Let me take a moment to talk about Rober Michels’ theory of the Iron Law of Oligarchy & how it applies to capitalist economies.
Capitalism = companies competing in the same market, which is supposed to “drive innovation” and “incentivize providing the best quality products at the lowest cost to consumers.” Yet in 2022, consumers & their hungry babies can’t get anybaby formula, regardless of quality or price. What up?
Well, as companies compete, some fail and go under. Successful ones eat up that market share & get bigger, or sometimes buy up their less-successful competitors. The process continues over and over until you wind up with 3-6 megacorporations that control an entire industry. They’re too big to be driven out of business or be bought by their competitors. Market share freezes between the megacorps. They’re each as big as they’re gonna get and their equally-big competitors are too big to be taken out.
Once any industry reaches this point of complete oligarchic control (and in 2022 that would be most industries), you can kiss innovation goodbye - there’s no motive for it. Improved product quality/lower prices now get traded off for open collusion & price-fixing between the megacorps.
This is the inevitable end result of capitalism! The system is set up to produce this result - of bloated oligarchies stifling competition & innovation and distorting the market to serve their own interests - in virtually every industry.
Case in point: now that just three companies produce infant formula, they’ve decided there’s no profit in it, so there is no formula to be had. Sure, someone could start a competing baby formula company by setting up a factory to make baby formula + establishing a distribution system to get that formula on store shelves, but how much would that cost, how long would it take, and how would the Big Three baby formula makers react? They’re big enough to freeze any upstart completely out of the market.
Capitalism + the Iron Law of Oligarchies = babies going hungry.
New hobby: going on Twitter and responding to every doctor or medical/public health organization currently warning moms not to make homemade formula with this:
Give families a legitimate recipe. Their grocery stores are out of stock. Their food banks are out of stock. No pediatrician has enough to feed all their patients for weeks. Give parents an option, or they will find one themselves that you don’t like. Their babies are hungry.
Interesting that the WHO PDF on how to make a breast milk substitute, posted since 2006, was taken down in 2020. Here’s a link from the Way Back Machine.
Long story short, you mix water and either goat or full cow milk in a 1:2 ratio and add 1g of sugar for every 10ml of milk used.
As an example, a one month old should have 40ml milk, 20ml water, 20ml of (boiled) water, and 4grams of sugar.
Or you can use powdered full cows milk. A 1 month old you’d mix 5g powder milk with 60ml water and 4g sugar.
Check it out for yourself. Don’t question why this was taken down in 2020 and we’re being told this isn’t okay anymore though.
I downloaded the pdf of that link for you all.
Honestly I think part of this is that the establishment doesn’t want to acknowledge that this is an emergency, that these guidelines meant for disaster zones are what we need right now.
They won’t admit that it’s really that bad, but it is.
Hey, America, just so you know; JUST BECAUSE YOU’RE HAVING A BABY FORMULA SHORTAGE DOES NOT MEAN IT’S OKAY TO JUST BUY IT FROM CANADA (OR ANY OTHER COUNTRY).
It is so dangerous, so selfish, so typical American to just be like “hmm, let’s just hop across the border to the other country because they can handle it, and we need to take care of ourselves.” Fix your own goddamned country. Just because our systems are slightly better doesn’t excuse you exploiting them. This may be shocking for y'all to hear; It is not for you.
Okay, I’ve seen a lot of people claiming that Biden is somehow responsible for the baby formula shortage. You’re looking at the wrong president.
I’ve attached a picture of the man responsible below.
It’s a fun picture of Trump with some other suits surrounded by piles of paper cutting a ribbon with a gold pair of scissors. This was to represent cutting regulations. This was the point where everyone who’s ever worked in a lab started screaming.
See, those regulations weren’t there because OSHA agents were bored and wanted to slap fines on people. They’re there because people got hurt.
These were laws that said don’t put workers around radioactive materials without hazmat suits–caused by the Radium Girls ingesting radium daily and daily. Don’t leave meat out for hours on end and don’t just pick maggots off–Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle is about the meat packing industry and how unsanitary it was. Workers have to wear helmets where falling is a risky–helmets reduced death and paralysis. Use vents and fume hoods to move gases away from workers–look at all the people with different cancer from breathing in Lord knows what. Provide a fire escape and don’t lock workers in–146 people died in the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. Don’t dump waste into the waterway–the Cuyahoga River literally caught fire. Don’t produce medical equipment in unsterilized factories with unsterilized equipment–the Dalkon Shield caused millions of infections because it was made in a repurposed Chapstick factory with no sterilization (among other things).
These laws are written in blood.
Every single regulation that is part of the EPA, OSHA, the FDA, and the DOJ is there because people were grievously injuried or died. They’re not there for fun. You might say that this is all common sense stuff but right now Amazon is tallying work place injuries faster than a textile factory at the start of the industrial revolution. Tesla refused to paint orange lines around machines, delineating where it was safe to stand. History tells us that capitalists will put profits first, worker safety be damned.
Now I haven’t read the very, very long list of all the regulations that Mr. Trump decided was worth getting rid of. I don’t think he read that list. But I’m guessing that there was a law about sterilizing equipment for food, maintenance for equipment, and/or consistent inspections that suddenly Abbott Laboratories no longer had to follow. And just like so many other big companies, they decided to put the profit over babies’ lives.
Capitalism is the monster here, and this wouldn’t have happened if one company didn’t have a monopoly on making baby formula. But regulations were a muzzle on that monster and they kept rampant capitalism somewhat in check. With that gone, this is what happens. It’s only a matter of time before we lose another important commodity because regulations were erased.
I remember the day this picture came out, and having worked in the food industry my whole life I knew it was going to lead to disaster…
New hobby: going on Twitter and responding to every doctor or medical/public health organization currently warning moms not to make homemade formula with this:
Give families a legitimate recipe. Their grocery stores are out of stock. Their food banks are out of stock. No pediatrician has enough to feed all their patients for weeks. Give parents an option, or they will find one themselves that you don’t like. Their babies are hungry.
Interesting that the WHO PDF on how to make a breast milk substitute, posted since 2006, was taken down in 2020. Here’s a link from the Way Back Machine.
Long story short, you mix water and either goat or full cow milk in a 1:2 ratio and add 1g of sugar for every 10ml of milk used.
As an example, a one month old should have 40ml milk, 20ml water, 20ml of (boiled) water, and 4grams of sugar.
Or you can use powdered full cows milk. A 1 month old you’d mix 5g powder milk with 60ml water and 4g sugar.
Check it out for yourself. Don’t question why this was taken down in 2020 and we’re being told this isn’t okay anymore though.
I downloaded the pdf of that link for you all.
Honestly I think part of this is that the establishment doesn’t want to acknowledge that this is an emergency, that these guidelines meant for disaster zones are what we need right now.
They won’t admit that it’s really that bad, but it is.
I haven’t reblogged a lot of political stuff in a while but this makes me boil. If they’re going to force women to have babies they may not be ready to have the very least they can do is offer financial support
