Low Marx for Market Capitalism

One of today's stories: that China will feel the sting of the current recession, because the bubble was built on credit that they facilitated through their manufacturing profits. With the recession and other economic displacements, they've actually made nothing; the future is bleak, and without endlessly feeding someone's consumerism with their savings, a market does not exist in sufficient size and strength to support all the factories and jobs they've created thanks to their profligate lending.

What does this really speak to? The futility, more or less, of manufacturing. It is true that we all need, or at least feel we can not live a civilized life without, the many physical items that surround us, be they toilets or iPods. Yes, we can survive despite them, but we can florish with them.

It is just that news items like the one above call into question many things. And one of those things is the very premise of our economic exchange.

Sadly, it seems that the only way our market capitalism can work is with an ever-growing population. If you (for the moment) put aside considerations like overcrowding and limited resources and global warming, why, this makes perfect sense! If you have ever-increasing demand for food, water, transport, housing, clothing and all the rest, you'll have the endless boom. And you'll justify manufacturing, for there will be an ever-expanding need for more products.

Now that we're done with this overly-rosy scenario, let's talk basics. One planet, one atmosphere, finite resources. It would seem to me that Houston, we have a problem. Several problems in fact.

The first one is that the ever-expanding model is broken. And if it was up to me, we'd keep it that way. It seems that the only way we've found to create what we call 'wealth' up to now involves massive destruction of the environment and the forced rape of Nature.

This can only go on so far. Or, in our case, a bit too far. It seems we may well have 'tipping-pointed' the environment into a warming spiral.

There is a solution that is multi-pronged. I am not holding my breath about any of the prongs, but here's the first one: go all out to stop over-population. Sure, we keep coming up with more ingenious ways to pack more people on to the planet without killing all of them, but is that really what we want, other than it pumps up the economic system? That would be a resounding, "NOT!"

Now that we've agreed to stop endlesly incrementing human density, the next problem is to re-model and re-form economic activity. The goal is to reward decisions that support a steady-state, sustainable planet, and to tax or penalize behaviors that consume resources unnecessarily and that imperil future survival.

That would mean a shift away from a manufacturing model. Right now the entire planet has sent its savings to China, which has invested on the one hand in more factories and on the other in putting more money into the hands of (primarily American) consumers, so they will buy Chinese goods and keep the good people of China employed. Nice concept, except there's a fallacy at the very heart of it; you can't keep extending credit indefinitely and still expect full payment at some time in the future. At some point you're simply lending money to a friend that you know is an addict. The hard work that created your savings will simply be snorted away. And looking back on the orgy of purchasing of 'cheap Chinese goods' that has gone on for a couple of decades, I think I hear the echo of a giant snort somewhere in the distance. Or is it in the room with me?

Here's where I get stupid, and I am hoping that one or more of the readers of this most essential rant will take it from here and provide the missing link. If, as I propose, the manufacturing model of economic activity is obsolete and out of step with Nature, how do you craft one based on sustainability and steady-state or shrinking population? Any and all proposals are welcome here. Regardless of whether we figure it out in advance, this is where we are all headed. If we can get on top of the game and channel the transition from our failed model to the next modality, we might just get there sooner. This is the dialogue I would welcome, but I have yet to hear word one of the discussion.