That's the main ideological lie of capitalism - that the market is there to provide for our needs. The market is there to provide profits. The cost of N95 masks septupled at the start of the crisis. There were bidding wars for ventilators - that should be absolutely illegal, people's lives depend on them, and yet you had states bidding against each other, because that's the way the market works. Who can pay the most?
Writer Hadas Their connects COVID-19's deadly path across the US to a larger, deeper crisis at the heart of society - capitalism and its continual system of dispossession and exploitation.
Hadas is author of A People's Guide to Capitalism: An Introduction to Marxist Economics from Haymarket Books.