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Chomsky is a linguist. The word “profit” has many meanings, not just financial per se. There is no personal profit in being proactive. The whole point of being proactive is to spend today for an eventuality that may occur in the future. It is to defer immediate pleasure in order to be prepared for an unpredictable eventuality.

But we live in an age where there is no ‘profit’ for the person or people who take such a view. As I wrote above, if some administrator spend $1 million on PPEs that sat in storage for 7 years that person would have been derided by his or her superiors. So the person has no incentive to think long term, to plan for black swan contingencies. His “profit” is to cut costs and do what his superiors find personally pleasing regardless of the larger consequences.

The governor of New York is guilty of the same thing. He had warning by his health officials to build stockpiles but he ignored them. His personal profit is to get re-elected and gain visibility, so cutting deals for solar plants or bringing an Amazon hub is more visible and more “profitable” to him personally than to spend $20 million to stockpile PPEs and ventilators. Even though it is totally predictable that something like this will happen at some point - it did in 2009, it did with Ebola, it did with Covid-19 - it is not profitable to prepare for it.

It is even convenient (profitable) to just scapegoat it when you are wrong, or to flip flop. Like the governor of MI who last week banned the use of hydroxychloroquine, but now has reversed course and is trying to posture as if she is the drug’s greatest advocate.

We the people are so poorly represented, and the system seems almost beyond repair. But perhaps as a result of Covid-19 and the economic repercussions so severe that a reset of our American values will occur. We need a thorough re-examination of our priorities and nothing but “profit” will do it. Now all the cities and states will be totally financially broken by the consequences and they will demand more money from the taxpayers. And that will force a rethink and a re-prioritization of what is truly worthwhile to spend on, and that which needs to be cut away as waste and fat and corruption.