Overflight, 151
“Discerning "right" from "wrong" in economics is a matter of distinguishing mutualistic from parasitic relationships. The history of civilization chronicles the gradual erection of a system of laws banning parasitic economic behavior. … Hosts are victims. No victim ever chooses to be robbed, enslaved, or denied basic human rights. Economic parasites use secrecy, deception, brute force, and legal authority as their "hooks." By latching onto their unwilling hosts, they are able to extort profits that no mutually voluntary relationship would provide. … To the extent that parasitic behavior is curtailed, society benefits. A healthy capitalist economy is a community of interdependent mutualists. To create an environment where cooperation flourishes, the elimination of exploitation in all its forms should be the chief objective of a society's economic laws. But keeping antiparasite laws in step with a rapidly evolving economy isn't simple. Identifying the economy's true parasites and writing laws that destroy their hooks requires a bionomics perspective.”
“The current financial stripping of economies and environments across the world exhibits, in fact, all the hallmark characteristics of a carcinogenic invasion.”
“The cancer stage of capitalism is not a metaphor. It is a rigorous description of where we are.”
“The essential problem of any life−threatening cancer is that the host body's immune system does not effectively recognise or respond to the cancer's challenge and advance. This failure of our social immune system to recognise and respond to the cancerous form of capitalism is understandable once we realise that the surveillance and communication organs of host social bodies across the world, as they now function, are incapable of recognising the nature and patterns of the disease. That is, capitalist−organised media and information systems select for dissemination only messages compatible with the capitalist organisation of social bodies.”
“They control their hosts, becoming in effect their new brain, and turning them into new creatures. It is as if the host itself is simply a puppet, and the parasite is the hand inside.”
Michael L. Rothschild, John McMurtry, Susan George, John McMurtry again, Carl Zimmer, all as quoted in Vladimir Z. Nuri, Fractional Reserve Banking as Economic Parasitism