Interesting to note that McCloud found that 85% of Dharavi's inhabitants work. And are basically happy. And do LOADS of stuff communally.
He rightly points out that we in the West have lost this aspect of culture with our focus on the cult of the individual. What we know as 'liberalism'.
Capitalism is, essentially, the economic system of the cult of the individual.
It is a societal encapsulation of the base level need to survive - to be ahead of the next person, to outcompete one's neighbour for scarce resources.
Our whole society is structured around this principle. Everything is a competition.
Politics and justice are an adversarial system. Truth and justice are irrelevant, who wins has the best argument (or the most money to purchase the best resources to fight the position).
Sport is the same. The more money you throw at an athlete or a sport, the more competitive it becomes, the tighter and the nastier and the less 'real' it becomes. People naturally look to ANY and EVERY means to 'get ahead of' the competition.
Why?
It used to be understood that sport was more for the expression of physicality and the desire to breed the opposite to competition - co-operation - especially in team sports.
These days, computer programs and science dominate who passes to whom when and where. Tactics and resources are ALL about *winning* rather than about "playing the game".
Athletes are optimised for individual best performance, rather than a group performance.
The notion of helping along those not quite as able is now anathema to any 'team' even in kiddie soccer - the under-sixes.
At a recent game I overheard several parents referring to one unfit and unskilful 'team member' as being a waste of space and detrimental to the REST of the team "winning".
I use this example to emphasis the notion that "winning at all cost" has become the norm.
Capitalism enforces this through such mechanisms as "free trade" which is, of course, anything but. Who wins has the most govt subsidies, usually.
Another mechanism capitalism uses to 'win at all cost' is so-called 'competition' legislation - allegedly designed to promote 'competition' and thus lower costs for consumers, but in fact, often producing the opposite.
Third Party Personal Injury premiums, anyone???? How did the deregulation of that market provide consumers with lower premiums?
Instead of ONE market player able to absorb losses from different areas and occasions, with a single bureacracy for processing claims and fees, we now have a hundred different firms duplicating ALL of those functions and, unlike the former govt 'monopoly', also required to produce profits for capitalist shareholders.
Sorry, the people lost that argument. And have paid through the nose ever since.
And how about electricity market deregulation? Anyone see any real competition in that? All the companies are now trying desperately to poach another retailers customers. The only REAL growth has always been in NEW dwellings, everything else is just passing around a slice of the pie from one retailer to another.
And as the generators effectively regulate the lowest price (at the moment) they all have to charge pretty much the same tariffs, as they are already as low as they can be.
This is the other unseen hand of the capitalist free market that was not predicted by Smith and Ricardo.
The nature of capitalism is such that it drives down prices of goods to the lowest possible level, until a point is reached at which all players in the market are struggling to gain market share, struggling to keep the market share they have, and struggling to make a profit due to the saturation of the market by so-called competitors.
And this struggle is passed on to the employees, in lower wages, longer hours, and simply the stress of doing the job under those competitive conditions.
I liken it to a relay team, where the slightest stumble or lack of form by any member of the team can see the whole team slip behind the others in the race.
The only way to improve conditions is for the race to be better regulated. By the people affected. Via their duly constituted govt. Access to markets needs to be limited. Constraints put in place that enable existing firms (and communities) to maintain their special relationship.
The 'methode controlee' used in Europe is a case in point. Champagne is not Champange unless it comes from a restriced and histroical area of norther France. We now drink 'sparkling wine' as a result. But "Champagne" still has the cachet, and the premium pricing structure, which enables it's small-holder communities to remain viable when faced with the likes of South Corp, or any of the other major wine producers, whose economies fo scale have largely created the worldwide wine glut. That and the over-production by un-regulated smallholders, many of whom are now screaming that their properties can't survive without the water they should never have been pumping form the rivers.
Apparently, that "free market" *competition* was a good thing for everyone - until now. Until we realised that there is not enough water to go around, and so some will have to miss out.
The circumstances that led to the GFC are another classic case in point. Lack of adequate regulation allowed the greedy and irresponsible to exploit the system to their immediate advantage.
Only better regulation (*socialism* you will note, according to the free-marketeers) will prevent such a catastrophy recurring.
For those of you who watched the McCloud program, ask yourself this - how many of your neighbour's do you know by name? Surname as well? Their parents? Cousins? Friends?
Ask the same questions of any Dharavi resident and they could probably give you a list as long as your arm.
I suspect that one of the questions we are (generally speaking) *not* asking of ourselves is "what's the point"?
Who ACTUALLY benefits from this capitalist, individualist, free-market system?
You'll need to read Marx, or a later scholar who encapsulates his better arguments to understand what this means, but the answer is, in short: 'the capitalists'.
Alas for community, family - and industry - the cult of the individual (the human or societal face of 'capitalism') has completely taken over to the extent that many of us have been hoodwinked into believing that " capitalism" can be made to work to our advantage.
This is in fact an insidious trap. Once you accept that concept you become trapped by it, and are forced to pedal ever faster on the competitive treadmills of life.
Spend less time with your friends and family, more time at "work" earning money that buys you less and less each year, paying off a mortgage that is too large, driving a car which is too big, and maxing the credit card on holidays you can ill afford but simply HAVE to take because otherwise the lack of free time and real realxation would send you mad.
And at the end of the day, if you read as I have done, the exposes of the system, you realise that capitalism itself can only continue to exist with massive differences between communities and markets. Someone, somewhere, needs to be able to earn MORE than your 'goods' cost to produce in order to provide the capitalist with his profit share.
We can never, all of us, reach the levels of income and expenditure of the wealthier portion of the community. And note that 'wealth' is increasingly being concentrated into fewer hands. Proportionally, how many billionaires does China have to its overall population???
Even here, i the "enlightened" west, and in a country doing better than most, Australia's wealth is largely concentrated in the hands of the top 10-20% of earners.
As a former rock star once said: the rich are getting richer, the poor get the picture..
Anybody care to argue the toss? 
