(One) Trouble with Capitalism

I struggle with capitalism and free markets. On the one hand, it fosters innovation, some good and some bad. On the other, left unchecked, it leads to consolidation of power and wealth. And there's always the tricky issue of labor. Labor isn't just a cost, its people. If those people have too little power and they're in Sinclair’s Jungle, working twelve hour days, losing the occasional limb and getting a nickel an hour. If they have too much power, they create the true workers paradise: as little work as possible for as much pay as possible. Productivity stagnates, profits plummet, chaos ensues.

The biggest issue related to capitalism, however, is that it is dependent on continued growth. This growth, of course, is a myth. Though the economic activity of the world has indeed grown at frightening speed over the last century, it ultimately has limits. Why? Because the stresses put on the environment by human activity, much of it motivated by capitalism (though some, like the depletion of the Amazon rain forest, is carried out by individuals lowest on capitalisms food chain, as opposed to, say, Alcoa). There's a catch 22 here. Though continued economic activity is ultimately undermining the environmental stability our species has enjoyed up to this point, it appears that as a country's average household income increases, some types of stresses on the environment will decrease. For example, the world's most desperately poor often depend on fire wood for fuel. This will lead, often, to deforestation. As their lot in life improves, however, they are more likely to depend on other sources of fuel, lessening the impact of millions of people scavenging for fire wood.

So the simple solution is to simply redistribute wealth, thus reducing those immediate stresses to the environment, right? Sort of. People with higher standards of living, like those in say the US or Japan or Belgium aren't wantonly cutting down their last trees for fuel. They are also likely to have fewer children. This is good. However, wealthier people also tend to consume much more in resources than their poor neighbors, the most obvious resource being petroleum. So called "developed" nations produced far more CO2 emissions than so called "under-developed" countries. Hmmm... seems like we're screwed.

Ahem.

However, there might be some way out of this. Free market capitalism may some day result in a more equitable distribution of wealth (though certainly some will continue to be "more equal" than others). But in order to get there, we are going to end up with more strip mines, more CO2 emissions and more waste than the planet and its inhabitants (all of 'em, not just us) can handle. There needs to be limits. There needs to be a recognition that the whole world can not live at the level and wealth and consumption of the United States, and that includes the United States. After all, an American living in 2000 square foot, air conditioned home with two cars in the garage is a mighty hypocrite if he says, "oh, well, I can live this way, but there needs to be limits to economic growth in the Sudan. The environment, you know."

We live in a land of excess. Of waste. And everyone else wants to get here (figuratively, though sometimes literally, of course). The problem is, "here" is unsustainable.

So there need to be limits.

But from whence comes said limits? Who is going to ask the American public, as well as the Japanese, the Germans, the Chinese, the Rwandans, the El Salvadorans to make sacrifices? Well, I can tell you this: if Americans don't cut back on consumption and growth, there is certainly no good reason for anyone in other countries to.

A change in the culture is in order, but that is slow going my friends.

I can't help but think that the limits must be imposed from the top. This is counter to my belief that the only meaningful and permanent change can occur when culture changes, when beliefs change, but we may be at a crisis point, and by the time we decide that excess is bad, it might be too late.

Next... the trouble with government imposed limits, of course.