Until the Eco debate shifts to Capitalism the planet and life is doomed

Yet another environmental program with not a single mention of Capitalism

BBCs latest Frozen Planet 2 while absolutely excellent how can it benefit the planet without mentioning Capitalism.

At the end of the last program there is a call for people to "do" something. But what?

Well there was a single paragraph on cutting down our consumption and choosing renewable and sustainable means of living. If we do this then problem solved it seems.

Except what actually was the problem we were trying to solve?

Why for example is the Environmental Crisis occurring in the 21st Century and not the 8th Century? And why are undeveloped countries not experiencing an Environmental Crisis? It is only the Developing Countries?

Well an initial look blames population:

There we go this is the problem. Human population remains below 1 billion for all human history until 1900 when it explodes.

So if the problem is population then stop breeding. I for example have no children. There we go simple. One child policy. Simple.

Does the BBC say this?

No.

Why?

Perhaps we don't think the environmental crisis is worth making such a great sacrifice. If you ask people to limit their family size you will lose their interest. Small steps perhaps.

But actually it doesn't matter cos this is not the problem. Take Iran. If US uses 8 ha / capita and the global average is 3.18 ha / capita note that the Iranians only use 0.1 ha / capita. And this does not make them any less happy. When speaking to people who have travelled widely the one country that stands out is Iran. Everyone I have ever met who has visited Iran says it is the best country they have visited. 

This blog is called "The Joy of Poverty" because everything in Western Thought from Plato onwards is wrong and skews the truth about Life. You cannot understand Life if you look at material things, private gain and Capital with a naïve eye. Anyway that is an aside. The point is that the BBC and the campaign for the Planet and the Ecological activists are not being given a platform to voice the actual problem.

If we all lived like Iranians then the planet would use only 3% of its current resources. 

POPULATION IS NOT THE PROBLEM.

CONSUMPTION IS THE PROBLEM.

So finally we are moving toward the actual problem.

Why do we consumer so much in the West (US 8ha/capita) compared to Iran (0.1ha/capita)? That means to get through the day an American uses 80x the resources of an Iranian. Why is this?

Well first look is that Americans are richer and happier than Iranians and its down to the Iranian government to be removed so that Iranians can become rich and live like Americans.

Now this is a very complex statement. We need only look at the attitudes of Imperialism and the idea that the natives of undeveloped countries will benefit from being controlled and exploited by modern super powers.

There is obvious some truth to this. As Monty Python jokes the Romans brought roads.

But its actually a very naïve view that fails to understand anything about life at all.

A simple thought experiment shows the fallacy. If the British Invading India made the Indians happier then who is going to invade the British to make them happier?

The answer interestingly is the British themselves. Scientific innovation means that each generation enjoys greater richest than the last. This suggests we are happier than our parents, but it means our children will be happier than us. And so ad infinitum. No one then is ever very happy then. Compared to people in 1000 years time we are actually living in poverty! Yet we are happy today so it seems poverty is not a bad thing! This leads to the great realisation: 

Wealth is Relative

If you want to feel rich then just go and live with poor people. You don't need to accumulate anything. and if you want to feel poor just go and live with rich people. Or to really blow you mind realise you are both rich and poor at the same time! Its all just down to how you reference yourself. Wealth is a purely a mental process it has nothing to do with material reality.

OK much written in this blog about all this so won't take it any further. But this is the starting essence of this blog. Wealth lies in the mind so get to know and master your mind. This is the greatest joy.

So actually no reason for the Iranians to be unhappy at all. If they have an understanding of their minds then they are happy. And that seems to be the way it is. And no reason for the Americans to be happy, its just down to whether they understand their minds.

Now the pattern here is that people involved in more material production and with a greater focus on material wealth have less time for their minds. And this is the Paradox of Capitalism. Much work is being done to dismiss this by the zealots of capitalism who have a fundamental naivete about  existence, but everything points to happiness and unhappiness being in the mind and so Capitalism actually wastes people's time and is more likely to lead them to unhappiness. Which is what the evidence shows most famously the Easterlin Paradox.

But it not only wastes their time, but it wastes the Planet also. The damage that Capitalism does to us is mirrored in the damage it does to everything else. And this is the primary cause of the Climate and Ecological Crisis.

So I jumped there from material existence naivete to Capitalism. Just unpack that.

Summary of Capitalism

So Capitalism is the system of economics that revolves around the principle of Private Capital. An individual can own things, and Capitalist economics is built around this as its unit.

Ownership can change hands by many means e.g. gifts but the primary one in Capitalism is Exchange. This can be barter where we swap items of ownership, or it can use an intermediary as a currency of exchange. This is commonly called money. Many arguments about what is the best money for example the new crypto currencies.

A Market is the system of free exchange. And this is where Adam Smith's contribution comes in.

In a market where the agents are free to trade (exchange) entirely based upon their own wishes then you will get the optimum exchange. 

I have played with computer models and indeed this seems to be true. A free market is an optimal algorithm for exchange.

The reason it is so good is that it matches supply and demand. If demand increases then prices increase and so wages increase and there is more incentive for people to work. If over-supply occurs then prices fall and while volumes may increase initially eventually with continued over-supply the returns starts to dwindle, wages fall and people reskill and work elsewhere.

Its a simple algorithm too. Each person only needs to know what they want.

It became known as the Invisible Hand.

So what is wrong with that?

A superficial glance shows one problem. What if the objects of trade are human beings? Capitalism naturally leads to a trade in humans. If the price of human beings falls below the work that they can do, then its worth while buying that human being and selling their work to make a profit. Governments have stepped in to ban slavery. And this reveals the first problem. Capitalism depends upon Government and Law. Adam Smith makes this very clear: a free market is also a legal market. People must be free to express their wishes without coercion or fear. The very idea of ownership if one thinks about it is a legal issue. If people start stealing, or a mafia starts to threaten people then the pricing in the system breaks down. A free market requires a strong government. A lot of people forget this. Capitalism implies Government.

And if we need a government in order to create the Laws that underpin Capitalism then Capitalism is not the arbiter of Truth. It is Government. Capitalism is like a computer program or function that Government uses to find the price of things. But as seen with slavery that price can be invalid.

Quickly the question of the Climate Crisis can be seen to be a government issue not a market issue. Markets needs to be controlled when they start to do damage. This is all written into Capitalism.

Take the example of over hunting. Its actually quite complex. Markets can help endangered animals or they can destroy them. I knew someone who worked in this. I forget the details but some ivory markets were sustainable through free market while the particular features of the Rhino Horn market meant that it was in the interests of poachers to kill all the rhinos and drive the price skywards.

Free markets do not guarantee welfare. And so all markets need government monitoring.

But there is a second much bigger problem. Capitalism entails Returns on Investment. If you own something you can Rent it to someone who either only wants it temporarily or who can't afford it for a fee. There are 2 problems with this.

In the latter case you have the wealthy exploiting the poor rather than helping. The wealthy can exploit the needs of the needy for personal gain. This is exploitation that lies at the heart of Capitalism and Imperialism. But far worse you create a demand for profit itself rather than the commodity and this is the real precise reason for the Ecological Catastrophe.

Consider housing. Its in the interests of the rich to buy up all the housing so raising the price, and thus making lots of poorer people homeless. The homeless must then rent housing from the rich, passing on their hard earned money to the rich in an endless stream of income from poor to rich. This is the fundamental core of the capitalist system, and I presume why it is so supported and protected by the global rich.

Obviously the rental market must return at least maintenance costs to the owners for them to rent, and very likely a profit. And once there is a profit to be made from rent then the wealthy will make the situation worse for the poor and better for the rich through new demand for buying housing. In the UK we have exactly the problem now. Few people in the UK can afford to buy a house! That is a basic requirement, and people in the UK now live in greater poverty than any of their ancestors. Even people in the most traditionally poor countries have always had their own place to live.

So once people can get a profit from renting things then there is a demand for those things that goes beyond the underlying desire for the commodity.

I may have no need for wheat. I am fully fed. But if the price of wheat is rising then I may buy wheat not to eat, but because I see future profits. People doing this gives wheat a price and demand that is not intrinsic.

Now there are fundamentals. At the end of the day wheat needs delivery, and the person who gets delivery of it who cannot make actual use of it loses money. So reality and the planet does have some role here but profit creates unnatural demands and pressures on the planet. 

But the search for profit leads to all kinds of behaviour that previously did not exist. Food companies will examine their production methods and markets to see how much profit they can extract from them. For these efficiency cuts and product modifications to return profits some thing must give. In some cases it is just inefficiency. But that is indistinguishable from damage to things outside the economy.

So what is outside the economy? Well much of Nature is outside the economy. If you switch to intensive farming you wipe out the ecosystem. This leads to short term gains, but we are waiting to see the long term effects on the global economy of wiping out life on this planet. And a very interesting part of nature is the bodies of the people in the economy. Efficiency Cuts and Product Modifications may increase profits but actually harm people. Look at the current problems being caused by high salt and sugar content in foods. A consumer is going to chose the sweeter or the more salty product without realising that this will eventually cause damage to their body.

Producers say its not our responsibility to make the consumer healthy, we just make food and seek profit for our share holders (there is the profit taking over the show). And the consumer says I don't know the details of what the producer is doing, I'm no food expert I assume they only sell food that is good for me.

Governments once again have to step in to manage Capitalism markets to make sure the demand for profit does not harm people.

Another classic example in the Health Care system. The demand for profit leads to Pharmaceutical Companies trying to sell as many medicines as possible without regard for whether they actually do any good. The contribution of Oxycontin to the epidemic of drug abuse in the West is a high profile example of this. Consumers have little medical knowledge and rely upon the industry, which in turn wipes its hands of all responsibility as it it only concerned in profits for its investors.

As can be seen the demand for Profit by Capitalist investors begins to distort markets to ignore welfare both in people and the environment. When Adam Smith says that Free-Market only works in a legal system this needs to be taken extremely seriously as the demand for Profit is always pushing markets toward the illegal.

Harm of customers, the environment and any living things should be illegal. And  huge compensation payments should be flowing through the global economy to compensate people not to damage each other and the world.

But the problem we face is the governments around the world are funded by the wealthy and their concerns are necessarily on profits to maintain and grow that wealth. True they may become Philanthropists like the Victorian Capitalists but the condition for wealth is being a Capitalist and so the bias in the rich is always for profit and exploitation. And so governments around the world are beholden to the Capitalist lobby groups that place growth of their portfolio above all other things even the welfare of people and planet.

And all this is summed up by the government's continual doctrine of Economic Growth. Its obvious why. Capitalists looking to grow their portfolio and wealth find the government and easy target to lobby and force economic growth. This leaves the government in the absurd position of both needing to grow the economy to keep Capitalists happy, and also ask us to cut down on resource use like the BBC and David Attenborough in Frozen Planet 2. It is a clear insanity caused by governments trying to meet the demands of out of control Capitalists and more the serious concerns of welfare to people and planet.

Any system built upon profit is biased towards exploitation.

Another thread here is the trap people are caught in with Capitalism. To live its not good enough to go and hunt, or farm a plot of land: all that is owned by Capitalists in a capitalist economy. We need either go to the Capitalists and ask for a job, or we need become a Capitalist our self. It's a self recruiting system. But as there is no other way to live we are forced to take part in the very system of growth and exploitation that the BBC is asking us to somehow reduce our involvement with.

How can you have Reduce, Reuse, Recycle in a system being forced to Grow? How can you have a Capitalist economy that reduces it ecological foot print while also seeking increasing profits and growth?

So Adam Smith's beautiful argument breaks down. When money starts to fund the very governments that create the Laws that are supposed to maintain the Free-Market and people are driven by profits rather than actual desire for the commodity you have a breakdown in the system.

As a result Capitalism is a liability both to mankind and the planet skewing the natural order of things.

Given that Capitalism depends on government it is fundamental to reverse the focus on Capitalism and the wealthy and return to all powerful governments again who have full uncompromised power to curtail the activity of markets.

Unfortunately this sounds like Socialism. And billions have been spent by the wealthy to demonise Socialism as it is a direct threat to the wealth of the rich. Indeed not just billions in propaganda but centuries of wars across the planet against regimes that reject Capitalism. And it must not be forgotten that Capitalism and Imperialism are the same. The very reason for the West to travel and subdue the World was funded by Capitalists looking for new markets and profits. The very start of the Western Empires was the then very lucrative Spice Trade that the West wished to control it for their investors.

So we are full cycle back to the top. The actual reason that the West wants to take over countries like Iran is not because they are poor and in need of development, but so that Western Investors can have unlimited access to that nation's resources. This indeed is the history of Iran with the West backing the Shah in return for control of the nation's oil. See Coup 53 for details on how the CIA and MI6 covertly fought to control Iran. The Iranian Revolution, like revolutions around the world most famously Vietnam, was the Iranian people kicking out the West so they could take ownership of their own resources.

So the myths of the West and Capitalism are very self serving. Iran does not need to accept the West, and it doesn't need to modernise or develop its economy. All governments must remain supreme to free markets, and whether they use the free-market algorithm is very much a political decision. What it must not be is an enforced decision so that the West can expand its own out of control markets and capitalists into other regions of the world.

And underpinning all this is the damage to the planet that the West's out of control economies have caused. It is not the rest of the world that needs revolution but the West. People need to vote for strong governments that will take control of markets and put them back into legal control along with the out of control international capitalists the now fund and distort governments.

So the Environmental Crisis all points to Capitalism and Imperialism. But the BBC does not say this.

Perhaps it is because people are not ready to live in a non-capitalist world where they are not obsessed with shopping and working and will need to think of more honest ways to spend our time. What will we--once forced into working almost our whole lives--do with the time once growth and capitalism is controlled again by government.

But probably the bigger problem is that if the BBC stood up to the Capitalists then the rich would simply petition government to close the BBC down.

Indeed all media outlets are either owned or at least controlled by Capitalists. It means that the real reasons for the environmental catastrophe will never make it into the press. And here lies the real problem for the planet.

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So how do you fix the Environmental Crisis?

(1) End Growth and manage economic deflation and contraction.
(2) Universal Credit to end the need to work. Once people don't need to work they won't apply this pressure to the environment. There are machines enough to do most of the work for us already.
(3) Government switch focus to the spiritual and mental sides of life. More focus on happiness, peace, love and satisfaction. Less focus on work, material gain, sex and struggle. Learn how to Enjoy Poverty.

Its an interesting reflection that for 7 hours over the last 7 weeks much of the UK has been sitting peacefully, doing nothing but enjoying the spectacle of nature. The only pressure on the environment has been the materials to make their TVs and the energy to run the TVs. And the minor energy to move camera crew to sites around the world and to power the editing suits and broadcast platforms. Obviously a bit more complex as a share of infrastructure needs to be added to the calculation. But the very act of learning about the crisis facing the frozen parts of the world did a lot to save the planet. This is a vision of the future. People learning and caring for the world instead of shopping and working on products that are mostly causes of unhappiness.

The problem is actually easy to fix we need only look at Iran and emulate how they live to see many people are actually already living the answer right now. But unfortunately our governments are controlled by Capitalists whose only concern is growth and profit and who are eyeing Iran as a source of profits and so want to transform that country to be like the West. Not only are the Capitalists the problem but their greed and aggression causes all the places that are good for the planet to fall and become bad for the planet themselves (also called Imperialism).

This is the real problem.