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BS ‘n’ About…
Tweaking Capitalism
Capitalism is the most powerful force yet unleashed by mankind. In a little more than 200 years it has gone up against and defeated nearly every non-Muslim faith, ideology, and culture on the planet. And it’s working on that one. Capitalism is an exponential force in a finite world stretched to the limits, driven by much of what is worst and most powerful in us. It is turning us into beings we probably don’t want to be, taking us places we probably don’t want to go.
Corporations have too much power and not enough accountability. A boardroom never takes into consideration what is best for the individual, the nation, nor humanity as a whole. It’s not their job. Capitalism’s job is to build Hummers between gas crises. Capitalism’s job is to keep prescription prices artificially high. Capitalism’s job is to keep the war contractors booming. Capitalism’s job is to chop down the last tree on Earth, if there is profit in it. Without thinking twice.
Humanity needs to harness the power of capitalism before it paves every desert, tundra, and jungle in some Coca McDisney, Fortune 500, Michelin, Mazda vision of corporate conformity. Burger joints, strip malls, and gas stations. Paris looks like Chicago which looks like Tokyo which looks like Everything Else.
And we’ll pass each other on those neoned, blaring streets, hooked up to our ipods and babbling into our cellphones. We’ll stare at a screen all day, then do the same when we get home. Eventually we’ll replace both with a virtual reality hook-up and a diaper. Our every waking moment will be an ear-shattering, technicolor assault on the senses, offering the latest “fat loss wonder drug” or “free rate quote”.
Along the way, governments, faiths, languages and cultures will become obsolete as they stand in the way of Dow Jones unity and dot.com conformity. Already, very few of the nations of the world have the power to stand up to a Fortune 500 company. Greed, ambition, and dog-eat-dog capitalism have seized the rudder of human history. …taking us places we probably don’t want to go. …turning us into beings we probably don’t want to be.
Capitalism will devour human civilization as we know it if we allow it to continue unchecked. But getting the genie back in the bottle won’t be easy. It is something well beyond the scope of this work. But a few general starting points ought to be self-evident.
For a democracy to remain a democracy, the business sector must remain subservient to the political sector, which must in turn remain subservient to the people. Safeguards need to be taken to ensure that the vast resources at the disposal of the business sector can’t be used to unduly influence the political process.
To that end, Washington needs to get off Wall Street’s dole, exile the lobbyists, amend the tax code, and pass some legislation to regain control of things. The rules of the game need to be changed to foster better people, better businesses, better politicians, and better control over our future. This need not be something done without Wall Street’s support. A business model that re-invests in its people, its infrastructure, its nation, and its world will reap dividends for generations. It is a matter of changing mindsets from the short term to the long term.
For that to happen, government and business need to work together on some far-reaching business model to improve ALL of our lives, then get the people’s support behind it. Through education, taxation, and legislation we need to find a way to give capitalism a conscience. …find a way of getting it to work for us instead of us working for it. If a business enterprise uses the rights and protections of Constitutional Democracy to grow to a size to influence the actions of that democracy, its books need to be public record and its decision makers need to be held fully accountable for their actions.
The business model upon which we build human civilization needs to be part of something nobler, wiser, and more far-seeing than next year’s bottom line. The rules need to be changed to reward contributions to the bigger picture. We need a comprehensive, long term inventory of world resources and needs, and a plan for conserving the former and satisfying the latter. The plan needs to be wide-reaching, outrageously optimistic, out in the open, and political suicide to oppose. Bring the people back into the process again, working on something they can truly believe in, and we could have WWII production levels during peacetime.
Capitalism needs to move beyond having twenty essentially the same white breads, each with its own ear-splitting, mind-numbing ad campaign telling us why it’s different from the others. …each with its own bread truck, zigzagging across town, wasting gas, oxygen, rubber, and bread trucks. …each with its own Board of Directors trying to figure our how to outwit the competition and the consumer to maximize profits. …each selling us 25 cents worth of bread wrapped in two bucks worth of marketing, merchandising, mark-ups, and middlemen.
The gross inefficiencies and prodigious waste of capitalism make for mind boggling potential. The energies of capitalism somehow united in common cause can bring water to the deserts, healthcare to the sick, crops to the hungry, and education to everybody. As a species, we are finally smart enough and rich enough to live in peace. We just have to want it bad enough.
And it all starts with us. We have to want to be better people than the people capitalism is making of us: isolated in our little cubicles, staring at screens, living on fast food, communicating by e-mail. The constant barrage of news, entertainment, and advertising has drowned out all hope of communicating with those around us. Even worse, it plays on our fears, our greed, and our inadequacies, to thoroughly distort the view of our world beyond our cubicle.
Information Age capitalism gives us no time to think, no time to reflect, no time to truly communicate with each other. We, the People need to crawl forth from these cubicles and take back control of our world. We have to want more than this out of life.
Capitalism is hurtling us into the future at an historically unprecedented pace. It won’t be long before we’ll be unable to fix its excesses. It won’t be long before it chops down the last rainforest, uses up the last of the oil, stinks up all the air and water, wipes out all diversity, and finds a way to go to war over each issue.
Capitalism is taking us places we probably don’t want to go, turning us into beings we probably don’t want to be. It is way too powerful a force for us to continue to allow it to run amok. We need to revise and re-direct its energies toward what’s best for humanity, not what’s best for capitalism. The math says emphatically that it is something we’re going to have to do at some point anyway. The sooner we start the easier it’ll be. Then again, we could just leave it for the kids. Party On!
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