The absurdity of intellectual property in a capitalist society is on full display as pharmaceutical

giants keep desperately needed life-saving knowledge related to the production of coronavirus

vaccine, a secret. We need a new system. We need a new society.

We need to demand that which may have sounded impossible even a few weeks ago,

but is not only realizable, but an imperative necessity. Deepening unemployment, a looming wave of evictions, massive and widening inequality, there's no denying it.

Capitalism is in crisis and capitalism is the crisis.

We are excited to have Professor Richard Wolfe join us again for a regular weekly segment

where we talk about the biggest stories related to the economy, the state of the working

class, and the crimes of big business.

We also talk about how the economy could be reconstituted on a new basis so that the

needs of the people and the planet come before profit.

Richard Wolfe is the co-founder of the Organization Democracy at Work and the author of many books.

The latest being The Sickness is the System when Capitalism fails to save us from pandemics or itself.

It's now available in an e-book format. You can check out Professor Wolfe's work at

R-D-Wolf.com. That's R-D-W-O-L-F-F.com. Richard Wolfe, welcome back. Thank you. Glad to be here.

Thank you for joining. Here we are. Forty-five million people around the world have been infected with COVID.

We have a half a million dead in the United States, staggering numbers, unbelievable numbers.

And a couple thousand dying each day. And this is after we're being told with sort of optimistic headlines that,

you know, things are getting better. Things have constantly been getting better, it seems,

for the last year as a half a million people died. And I'm looking at two different stories.

One was a story that came from a couple days ago. Countries urge drug companies to share

vaccine know-how. And then there's another article, Breaking News, that Merck, a pharmaceutical

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