Dear Jeff Bezos, instead of firing me, protect your workers from coronavirus

Huge indictment of capitalism that we have an unbelievably high level of productive capacity and can't do any of these things: make hospital equipment including ventilators; produce enough masks; keep hospitals open (there has been a steady trend of closures brought on by financialization (profiteering) and mergers); train adequate numbers of hospital staff; and the most ridiculous so far is every business is desperately trying to stay open even for non-essential things, like Amazon.

Profiteering is undercutting every possible thing. The profit motive over a democratically planned economy is horrible most of the time but really becomes a mess in a crisis.

But sometimes we get cheap flat screen TVs, so it's impossible to say whether capitalism is bad or not.

(with thanks to dril: https://twitter.com/dril/status/464802196060917762)

That's beyond absurd. So we get cheap, unnecessary items, while many don't have access to healthcare, are homeless, are literally starving, or all three and that somehow makes it impossible to say whether capitalism is good or bad? I'd say that fact alone makes US capitalism bad. Trading millions of lives for cheap TVs and other garbage. I really hope you were joking but knowing this forum, that's probably too much to hope.