Chapter 26: Parasitic Industries

Throughout this writing, there is reference to parasitic industries. For those not familiar with the term, think of the metaphor of a parasite in nature. A parasite feeds off of a host organism, contributing nothing to the host's survival or well-being, while actively damaging and draining the host, compromising its health. Parasitic industries follow the same pattern in the context of the Community and economic dynamics.

This chapter was written when the Transition was imagined as a single, rapid, coordinated event. Passages from that original plan are kept for transparency in marked boxes; the current approach is gradual, voluntary and democratic (how the approach has evolved).

A note on the word: “parasitic” describes what these industries do within the system, not the people who work in them. Most people in these jobs took the work that was available to support themselves and their families, and many are decent, caring people doing their best inside a structure they did not design. Nothing here is a judgment of them. In the Transition, their skills and experience will be welcome in work that serves the community directly.

Though it has been covered earlier in this writing, it is worthwhile to re-examine a prime example that is the health insurance industry in Capitalist countries lacking universal healthcare. In such societies, medical care becomes so prohibitively expensive that it is hopelessly out of reach for all but those at the top of the economic pyramid. Insurance companies capitalize on this by placing themselves between the patient and the medical professional, offering to cover part or all of the cost of medical treatments, for which they charge the patient a monthly premium.

For a family, the monthly fee for a plan can rival or even exceed the cost of rent or mortgage, which is the biggest other single expense under Capitalist paradigms: the average total premium for employer-sponsored family coverage in the U.S. reached $25,572 a year in 2024, more than $2,100 a month (KFF, 2024). Even where employers offer health insurance costing the employee much less than private insurance, the monthly patient contributions are still formidable: in 2024, workers paid an average of $6,296 a year toward family coverage, before any deductibles or co-payments (KFF, 2024). In the United States, workers’ contributions to employer-provided family coverage roughly quadrupled between 1999 and 2019, and, averaged across all covered workers, deductibles rose 162% in the decade to 2019 alone (KFF, 2019), far faster than wages, while coverage dwindled (KFF). Copays have risen too. Many plans once had no deductible at all: in the 1990s, when many workers were in HMOs, deductibles were the exception, and as recently as 2009 more than a third of covered workers had none. By 2019, more than four in five did (KFF). If Capitalism is not replaced and decommissioned, the trend will only continue.

Deductibles are often high enough to be economically crippling to the point where people frequently and routinely forego needed medical treatment because they cannot afford to pay 100% of the cost of the deductible. Even when the deductible has been met, the copays are often prohibitive for anything but the most minimal procedures.

These companies present themselves as looking after patients’ health and helping them. As with the "anybody can make it" myth, there is an element of truth to this but the big picture tells a different story. Insurance is only "necessary" because medical costs spiral out of control and people know they will never be able to afford care if it is needed. The Capitalist dynamics of “supply and demand” guarantee this.

We must keep in mind that insurance companies, like casinos, are businesses devoted to making money. As previously discussed, claims are routinely denied, regardless of the hardship or even death that denial will cause the patient. Like casinos, where some people do indeed win but the "house" always takes in much more than it ever pays out, insurance companies do pay claims when they absolutely cannot get out of it; but they reliably take in more than they pay out: even under the U.S. Affordable Care Act, insurers may keep up to 15–20% of premiums for administration and profit (KFF, 2023).

In one respect, this business model resembles a protection racket: people pay out of fear of what will happen if they don’t. The difference is that the danger, ruinous medical bills, is not threatened by the insurer directly; it is created by the system the insurers belong to and profit from, in which hospital list prices are inflated to several times their costs (Linde and Egede, 2022) largely as bargaining positions in negotiations with insurers.

This creates a situation in which medical treatment is dictated not by medical professionals but by accountants and claims adjusters who are very strongly reinforced to deny treatment by default. In Capitalist paradigms, when there is a conflict between a doctor and an insurance company, the insurance company usually prevails, except for those at the top of the Pyramid to whom exorbitant medical fees are not an issue.

Thus these businesses are truly parasitic, feeding off of the resources of citizens who are forced by the Capitalist system to choose between having no access to serious medical care in case of need or else paying a large share of their meager paycheck to buy the possibility of maybe having access for self and family. Health insurance companies more often than not serve to prevent patients from getting care. This is analogous to a scenario in which a factory pollutes a town’s water supply, giving rise to a parasitic water purification business that charges residents for drinkable water when otherwise they have none since the water is now undrinkable. The real solution is to shut down the polluting factory or modify it so that it doesn't pollute.

Parasitic industries contribute far less to the Community than they extract. They sap and drain the resources, quality of life, and well-being of all, including both individuals and employers. In the case of health insurance, Capitalist paradigms create an artificial need due to the unattainable cost of medical care. This industry parasitizes the populace by purporting to fill this need, which is taken as a given, a fact of life like gravity or electromagnetism, even though it isn't. This industry exacerbates the situation by ultimately driving the cost of medical care even higher, increasing the cost of living, AKA the blackmail price that every person is forced to pay constantly in order to be allowed to continue existing.

The health insurance industry is but one example. Sadly, parasitic industries abound in every sector under Capitalist paradigms. Examples include all insurance industries, billing, collections, advertising, marketing, stock brokerages, credit bureaus, corporate attorneys, lobbyists, rental companies, telemarketers, lending companies, the fashion industry, purveyors and manufacturers of status symbols, real estate brokerages, pawn shops, much of the tourist industry, even bottled water companies (which would have no market if it were not for Capitalism's reinforcing of polluting industrial practices and lifestyles), banks and more.

Yes, banks are in fact parasitic with respect to those not near the top of the economic Pyramid. Consider that when you put your money in a bank, they limit your access to it, charge you fees for accessing it, for not accessing it often enough or accessing it too often, and even for not maintaining an arbitrary minimum balance, thereby placing an extra burden on those in the weakest financial straits. They also practice predatory lending. Banks will manage investments, but if you are looking to invest a small amount, banks pay you returns that do not keep up with inflation. Meanwhile banks invest your money and make astronomical sums off of it. The only "service" a bank could be said to provide is that your money is harder to steal in a bank than under your mattress. The economic and social environment in Capitalist societies makes it extremely difficult to function in day-to-day life without bank accounts, credit cards, and the like which creates the “necessity” of having a bank account.

In addition to legal parasitic industries, illegal ones thrive as well. Examples include protection and extortion rackets, pimps, loan sharks, con artists and scammers targeting every segment of the Community with a multitude of scams, drug dealers, human traffickers, blackmailers, arms dealers, escort services, identity thieves, counterfeiters and more.

Both legal and illegal parasitic industries are an inevitable feature of any Capitalist paradigm that operates for any length of time. When one's level of freedom, options, quality of life, the respect one is afforded, and even ability of continue living are determined by one's level of wealth or lack of it, getting money takes on prime importance at the most basic level. What such paradigms reinforce is the acquisition of currency, influence, power over others, and material wealth. Such an environment is richly fertile ground for both legal and illegal parasitic industries to arise.

In the new paradigms, where currency will be irrelevant and nonexistent, there will be no reinforcers for such industries. They will wither and die for lack of nourishment and purpose. They will serve no function, have no clients or victims, and will fade into the annals of failed human paradigms belonging to dark ages, thankfully left behind.

Those currently forced by economic necessity or driven by greed into such industries will be left without jobs; but unlike the case under Capitalist systems, this will not negatively impact their survival or quality of life. For the most part, they will be able to leverage and transpose the skills that they learned in those industries into forms that are truly productive, contributory, and fulfilling.

Those unwilling to accept treatment or who cannot be turned from harmful practices will have to be prevented from exercising them, but otherwise they will be treated with respect and enjoy the same quality of life as other members of the Community. These behaviors will tend towards extinction, as they will in no way be reinforced in the new Paradigms.

Since the post-Transition communities will be self-scrutinizing and crafted to grow, learn, evolve and adapt, any reinforcers for predatory behaviors that are unintentionally generated will be quickly identified and altered to reverse the pattern before it can become endemic and entrenched.