Chapter 19: Capitalism and Resource Management, Long-Term Sustainability, and the Environment

The drive for ever-growing profits, stock prices and market share leads to runaway forced compulsive overproduction, overconsumption, waste, stress, needless depletion of resources, pollution, and the deliberate manufacture and design of inferior products in a dangerous feedback loop that threatens to destroy life on Earth itself if not halted and dissipated in the near future. The demands of this vicious cycle create a work environment of constant, ever-increasing stress in order to maintain the unrelenting, escalating pace. And all of this pattern is utterly avoidable and unnecessary. There are no beneficial side-effects of this phenomenon.

In fact, we could call this cycle forced overproduction/overconsumption the self-devouring cycle, since on the production end, it necessitates the needless escalating depletion and pollution of both natural resources and employees’ time, health and energy, while on the consumption end it forces endless consumption and replacement of deliberately short-lived inferior goods which end up discarded, further depleting space and environmental integrity. Employees are literally forced under economic coercion in a kind of forced-march atmosphere to produce an endless torrent inferior products which we are then forced to consume in order to function in the society. We are literally devouring ourselves, our time, our energy, our spirits, and the physical world for no justifiable purpose except to keep the Capitalistic economic pyramid in place squarely on our shoulders.

An infrastructure devoted to the well-being and quality of life for each and all would make the best products possible in sufficient supply for all. Products would be designed to be easily upgradeable and user-serviceable whenever technically safe and practical. Once every household is provided with a TV, a music player, an oven and stove, a car, etc., then production can be throttled down to a trickle that suffices to keep up with real need due to breakage, immigration, population growth, etc.

If the best possible units are distributed to all, then there is no need to keep changing models and specs every few months; no need for reliance on presentation and packaging to sell products; no need for advertising and built in sabotaging of products to shorten their lifespan to ensure an artificially forced endlessly escalating demand.

In a society which makes its choices based on human well-being, qualify of life, empowerment and actualization, enough is sufficient with a slight surplus to cover the unexpected. This frees up energy, human effort, time and resources for true research and development (both pure and applied) and for artistic, cultural, creative, innovative and other truly meaningful pursuits.

The current level of stress and pressure on people to produce at a furious pace will be reduced to a much more relaxed one that does not deplete the physical, mental, emotional, social and creative energies of working people. This will create an environment primed for a renaissance culturally, scientifically, artistically, socially, and in every other way.

In the new Paradigms, research, development, design, production and distribution of products and services will be freed from the burden, drag and hindrance of having to make a profit, keep stock prices up, and expend resources on marketing, advertising, packaging and presentation. Developers and producers will be freed from the restrictions and tyranny of nondisclosure agreements and corporate hierarchical dynamics and whims. They will instead be encouraged to collaborate and compete towards the goal of producing the best achievable products and services for the people (of whom these developers and producers will be part and parcel) in the most sustainable and upgradeable forms.

The people will be freed from the constant compulsory burden of coming up with an endless supply of intentionally-scarcified money to pay off those who are in the business of denying them access to goods, services and life itself. Then we will see Humanity thriving in every home and in the community as a whole, in a healthy and resilient ecosystem that will sustain a high quality of life far beyond the foreseeable future.

In such a culture, motivations will shift from alienated financial gain to the joy and pride in workmanship that comes from the creative and collaborative process itself, which is one of the first casualties in a Capitalist paradigm. Public celebrations marking the appearance of new innovations and the reaching of milestones and goals can further reinforce these behaviors as those responsible are lauded, publicly appreciated and celebrated. Social, public acknowledgement and expressions of appreciation for innovators will replace financial rewards, which under Capitalist paradigms are too often withheld from those who actually create them.

Public feedback and request channels will be established in order to allow users to send in requests and suggestions to be acted upon by researchers, developers and producers when warranted. If many users are reporting that the gear shift lever tends to fall off in the family sedan, or the 19 inch TV is too small and the 26 inch is too big, could we maybe have 23 inch TV’s as well?, then those involved in generating products and services will be set up to respond directly to user needs and requests.

In contrast, Capitalist producers will always do what generates the greatest profits regardless of whether it benefits, hurts, or frustrates users, often over their objections. Current examples include the change in cell phone manufacture from using easily replaced batteries to built-in batteries that cannot usually be replaced without destroying the phone. In that same industry, there were well-known recent instances where Apple repeatedly pushed “upgrades” that slowed down older iPhones in order to force customers to buy newer ones. Another familiar example is subscription-based software that stops working and locks the user’s own created files, holding them for ransom until payment is received. In other words, the software vendor blocks your access to the products of your own creation. Witness also the practice of “bundling” among telecom companies – a subscriber cannot choose exactly what they want, no more and no less. One must pick a “bundle” including a lot of unwanted channels, in order to get a few that one does want. Car manufacturers have taken to designing vehicles in such a way that the owner cannot change a headlight on their own, since doing so involves dismantling much of the front of the car, which only a dealer is equipped to do. The examples could fill many volumes.

The end of Capitalism and its replacement with a synergistic, democratic socio-economic paradigm will also result in massive reduction of waste, pollution, landfills, and unnecessary resource depletion that are the inevitable result of the self-devouring cycle that is necessary to keep Capitalist societies functioning optimally.

From an estimated 2,000–10,000 humans in the distant past (about 70,000 years ago, according to genetic drift studies) scattered widely across North Central Africa in small groups of a few dozen, to today’s 7 billion and growing rapidly, humans have come a long way, for better and for worse.

We have changed from hunter-gatherers to agriculturalists to today’s population increasingly concentrated in metropolises of millions across the world. Our lifestyles have gone from stone-age hunter-gatherers forging tools from natural materials at hand to modern technological engineers, reshaping our environment on an unprecedented scale. Our current global lifestyle generates massive amounts of waste, much of which is toxic to the environment and to ourselves as well. In our quest for profits, we ravage the earth on a gargantuan scale in the pursuit of resources to exploit. We have gone from having a negligible impact on the world to being the single biggest factor impacting the entire planet and the ecosystem of which we are a part and upon which we depend for our survival as much as any other plant or animal.

Picture the impact on our physical environment due to our pattern of forced overconsumption of cell phones, washing machines, computers, clothing, cars and every other kinds of products that are made to last just past warranty (in a setting of massive advertising, propaganda, incentives and pressures on citizens to replace them as frequently as possible)! Picture a pile of 7 billion discarded cell phones! Picture this every year. Then apply the same picture to every kind of consumer product. Where can we put it? It is staggering and utterly unjustifiable. The depletion of resources involved in this runaway compulsive producing/consuming is artificially hyperinflated and unsustainable. Resources that could last centuries, millennia, or longer if used only in proportion to real need, are being depleted in a matter of decades. The destructive and potentially extinction-level impact of this occurs at every phase of this unsustainable cycle. Forced overproduction devours natural resources at an ever-accelerating pace worldwide. Many production processes generate proportionally-escalating amounts of pollutants that inevitably have to end up someplace. Packaging materials require the ongoing destruction of forests to produce cardboard and paper with further consumption and pollution in the production of plastics. Such packaging quickly ends up in landfills, landscapes, or oceans. Advertising consumes still more paper, plastic, and energy. Then when these products break as designed or are forced out of service by upgrades and other business ploys that render them unusable or frustrating to use, such as phasing out support, the products themselves endlessly pile up in the environment, often laden with toxic materials. All of this is utterly avoidable.

In the new Paradigm, products will be designed to last as long as technically possible and be easily repairable and upgradeable. The above issues will shrink to utterly manageable proportions. New production models will also include recycling and reclamation of discarded products, which will progressively reverse at least some of the damage done under Capitalist practices.

Surely even those completely ensconced in the upper reaches of the economic pyramid are smart enough to know that our resources are finite and this kind of forced consumption will deplete them in the foreseeable future. When raw materials are exhausted, the profits will stop. The problem is that, like any addicts, people in that position are not able to see or reason clearly where their addiction is concerned. It is a matter of physiology; it is the same predicament faced by the gambling addict who cannot stop even though they know they are about to lose their house. Addiction is known to actually rewire the brain.

Unlike the gambling addict, however, the money/power addiction of those at the top of the pyramid is enabled, reinforced and encouraged in Capitalistic societies. They are even held up as role models for the rest of us to emulate. To make things worse, Capitalist society perpetuates in them the belief that they will always get their way, that they can buy and bully their way through any calamity. This of course is not true, but that fact will not help any of us if these people are allowed to continue to pursue their dangerous compulsions.

The situation is analogous to a passenger airliner being piloted by a delusional pilot who believes they can fly through a mountain, bent upon proving it to all present. The cockpit must be breached. The controls must be wrested from their hands. The plane must be landed safely. Then the delusional ones must get therapy and rehabilitation just like any drug, alcohol, gambling or video game addict or OCD sufferer.

To allow the current course to continue is irresponsible and mass-suicidal.

Of course, overpopulation is an extremely serious global issue. With the current population it is still possible to provide the necessities and a high quality of life to all if we create sane, workable, equitable, balanced, coordinated and sustainable paradigms. But there is still a practical limit to how many humans the earth can sustain with any worthy quality of life.

We cannot continue multiplying indefinitely without facing a future crisis in which there will be no possible solution to avoid mass extinction or crushing deprivation for millions or billions, even with the most efficient and equitable harmonious system possible. There is only so much space. Resources are not inexhaustible. And we do not live in a void. It is neither possible nor desirable for humans to crowd and pollute the ecosystem into extinction in order to make room for more and more of ourselves. The result would be very much like the world depicted in the movie “Soylent Green”: a dying world in which only humans are left, dying out but surviving for a time by eating their own dead.

It is vital to begin dealing with this issue now, not when mass extinction is at hand. It is one of the most challenging issues. Failure to resolve it wisely will certainly lead to disaster on an unprecedented scale. In order to protect our beloved future generations from this fate, we must come up with proactive practical solutions almost immediately.

This is an extremely controversial and volatile issue. It touches on one of the most basic instincts of all living creatures and brings into focus a potential conflict between the long-term survival of our children's children's children, versus the fundamental right of a family to have children in the first place. This does not have to be a conflict. Any solution must take into account the long term good of all and the rights and freedoms of individuals and families in the present in a balanced way. Any discussion of this topic must be done with utmost mutual respect and sensitivity by all concerned, as emotions will run extremely high.

It is an issue that touches on cultures, traditions, religion, personal freedom, social responsibility and more. It is not specifically an issue of Capitalism as such, but it is nevertheless a vital issue that must be addressed and acknowledged in any socio-economic or political paradigm. Sadly, Capitalism is extremely unlikely to encourage addressing the issue, as doing so would most likely be contrary to short-term profitability. A shrinking or stable population means flat or shrinking profits.

There are obviously three possible ways to keep the population from becoming catastrophically high:

1) Reduce the birth rate 2) Increase the death rate/decrease lifespan 3) Undertake massive colonization of other worlds

Since we are striving to create a compassionate and empowering society, Option 2 can be discarded immediately. Option 3 is attractive theoretically but has multiple drawbacks, most notably the fact that the only viable other world in our neighborhood is Mars, which would require massive resources to terraform and probably take too long to accomplish. It would also most certainly be physically impractical to relocate a few billion human beings and a whole ecosystem plus infrastructure from here to there. Colonization of Mars is a possibility, but relocation of enough people to ease overpopulation is not likely to be a real option at this time. In addition, even if it becomes practical, it would only postpone the crisis for a few generations, after which it would overtake not one but two worlds.

That leaves reducing the birth rate as the only viable way to prevent an overpopulation disaster. This will be extremely challenging to resolve, because it involves one of the most intimate, personal aspects of human existence. No compassionate civilization would presume to try to dictate people's rights to have children. On the other hand, at the current rate of global population growth, we are rapidly approaching a situation where no conceivable socio-economic paradigm could prevent massive famine and privation.

Certainly educating people, making them aware of the long-term realities is one obvious way to proceed. If people are aware that this is a factual survival issue rather than a political one, then many or most will probably respond accordingly. Yet it is unlikely to be enough by itself, partially because this issue touches on religious and cultural attitudes which brings in daunting levels of complexity. It must be handled with utmost sensitivity.

In India, a poster was put up in public places depicting an emaciated, impoverished family with a bunch of kids next to a family with two children looking healthy and prosperous. When random citizens were asked their reaction to the poster, many of them expressed concern for the family with two kids, asking "Can't medicine do something for that couple so they can have more kids?" This reflects Indian cultural attitudes towards the subject.

In the pre-technological societies of the distant past, infant and child mortality rates were high and lifespans were short, so it was essential to the survival of the individual, family, community and species to have as many children as possible and start as early as possible.

In agrarian societies, having many children insured sufficient workforce for planting and harvesting, and created a strong support system. Again, the mortality rate was generally high and lifespans shorter than now.

Like any life form, we have an instinct to procreate. Doing so is one of the most rewarding of human experiences.

In current times, infant and child mortality rates are generally low in much of the world, and lifespans are much longer than ever before. We have not yet fully realized the impact of this on our present or our future. We still have the tendency to think and feel as our agrarian and hunter-gatherer ancestors did about such things. We have not fully adapted to the changes we ourselves have made to our world. What was imperative when 8 out of 10 people born never lived to be parents, is dangerous when 9.8 out of 10 people born live to become parents.

If Capitalist societies have an impact on population growth, it is most likely to encourage it. A steadily growing population is an ever-increasing market and workforce to sustain the ever-accelerating self-devouring cycle perceived to be necessary.

In contrast, the new post-Transitionary synergistic paradigms may well be more fertile environments for cultural and perceptual mentality shifts favoring slowing population growth to a hopefully stable, sustainable level or even zero.

Historically, the gradual transition from a tribal/community based society, to an extended-family-based society, to the nuclear-family-based society that is dominant in much of the world now, has come at the price of alienation and loss of community cohesion and connectedness. We humans are a social species. When our primary social center consists of only one's self and at most one other, then our sense of community is virtually nonexistent, or rudimentary and tenuous at best.

In the new paradigms, economic pressures that divide and isolate people will be absent. In a more community-based society where processes like energy and food production, sporting and artistic life and most other activities are more participatory and centered in neighborhoods and communities instead of mammoth central facilities, community life will likely begin to flourish and become a more active and meaningful aspect of people's lives.

Under Capitalist paradigms, people tend to experience very little sense of healthy interconnectedness or community. People usually live one place, work someplace far away (not in the community or neighborhood where they live) with other people who live in distant, spread out locations. There is little chance for true community to develop.

Production of goods and services happen at a centralized, mammoth corporate level. The people of the community are not involved in it. Thus shopping and provisioning are yet other activities that fail to foster development of community.

Nearly all of life’s activities and functions are done on an individual or nuclear family basis. There are indeed friendships, but very little in the way of community. When people's lives are so fragmented that there is little or no connection between the people they work with, the people they live with, and the people who grow the food they eat and so on, then each family unit is an island, isolated. Yet there is something in us that needs, seeks and values community.

When people experience being part of a community of mutually interconnected, interdependent, supportive people, then the children of the community will become more a part of the lives of all the community and vice versa. Each family will enjoy a community of children mutually involved in their lives. Having only one or two children will not feel too small when there are often five, six or eight children around the house. This is borne out in fact, in Kibbutzim and in many communities with a strong level of mutual engagement among members. Based on existing experience, the new post-Transition paradigm will foster and reinforce mutual involvement of all generations and walks of life. Economics will not only cease to divide people, but will take a form that engenders beneficial interdependence and mutuality in a symbiotic dynamic.

A transition from the nuclear family, back to the extended family (which in the modern context may not necessarily be related by blood), and ultimately back to the community as a social focal point, source of strength, and support system, will re-integrate us into a synergistic whole. Empowering healthy interconnection will displace caustic alienation and isolation. The nuclear and extended family will actually be strengthened by existing as part of a strong support system rather than as an isolated, economically besieged island in a stormy sea.

Regarding the challenge of overpopulation, it is wise to look at and learn from societies and countries that currently have zero or low population growth in the absence of government regulation. This points primarily to the Scandinavian countries, which are socialistic democracies that have long treated issues of procreation, sexuality and childrearing in a balanced and matter-of-fact way. Family planning, human sexuality (in all of its aspects), hygiene and related matters are an integral part of school curriculum in middle and high school, alongside mathematics, language, history and so forth.

The topics are treated neither as shameful, immoral, or dirty (which attitude acts as a reinforcer to stimulate curiosity, negative attention-seeking, and the whole forbidden-fruit syndrome), nor as the be-all, end-all to be rushed into as soon as possible with accompanying social and peer pressure to participate in order to prove one's self. There is no social, cultural, family, or peer judgment for having sex or getting pregnant, nor for not doing so. By the time young people become interested in romantic bonding, sexuality, procreation, and related aspects of coming of age as a human being, they are well informed about the mental, emotional, physical and other aspects of life and well equipped to make wise, well-informed decisions.

All aspects of this side of our nature are free of taboos or restrictions. Birth control is freely available along with all relevant medical and health care including obstetrics. Work environments support employees taking maternity leave, both parents. Inhabitants are free to have as many or few children as they wish, and yet the birth rate is among the lowest in the world, holding stable at approximately the break-even point, balancing the death rate. At this time, this is probably the optimal situation to strive for. Future studies may point to an optimal population range to aim for. In the meantime, if we can reach a growth rate of zero, it will be a good starting point.

Religion is not suppressed in these social-demorcratic countries either. There appears to be a spontaneous balance between citizens who choose to have larger families and those who choose to have one, two or no children. All countries at all levels of development would do well to study these countries' approach to population growth and adapt it to the post-Transition society, or even sooner.

One hopeful note, though somewhat counter-intuitive, is the tentative observation that many societies that enjoy a higher general degree of well-being and harmony tend to have lower population growth rates than countries with greater levels strife, poverty, disparity, and privation. One possible explanation might be that on some unconscious instinctive level, an environment of privation, danger, strife, and adversity represents a high threat to survival which instinctively triggers an unconscious sense of urgency to procreate as many children as possible to maximize the chance of survival of family, community, and country.

Conversely an environment with a high degree of well-being and safety may unconsciously signal a diminished sense of urgency to out-procreate the death rate. It may be as simple as populations responding to an innate imperative to strive to ensure that the birth rate always outpaces the death rate. If there is such a mechanism at work, then in a post-Revolutionary society in which individuals and the bigger community enjoy a heretofore rarely experienced universal sense of well-being, fulfillment, empowerment and optimism, such mechanism would tend to act to adjust the birth rate to just above or approximately equal to the death rate.

There are no easy or simple resolutions to the issue of overpopulation, but they must be addressed, wrestled with, and solutions found if we are to survive in the long run and having survived, find it to have been a worthwhile endeavor.

Another aspect of resource management has to do with the choices we make about which technologies to favor over others in order to accomplish a given purpose or fill a given need.

In Capitalist societies and paradigms, the choice is made that favors maximum profits and stock prices. This may or may not be the same as what most benefits the people or is most sustainable and best for long-term survival or quality of life. In fact, in more instances than not, what best serves the profits of large corporations is not what is best for the people.

Examples abound and are discussed elsewhere in this writing. They include the systematic destruction of the developing public transportation system in Los Angeles, California in the U.S.A. in the 1930’s by industries who realized their profits would be vastly greater if the inhabitants were forced of necessity to use private cars; the way companies manufacturing baby formula responded when it was found that some of their products were harming infants - they simply continued selling said products in countries that hadn't yet gotten the word that these products were harmful and banned them; the switch by cell phone manufacturers to non-replaceable cell phone batteries; automobile manufacturers buying up patents of innovations that could reduce their profits if widely available - only to use the patents to suppress development of such innovations; suppressing development of alternative technologies in order to extend and entrench dependence on petroleum products; use of inferior materials to insure rapid product failure in order to force demand for replacements; favoring designs using non-user-serviceable parts over designs easily serviced by users... the examples are legion and well-documented.

In a post-Capitalist synergistic society, the choices will be very different.

One can envision the proliferation of passive-energy designs, materials and building techniques to produce buildings that make clever use of materials and designs to maintain a more or less constant temperature in the human comfort range. This will greatly reduce the need for energy consumption to heat and cool. Such design principles are known and documented but have not become the norm, partly because of lack of public awareness of them, and partly because energy companies, air conditioning and heater manufacturers, and the ever-lurking petroleum industry all would lose massive profits if these became the norm.

In a synergistic society, the economics of energy efficiency will predominate. There will be no profit motive. Similarly a diversity of energy technologies will be able to proliferate and flourish when not suppressed by a massive Capitalistically driven fossil fuel energy industry. There are existing technologies that are orders of magnitude more efficient, sustainable, clean and easy to produce and maintain, but which are not known by the vast majority of the population. Multi-fuel vehicles. Mechanochemical engines. Bio-electronics. The list is impressive. And this is only in one area of technology: energy production.

Under Capitalism, mechanical devices, electronics, appliances and the like are designed and built for the most part to be non-user-serviceable, to be replaced as often as possible. Under a synergistic humanistic paradigm, we could expect that such things will be designed and built to be as easily user-serviceable as possible, with longevity in mind, and with easy upgradeability.

For example, similar to some military designs in which troubleshooting needs to be quick and simple, many new-paradigm devices will be troubleshootable by looking up light patterns or error codes in a manual and replacing specific circuit boards or components depending on the malfunction. In many cases it is not necessary to replace the entire device.

Upgradeability will follow the same principle. For example, every washing machine has certain parts: a controller, sensors, a pump, a soap dispensing mechanism, a drum, motor etc. If designed and built properly, then when an updated controller or more powerful but energy efficient motor is developed, the user will be able to unplug the old controller or motor, snap it out, snap the replacement or upgrade into place, plug it back in, close up the machine and be ready to go. Instructions will be in plain, easy-to-understand language with images and diagrams.

Such a paradigm will foster a greater sense of empowerment among people, greatly reduce waste, eliminate unnecessary overproduction and allow for technological progress to be integrated widely and much more quickly than is the case in Capitalist paradigms.

Transportation is another example, touched upon elsewhere in this writing. In a more humanistic, synergistic paradigm, infrastructure and technology will diversify. Extensive networks of trails, paths and other infrastructure will be built for bicycles and other human powered and low speed vehicles that will render them more practical and attractive. Mass transit will be expanded as well.

Transportation technologies will diversify, thus greatly reducing dependence on, and pollution because of, fossil fuels. An increase of emphasis on quality public transportation will greatly reduce road congestion.

China's early model of supplying free bicycles for public use can be expended to cars, Segueys, and other types of vehicles to insure that all citizens have access to transportation when they need it.

Safety and maintenance will most certainly be superior to current conditions, since a growing number of people are forced to put off repairs and maintenance due to high cost. Maintenance and repair facilities will be placed in convenient locations in each neighborhood, and mobile mechanics will be dispatched when needed.

These are but a few examples of how the new paradigm will function and the kinds of decision-making processes that will likely transpire. The important principle to keep in mind is that practical and aesthetic considerations of the people will predominate once human societies are freed of the compulsions and constraints forced upon them under Capitalist paradigms.