How Vulture Capitalism is Swallowing the World: Antony Loewenstein

Antony Loewenstein discusses the issues in his book Profit and Doom. Photo: Greag Saunders

The perilous path of outsourcing and profit in contemporary capitalism is laid out by Antony Loewenstein, Guardian columnist and author, in this morning session from the first day of the 2014 Byron Bay Writers’ Festival.

From armies to detention centres and emergency aid, private companies have their hands in all these areas and governments now hide behind commercial-in-confidence provisions in the contracts made with these private companies to keep information out of the public sphere.

Loewenstein says the system is hideously broken.

“The government of the day sell this [system] to voters as being more efficient,” says Loewenstein but profit is at the core of out-sourcing, and buck-passing responsibility for riots, deaths and failure in service delivery is commonplace.