Looking Into 2018: Capitalism, Environmentalism, and a Sustainable Civilization

Here’s a wide-ranging discussion between frequent commenter MarcoPolo and me that I thought I’d publish as a blog post.  It began when he responded to my assertion that we are experiencing the end of the American Empire: MP: It was always inevitable that other nations with much larger populations would arise to challenge the brief supremacy enjoyed by the U.S. following the Second World War. There was no question of U.S. economic supremacy as a divided and devastated Europe was forced to rebuild and the British Empire wound down and ceased to exist by granting independence to a multitude of new nations.  The demise of Marxist-Leninist-Maoist Communism and the discrediting of socialist economic principles awoke a long suppressed economic revival among developing nations as the U.S. slowly sank into social decay and economic stagnation.

CS: A great many things look inevitable after they’ve happened, but here’s an alternative scenario describing how this could have gone: Trotsky, an dedicated idealist and intellectual (rather than Stalin, a sociopathic butcher) came to power.  Communism co-existed with capitalism, and the world got to see what happens when both ideologies co-exist and neither is attacking the other.  This would have presented a global-scale experiment with clear, unambiguous outcomes, enabling all of us to see clearly:  In which environment are people happier, healthier, better fed, and educated?  Where is there less destitution, untreated disease, racism, sexism, crime, gun violence, police brutality, class warfare, open hostility, and the waging of war?  Btw, it would have been interesting to see what life on Cuba would have been like over the last 58 years if the U.S. had not beaten that communist nation into an economic pulp.

This, of course, deciding on “the winner” wouldn’t have been that simple; for instance, one could say, “OK, but where would our civilization be without all the innovation for which capitalism provided the incentive?”

On a less radical note, it’s untrue that socialist economic principles have been discredited, given the success of Western and Northern Europe, as well as a few smaller societies around the globe.  On a one-for-one basis, these nations have far higher taxes than ours, but they are coupled with government services that most citizens value highly and are generally quite happy to contribute to.  As we’ve discussed previously, their “gross domestic happiness” scores are far higher than ours here in the U.S.  Is that really any wonder, though, given that they feel they are part of a national community?  Contrast that to the unofficial motto of wealthy Americans: “I’ve got mine. You can go to hell.”  But does this increase happiness for anyone, rich or poor?  According to massive amounts of polling data, the answer is clear: not in the slightest.

But suppose this “happiness index” is too nebulous, too touchy-feely a metric for your taste. Fair enough. Most of these countries’ health outcomes, e.g., infant mortality rates, are much better than ours. Far fewer children are hungry, and no one has open sewers pouring through their front yards, whose local governments are making no effort whatsoever to correct (see report linked below). What American wasn’t appalled by the United Nations’ report on extreme poverty and human rights violations in the U.S. delivered by its envoy after his coast-to-coast tour of the U.S.?  Did anyone among us fail to share a feeling of deep disgrace and disgust that the U.N. had to come here and hold the world’s richest nation to account for the hardships endured by its most vulnerable citizens?

MP: From its inception, the USA was always a nation founded in hypocrisy and sustained by self-delusion. The USA preached the lofty sentiments and ambitions of the Enlightenment thinkers, even enshrining some of those principles in its constitution, but while U.S. politicians and institutions preached these virtues loudly, the USA seldom lived or practiced them.  The U.S. must put its own house in order before worrying about preaching morality to other nations.

CS: This is completely true, and it has been from the opening bell.  “All men are created equal.  Btw, I have some men for sale over here, at $10 apiece, $15 for the big strong ones.”

Though the U.S. has done some exceptional things for which it will always be remembered, e.g., its heroism in WW II without which the entirety of Western Civilization would have gone back into the Dark Ages, its values have virtually nothing to do with a government of, by and for the people.  This is immediately obvious to anyone who reads reports not constructed by the corporate-owned media of the U.S.’s supporting tyrants around the world who jail, torture and execute journalists, overthrowing duly elected populist leaders, squashing people’s uprisings, etc.  This is even more apparent today than it’s ever been in the past, given what the U.S. is doing in Honduras, Yemen, Palestine, Iraq, and elsewhere.

MP: The day of reckoning for the U.S. has arrived. The U.S. must accept a new reality. No longer can the U.S. afford the luxury of relying of its former wealth and prestige. The U.S. must face the change in circumstance and compete to survive. The era of self-delusion and fantasies are over.  The U.S. must learn to be just one of the large nations, not the only large dog in the pack.  That doesn’t mean any other nation, or block of nations are any less cynical than the US, but they do have the advantage of lacking self-delusion. The CCCP leadership of the PRC have no illusions; they have no interest in anything except the advancement of the PRC and their own hold on power.  I’m afraid your desire for a leader, foreign or domestic, to provide “ideological moral leadership” was always a delusion, a fantasy. I realize the need for people (especially Americans) to find someone or something to believe in, but the time for that sort of delusion has passed.

CS: Again, no dispute.  As suggested above, I personally never suffered under that delusion, but I grant that most Americans do.

MP:  The U.S. needs to look around  and re-examine its priorities. The Paris Accord was just another method of disadvantaging America. U.S. citizens can no longer afford to indulge in an orgy of self-loathing and self delusion.  There’s little value worrying about the Arctic, or gushing with praise for Chinese propaganda, while just up the road your neighbours, your fellow Americans, are losing their homes and lives in wild fires.  Carbon Fee and Dividend, emissions trading, cap and trade or straightforward carbon taxes, like all complex regulatory schemes is doomed to economic failure. The proponents of such schemes can never explain or justify the reasoning in economic terms, instead resort to ideology and theoretical scenarios, usually based on speculative fantasy. Such proposals are always advocated by those keen to spend “other people’s money”–loud advocates, with worshipful acolytes, but lacking any practical knowledge.

CS: Here’s where you and I diverge.  The vast preponderance of scientific evidence suggests that our civilization faces grave, immediate, and unprecedented danger, all associated with its inability to make important alterations in the status quo.  The victory of what is essentially free-market capitalism is taking us (has taken us?) to the point of the collapse of many of the systems that have sustained human society for the last 10,000 years.

Now, we can argue about some of this.  How close are we to nuclear annihilation? World fascism? Nobody knows; at least I certainly don’t.  But very few informed people dispute that the environment, i.e., the climate, the temperature and pH of the oceans, the levels of air and water pollution, our natural immunity from the ever-quickening mutations of pathogens, the growth of the human population, and the biodiversity on which the human species ultimately depends, will not withstand too much more of business-as-usual.

If you read up on Carbon Fee and Dividend, you’ll realize that your claims about it are false.  It’s not at all complex, unfair, or protectionist; it’s not based on theoretical scenarios, speculative fantasy, or spending other people’s money.

MP: I believe that we, as environmentalists, must return to the basics. We must concentrate on researching, commercializing, and implementing cleaner technology (even if only of a modest scale). We must be more inclusive and compromising to gain support and cooperation.  Most of all, we must be able and willing, to spend the time to justify our advocacy, not simply repeat slogans, doctrines or old myths.  It’s important we answer all the questions, and listen to the evidence behind dissenting opinions. (After all, they may be right!)  This is the only way I know to overcome objections and persuade people to change and embrace better environmental practices.

CS: I wish we had the time required to make that work, but there is no evidence to support that belief.  I base this on what I read each day, which is far more based in science than in political bombast and leftist ideology.  The gating issue on all this, I believe, is cooperation: among people as well as nations.  Success as a civilization at this point will require an enormous amount of empathy and trust…and, ironically, these are the precise commodities that seem to becoming so horrifically scarce.

If I had to point to the single most discouraging aspect of the “Trump phenomenon,” I would say that it’s precisely this: almost half of Americans voted for a man whose principles bring out the very worst in us, pull us apart, and place blame on innocent people (largely those with brown skin), while Trump relentlessly attacks the press and the judiciary, and challenges the validity of the U.S. democracy, e.g., by manufacturing a fictitious problem (“millions of illegal voters”), so as to disenfranchise even more people with addition forms of voter suppression.

This is exactly the opposite direct from the one we need to be heading.

May 2018 mark a watershed period in all this retrogression.

Happy New Year to you, and to everyone around this much-beleaguered planet.