Cheap Nature, Cheap Lives

Stasia Skonberg

Geography 101: Dr. Richard Simpson

1/24/2021

Response Paper 2

Cheap Nature, Cheap Lives

         In the introduction of Patell and Moore’s “Seven Cheap Things,” they explain from the very beginning how capitalism has become more than just an economic system to us and how our relationship with capitalism should change because of that. Their argument is that we as humans have evolved and changed our world but it hasn’t been done by just “humans being humans” and we can’t blame all our mishaps on our ancestors because we, right now, are the ones directly causing our downfall.

         There are seven main key terms of this piece and they are; nature, money, work, care, food, energy, and lives. Throughout the essay, we are led into the darkness of the U.S. current chicken industry and how that does currently and will in the future cause the abuse and misfortune of not only our planet but our people too. Another term we are introduced to throughout this piece is the term cheap. Everything we have created in the U.S. for the most part has been to achieve one simple thing, cheapness. Because of our undying need to have a cheap chicken sandwich at a fast food restaurant or cheap chicken at the grocery store, we are abusing every step along the way to it. Cheap chicken causes cheap lives.

    It is extremely easy to overlook all of these misfortunes because we don’t have to see it or deal with it in any direct way. All we see is the five dollar chicken breast at Fred Meyer and how we don’t have to break the bank for it. But if you look at everything else, at all the history leading up to the creation of capitalism and then all the history of capitalism leading up to now, you start to feel a sense of doom. Capitalism emerged from a broken, plague ridden Europe where the 1% were grasping at anything to continue on their profits, even if it meant the misuse and destruction of the planet and its inhabitants. So if something so dark and demented as capitalism came out of the Black Plague, what is there to come out of our most recent Covid-19 Pandemic? What other kinds of misfortunes can we humans put on our earth and other humans during this time that will prevail beyond centuries and generations of people like capitalism has from the Black Plague.