At the moment, with little hope for any further survivors to be pulled from the rubble, it appears around 160 people may have died following the collapse of a twelve-storey building in Miami. We know that in 2018 significant structural damage was identified in the building, with a recommendation for significant repairs to be carried out. But in the subsequent three years the work was not done, and now many people are now needlessly dead.
There are parallels with the Grenfell tragedy in London in 2017, where 72 people died due to the building's cladding and inadequate fire safety precautions, with warnings about the building's problems falling on deaf ears for over a decade before the tragedy.
In Australia we've had our own near-tragedies with structural flaws in our buildings, with Sydney's Mascot Towers buildings evacuated after cracks were noticed in the building's structure, and with residents unable to return two years on, many have been left with nothing.
To return to Florida, many have made the obvious link between this collapse and the Government's approach to deregulation.
This isn't necessarily new. Obvious recent examples show how late stage capitalism has compromised our safety when it comes to climate change and public health. This is another example of how the neoliberal system and its sheer focus on short term financial gain for some leaves us all worse off, and kills. While polls indicate people are well to the left of government economic policy, the wealthy world is nonetheless dominated by right-wing governments. Notionally left-wing parties have not shifted from Third Way liberalism, with leaders such as Macron and Trudeau as wedded to the capitalist project as their conservative counterparts, and more radical socialist options such as Sanders or Corbyn were passed over for centrists in Biden or Starmer.
We appear to be limping on into numerous crises and disasters. Are we going to do anything about it?
There are parallels with the Grenfell tragedy in London in 2017, where 72 people died due to the building's cladding and inadequate fire safety precautions, with warnings about the building's problems falling on deaf ears for over a decade before the tragedy.
In Australia we've had our own near-tragedies with structural flaws in our buildings, with Sydney's Mascot Towers buildings evacuated after cracks were noticed in the building's structure, and with residents unable to return two years on, many have been left with nothing.
To return to Florida, many have made the obvious link between this collapse and the Government's approach to deregulation.
This isn't necessarily new. Obvious recent examples show how late stage capitalism has compromised our safety when it comes to climate change and public health. This is another example of how the neoliberal system and its sheer focus on short term financial gain for some leaves us all worse off, and kills. While polls indicate people are well to the left of government economic policy, the wealthy world is nonetheless dominated by right-wing governments. Notionally left-wing parties have not shifted from Third Way liberalism, with leaders such as Macron and Trudeau as wedded to the capitalist project as their conservative counterparts, and more radical socialist options such as Sanders or Corbyn were passed over for centrists in Biden or Starmer.
We appear to be limping on into numerous crises and disasters. Are we going to do anything about it?
