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Quotes about Capitalism from the world's top natural health / natural living authors

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"Out of an earlier mercantilist philanthropy grew a new corporate philanthropy, intended not to ameliorate the lot of industrial capitalism's victims but to shape and guide social institutions. Foundations were, and still are, important ramparts through which private wealth, acting through creative and loyal managers, influences and often controls universities, medical schools, and other "public" institutions. The Rockefeller foundations established directions and strategies that other foundations followed." - E. Richard Brown, Rockefeller Medicine Men: Medicine and capitalism in America (Get the book.)

"Also, the fact that they come in the form of durable seeds which can be stored for long periods of time means they can function as commodities as well as foods, making these crops particularly well adapted to the needs of industrial capitalism. The needs of the human eater are a very different matter, however. An oversupply of macronutrients, such as we now face, itself represents a serious threat to our health, as soaring rates of obesity and diabetes indicate. But, as the research of Bruce Ames and others suggests, the undersupply of micro-nutrients may constitute a threat just as grave." - Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto (Get the book.)

"Selznick, and the contemporary figures Ted Turner and Craig Venter with hypomania or bipolar disorder, and further postulated that if it were not for the excessive, even manic energy of these brilliant innovators of American capitalism, America wouldn't be the great country that it is today. As a fellow mob boss says to Tony Soprano, assuring him that it's acceptable to be in therapy and to take Prozac: "There's no stigmata [sic] anymore." "I was seeing a therapist myself about a year ago," Paulie Walnuts tells Tony in one episode. "I had some issues." - Charles Barber, Comfortably Numb: How Psychiatry Is Medicating a Nation (Get the book.)

"In her book Megatrends 2010 Patricia Aburdene traced the rise of what she calls "conscious capitalism," a trend that appears in the market as conscious, or values-driven, consumption. By the turn of the century the market in the United States for values-driven commerce had reached $230 billion (The New York Times called it "the biggest market you have never heard of")." - Ervin Laszlo, Quantum Shift in the Global Brain: How the New Scientific Reality Can Change Us and Our World (Get the book.)

"However exciting they sound, monoculture farmers aren't likely to focus on these inefficient varieties for the simple reason that growing them goes against the tenets of agrarian capitalism: high yields and reliability. The alarm over genetic engineering isn't too far removed from the suspicion that initially greeted grafting. Indeed, GM could play a vital role in bolstering Africa's food supply. Bananas have been developed that contain vaccines so that children without access to immunization shots can simply eat bananas to protect themselves from deadly viruses." - Adam Leith Gollne, The Fruit Hunters: A Story of Nature, Adventure, Commerce and Obsession (Get the book.) "As political philosophers point out, fighting transgenic engineering can be construed, at a certain point, as an act of resistance against the hegemony of global capitalism and its political supplement, liberal democracy. The story of the modern banana began in the 1870s, when a twenty-three-year-old American named Minor Keith started building a railroad network through the Costa Rican forest. He planted bananas alongside the railways, not realizing that the seedlings would one day grow into an empire of fruits." - Adam Leith Gollne, The Fruit Hunters: A Story of Nature, Adventure, Commerce and Obsession (Get the book.) "Europeans are indebted to Arabic civilization not only for nautical charts that helped them find their way around Africa and to the New World, but for a numerical system that gave birth to modern capitalism. Alongside calculus, they pioneered geology, astronomy and archaeology. They also taught Europeans to start enjoying fruits. In the 1100s, the Crusades exposed Europeans to thriving fruitgrowing regions abroad. Marco Polo's account of his travels in the Orient, filled with descriptions of magnificent pears, apricots and bananas, generated much excitement. " - Adam Leith Gollne, The Fruit Hunters: A Story of Nature, Adventure, Commerce and Obsession (Get the book.)

"Everything in our conscious life, from feeling pains, tickles, and itches to—pick your favorite—feeling the angst of post-industrial man under late capitalism or experiencing the ecstasy of skiing in deep powder—is caused by brain processes. —john searle, slusser professor of philosophy, university of california, berkeley, 1995 "You," your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules." - Charles Barber, Comfortably Numb: How Psychiatry Is Medicating a Nation (Get the book.)

"It's a basic principle of capitalism: If stores think their customers will buy a product, then they will stock it. It's really that simple. Never forget that it's the consumers, not the manufacturers, who are ultimately in the driver's seat. Campaign for Cleaner Air "Many parents have become involved in clean air community campaigns," Dr. Perera told me. "They've lobbied to get trucks to stop idling in front of schools and lobbied for cleaner buses." - Deirdre Imus, Growing Up Green: Baby and Child Care: Volume 2 in the Bestselling Green This! Series (Green This!) (Get the book.)

"Given that the pharmaceutical industry is supposedly a prime example of the success of global capitalism, driven by a competitive market for drugs, why do we not see more price competition? Some aggressive competition occurs in the closed-door negotiations between industry and such large purchasers of drugs as health maintenance and other organizations. For my individual patients who pay out of pocket, there appears to be relatively little variation in price among the drugs." - Peter J. Whitehouse and Daniel George, The Myth of Alzheimer's: What You Aren't Being Told About Today's Most Dreaded Diagnosis (Get the book.)

"To Ralph that means "constructive capitalism," which he explained in his theatrical, run-on sentence kind of way: "Constructive capitalism is where you share the profit with the workers and the Earth from which you made it. You and I are brothers and sisters because of one eternal loving Father, and we should take care of each other and this planet." - Stacy Malkan, Not Just a Pretty Face: The Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry (Get the book.)

"Much more so than the human body, capitalism is marvelously adaptive, able to turn the problems it creates into new business opportunities: diet pills, heart bypass operations, insulin pumps, bariatric surgery. But though fast food may be good business for the health care industry, the cost to society—an estimated $250 billion a year in diet-related health care costs and rising rapidly—cannot be sustained indefinitely. An American born in 2000 has a 1 in 3 chance of developing diabetes in his lifetime; the risk is even greater for a Hispanic American or African American." - Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto (Get the book.)

"To Ralph that means "constructive capitalism," which he explained in his theatrical, run-on sentence kind of way: "Constructive capitalism is where you share the profit with the workers and the Earth from which you made it. You and I are brothers and sisters because of one eternal loving Father, and we should take care of each other and this planet." - Stacy Malkan, Not Just a Pretty Face: The Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry (Get the book.)

"As slaves harvested crops for Europeans, the roots of capitalism and global commerce spread through a damp, dark soil of inequality. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, an early anarchist, attributed unfairness to private property. Hobbesian types claim it goes back to humankind's ancestral territoriality. Even today, our food stream relies on migrant laborers who live in subhuman conditions. American fruit pickers aren't farmers or peasants. Many are indentured workers handcuffed by sharecropping agreements. Most of these 1.3 million nomads consider themselves lucky to make minimum wage." - Adam Leith Gollne, The Fruit Hunters: A Story of Nature, Adventure, Commerce and Obsession (Get the book.)

"They see merciless capitalism as the wave of the future. There is a name for this economic system?the ownership society"—and President George W. Bush, among others, likes to use this term. People must take ownership of their own future, and plan for their future as property owners in many senses of the word. There is indeed much to be said for the ownership society in terms of its ability to promote economic growth. But by its very nature it also invites speculation, and, filtered through the vagaries of human psychology, it creates a horde of risks that we must somehow try to manage." - Brian Fagan, Floods, Famines, and Emperors: El Nino and the Fate of Civilizations (Get the book.)

"It is also unfortunate that conservative politicians and pundits have been led to believe it is their mission in life as philosophical champions of capitalism to defend the corporate world, even international corporate conglomerates run by those who eschew the very foundations of conservatism. Conservatives will cry that I must be a liberal or environmentalist fanatic. In fact, I am a conservative and have been all my life. Capitalism is very different from the opportunistic system modern corporations have invented for themselves." - Russell L. Blaylock, M.D., Health and Nutrition Secrets (Get the book.)

"I firmly believe that the moral imperative of capitalism is not the accumulation of wealth; it's the provision of sustaining jobs. Several of these individuals lead large corporations, and several are leaders in their industries. They support my efforts, although they offer moral support only. None are able to step out front yet. The reason relates to the proposed reform that I've just outlined and that I published as an editorial in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine in July 2005. The plan I propose harnesses reason to the benefits of employees. It is ethically sound." - Nortin M. Hadler MD, Worried Sick: A Prescription for Health in an Overtreated America (Get the book.)

"Yet as Elliott writes, "Consumer capitalism works, at least in part, by presenting consumers with a vision of the good life. This vision of the good life suggests the ways in which a consumer's own life does not measure up, and which could be remedied by the consumer product. You could be hipper, sexier, not just liked but well-liked, if only you would buy what we are selling." (An interesting aside to this is the history of cosmetic surgery." - Shannon Brownlee, Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine Is Making Us Sicker and Poorer (Get the book.)

"Newsweek wrote in 1955: Many financial men like to think that the nation has developed a "new capitalism" with an ever-broadening base. Some 7.5 million people hold stock in publicly owned corporations, compared with 6.5 million three years ago. Assets of mutual funds, which give the small investor a chance to spread his risk, have soared from $1.3 billion in 1946 to $7.2 billion. Thousands of workers have become owners of the firms they work for via employee stock-purchase plans." - Brian Fagan, Floods, Famines, and Emperors: El Nino and the Fate of Civilizations (Get the book.)

"REPPED: The crisis in today's health care system is deeply rooted in the interwoven history of modern medicine and corporate capitalism. The major groups and forces that shaped the medical system sowed the seeds of the crisis we now face. The medical profession and other medical interest groups each tried to make medicine serve their own narrow economic and social interests. Foundations and other corporate class institutions insisted that medicine serve the needs of "thgir" corporate capitalist society." - E. Richard Brown, Rockefeller Medicine Men: Medicine and capitalism in America (Get the book.)

"Some of these factors exist in the background of the market, including the advance of capitalism, the increased emphasis on business success, the revolution in information technology, the demographics of the Baby Boom, the decline of inflation and the economics of money illusion, and the rise of gambling and pleasure in risk taking in general. Others operate in the foreground and shape the changing culture of investment." - Brian Fagan, Floods, Famines, and Emperors: El Nino and the Fate of Civilizations (Get the book.) "Now, Bootle declared, we were entering the "zero era," brought on by global capitalism, privatization, and the decline of labor unions, all of which made it impossible for prices to be decided by committee.31 Steven Weber, with his 1997 article "The End of the Business Cycle" in the public policy journal Foreign Affairs, argued that macroeconomic risks were lower now: "Changes in technology, ideology, employment and finance, along with the globalization of production and consumption, have reduced the volatility of economic activity in the industrialized world." - Brian Fagan, Floods, Famines, and Emperors: El Nino and the Fate of Civilizations (Get the book.)

"It was a great wrenching experience in American history, spreading death and destruction, stimulating industrial development, and producing *In this book, "corporate philanthropy" refers to philanthropy characteristic of corporate capitalism, especially foundations that are philanthropic corporations controlled by members of the corporate class. upheavals within and between all classes of Americans. A new kind of philanthropy, tailored to these new conditions, emerged in the decades following the war. The Civil War not only freed the black slaves from legal bonds of slavery." - E. Richard Brown, Rockefeller Medicine Men: Medicine and capitalism in America (Get the book.) "Perhaps most fundamental, the association of medicine with science won support from the new technical, professional, and managerial groups associated with the growth of corporate capitalism. AMERICAN MEDICINE IN THE 1800s In 1800, nearly all American physicians received their training as apprentices at the side of a practicing physician, assisting with simple techniques and mixing medications. In the eighteenth century, medical lectures had not been widely available in this country, so young men from the upper class went abroad for their medical education, especially to Scotland." - E. Richard Brown, Rockefeller Medicine Men: Medicine and capitalism in America (Get the book.)

"In his report, "Cows, Cannibalism, capitalism & Coverup," Dr. Best suggests, "It is easy to misdiagnose CJD as Alzheimer's disease, the fourth leading cause of death in the U.S., currently afflicting two to three million people."3 Dr. Best cites 1989 autopsy studies done at the University of Pittsburgh and Yale University that show respectively that 5.5 percent and 13 percenr of Alzheimer patients actually were victims of CJD.4 In a similar survey of neuropathologists it was found that from 2 percent to 12 percent of all dementias in humans were actually CJD." - Ann N. Martin, Food Pets Die For: Shocking Facts About Pet Food (Get the book.)

"The first is the hasty conclusion that cartels and monopolies are an expression of capitalism or free enterprise, and that the solution to the problem lies in the replacement of capitalism with some other kind of system. As we have emphasized, however, cartels and monopolies are just the opposite of competitive capitalism and free enterprise. The second trap is the conclusion that the solution for the abuses of cartels and monopolies is to be found in the increase of government regulations and controls. But that is precisely the problem already." - G. Edward Griffin, World Without Cancer (Get the book.)

"The Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz called this inequality of knowledge between consumers and producers "information asymmetry," and pegged it as one of the central flaws of market capitalism.21 The absence of even minimal toxicity data works to insulate the industry from the normal supply-demand dynamic of the market. In a country that prides itself on its entrepreneurial ingenuity, the United States is hitching its faith to a system that reinforces stasis and a potentially dangerous status quo." - Mark Schapiro, Exposed: The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products and What's at Stake for American Power (Get the book.)

"Integral philosophy's attempt to assert universal truth claims is a pretentious (and potentially dangerous) fiction designed to justify Western capitalism's neocolonial globalization. Integral philosophy is essentially attempting to resurrect the now discredited Enlightenment worldview, and by doing so it becomes complicit in the ongoing sins of modernist oppression. Despite paying lip service to postmodern insights, integralism ignores the fact that modernism's reality frame has been effectively deconstructed and unmasked." - Steve McIntosh, Integral Consciousness and the Future of Evolution (Get the book.)

"After all, our economic system is called "capitalism," not "humanism." It also struck me as humorous that I had believed that by torturing myself with the pain of imperfection, I would behave more ethically. And once I got to the point of laughing about my arrogance and foolishness, I began to let go of my demon, which has not lessened my efforts to eliminate dehumanizing financial aspects of what I do for a living. But it has reduced my whining about it, making me more effective at articulating the problem." - Bruce E. Levine, Surviving America's Depression Epidemic: How to Find Morale, Energy, and Community in a World Gone Crazy (Get the book.)

"The adaptability of the ads and the ad makers to deal with the safety and product quality concerns of the customers for the last 160 years is capitalism at its finest. Their adaptability emerged in the 1980s after several terrible accidents and deaths involving their products. So, finally, after so much criticism about the accidents with and the danger of so many chemicals, the corporations shifted their focus and concentrated on the safety of handling and application." - Will Allen, The War on Bugs (Get the book.)

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