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They’d Charge Us for the Air We Breathe
A thread
https://thousandwordworker.wordpress.com/2021/05/10/theyd-charge-us-for-the-air-we-breathe/
A thread
https://thousandwordworker.wordpress.com/2021/05/10/theyd-charge-us-for-the-air-we-breathe/
There's a cliché that, if capitalists could, they'd find a way to commodify the air we breathe and charge you for it. Amidst the horror of the pandemic in India, the market for air has become an established reality. By Arundhati Roy:
“"Oxygen is the new currency on India’s morbid new stock exchange. Senior politicians, journalists, lawyers – India’s elite – are on Twitter pleading for hospital beds and oxygen cylinders. The hidden market for cylinders is booming.
Oxygen saturation machines and drugs are hard to come by.” –
“"There are markets for other things, too. At the bottom end of the free market, a bribe to sneak a last look at your loved one, bagged and stacked in a hospital mortuary. A surcharge for a priest who agrees to say the final prayers.
Online medical consultancies in which desperate families are fleeced by ruthless doctors. At the top end, you might need to sell your land and home and use up every last rupee for treatment at a private hospital.
Just the deposit alone, before they even agree to admit you, could set your family back a couple of generations.” –
The original Guardian article can be read here: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/apr/28/crime-against-humanity-arundhati-roy-india-covid-catastrophe.
The original Guardian article can be read here: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/apr/28/crime-against-humanity-arundhati-roy-india-covid-catastrophe.
This thread can be read here: https://thousandwordworker.wordpress.com/2021/05/10/theyd-charge-us-for-the-air-we-breathe/
