The Mask of Progress
The central question in our society today is the role of capitalism. It’s really always been that way. How we distribute tax revenue - national defense, roads, education and public health - is at the core of every political discussion we have. But with climate change threatening to destroy us, how we regulate capitalism and our worst human impulses will determine whether we thrive or perish.
This is complicated, especially because climate change requires a political/economic solution that our broken political system is failing to confront. This failure to properly regulate our capitalism has led us to this breakdown - Fox News, a deranged former president, a Republican Party that has morphed into a nativist organization and a Democratic Party intent on losing elections so it can be morally right.
So here we are.
The unforgiving, efficient machine of capitalism grinds away, creating vast wealth for some, but leaving in its wake ghost towns, mono-culture midwest farms and a fast-food nation that poisons us and bankrupts our healthcare system.
Capitalism - to paraphrase conservative economists - is neutral with regard to the public good. It doesn’t care about the soft stuff - the connection to our communities, the quality of our food or the health of our people. And nor should it.
Economists and policy-makers call this “externalities,’’; the things not concerned with money-making or production. Capitalism doesn’t care about externalities. Capitalism only concerns itself with producing as many carrots, trucks or computers as it can, as cheaply as possible. And it’s worked, quickly raising America to the status of world power.
But we can no longer ignore the destruction.
We learned this back in the 70s. Rivers caught fire because we dumped our pollution in them. The air was killing people. So were cars without seat belts. We acted. We told our government to do something. And they did.
Congress and a Republican president passed the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, regulated toxic chemicals, created the EPA, and told the truth about cigarettes. The Justice Department broke up companies that grew too powerful or denied them the chance to merge in the first place. Congress told executive branch bureaucrats to become umpires of capitalism to make sure the game was fair. The Federal Trade Commission ensured advertising was truthful. The Securities and Exchange Commission stopped Wall Street from stealing our money. The EPA forced auto makers to clean up tailpipe emissions that killed people. OSHA kept workplaces safe.
The merchants of capitalism complained but they made it work - while turning a profit of course. The car companies added seatbelts. They invented new ways to deal with the rules, new ways to get better, more efficient. I don’t for a minute deny the benefits. This system has lifted more people out of poverty than any in human history. It leaves individuals alone - Steve Jobs in his parents’ garage - to invent and drive innovation. That freedom is key to a democratic, innovative and creative society, instead of a class-based system where you’re locked into a career at the age of 16.
But the externalities, the things that make life worth living, took a beating.
Take agriculture. This system turned farming and food from a trip to the local butcher into a Supermarket that sold meat wrapped in oil-based plastic. The apricot groves around Santa Clara, CA are all but gone, replaced by Silicon Valley and hordes of tech workers commuting from San Francisco.
This transformation is described by British sheep farmer James Rebanks in his new book “Pastoral Song.’’ The book is a lament to what we have lost and a warning for what is coming. Rebanks watched his grandfather farm their family property in Northern England using what he calls “the old ways.” As a child, he was intimately familiar with the pastures, the animals, his neighbors and the weather. Then came technology and the lure of cheap food at supermarkets. The price for sheep dropped, forcing them to grow, adding equipment and chemical fertilizers. The old ways left the farm and so did the birds, butterflies and fish.
“Our power to beat up Mother Nature has grown exponentially in my lifetime, wearing the mask of progress,’’ Rebanks writes. “And because of that we have destroyed things on a scale our ancestors would have scarcely believed.’’
Add Rebanks to the long and growing list of visionary reformers: Rachel Carson, Jane Jacobs, Michael Pollan and Alice Waters. These people recognized that DDT killed bald eagles and human beings, that runaway urban development led to broken communities and that real food from real dirt in real communities could be the most important attribute we have. They recognized that capitalism left unchecked is bad, not good.
Rebanks and the others anticipated the retort from economists, supermarkets and agri-business that we need efficiencies to feed the billions of people not yet born. His ideas for regenerating agriculture seem like hippie nostalgia to the efficiency champions.
Rebanks continues:
“Nature is finite and breakable… As farmers we now have to reconcile the need to produce more food than any other generation in history with the necessity to do that sustainably and in ways that allow nature to survive alongside us.’’
Or in other words, at some point - climate change! - nature will put a stop to capitalism and our unwillingness to deal with its negative impacts.
More and more, it seems like the good things in life come less from the creations of capitalism than from the non-profits that spring up to fix the problems created by the machine.
The affordable housing in my area is built more and more by non-profits like Downstreet Housing & Community Development. The best food is sold in the local food co-op and the farmers market. Music and arts are shown in small museums and created by independent artists. All this good can survive and prosper in the face of the grinding machine of capitalism that produces products without regard for the public good.
As Rebanks says:
“... if the giant corporations would give us the things we wanted, we let them. But it was an illusion, an industrial arrogance, a future that didn’t work: a dystopia.’’
Pushing back against the arrogance of capitalism will take a radical restructuring into a society that values the good things and empowers the referees that make the game fair.
In the end, I believe that restructuring makes society richer, not poorer, by creating wealth and jobs that enrich people’s lives. And those externalities - what makes life valuable - comes from humans living and working together, not an Amazon package on the doorstep.
