Are You Ready To Consider That Capitalism Is The Real Problem? BY JASON HICKEL AND MARTIN KIRK
There’s something fundamentally flawed
about a system that has a prime directive to churn nature and humans into
capital
ours is a system that is programmed to subordinate life to the imperative of profit. For a startling example of this, consider the horrifying idea to breed brainless chickens and grow them in huge vertical farms, Matrix-style, attached to tubes and electrodes and stacked one on top of the other, all for the sake of extracting profit out of their bodies as efficiently as possible. Or take the Grenfell Tower disaster in London, where dozens of people were incinerated because the building company chose to use flammable panels in order to save a paltry £5,000 (around $6,500). Over and over again, profit trumps life. It all proceeds from the same deep logic. It’s the same logic that sold lives for profit in the Atlantic slave trade, it’s the logic that gives us sweatshops and oil spills, and it’s the logic that is right now pushing us headlong toward ecological collapse and climate change.
ours is a system that is programmed to subordinate life to the imperative of profit. For a startling example of this, consider the horrifying idea to breed brainless chickens and grow them in huge vertical farms, Matrix-style, attached to tubes and electrodes and stacked one on top of the other, all for the sake of extracting profit out of their bodies as efficiently as possible. Or take the Grenfell Tower disaster in London, where dozens of people were incinerated because the building company chose to use flammable panels in order to save a paltry £5,000 (around $6,500). Over and over again, profit trumps life. It all proceeds from the same deep logic. It’s the same logic that sold lives for profit in the Atlantic slave trade, it’s the logic that gives us sweatshops and oil spills, and it’s the logic that is right now pushing us headlong toward ecological collapse and climate change.
In February, college
sophomore Trevor Hill stood up during a televised town hall meeting in New York
and posed a simple
question to Nancy Pelosi, the leader of the Democrats in the House of
Representatives. He cited a study by Harvard University showing that 51%
of Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 no longer support the system of
capitalism, and asked whether the Democrats could embrace this
fast-changing reality and stake out a clearer contrast to right-wing economics.
Pelosi was visibly
taken aback. “I thank you for your question,” she said, “but I’m sorry to say
we’re capitalists, and that’s just the way it is.” The footage went
viral. It was powerful because of the clear contrast it set up. Trevor Hill is
no hardened left-winger. He’s just your average millennial—bright, informed,
curious about the world, and eager to imagine a better one. But Pelosi, a
figurehead of establishment politics, refused to–or was just unable to–entertain
his challenge to the status quo.
It’s not only young
voters who feel this way. A YouGov poll in 2015 found that 64%
of Britons believe that capitalism is unfair, that it makes inequality
worse. Even in the U.S., it’s as high as 55%. In Germany, a solid 77% are
skeptical of capitalism. Meanwhile, a full three-quarters of people in major
capitalist economies believe that big businesses are basically corrupt. Why do people feel
this way? Probably not because they deny the abundant material benefits of
modern life that many are able to enjoy. Or because they want to travel back in
time and live in the U.S.S.R. It’s because they realize - either consciously or
at some gut level - that there’s something fundamentally flawed about a system
that has a prime directive to churn nature and humans into capital, and do
it more and more each year, regardless of the costs to human well-being and to
the environment we depend on.
Because let’s be
clear: That’s what capitalism is, at its root. That is the sum total of the
plan. We can see this embodied in the imperative to grow GDP, everywhere, year
on year, at a compound rate, even though we know that GDP growth, on its own,
does nothing to reduce poverty or to make people happier or healthier. Global
GDP has grown 630% since 1980, and in that same time, by
some measures, inequality, poverty, and hunger have all risen... read more:
https://www.fastcompany.com/40439316/are-you-ready-to-consider-that-capitalism-is-the-real-problemsee also
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