from NICHOLAS CUNNINGHAM

Take Heart:  Make

Capitalism Work For Us

To the Editor:

Adrian Kuzminski (May 30-31, 2019) recalls Garrett Hardin’s classic 1968 “Tragedy of the Commons” with appreciation, but closes with a rather forlorn, indeed hopeless take-home message.

As I recall, Harden pointed out that, faced with exploitation of “the commons,” rationing provided a workable solution: for example, if “free” parking becomes scarce and is being exploited by the powerful or the feckless, parking meters offer a simple practical solution.

So rather than pine for our long lost “non-corporate, decentralized, re-personalized, re-localized model of independently owned and run businesses,” why not seek out practical solutions?

• use our anti-monopoly laws to break up the “too-big” corporations,

• give unions equal power,

• encourage cooperatives,

• regulate corporate emissions & pollution & unfair business practices,

• guarantee a national living minimum wage,

• make capitalism work for us, the land and our children’s futures?

It’s hard to unseat these quarterly income obsessed corporate leaders!

But we can unseat our legislators, governors and the POTUS, until we elect governments that work not for them, but for us, and are capable of protecting our local, national and global “commons”!

NICHOLAS CUNNINGHAM, M.D., Dr.PH.
Springfield Center