but it’s tied to doctors being owned by hedge funds which BlackRock has ties to most of them. Hell they have ties to most things that government has allowed to be privatized!

Also on climate change there is the worsening droughts in many areas of the country and the push for rich people to privatize water too.

Here’s an important article about private equity funds buying up doctors and how that has devastated so many careers.

Private Equity Gloats Over A Doctor Glut

A private-equity-owned emergency room staffing firm co-founded by a wealthy Republican congressman has been openly hailing a coming “oversupply” of doctors, promising prospective investors that a surplus of emergency physicians — soon projected to reach nearly 10,000 — will drive doctors’ wages low enough to offset the haircut that health care reforms have imposed upon its profit margins.

The physician glut was highlighted in a recent pitch deck prepared by the cash-strapped Nashville ER staffing firm American Physician Partners (APP). The company, which operates ERs in 155 hospitals, has been trying — and failing — for months to raise $580 million to pay off creditors, including Rep. Mark Green (R-Tenn.), who holds somewhere between $5 million and $25 million of the company’s debt.

Like most of its competitors, APP has watched its profit margins and credit ratings sink since various laws banning surprise billing were enacted last year. While APP claims it never sent surprise bills to patients, it has also told its doctors in email exchanges reviewed by The Lever that various laws banning the practice had resulted in a 50 percent drop in the company’s revenues from certain large insurers.

But in its November 2021 pitch deck to investors, APP tells a different story, promising the company will more than make up for the expected $5.8 million to $11.6 million hit to its $122 million in annual gross earnings, by slashing some $19.6 million from its payroll costs. APP can do this in the midst of a once-in-a-generation health care labor shortage, according to the presentation, thanks to a coming glut of ER doctors.

This ER doctor glut was primarily caused by a recent explosion in the number of emergency medicine residency programs founded to train medical school graduates in the specialty — and was part of a deliberate scheme by vulture capitalists to flood the health care system with cheap medical labor.

This “oversupply” of emergency physicians will likely never be apparent to the average patient sitting in an ER waiting room, where skeleton staffing has been thoroughly baked into the business model.

As the APP presentation points out, 70 percent of hospital ERs are outsourced, and most contracts are awarded to the lowest bidder. Nearly all of the biggest bidders on ER contracts — Envision Healthcare, TeamHealth, SCP Partners, ApolloMD, and APP — are owned by private equity firms that have accumulated nine- or ten-figure sums of debt buying out smaller competitors. Making the interest payments required by that debt leaves no room for extravagances like higher doctor-patient ratios.

Damn every member of congress that has allowed so many industries to become privatized for profit at our expense! A lot of this started during Reagan, but both parties have been complicit in making it worse and Obama did more damage to the country than people realize. The hideously and deliberately flawed ACA was a setup for private equity firms to gut our health care. Both parties have also been complicit in deregulation of nursing homes that have been bought up by hedge funds and gutted to the bones.

In the comments on the 2 essays people are still thinking that they can vote our way out of what’s happening now. Sure. Just find a way to get someone elected against the will of all the dark money and scores of lobbyists and think tanks and of course AIPAC.

Sorry for the long comment. Might should have done an essay on this crap! Yay for rolling blackouts in this 3rd world country that was deliberately created whilst we fought amongst ourselves.

...seems to me. I'm a local vs globalist. Corporate rule or national rule is the current dynamic IMO.

If I could paint my picture it would be market gardeners in every community with eggs and animals around the edge of the cities. I know we won't do this sensible thing, but dreams are nice.

Thanks for the OT!

I do believe humanity could fix this, or at least make things better.

[Edited to add this is in response to Linda Wood.]
As you say above:

live more simply.

From Lookout:

If I could paint my picture it would be market gardeners in every community with eggs and animals around the edge of the cities.

From OTC, the idea of going back to using:

Bicycles, horses and burros.

From e.l.:

There needs to be a credible "to the barricades" moment.

and:

With luck, good behavior and assorted highly un-american proclivities, conservation measures can reduce the total need to the point that we, globally, could pull it off.

From Shaharazade:

I also find young'uns encouraging. They aren't as invested in keeping this nightmare myth going.

From Pluto's R.:

China is running around the world pulling people out of poverty. China is using its wealth to bring a measure of prosperity to all nations in its sphere of influence by bringing the global trading infrastructure to their doors. This way, partially developed nations can participate in the global economy as equals, and not filtered through a commissioned intermediary.

and:

Every day that goes by, the world notices this more and more. Africa is rapidly waking up to this reality. Even India is becoming aware. This has always been a brown world. The Five Eyes have made it clear for centuries what they think of the brown world.

Your response to Lookout:

I think your painting of an ideal of market garden towns is absolutely possible! It's very doable, desirable, and workable. Meanwhile, we can design our cities and towns for small marketplaces, neighborhood grocery stores within walking distance of our homes, and sustainable energy sources for simpler living. But we have to redesign the way we live.

That comment puts me in mind of QMS; ( In the spirit of QMS, I would encourage 'all hands on deck' including and especially artists who he has so consistently highlighted over this past year.) This last Wedendsday he presented work from the artist Nele Azevedo. In an interview, Azevedo mentioned that one motivation for her work is deep love for our public spaces yet a "questioning [of] the ideas that lead governments to build public monuments and our relationship with them".

Which puts me in mind of the 'walkable city' you mention above. I love a walkable city with beautiful parks, gardens, museums, libraries, restaurants, bars, markets, etc. etc. all within an easy walk. Add to that a great link to high-speed trains in order to go on trips to the coast, to the mountains, to the bigger-city hubs that have added cultural attractions like great theatre, opera, concerts, art exhibits, lectures, (choose your inspiration).( h/t to QMS again for this Saturday's comment in OT.) We could have nice things if we decided to allocate our money. Forty billion (or more accurately fifty-six billion) that our congress critters just threw away, would be the first baby step to making things better.

Thanks JtC for the conversation.