This section of the Primer is about Economics.
A Critique of Capitalism
Contents
Myths
Efficiency
Informed Choice
Magic Hand
Democracy
American Exceptionalism
Gross National Product
The American Way Of Life Is Non Negotiable
Preview
Explaining why capitalism is not the ticket to a preferred future is the point of departure for the Primer. The ideal of the Primer is to encourage and empower the reader’s own motivation, participation and advocacy on behalf of paradigm shift. Consider taking some notes on items of interest that you might build on or share with others.
Others have written volumes about the problems of capitalism. Much of the Primer makes use of existing information and arranges it in a paradigm shift context. The Primer asserts, the damages caused by capitalism are as much personal, social and spiritual as environmental.
We cannot produce our way to sustainability with more stuff and more energy no matter what the source. The need is for a widespread change in consciousness, not a tech breakthrough. The Primer asserts sustainability requires a great deal of downsizing eco and social footprints. Some call that de growth. Yes it is. A de-growth in physical size, a regrowth of positive human potential.
Capitalism as we know it and its most remarkable product, the consumer culture, is the common denominator for practically every social, economic, political, environmental and even spiritual problem of our time. The interests of capitalism, its owners and its servants are simply at odds with a sustainable and healthy society and planet.
A Critique of Capitalism
Contents
Myths
Efficiency
Informed Choice
Magic Hand
Democracy
American Exceptionalism
Gross National Product
The American Way Of Life Is Non Negotiable
Preview
Explaining why capitalism is not the ticket to a preferred future is the point of departure for the Primer. The ideal of the Primer is to encourage and empower the reader’s own motivation, participation and advocacy on behalf of paradigm shift. Consider taking some notes on items of interest that you might build on or share with others.
Others have written volumes about the problems of capitalism. Much of the Primer makes use of existing information and arranges it in a paradigm shift context. The Primer asserts, the damages caused by capitalism are as much personal, social and spiritual as environmental.
We cannot produce our way to sustainability with more stuff and more energy no matter what the source. The need is for a widespread change in consciousness, not a tech breakthrough. The Primer asserts sustainability requires a great deal of downsizing eco and social footprints. Some call that de growth. Yes it is. A de-growth in physical size, a regrowth of positive human potential.
Capitalism as we know it and its most remarkable product, the consumer culture, is the common denominator for practically every social, economic, political, environmental and even spiritual problem of our time. The interests of capitalism, its owners and its servants are simply at odds with a sustainable and healthy society and planet.
Consider the many thousands of public interest organizations, large and small, local and national. Virtually all of them exist to address some kind of damage caused by capitalism and its uncounted external costs.
We have cars instead of transit and sensible planning. We have extreme resource intensive suburbia instead of sensible housing. We have junk food and many other products known to damage public health and the environment, freely advertised and easily available to children at any convenience store. We have expensive miracle cures for many diseases and conditions that are largely avoidable. We have homeless people largely because affordable housing does not deliver as much profit as up scale apartments or suburbia.
Capitalism produces products and services that are purposefully bigger, fancier and more resource intensive than necessary, simply because they deliver bigger profits. The material affluence and the global reach of the depends completely on non sustainable excess consumption.
This economic system cannot survive without externalizing the costs of production, consumption and disposal of its products and services. This affluent society cannot survive without social engineering which purposefully degrades the social skills needed for healthy civic culture. Instead of a vibrant civic culture, we have a remarkably large percentage of the nation’s wealth and political power controlled by a remarkably small percentage of people with interests often in conflict with healthy people and planet.
Millions of people are dis-empowered and distracted because they have too much money while millions of others are dis-empowered and distracted because they don’t have enough money.
These and many other problems are all related. We can blame the economic system and its big businesses but a big assist goes to the many millions of every day people who continue to buy the products and services that do not fit a sustainable present or future. Some people might say the System is broken. The System isn’t broken, damage to people and planet in the name of profits is just what capitalism does. As long as people continue to over consume, we can only expect more of the same and worse.
There is virtually no serious public discussion about sustainability. Calling on the market to repair the damage it causes to people and planet is like inviting the arsonist to help put out the fire. Millions of jobs exist to repair the damage caused by the products and services from millions of other jobs.
We have cars instead of transit and sensible planning. We have extreme resource intensive suburbia instead of sensible housing. We have junk food and many other products known to damage public health and the environment, freely advertised and easily available to children at any convenience store. We have expensive miracle cures for many diseases and conditions that are largely avoidable. We have homeless people largely because affordable housing does not deliver as much profit as up scale apartments or suburbia.
Capitalism produces products and services that are purposefully bigger, fancier and more resource intensive than necessary, simply because they deliver bigger profits. The material affluence and the global reach of the depends completely on non sustainable excess consumption.
This economic system cannot survive without externalizing the costs of production, consumption and disposal of its products and services. This affluent society cannot survive without social engineering which purposefully degrades the social skills needed for healthy civic culture. Instead of a vibrant civic culture, we have a remarkably large percentage of the nation’s wealth and political power controlled by a remarkably small percentage of people with interests often in conflict with healthy people and planet.
Millions of people are dis-empowered and distracted because they have too much money while millions of others are dis-empowered and distracted because they don’t have enough money.
These and many other problems are all related. We can blame the economic system and its big businesses but a big assist goes to the many millions of every day people who continue to buy the products and services that do not fit a sustainable present or future. Some people might say the System is broken. The System isn’t broken, damage to people and planet in the name of profits is just what capitalism does. As long as people continue to over consume, we can only expect more of the same and worse.
There is virtually no serious public discussion about sustainability. Calling on the market to repair the damage it causes to people and planet is like inviting the arsonist to help put out the fire. Millions of jobs exist to repair the damage caused by the products and services from millions of other jobs.
Sustainable lifestyles, society and economic system is a tall order. We will either make the changes called for or wish we had. Paradigm shift is not a future paradise. It is an opportunity in the present tense, available to just about everyone in their own ways with no permission needed. We can enjoy many of the benefits of paradigm shift as soon as we care to take action in our own lives and even better, with family, friends and neighbors.
Humans don’t need to behave perfectly for moving towards sustainability but serious changes in values and lifestyle are needed. Paradigm shift calls for enlightened self interest. We do well for ourselves when we do well by others and the natural world. Every community has surprising allies and assets to work with.
The consumer culture, does provide us with a remarkable array of products and services that do enhance our well being and can absolutely be used to help bring about a preferred future. We can choose the products and services that fit sustainability and leave the rest behind. Paradigm shift is all about putting common sense and enlightened self interest to work. We don’t need a big tech breakthrough, we do need a widespread raising of personal and civic consciousness.
Note - This critique of capitalism lays the groundwork for the Primer and paradigm shift. Many of the assertions made in this first section will receive more attention later in the Primer. The Primer will point those out.
Humans don’t need to behave perfectly for moving towards sustainability but serious changes in values and lifestyle are needed. Paradigm shift calls for enlightened self interest. We do well for ourselves when we do well by others and the natural world. Every community has surprising allies and assets to work with.
The consumer culture, does provide us with a remarkable array of products and services that do enhance our well being and can absolutely be used to help bring about a preferred future. We can choose the products and services that fit sustainability and leave the rest behind. Paradigm shift is all about putting common sense and enlightened self interest to work. We don’t need a big tech breakthrough, we do need a widespread raising of personal and civic consciousness.
Note - This critique of capitalism lays the groundwork for the Primer and paradigm shift. Many of the assertions made in this first section will receive more attention later in the Primer. The Primer will point those out.
Efficiency
Efficiency is defined as using the least necessary physical or managerial inputs to accomplish a desired task. Capitalism claims to be efficient but its the opposite of efficient. The ideal of capitalism as we know it, is to use as much energy and resources as possible to perform a task. Transportation, food and shelter are core human needs but this economic system prefers to supersize taking care of those needs because there are more profits to be made from excess consumption than efficient consumption.
In the world of common sense and thermodynamics, cars, junk food and suburbia are extremely inefficient. An average car weighs 10 to 20 times its human cargo. They require extensive and expensive infrastructure. They kill over 40,000 people and cause hundreds of billions in property damage each year.
Meanwhile, 10 to 20 pounds of grain and thousands of gallons of water and soil erosion are needed to produce a single pound of meat. Factory farms abuse animals and the environment. The waste lagoons are a danger to nearby eco systems and the odors degrade the quality of life of people who live nearby. Antibiotics are the norm making those antibiotics less effective for human use.
America's food system becomes even more in efficient considering typical levels of consumption of animal products and junk food contribute to expensive damage to public health. Virtually all public health studies conclude the average American diet includes unhealthy amount of meat.
People need shelter. Capitalism prefers to build suburbia instead of modest more compact more environmentally benign housing because suburban houses are bigger, they need to be filled up with even more stuff, the residents almost always require having a car. All those inputs required by suburbia create more economic activity and profits even as they create many problems for the environment and community well being.
The New York Times reports medium income housing in Manhattan is torn down so high end condos can replace them. More profits can be made from the new and larger condos. Profits for investors are valued far above efficiency for taking care of legitimate human needs.
Hundreds of billions of people hours are lost to non productive entertainment and spectator sports instead of helping to make our neighborhoods and communities more cohesive and better places to live.
Innovation is a core human ideal but when innovation is motivated primarily by making money, we have a lot of problems.
Billions are spent repairing interstate highways, money that could be invested instead in sensible public transportation. Many cities are currently thinking about taking out sections of interstate and replacing them with boulevards in an effort to reconstruct the neighborhoods that existed before the interstates.
The multi-billion dollar Insurance industry exists largely to protect the oversized property and possessions of its customers and clients. The US military exists to protect global trade so Americans can buy cheap stuff made where labor is inexpensive and environmental restrictions are less.
Much of the medical profession exists to treat problems of over consumption.That condition is extremely inefficient. Billions are spent each year on avoidable health care costs from junk food, car wrecks, stress and anxiety.
Picture a beloved pair of Converse Allstars. Compare those to modern sneakers in design, materials used and cost. Even the humble tooth brush has become upsized and even electrified.
Inefficiency leads to more efficiency. A modest but close to home example. My suburban street now has expensive rain gardens retro installed between the street and sidewalk to filter run off from the oversized paved street before going into the storm drain and nearby river. And then, we have expensive new crosswalks built to protect pedestrians wanting to reach the other side of the busy street. Sensible transportation infrastructure would not need so much of these expensive interventions.
Every year, hundreds of billions of dollars and hours of time are lost to inefficiency in housing, transportation, food, recreation and health care. Imagine how that time and money could be used instead, not only to repair the social and environmental damage caused by capitalism’s excess consumption but to avoid causing much of the damage in the first place.
Imagine, millions of jobs in the US exist to repair the damage caused by millions of other jobs. Capitalism is hard wired to be inefficient, it is not sustainable and it is not built to last. Best to move towards sustainability and efficiency sooner than later.
Efficiency is defined as using the least necessary physical or managerial inputs to accomplish a desired task. Capitalism claims to be efficient but its the opposite of efficient. The ideal of capitalism as we know it, is to use as much energy and resources as possible to perform a task. Transportation, food and shelter are core human needs but this economic system prefers to supersize taking care of those needs because there are more profits to be made from excess consumption than efficient consumption.
In the world of common sense and thermodynamics, cars, junk food and suburbia are extremely inefficient. An average car weighs 10 to 20 times its human cargo. They require extensive and expensive infrastructure. They kill over 40,000 people and cause hundreds of billions in property damage each year.
Meanwhile, 10 to 20 pounds of grain and thousands of gallons of water and soil erosion are needed to produce a single pound of meat. Factory farms abuse animals and the environment. The waste lagoons are a danger to nearby eco systems and the odors degrade the quality of life of people who live nearby. Antibiotics are the norm making those antibiotics less effective for human use.
America's food system becomes even more in efficient considering typical levels of consumption of animal products and junk food contribute to expensive damage to public health. Virtually all public health studies conclude the average American diet includes unhealthy amount of meat.
People need shelter. Capitalism prefers to build suburbia instead of modest more compact more environmentally benign housing because suburban houses are bigger, they need to be filled up with even more stuff, the residents almost always require having a car. All those inputs required by suburbia create more economic activity and profits even as they create many problems for the environment and community well being.
The New York Times reports medium income housing in Manhattan is torn down so high end condos can replace them. More profits can be made from the new and larger condos. Profits for investors are valued far above efficiency for taking care of legitimate human needs.
Hundreds of billions of people hours are lost to non productive entertainment and spectator sports instead of helping to make our neighborhoods and communities more cohesive and better places to live.
Innovation is a core human ideal but when innovation is motivated primarily by making money, we have a lot of problems.
Billions are spent repairing interstate highways, money that could be invested instead in sensible public transportation. Many cities are currently thinking about taking out sections of interstate and replacing them with boulevards in an effort to reconstruct the neighborhoods that existed before the interstates.
The multi-billion dollar Insurance industry exists largely to protect the oversized property and possessions of its customers and clients. The US military exists to protect global trade so Americans can buy cheap stuff made where labor is inexpensive and environmental restrictions are less.
Much of the medical profession exists to treat problems of over consumption.That condition is extremely inefficient. Billions are spent each year on avoidable health care costs from junk food, car wrecks, stress and anxiety.
Picture a beloved pair of Converse Allstars. Compare those to modern sneakers in design, materials used and cost. Even the humble tooth brush has become upsized and even electrified.
Inefficiency leads to more efficiency. A modest but close to home example. My suburban street now has expensive rain gardens retro installed between the street and sidewalk to filter run off from the oversized paved street before going into the storm drain and nearby river. And then, we have expensive new crosswalks built to protect pedestrians wanting to reach the other side of the busy street. Sensible transportation infrastructure would not need so much of these expensive interventions.
Every year, hundreds of billions of dollars and hours of time are lost to inefficiency in housing, transportation, food, recreation and health care. Imagine how that time and money could be used instead, not only to repair the social and environmental damage caused by capitalism’s excess consumption but to avoid causing much of the damage in the first place.
Imagine, millions of jobs in the US exist to repair the damage caused by millions of other jobs. Capitalism is hard wired to be inefficient, it is not sustainable and it is not built to last. Best to move towards sustainability and efficiency sooner than later.
Informed choice
Capitalism claims the virtue of providing the customer accurate information about a product or service and then let them choose what’s best for their needs. Instead, informed choice is a fiction. The reality is, the price we pay for the product or service does not tell an honest story about the social, public health or ecological damage that product is responsible for in its manufacture, use and disposal.
An important term to know in relation to informed choice is external cost. An external cost is the consequence of using a product or service that affects others [or the environment] not involved with the purchase or use of the product.
Aerial spraying on forest lands drifts into peoples’ lungs, pollutes water and nearby properties. Factory farms degrade the quality of life for those living nearby. Thousands of people watching sporting events, tractor pulls or pop concerts adds up to millions of person hours of lost time, talent and human potential that could have been used doing good works in the community.
These externalities can all be translated into social, economic, environmental and public health costs. An honest product and economic system would account for these external costs so the buyer would know the impacts made by their purchase. The price we pay for everything would be far higher if the economic system were honest.
Informed choice and external costs are closely related to inefficiency. The greater the external cost, the greater the inefficiency.
Foto was here
The price for gasoline does not tell the honest cost of looking for oil, its production, transportation, use, accidents, the effects on the environment, effects on people where the oil comes from, pedestrians and bike riders hit by cars, the lost time in traffic jams, the noise, road rage, the dispiriting strip malls, the air pollution, etc. A more honest cost for a gallon of gasoline could well be $25 per gallon if not much more.
There are many many more threads of external costs and lack of product information. Meat and junk food, already mentioned, have lengthy lists of external costs. Important to emphasize, there are social external costs as well. Drug and social media dependency result in lost human potential. Fashion and fads divert our attention from more important issues and actions.
This economic system and the affluent lifestyles it sells are, essentially, subsidized by damage to public well-being and the health of the planet. Our lives would be radically different if the economic system was honest. Everything would cost much more with informed choice. Unhealthy choices would be so expensive, few people could afford them. Then, we wouldn’t have to pay for expensive cures and clean up and could use that money in productive ways. More on this “double benefit” later.
A sustainable economic system and sensible lifestyles would look far different from what we have now. We would have to become far more responsible in how we take care of our needs. We would also have to redefine what our needs are. Paradigm shift is all about redefining our needs and how to take care of them in ways that are positive for people and planet.
The Magic Hand
The magic hand is one of the most cherished myths of capitalism. Investopedia defines the magic hand, “Through individual self-interest and freedom of production and consumption, the best interests of society, as a whole, are fulfilled.”
Our economic system does have rules and regulations but it is still deeply flawed. For example, climate change comes to us thanks to self interest and the freedom of production and consumption - we are taught from a young age to overconsume. We have as many cars and trucks in the US pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as there are adults to drive them thanks to the magic hand. We will go into more detail regarding the magic hand about cars and suburbia in another part of the Primer.
According to the Federal Reserve, the richest one [1] percent of Americans own sixteen [16] times as much financial resources as the least wealthy 50 percent of the population. That remarkable statistic expressed another way, three and a half million people own 16 times the financial assets as the least well off 160 million. The magic hand at work.
Capitalism claims the magic hand is the best way to allocate resources for the greatest good of society. Instead, the greatest good goes to those who can afford it and the environment suffers, too. The well off have better living conditions, schools, food choices, health care, life expectancy, test scores and more simply because they can pay for it. The System also allows those who have all the best, to pass those assets and privileges on to their children. People live in luxury and not far away people are living in cardboard boxes by the railroad tracks. The well off have far more economic and political power than those with less money.
External Costs
An external cost occurs when the buyer and user of a product or service creates an issue for someone else or the environment that had nothing to do with the use of that product or service. A good example is the activities of billionaire Elon Musk. His rocket tests have blown up and rained debris and pollution down range. His satellite systems damage the view of the night time sky while generating profits for his businesses. I was camping one night and saw the formation of lights travel across the sky. I later found out it was a Musk enterprise. I felt intruded on.
Average Americans impact people and planet as a normal part of their lifestyle. Riding a bike, I am in traffic, normally in a bike lane, but that does not protect me from the exhaust pollution. Every day, a bike rider is run over by a car, another form of external costs. Big homes mean big clear cuts and that damages habitat for all kinds of wildlife, large and small.
So the cost of that damage to people and planet is suffered by people and planet. And the cost of that damage does not show up on the price of that product. Various estimates figure if a gallon of gasoline included its many external costs, the price would be 20 - 30 or more dollars per gallon. One might say the use of those cars generates an enormous amount of positive economic activity. Cars and related industries employ millions of people. Yes they do. Cars and trucks are invaluable to the economy. People use cars to go to work. People deliver untold products to stores. All completely true.
The fact is, damaging people and planet is just part of business. The degree of dependence on damaging products and services is the point. Our society is totally dependent on externalizing the cost extraction, production, use and disposal of just about everything we depend on for our affluent lives.
Estimates have been made as to the value of nature we depend on. Air, water, cleaning up pollution. All those systems are degraded and over used by humans. The more affluent, the more external costs, the more damage. As mentioned above, millions of jobs exist to clean up the damage caused by millions of other jobs. The entire process is enormously in efficient. The magic hand oversees an assembly line of social and environmental damage. Americans are exceptional in the level of external costs.
Paradigm shift does not equate with no impact on people and planet but those impacts would be far less and the prices paid would be far more accountable. That would mean a vastly different way of life for all of us. Other parts of the Primer describe what a lifestyle much closer to sustainability might look like. Other parts of the Primer describe products and services we are familiar with now that would will not likely make the cut to sustainability.
American Exceptionalism
American Exceptionalism is the belief that the United States, because of its historical development, its political system and values confers to the US a special place on the world stage. French historian and writer Alexis de Tocqueville is often credited with articulating this idea after visiting the US in the 1830’s. The Primer fully agrees, the US is exceptional. But in a very different way.
The enthusiasm for American Exceptionalism is based on mainstream ideals and values that come down to the familiar belief that big is better. American exceptionalism is credited to its exceptional wealth. In current terms to the size of the American homes, cars, incomes, in general material prosperity.
America’s military is the largest in the world. Even strands of Christianity consider our affluence to be the rewards of our hard work and virtue.
These beliefs in American Exceptionalism reinforce the belief that our political and economic system are the best available. These beliefs contribute to the belief that the US is entitled to and even obligated to take political and economic initiatives of global importance.
The opinion of the Primer is that the US is exceptional because it has been remarkably able to turn Nature into money and power. The US can simply afford to buy and pay for a lot.
The early European pioneers hit the lottery coming to North America. There were river, lakes, forests, soil, climate minerals, coal, oil and all manner of natural resources in abundance. The early settlers were often assisted by the native residents but, of course, the culture, technical and organizational back ground of the European settlers added up to a very different outcome compared to the thousands of years of Native American presence on this continent.
Simply put, the Europeans were able to turn Nature into political and economic power and were not shy about doing it. Americans claiming virtue and exceptionalism is like someone claiming credit after inheriting vast wealth from a dispassionate benefactor.
American Exceptionalism is a mythology that perfectly explains how Americans see themselves and their place in the world.
Gross National Product
Most of us recognize the term Gross National Product, we’ve grown up with it. GNP is a crude measurement and its focus and bias is economic growth. GNP estimates the total value of all the final products and services produced by the means of production. GNP tells us basically, how much MORE stuff was produced and consumed over previous figures. It does not consider that some economic activity is healthy and some is not. The GNP considers a car is better than transit and a bike. Junk food is better than whole food. A traffic wreck is better than walking. A day shopping at the mall is better than a day at a work party with friends and neighbors.
GNP has served as a propaganda tool for economic growth and ignores other metrics that provide a better look at the condition of society.
GNP does not account for non paid work, damage to the natural world, services provided by nature, climate change, external costs, social well being, literacy, economic dis equity, the decline of wages for many sectors of workers and more.
For capitalism, the more growth the better. GNP was and still is a part of “traditional” social engineering, telling us, the well being of our society is based on how much more energy and resources are used. The repetitive message - excess is desirable and encouraged.
In a critique of GNP, also used in France, former French president Nicolas Sarkozy observed we will not change our economic and social behavior “unless we change the ways we measure our economic performance”.
In more recent years, other types of indicators have become available to address this GNP problem measuring conditions that tell a much more accurate story about society's successes and challenges such as education, life expectancy, health care, life satisfaction, work and life balance, eco logical conditions. New indicators include the Human Development Index, Better Life Index and Genuine Progress Indicator.
A deeper understanding of the country's condition can help educate and motivate the public to make our lives, communities and nature a better place. Paradigm shift can only benefit.
The owners of Society are as much the victims of social engineering as anyone else.
Capitalism and Democracy
Certainly anyone can run for office and say whatever they like but the winner take all election system in the US all but guarantees either a democrat or republican will win the election. The two parties have some appreciable differences but they both serve capitalism without question. Because money is considered free speech, those with a lot of money can influence the political process in their favor.
Many other nations that claim a democratic system such as in Europe, have elections that include more political parties with more diverse voices with greater chances for actually being included in making public policy thanks to proportional representation. For example there are 22 political parties in Italy that have members either in the European or Italian parliaments. The parties represent various interests on the left, center, right, green, liberal, Christian, social democrat, populist, eco socialist, progressive, liberal conservative and more. Certainly a few dominate but the Movimento Animalista, an animal rights party, has a representative in the European Parliament.
Capitalism and its economic chieftains have a firm grip on power that guarantees we will have limited ways to address many issues relating to the environment, sustainability, public health, finance, transportation, energy, education. A more open civic discussion about many important issues is not in the interests of those who have a lot of money and power. Challenging capitalism is a challenge to their money and power.
Social engineering, otherwise known as the consumer culture, has also had an enormous impact limiting the capacity of people to even question the legitimacy of the existing economic and political systems. Given the trends, those in control would prefer deteriorating social, environmental and political conditions such as climate change, than excusing themselves to make room for others with very different ideas to help manage society. An already flawed system is growing worse in real time. It is up to those who disagree with this System to be creative and positive in pushing back.
A core part of the Primer’s advocacy is that we can make many of our own personal policy and behavior decisions to live far more sustainably. We already have a good idea of what a sustainable lifestyle might look like. Anyone or groups can consciously prioritize their time and money and create their own version of paradigm shift. The more the better. The hope is these grass roots efforts engage with each other more frequently and increase the scale and success of their efforts to eventually displace the flawed leadership we now have. The Primer & related entities actively encourage this transformation.
