Image, Cassandra’s Curse: http://www.clubofrome.org/?p=1893
This morning I was pulling poison ivy. It looked like I was up against the withering prospect of pulling more than a hundred individual plants. But I found that if I dug my gloved finger to the root and gently tugged, I could trace it through other roots and stems in my neglected garden, then fairly easily zip out whole tracts of the stuff. Without pulling a single individual plant, tugging up the root dislodged all the ones I could see and a lot that I hadn’t seen in the tangle of vegetation. When I was a teen I yearned to travel America to see “how other people live.” Now, basically, you can see how they live from wherever you happen to be. The same advertising, the same chain stores, and the same TV, radio and print conglomerates have largely replaced America with the same repeating road-stop strip mall, from sea to shining sea. Everyone’s head throbs with the same songs, and young people “relate to” the same handful of company logos and media characters. Corporate “news” reports on how the actual people who play fictional characters are faring in their reproduction and rehab. As I was freeing my American garden from toxic infestations, my mind drifted to the image of the chain stores along a highway, each strip mall a sprig of leaves, connected by an unseen cable of root. I imagined that I was driving cross-country on a big interstate highway, pulling up chain stores as I went along, helping free up a land strangling in a rash of sameness.
Modern corporations were essentially illegal at the founding of the United States (the colonists had had enough of British corporations). In the new country, corporations could form, raise public capital, and share profits with stockholders only for specified activities that benefited the public, such as constructing roads or canals. Corporate licenses were temporary. Corporations were forbidden from attempting to influence elections, lawmaking, public policy, or civil life. Imagine.
But from the beginning, corporate-minded men chafed for power, prompting Thomas Jefferson to write in 1816, “I hope we shall … crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country.”
For the first century after the American Revolution, legislators maintained control of the corporate chartering process. Then they essentially lost it as a series of court decisions established corporate “rights” and corporate “personhood.” These laws have been catastrophic for democracy, with planetary implications.
Corporate globalization has been called “the most fundamental redesign of social, economic, and political arrangements since the Industrial Revolution.” Corporations have swept real economic and political power away from governments. Of the hundred wealthiest countries and corporations listed together, more than half are corporations. ExxonMobil is richer than 180 countries – and there are only about 195 countries. Without the responsibilities or costs of nationhood, corporations can innovate and produce at unprecedented speed and scale. Yet they can also undertake acts of enormous environmental destruction and report a profit.
The behavior of corporations arises from their wide freedom of action and their limited liability for harms caused. Further, shareholders “own” and profit by the corporation, but “limited liability” means shareholders can lose no more than the money invested; they aren’t held responsible for anything the corporation does. If they were, stockholders might know what companies they “own” and why. They might demand corporate responsibility. They might invest more carefully. But because they’re not, they don’t.
Further, if a corporation can make a larger profit by wrecking a community, the law says it must. Perhaps the most famous case in corporate law was decided in the Supreme Court of Michigan in 1919 when Henry Ford got sued by the Dodge brothers (yes, those Dodge brothers). Ford wanted to plow profits back into the company and its employees. “My ambition is to employ still more men,” the New York Times quoted Ford as saying, “to spread the benefits of this industrial system to the greatest possible number, to help them build up their lives and homes. To do this we are putting the greatest share of our profits back in the business.” The judges posed a short question: What is a corporation for? The judges answered themselves by saying corporations are “primarily for the profit of the stockholders.” Not for the benefit of employees or community. Corporate managers – regardless of personal scruples or desire to “do good” – are forced to always put profits first.
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the profit-maximization imperative creates continuous pressure to dump waste in the public commons and to shift the resulting costs to the public through subsidies, tax-funded pollution cleanups, and such. Where dumping waste is illegal, corporations may be fined for violations. Such fines often become “a cost of doing business,” while shareholders know that corporations never get sent to jail, and that some are “too big (to be allowed) to fail.” To the extent that governmental regulations get annoying, corporate appetites engulf those too, backing and basically installing cooperative elected officials, then coercing the removal of regulatory “barriers” (formerly: “public protections”).
However, we can envision how a more public-minded government might deal with risk-prone corporations. In Wold War II, the US government seized control of certain German companies inside the United States. Obviously, it wouldn’t do to have German chemical plants on American soil while we were engulfed in war with Germany. The companies were not destroyed, just controlled by the government for a while; some still exist. When U.S. automakers got into serious trouble and went into bankruptcy in 2009, the federal government stepped in to control management for a while. These weren’t punitive moves exactly, but one can imagine ways in which corporations acting as bad citizens might have to do some time with, say, their stocks frozen – no trading, maybe – while a government of the people does a little potty training with the executives.
In real life as we know it, the profit-maximization imperative means that any company seeking to act responsibly incurs a competitive disadvantage. The implications are generally a cascade of catastrophes because essentially all the money in the world is thus under pressure to act irresponsibly. Any other impulse must buck that tide.
The corporations’ central tenet of faith, their object of worship, their grail and their gruel: growth. Growth fueled by continually unearthing new resources and cheaper labor. Growth fed by raising and fattening new consumers. Growth had historically resulted from technical progress and growing population. It became a central pursuit of government policy mainly after World War II.
But Planet Earth cannot grow. Not any faster than it accumulates stardust, anyway. If the economy “grows” while resources like water, forest, and fish are being depleted, it’s not growth: it’s just blowing more bubbles. Yet because our economic system shows unconditional love for growth, it doesn’t ring alarm bells over bubbles. But count on this: the bigger the bubble, the worse the burst.
The first corporate century, the 20th, was a period of explosive growth. Despite as many as 150 million human beings killed in warfare between 1900 and Y2K, the world population quadrupled. Energy use increased sixteen-fold. The fish catch – which peaked in the late 1980s – increased thirty-fold. The sheer amount of stuff used annually flies in flocks of zeros that defy comprehension: 275,000,000 tons of meat, 370,000,000 tons of paper product, et cetera. Incredibly, of all the earthly materials that human hands have ever transformed, fully half of that material transformation has occurred since World War II.
“It is impossible for the world economy to grow its way out of poverty and environmental degradation,” writes the resource-minded economist Herman Daly, because the economy is a “subsystem of the earth ecosystem, which is finite, non-growing and materially closed.”
And economists think the solution to our problems is more growth? We’ve been terribly misled. But more development – that’s a different proposition. “Grow” means to increase in size by adding. “Develop” means to realize potentials, to make better.
Because the world is pretty much fully tapped, growth now threatens development. In a postgrowth world, we’d measure things like community and satisfaction. We’d replace the feverish tail chase of the material with life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Those come from development, not from growth. Let’s not confuse the two.
During challenging ocean conditions, certain sea jellies “de-grow.” They don’t just lose fat or slim down; they actually lose cells and simplify structures. When times are good, they regrow. Because they are adding new cells and regrowing structures (not just replumping), they are actually rejuvenated – younger than they were. On the other end of the scale, Edward Abbey long ago observed that growth for the sake of continuous growth is the strategy of cancer. Knowing what we now know, it appears that the world can’t produce enough to grow our way out of poverty. But we could certainly shrink our way out.
Carl Safina is a MacArthur fellow and host of the PBS television show Saving the Ocean. This essay originally appeared in his book The View From Lazy Point.
Read the original article on Adbusters HERE:
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Comments (7)
I am still waiting for the day when I hear a politician publicly admit that the economy can’t keep growing forever and that the time to start planning for an end to the growth is now. I am also still waiting for the day (which should come sooner, but hasn’t yet) when journalists interviewing politicians take them to task over this.
- because the economy is a “subsystem of the earth ecosystem, which is finite, non-growing and materially closed.”
Hurray, someone finally said it succinctly. The Greens have been saying it for ages mind you. I had a Greens bumper sticker many years ago reminding people of ‘No economy without the environment’. Pretty straight forward I thought.
So people are finally starting to get uncomfortable, but its got to go further. People are fretting that the IGA will come to no good, more jobs will be lost, more services will be cut.
I say let it fall. Let people go to the wall. Maybe finally then people will be out in the streets demanding change and asking for the heads of these useless, spineless politicians we never seem to see the end of. Like all addictions (greed, capitalism) you have to wait until it hits rock bottom before people will see they need to find a way out. Until then all this posting on TT is all self satisfying waffle (myself included).
Aside from this lets please, please please stop waiting to be led. We can do much on our own.
Spend less on ciggies and alcohol and spend it on local organic produce instead (local growers benefit, strain on health services and dental recedes)
Buy and build smaller houses (lower operating costs, less materials, more affordable houses to buy and run, homes are more ‘homely’ and connected)
Buy less packaging (less waste removal and disposal costs, less resources used, lower cost for items)
Use power and fuel more efficiently (less resource use, less demand for a resource brings its price down)
Due to uncertainty from the GFC and perhaps just maybe the environmental movement finally getting through to some after all these years, I believe this is already happening and look how much of a tiz the corporate world is in. No one is buying, there is no growth! Panic!
But lo and behold we are still here. People are deciding to work less, grow their own food, share things (my my what a concept) and support each other. So life goes on. Yes its hard, but maybe we will remember how the third world has been doing it for all this time.
The less services we need, the less we need to pay taxes to get them and the less we need an overinflated, over payed government to regulate and convey those services. The less we need centralised fossil fuel energy, the less we need mining magnates and the fat-cats with their excessive bonuses and dividends.
Why exactly do we need more and more jobs anyway? The cut backs to staff, causing others to pull longer shifts are just horrendous. Why do we not job share? More people working, but for less hours. Use payments currently going to welfare to subsidise it, and tax people less. What happened to the shimmering future dream of more leisure time? I don’t have any more leisure time, do you?
We are all too busy working to pay for needless baubles or overpriced services, or more people on welfare.
Maybe if we didn’t need all this and could work less we could get back to what community and human interaction is about, spending time with our loved ones and pursuing our hearts desires. We would have more time to cook better food, attend local markets, read and educate ourselves and look after our health. This is indeed ‘development’ or dare I say it ‘evolution’.
I fully expect the barrage of retaliation claiming this is all simplistic, idealistic, tree hugging trite, but all I can say is “you may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one”. Its the dreamers who move us forwards, while the nay sayers and defeatists grumble and drag their feet.
As our old friend sang it so well “.........waiting for the great leap forward”. Still
Hi Sue (#2) - you might be interested to read this article describing the wholesale capture of our political institutions by the global financial industry cabal:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/05/the-quiet-coup/7364/
Thanks Merk. An interesting read. Unfortunately it contains alot of financial techno speak which quite frankly illudes me. As I stated, I am aware the GFC is alot more complicated
than market confidence and people spending less. However the article does clarify one salient point, which is that one one hand we have ‘regular’ society going about its daily business, working hard, trying to keep their head above water, quite unaware of how the world of high finance works. On the other we have these stock market techno geeks ‘just doing their jobs’ going about the business of wheeling and dealing and making money (whether its ‘real’ or not or just numbers on a screen) blissfully unaware that they are messing with peoples lives and their hard earned savings (loans and super). They have indeed captured government because the government has become more interested in balancing the budget and protecting their industry donations and provision of services they no longer want to handle, rather than providing the services people need at affordable prices. They have fallen for the bullshit that the market knows best and does not need regulation.
The big lie is that its a ‘free market’ economy because 1. the whole focus of their job is poking and prodding and messing with the part of the market they can control (the finance, economy overlay, i.e. credit, securities and all the shit I don’t understand) purely to make money for themselves and 2. all the while forgetting that ‘market trends’ are linked to people that are highly unpredictable and who are inexorably linked to the planets unpredictable rythms (poor harvests, natural disasters, changing weather patterns, changing human desires). The last of these they try to manipulate through marketing and advertising. Yes they put money into the economy and build infrastructure but most of the time we don’t really need it and often it is just to further their own ends anyway (like roads for mining)
Hence in a small way we can wrestle back some control by how we spend and where we save our money, but because government are now mesmerised by the corporate sector we must remain vigilant and keep our finger on the pulse and make them realise we are still watching. This becomes increasingly hard as government has been hoodwinked into slashing funding to education (on the financial sector ideal that ‘the cream rises to the top’). The result being that people are dumbed down and less engaged in politics and finance, and the ones providing the cash and the supposed ‘solutions’ are the ones who get the governments ear. The sooner the populace grabs back the attention of the governement by ‘going to the window, sticking their head out and yelling I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!’ the government will have no choice but to listen. Yes some people will hurt during the process, but this is the way its always been with change and (r)evolution. Its time for the majority to wrestle back control of the finance sector via our so-called ‘representatives’ and saying ‘sorry buddy you work for the good of the whole, not just your shareholders’. Those who are currently making money for nothing from shares will just have to come back and live in the real world. I have no problem with capitalism that makes a profit from ingenuity and doing things smarter and cheaper but the current model that makes profit from exploiting the poor and trashing the environment has got to go.
And then there’s the attitude that says: “If we keep on heading along the same path, the whole planet is stuffed. It is inconvenient (and possibly expensive in the short term) for me to change, so it is a given that the planet will become inhabitable within a century or so. Therefore I must rip out as much profit in the short term as I can. There is no long term.” There is no incentive for the rich and powerful to abandon this attitude.
Belief that there is ‘No economy without the environment’ leads to intensified greed and accelerated destruction. Refusal to accept that maxim leads to greed and destruction at the current levels and rates. Which would you prefer?
Or do you think that those with wealth and power are magically endowed with a conscience?
Speaking of yelling ‘I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore’ - look at what it took in terms of civil disobedience for anyone to even begin to listen to the populace in Greece. Sadly I expect that Tasmania’s finances will lurch forwards day by day looking more and more like the living dead, until this latent popular discontent spills out onto the streets in the form of an angry mob.
Also I would say that it is in the interests of the financial puppet-masters to obscure their rent-seeking practices in the form of complex products, incomprehensible laws and regulations, and backroom deals with authorities. A good place to start with working through the jargon in the article linked above is with a dictionary - there’s a good one at investopedia.com.
I encourage everyone to keep seeking answers and see for themselves just how deep the rabbit hole goes..
The laws that allow the current economic/finacial/monetary paradigm were passed by individuals acting to represent various constiuencies. I suggest that the majority were members of political parties exercising the particular blindness to conflicted interests that accompany that membership. With that in mind it is little wonder that concepts like common wealth, the common good, sustainability and accountability have been jettisoned in favour of anything that keeps wealth pumping up the pyramid toward the one percent.
You do not need a dictionary of economics to understand that, a mid level understanding of human nature is enough.
Time is getting short. If we want a better system, it must be built by better people than those who built and are attempting to
maintain the now failing wreck we are about to be crushed by.
How will we identify them? Current knowledge suggests it will not be by their membership of any current political party.
Sue, if you have not done so, I suggest you check out “the Archdruid Report”. Google brings it up.
His writing constitutes one of the most enlightening vantage points from which to view the current time I have ever encountered.