Feasible Ways in Which Humans Can Combine
Mass Capitalism and Environmental Improvements
Expanding Capitalism into a Larger Global Mass-Capitalistic System, While Improving Our Global Environment and our Human Population’s Standard of Living
By Sean G. Simmons (December 2000)
There has been an
ever growing movement beginning in the 1940’s and 50’s, whose premise is to
either control growth or halt it all together.
This movement has rallied around a green flag preaching the philosophy
of saving mother earth from the current exploitation’s that are taking place
under the Western economic system. Many
of these members of the Green Party view the current Industrial or Capitalistic
Systems as the main enemy of the environment because of the way that a Capitalistic System considers
natural resources that are scarce or irreplaceable as a very valuable
commodity. It is true that now that we
have had time to evaluate the costs and benefits of an Industrialized society,
we have recognized that there have been some costs or “externalities” that have
developed out of our extremely prosperous time period. Some of these costs are urban sprawl, global
warming, pollution, and the increase of greenhouse gases just to name a
few.
The Greens
solution to deal with these “externalities” is to declare capitalism the enemy
and to wage a war in order to either sustain or end growth altogether while
moving back to a more Welfare-like state.
Greens view the capitalistic model as one that tries to dominate and
exploit nature for one’s personal wealth and gain, and they fear that at our
current rates of consumption and waste that we will quickly destroy the earth’s
natural environment. They have
developed many clever techniques such as lobbying, generating large amounts of
wealth, creating new social structures, forming political parties, and even
using acts of terrorism in order to slow the capitalistic machine from growing
ever larger.
I do agree with
many of the Greens and others that have worries about our earth and its’
natural environment, and that something must be done quickly and substantially
to correct the crisis that is looming.
It is because of the West’s recent success that we have been
experiencing these problems and I feel that the same knowledge and labor that
was used to create these economic successes can be used to find feasible
solutions to our current global ecological problems.
I disagree with
the Greens policies or ideologies about how we as a planet must go about
correcting these ecological problems though.
The idea of halting growth altogether or creating a policy of
sustainable growth on a worldwide scale is not a feasible solution in the
evolving global Capitalistic market.
Slowing or stagnating the growth of the world is not feasible because
countries that have not reached the economic well being that the Western
Hemisphere has attained will reject this idea with full force. Even if stagnating growth were an acceptable
idea in the global community, it would create such a global depression in the
West that the political leaders would be ousted or in the worse case scenario
killed.
Therefore, I
believe in order to maintain and improve our global environment and standard of
living we must begin looking for more feasible and ideologies and practicle
solutions that will incorporate our current economic and sociological systems
with practical solutions that will not inhibit continual world growth and
expansion. In the following essay I
will try to answer the following question:
How can we expand capitalism into a larger and more encompassing global Mass Capitalism with a Free Market structure and continuous growth, and still improve our global environment and our general standard of living?
Theory One- The Damages
Caused that are Related to Progress
Our current Free Market Capitalistic System has been
quite a successful machine compared to other models which rely on more of a
Welfare State such as Socialism or Communism.
Other economic systems have collapsed, while Capitalism has remained in
a phase of continuous growth. Recently
though, we have started to gain conscientiousness about some of the costs that
are related to our system. We face
problems with an increasing gap in individual education, wealth, and social
standings just to name a few. On a
global scale we are also facing ecological problems of historic
proportions. When the Western Countries
were in the beginning phases of growth we used extremely high amounts of scarce
resources in order to develop more efficient output. Better technologies were created and there was a snowball effect,
which created greater and greater amounts of efficiencies. We are not yet at the maximum amount of
efficiency we desire, but we must look at the many problems that we created
from this growth and learn from them.
The reason being there are others in the world that are currently at the
same stages or lower stages of development that the West were at in the
beginning of the Industrial Revolution.
One of the main causes of these problems are that the Third World and
emerging countries are trying to grow and compete in the market on the global
level and they are using outdated techniques and technologies to grow and
become competitive with the West. They are
causing ecological havoc that is preventable if we show global leadership
abilities to cultivate and educate these countries into compliance with global
environmental standards. We cannot
continue under our current policies, which is allowing the relaxed
environmental standards of these emerging countries and turning it into a
competitive advantage for ourselves because we will eventually pay the costs of
the “externalities” of this wastefulness in the future.
A modern example of this is the Chinese project of the
Three Gorges Dam. The Chinese are
destroying and relocating thousands of acres of land and people,
respectively. This project could be
eliminated entirely if the Chinese would use nuclear power instead, but for
political and technological reasons they do not. This is just one of the many examples of what is going on now and
is preventable if our leaders were spending the time trying to identify these
flaws in our current economic systems instead trying to find ways to cause its
demise.
Once we realize
that progressive leadership and guidance from the Western Hemisphere is a
necessity in order to continue growth we can start developing feasible
solutions to our current problems. We
can also spend time generating ideas and technologies that will create greater
efficiencies and ecological stability in the future, but our leaders must first
recognize the problem and secondly, decide to do something about it.
Currently, our
elite leadership is not trying to maintain and spawn continuous growth
throughout the world. They are trying to
find ideological causes to put time and energy into rather than focusing on
feasible solutions to problems that we are facing in the not to distant
future. I f the elite leadership does
not start focusing on methods that will stimulate future growth which will in
turn create higher standards of living and better ecological stability then
there is going to be a highly negative result. Our leadership and nation has loss the connection between the
ability to create wealth and prosperity, as was done in the past by exploiting
others through violence. We would like
to forget that part of our history, but we cannot. If we do it might cause us to slip back into a Welfare State of
guarantees that will slow growth, increase world poverty and other problems, which
will once again shift to the focus away from ecological stability and back to
personal survival. This will negate any
small victories or achievements we have made in recent time.
“Economic Activism involves the government stepping in to
make sure that society’s costs and benefits are factored into price and
profit.” The current method of
“Economic Activism” is to use tariffs and quotas that are enforced by the
government to force participants in the market to pay for actions that are
deemed costly and inefficient methods of production and consumption. On occasion, producers are given benefits
for choosing methods that are beneficial to society such as tax breaks or
subsidies of some sort. There are also
other types of “Economic Activism” that could be created though that does not
have to be guided by government. After
all, True Capitalists dislike any government involvement in the first
place. If government is left out of
regulating the majority of the marketplace except to prevent monopolistic
competition, I believe that industries will begin developing better
technologies. This will in turn
continue to lessen ecological problems because the market will actually promote
competition between firms to produce the most efficient good using the best
outputs and causing the least amount of “externalities”.
The only way this
“true” form of competition in the marketplace is attainable though, is by
cutting the huge bureaucratic regulations that big government creates. By cutting Western bureaucracies by a 1/3 or
a ½ you could create a more efficient government, which would reduce taxes,
allow more investment in personal saving and corporate technologies, which will
stimulate growth in the market and cause technologies to advance at a much
higher pace. This high rate of
continuous growth will help individual standards of living; it will create a
more efficient labor force, and allow more room for future research and
development. There are many variables
standing in the way of this economic concept though.
Whenever you have political and economic activism, you
also have counter movements and sociological impacts. In our current Welfare State we have many people in our lower
class that are undereducated and unskilled.
This also goes for all the underdeveloped countries in the world
also. In order for “Economic Activism”
to be feasible we must consider a way to get the world’s population that are
unskilled and uneducated up to a level that will be efficient and productive in
an ever increasing technological society.
The more the market grows the more we create social problems under the
welfare state because of governmental guarantees. When the state makes guarantees it takes away wealth from the
overall market which in turn slows growth and creates inequalities. If huge inequalities are allowed to continue
to increase between upper and lower
classes, then they will eventually reach a level where the masses will become
extremely discontented with their leaders and they will revolt.
Another possibility is that our increasingly expanding technologies will become so extremely complex that we will revolutionize ourselves so far that the lower uneducated classes will be forced into the Welfare state all over again because they will be unable to be competitive producers in the market place. We must create a sufficient structure to realize each individual most productive capability at a young age so that they will be maximized in the future to their highest potential output. If humans can maximize their own potentials then inflation will be highly reduced and less government and political involvement will be necessary to deal with business cycles and social problems. This can only happen through an alliance between the governments of the Western Hemisphere and the financial markets.
Theory Three- Feasible
Solutions to Allow Growth and Environmental Stability
Our main problem the world over is that our political and
cultural systems are much slower to adapt and accept change than our financial
markets and technological sectors are.
We must create an alliance between our governments and financial markets
in order to bring about or maintain an era of continuous growth that could lead
to a new Mass Capitalism on global level.
We are currently reaching a pinnacle in our current financial markets
and ecological systems. We have the
option to expand growth and replenish the environment before too many harms are
done. If we ignore anti-capitalistic
ideology and do not allow our leadership to become complacent then we can
continue to develop.
There are many feasible solutions that will allow growth
and be ecologically friendly at the same time. First, we must eliminate
ignorance everywhere in order to allow the global market to grow because one
weak link causes global inefficiencies.
Secondly, we must always be continuing to invest large amounts of
capital into research and development, which will result in more efficient
technologies and less destructive behaviors.
There are many natural resources at man’s fingertips that should be
harnessed and turned into a part of the production process. One example is the Sun. Solar energy is the most efficient and cost
effective piece of energy that exists in the world. If we could harness all of the suns energy then there would be no
need to use inefficient fossil fuels which we use today that cause large
amounts of green house gases.
Nuclear energy and Fusion are also very effective
resources that could provide efficient and low cost methods of production and
power. Unfortunately, in today’s
society there are many stigmas are associated with nuclear energy which causes
this field to expand slowly. There are
also many groups such as Oil producers who do not want to see the market in
which they have a monopoly over become increasingly lower in demand. Although, if we could develop a substitute
for oil then many countries would lose their strategic advantages which would
allow the West to wield more power over these developing markets which would
force them into compliance in a faster and less costly ways. Rather than depending on wars or economic
sanctions which are very inefficient methods to enforce compliance. These are just a few examples of the current
capabilities that we are on the verge of discovering to create more ecological
stability and a more efficient market.
Concluding Observations
In conclusion, I have tried give examples and theoretical
solutions in the hopes of finding ways to expand capitalism into a more
expansive global mass capitalism while at the same time continuing to improve
our ecological stability and general standard of living. There will always be skeptics that will try
to discredit these theories in order to promote their own agendas. Hopefully, the theories I have developed
which try to build a consensus between the political, ideological, and economic
groups will be a helpful way of continued prosperity in the future. First, by minimizing and repairing damages
that we have already caused in the name of progress we can begin mending our
environment. Secondly, by incorporating
political and economic activism we can begin making forward progress in bridging
the gap between economic growth and environmental stability. Finally, by
creating feasible solutions through technological development hopefully we can
make continuous growth and the world’s ecological stability work as a
developing partnership that will stimulate growth and create global prosperity.
I realize that these theories are just ideas and that
there are many variables that I have not considered, but I firmly believe that
continuous growth and ecological stability are both feasible solutions to our
current environmental, political, and social problems.