This is an excellent article, and I’m hanging on each word, but I want to call out one word specifically as wrong — it’s the word “pragmatic”.

There is nothing “pragmatic” about putting short-term profits for your company above the health of the entire world, including yourself and your family!

It isn’t even financially pragmatic. It is a matter of certainty that the antibiotics will run out — the only question is when, not if. The company that’s ready with their replacements will do trillions in business.

So why aren’t they doing it? Simple — it’s that quarterly profits and Wall Street mean that the long-term picture is entirely unimportant. Executive get bonuses based on annual performance, and their aim is to get as much of those as they can, as soon as possible.

It sort of works for them — as long as they don’t get sick with some antibiotic resistant disease — but it doesn’t work out for their company in the long run, or our society.

We have been brainwashed into believing that obsession with short-term profits to the exception of all else is “pragmatic”… but in fact it’s objectively madness.

It has descended into a battle between “them” (a tiny number of extremely rich individuals) and “us” (the vast majority of humanity) on issues like antibiotic resistance, income inequality, climate change and the destruction of the biosphere. We must prevail, and to do so we must avoid our opponents’ weasel words.

So please, don’t use the word “pragmatic” for things like, “Allowing infectious disease to ravage humanity again for the sake of short-term personal profit.”

Call it like it is — “profit-driven.” That’s short, and clear, and non-pejorative, but accurate.