Huddled masses of children sleeping on concrete pads under crinkled foil; chainlink cages teeming with unshaven, foetid men speaking a half dozen languages from as many different countries of origin; and poor, working Americans footing the bill for the operation. Tired of looking yet? Of caring?

This is a near complete inversion of the words engraved on our Lady Liberty. Their profanation; their defilement. It is the product of policy at US federal agencies. It is paid for with money that everyone earns, representing value that everyone creates, together.

This involves not just money – again, money that we all put together, partly as a cooperation-pump fund that maintains the various associations we envision and enjoy under shared society and partly as a just-in-case fund that can help rectify any jackpots in the social and natural lotteries. Money, yes, but this case also involves transforming that money into profits for a few.

The situation refered to above is the result of policies. The policies are realized by people, many of them workers of all stripes, yes, but also investors, intermediaries and other business people. This class of people have taken an interest in receiving or directing monies – legally mandated expenditures from the public’s purse – entailed by the policy. But are these interested parties looking after what outcomes, guided by what virtue?

Evidence abounds sufficient to answer that query. A system that were focused on meeting asylum claims would, on inspection, offer a clear, consistent path to asylum, make it accessible at a scale adequate to the sheer volumes of humanity seeking relief, and expedite the careful process of growing the country amid the dual specters of declining birth rates and ballooning elderly populations. What we have describes rather something else, a system for obtaining profits, and quite a counterpoint description of one at that. The term “at all costs” can easily be ascribed to the case at hand. Every bed that is filled is a billable expense; fewer asylum claims processed means more desperate people filling detention center beds. Of course there is markup for providing the beds and the service of them – this is the rent. Rentseekers follow. An asylum policy that results in less asylum, or indeed an immigration system that results in less net immigration, obviously runs counter to a goal of growing numbers from without. And this seems, based in the public statements of everyone involved, to be by design. (Indeed the architects of the current set of policies are not shy about their fear of “replacement” which you can research on your own time. Wear a tinfoil hat for full effect.)

Of course any policy has to do with the exec leadership. However, recall an axiom of public policy: No policy, no funds. For all their bluster of hating government at any size, this administration is putting the US government in charge of youth detention centers kiddie concentration camps kindergulags. And Of Course this begets its corollary: No profiteers, no profits. So we have a circle described before us.

Capitalism is not wrong. The system and its parameters are fairly clear and nothing about them or their operation necessarily describes an engine of exploitation. But the capture of a globalized patchwork of trade and finance regimes by corporate entities via their political vassals in the halls of power that used to be nation-states; this does not seem on its face very much resembling capitalism. It most definitely engenders outcomes many tend to term not right.

Whatever the eff it is, the “rules” that “govern” this system are as arcane as they are mutable. And the whole thing relies in part on manipulation of capital costs, including and most importantly labor, requiring displacement of populations, artificial borders and border disputes, et cetera. Collusion is not capitalism. Nope. Zero. False.

And currently an externality of this system are kids in cages. Baby jails. Children too young to speak separated from their parents with no provocation, and lost – literally misplaced, their names and origins unknown – by a system with nothing for them but horror and privation.

Really, why can’t this be the wake-up call already? Capitalism came and went. It was great for many and very, very great for a very, very few who got ambitious about what might be possible for their children, godchildren and mistresses. We have flirted with some change in different areas around the world, and it seems to help matters for a lot of normal people without harming the ultra rich much if at all. It is time to explore the possibility that:

i. Capitalism is a wonderful system for distributing production output, and also tends to increase surplus

ii. Surplus tends to accrue, and this accrual tends to result in unequal distribution of inputs

iii. Inequality tends to beget inequality

iv. Social solutions tend to redress inequality

Therefore, Social solutions may be now necessary and prudent and in fact the only option.

Phew. Just saying, everyone around here hating a player instead of hating the game and letting the disgust flow in a productive direction.