Can we have a future, with capitalism?

Kia-ora


I'll come clean. I am a capitalist. I've started two businesses, one not so successful, due to injuries and health issues at an inconvenient stage. Though we did OK in the end. Another which shows all the signs of a healthy infant. I don't expect we will make a fortune, but it will make, enough. Currently I work for a multinational.
It is one of life's irony's that someone like me, an advocate for the mixed economy, Democratic Socialist, model that has proven the most successful economic system, to date, is considered any way, radical.

No one has yet found a better system for allocation of day to day resources, within a community, than a market capitalist system.
You see potential customers for your market garden or building skills, you invest in training as a builder, buy a set of tools, or in a plot of land and seeds. If you do it well, you make a good living, but how much profit you can make is limited, by the fact there are many other small builders and market gardeners, and your potential customers can see who grows the best vegetables, or builds houses that stay up. At this level a "free market" works fine. The economy is pretty much in a steady state, as is the use of natural resources.

As soon as you grow the community larger, than one where everyone knows the skills and honesty of the other members, you need ways of ensuring those with market power do not accumulate too much of the communities wealth. Basically that real contributors to the community don't lose out to cheats, resulting in the breakdown of the system

No capitalist society has succeeded without a healthy dose of co-operation, common infrastructure, goods and services and regulation, "socialism". Countries that are, "successful" by all our normal measures, have an economy balanced between private and State. The most successful have high progressive taxation, and a State share of the economy, around 50 to 60%. Ours is down to 28%, and it shows.

Without the rule of law, healthy and educated  workers, public infrastructure and regulation of the "cheats" if you like, we cannot have a successful business, and wider economy.
Private provision of mass 'public' goods has proven to be incredibly inefficient, and wasteful. like our power companies.

It suits Bill Gates, and others, to attribute human advancement to capitalism, a self justification for having extorted extreme wealth.
Others attribute advances to human co-operation in developing infrastructure and services, laws, and sharing wealth and advancement, which capitalism can never deliver.

Both are correct.

The USA's post war advancement was due  to high taxes, socialist redistribution, a high quality public education system, State sponsored research and innovation, public infrastructure spending, anti trust laws, banking regulation and a large middle class.
All were needed to make capitalism work.
The concentration of wealth and power with late stage, insufficiently regulated, monopoly  capitalism, and the winding back of social infrastructure and redistribution, is causing the USA's decline.

In our example of small community capitalism above, people pretty much get out what they put in. The market limits how much they can take as profit. A "steady state economy, without growth, is possible.
You are buying yourself a job, if you like.

In a truly free market, an impossibility of course, where there is perfect information and competition, there cannot, of course, be any profit. "Free" marketeers/"free traders", don't want a "free market", they simply want one distorted in their favour.
Any business knows, that to make a profit you have to distort the market in some way. Convince people you are better than your competitors, get Government to legislate in your favour, or give you subsidies or public goods, or use monopoly or oligopoly power, to eliminate competition and keep wages low. Your profit is always someone else's loss.

Capitalism requires "growth" to function?
The motivation behind capitalists' is profit. Getting out more than you put in. Why start a business and take that risk, if you are going to make the same amount as you would as an employee.
However most people do make less than they put in, so that others can profit.
Many functioning businesses don't make a real profit. Including most of our essential small businesses. They make enough.  Small builders make a good living. But you could hardly say they take out more than they put in. The degree of competition precludes that. Building material suppliers, however, make huge profits in New Zealand, because they are a duopoly. Big box stores, and banks, are extremely effective, in removing wealth from communities.

In a finite world, the exponential growth required to make increasing  profits, and pay interest, is not possible.

Capitalism is cannibalising, the human and natural environment, it needs to survive.

The concentration of wealth and power insufficiently regulated capitalism, and excessive profit taking, has caused, now works against the survival of human civilisation. With the wealthy opposing any attempts to limit the damage.

Kia-ora

A reminder of why we have to change our economic paradigm.

Our present one is not sustainable, even short term.


“Memo To The #Occupied Movement (A Post-Growth Economy)
By Richard Heinberg
06 October, 2011
Post Carbon Institute
Here’s a fact that’s hard for most Americans to swallow: economic growth is over. Given the finite nature of our planet and its resources, the recent trend of global economic expansion was destined to end. No stimulus package or slashing of social programs is going to flip the economy back to an expansionary trajectory. We’ve hit the proverbial wall, and this will be the defining reality of our lives from now on.
The growth-seeking political-economic system has failed us. Today that system is dominated by Wall Street. “Goldman Sachs rules the world,” trader Alessio Rastani told us in a now-viral BBC interview. I met people like Rastani in researching my book, The End of Growth.
At one lavish conference, 800 global investors packed a hotel ballroom to consider climate change. There was no talk of how to avert or mitigate floods and droughts. Instead, the discussion focused on profiting from warming with — no joke — weather derivatives. These folks were just doing their job, despite any private feelings of concern, remorse, or dread. And each was getting paid enough to single-handedly fund a midsize school district.
Both Wall Street and Washington are trying to do something impossible: grow human consumption forever in a world of limited energy, minerals, water, topsoil, and biodiversity, all while protecting and expanding the riches of the top one percent. If economic growth is over, that means we can no longer count on a rising tide to lift all boats. Under these conditions, extreme income inequality is not just unfair, it is socially unsustainable.
It’s strategic to bring protest to Wall Street rather than Washington. We must go directly to the crime scene — not with a request for reforms, but with an arrest warrant from the people.
You courageous people in the #occupy movement are absolutely right in saying the system is broken, greedy, and unfair. But when our discussion turns to replacing the current system, we’ve got to embrace a bigger view of reality than the one held by stock traders and politicians. It’s not just our wealth they want to control, it’s our vision for what is both possible and necessary. We need a post-growth economy that works both for people (all of them) and for the rest of nature: a localized economy based on renewable resources harvested at nature’s rates of replenishment, not a fossil-fueled global economy driven by the imperative of ever-higher returns on investment."""

For Those Who Still Think Man Made Global Warming is a Beat Up.

Kia-ora

Those who went on forever about a mistake in the IPCC report ignored the real story.

The fact is, the glaciers are disappearing!
Watching a glacier die.

And the polar ice. Arctic Ice Shipping Routes.

Not that you could tell from the response of the New Zealand Government.
Even Labour, lets us down.

Climate Change Is Here. Now!

Kia-ora


Kassie Siegel: Climate Change Is Here Now

"Climate change is happening now, we are causing it, and the costs of inaction -- to us, to plants and animals, to the physical world that we depend on -- are too steep to ignore and pass to the coming generations".

Anthropogenic, Global Warming. (AGW) Is it too late?

Kia-ora

Is it already to late.
“Last year, a record 30.6 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide poured into the atmosphere, mainly from burning fossil fuel – a rise of 1.6Gt on 2009, according to estimates from the IEA regarded as the gold standard for emissions data.”

While the politicians around the world "are fiddling", The chances of keeping Global warming within tolerable limits are decreasing year by year.

James Lovelock   may yet be proved right. The human race is unable to co-operate to prevent the collapse of the environments ability to support humanity.

Keeping warming within 2 degrees this century is unlikely, unless we stop almost all  fossil fuel use within the next 20 years.

The US Governments answer is to legislate, to say AGW does not exist, as if politicians opinions could "stop the tide".

Without the efforts of the worlds biggest per capita polluter, the chances of real efforts to reduce warming in the next 20 years are not good.

The IPCC predictions have, so far, been shown to understate AGW.


ANY ONE WHO ARE CONCERNED ABOUT OUR CHILDREN'S FUTURE SHOULD BE PRESSURING GOVERNMENTS AND BUSINESS TO REDUCE GREEN HOUSE GAS EMISSIONS. Not to mention reducing our own.

Joining organisations such as Green parties NZ Greens, lobbying groups 350.org , community groups NZ Transition towns  and business sustainability NZ business council for sustainable business. groups are other ways to help make a difference.

Government agencies can assist with reducing your dwelling or businesses carbon footprint. Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority.