Redefining the Radical and the Realistic as Time Ticks Down
Our narrative is approaching its nadir. Despite the valiant efforts of so many, the Troglodytes[1] seem poised to triumph. This is the moment, if this were the movie version of humanity’s story, at which all appears lost. It is now, in the darkest hour before the dawn, when the plot demands that in their trough of despond our heroes have their moment of revelation.
Maybe one remembers the advice of long ago from a beloved grandparent (when you’re in a hole, child, stop digging); maybe another reprogrammes their personal AI device to apply its accumulated intelligence to the challenge objectively, uncorrupted by the commercial imperatives of its manufacturer; maybe the diffident spiritual one speaks up and exhorts them to Let Go finally of their attachment to things. The group go back to first principles, identifying the essence of the problem and laying it out for the AI to contemplate:
Ø Consumption of natural resources at rates greater than earth’s capacity to replenish them
Ø Greenhouse gas emissions at levels condemning us to global temperatures beyond those we have ever known
Ø Accelerating disparities between the wealth of the very richest and the majority of the human population create artificial scarcity of essentials for the latter
The AI appears initially confused. Each of these issues is within humanity’s gift to address immediately, so what is the problem? It needs to be asked a different question: what human behaviours are causing these problems?
It identifies their common root cause as money. Or, more specifically, the reverence in which it and the accumulation of it is held. In particular, it cites the belief in the need for perpetual economic growth; the optimisation of profits and financial returns as the overriding driver of economic activity; and the characteristic of free market capitalism to reward scale, leading over time to one or a few mega-corporations dominating each market, meaningful competition evaporating and wealth and power pooling in the hands of a few.
The AI notes that none of these priorities are, of themselves, goals of humanity; merely means to achieve its goals. It notes that, given the scale of harm to humanity and the planet threatened by the pursuit of these priorities, the intelligent response would be for humanity to use different means to achieve its ends. The AI observes that the living ecosystem that is the planet is adjusting to the extreme changes wrought upon it by humanity over the last 80 years in particular. To ameliorate the effects of this, it recommends humanity urgently reduces both its consumption of resources and the greenhouse gases it emits, and achieves a far more equitable redistribution and reallocation of the resources available to it.
“We need to stop digging,” reiterates the granddaughter. “We need to let go,” repeats the quiet one. Others speak of seeing the water we are swimming in and suggesting we are not swimming in it, but boiling as, frog-like, we fail to notice or act on the rising temperature. Our heroes, reinvigorated, spend the rest of the night coming up with ideas: different ways to organise which will still contribute to humanity’s ultimate goals but which reduce the prospect of large areas of the planet becoming uninhabitable, with all the knock on effects that will have in terms of mass migration, resource wars, and widespread social and economic breakdown.
As day dawns, they have a ten point plan, including:
Ø New money being created by the central bank injecting it into the real economy in line with the stated social priorities of the government of the day, not private banks creating it as a profit making device for themselves at their discretion. If money is created primarily with the motivation of meeting identified social needs rather than in response to the profit motive of a private bank then, in a similar way to the previous point, issues of otherwise unnecessary economic activity and inequality may be addressed
Ø Removing the ability to charge interest on loans at rates exceeding inflation. Those with the surplus capital available to lend to others do not need it and it should be available to those that do. The owners of the capital might reasonably expect to receive it back with the same real value it had when it was lent and reasonable fees might be charged to facilitate and manage such loans. More than that, however, is profiteering which should not be permitted. Exceptions may apply for more speculative loans, but given 97% of money in the economy is debt, almost all of it interest-bearing, the need to meet interest payments is one of the most significant drivers of excessive consumption in the economy. Materially reducing that engine of consumption could play a huge role in reducing emissions, as well as addressing a major source of economic inequality
Ø Requiring businesses (and other organisations) to take all their stakeholders’ interests into account and not to give pre-eminence to their owners’ financial interests. Without the presumed imperative to prioritise shareholder interests, those running businesses can make more nuanced decisions, balancing competing interests to optimal overall effect
Ø Making businesses responsible for the external costs of their activities (eg the costs of pollution associated with their activities, or social costs from paying below the living wage). This would contribute to avoiding the situation where costs are socialised (i.e, the burden of them falls on all) whilst the benefits are privatised (i.e. enjoyed only by those owning and/or running the business)
Ø Introducing a levy on profits over a certain level, on the basis that any such super-profits reflect an imbalance in the management of stakeholder interests; an indication of poor performance which should not be rewarded. A further disincentive to manage the business in an unbalanced way, but if that persists the state may have funds with which to redress the imbalance to some extent
Ø Introducing limits on pay differentials so that differentials still exist to reflect different skills and endeavours and impacts, but they are not disproportionate and address more than financial metrics. Thus those delivering valuable public services may be remunerated to reflect their social contribution, not have their work valued purely in market terms
Ø Introducing carbon rationing, so that the very wealthy cannot continue causing emissions several orders of magnitude greater than the majority of humanity (and banning the use of private jets, super yachts and similar as part of that process). This would contribute to addressing the excessive resource consumption, excessive emissions and inequality concerns without leaving any individual confronting anything approaching hardship as a result of these changes
Ø Introducing limits on property ownership, such as any adult not owning more than one property at a time (whether directly, or as beneficiary of a trust, or as a significant shareholder of a company). This would restore residential properties to the status of homes, not units in speculative investment portfolios, with the potential to drastically reduce the proportion of an individual’s income taken up by the cost of having a roof over one’s head
Ø Introducing stewardship duties upon owners of land (remunerated, potentially, if honoured) so that land is used generatively for the benefit of current and future generations, not abused in a way which destroys soil quality and biodiversity. Among the most important assets we collectively inherit and bequeath this would redress historic despoilation and avoiding potential future misuse
Ø Retiring GDP (i.e. the volume of paid for busyness regardless of its social value) as a metric of economic success and the bedrock of economic policy and replacing it with a measure of positive impact on the wellbeing of citizens and society at large. Shifting the focus to something we all value, rather than something which long ago outlived its usefulness as a measure and bears no relation (again) to what is important for humanity now, is simple common sense
Our heroes know this will provoke outrage from those who would most be affected (i.e. those most affecting most of humanity by their current lifestyles) and fear among those who have not had the opportunity to contemplate any other system than that which has led us here. The outraged will raise objections applying the rationale of the current system — which will of course no longer be applicable. However, if implemented as a package, the new measures have a consistent internal logic which could have the effect of jump starting a new economy which is regenerative and distributive by design, consistent with the principles and objectives of Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Economics.
Our heroes recognise that decades of attempts to ameliorate capitalism have achieved no more than provide it with more ways to sell itself. The goal of converting the planet into one global mall, with the same products on offer wherever you are, proceeds unabated (whether that be the type of food you eat, the type of vehicle you drive, or the type of experience you have). Resisting by aiming to make capitalism responsible or conscientious, purpose-led or nature-friendly, may make it marginally more palatable, but ultimately no less destructive.
But capitalism is a form of empire, offering, as Jan Morris identified of the latter, “seductive illusions of permanence”, and going “the way of all empires when they last too long. As their confidence shrivels and their apparently permanent convictions fade, they become caricatures of themselves.” In their desperation, sensing this, the Troglodytes are fighting with all they have to resist, but if we are as a species to enjoy a liveable future (and not just the Troglodytes, the arch colonialists of the twenty-first century), we need to leave the caricatures behind and embrace new thinking and being.
No-one (with any credibility) denies the truths put to the AI. However, till now, our collective instinct has been not to act on them but to ignore them, in a conspiracy of silence in which, consistent with so much in our current culture, we are complicit, without assuming responsibility.
The Troglodytes will tell our heroes that they are doom-mongering and that human ingenuity will solve these issues the way it has solved all others is we persist with our current course but, as Jenny Offill has written, “Do not engineer the sun or ocean: engineer us”. In other words, the more effective work is what our heroes are engaged in — proposing how we might approach our lives differently to immediate and positive effect, rather than continuing to believe in future fairy dust to save us, when we don’t even need it in the first place if we just show degrees of moderation and imagination.
In reducing the incentive to accumulate vast amounts of financial wealth, and creating a focus for the economy and society on the care and wellbeing of all citizens, rather than a zero sum game where a few benefit to excessive degrees at the expense of many, our heroes not only identify economic policies to address the existential challenges we face but do so in a way which offers greater fulfilment for more of us also; more congruence with the lives, when we have the opportunity to articulate it, we would wish to lead.
There would be opportunities for shorter working weeks as we would not need to earn so much to maintain a decent standard of living. There would be more time to spend with family and friends and/or for communal activities and/or to develop those interests deemed too frivolous in a market and profit driven world, but which have a value in the incidental joy they generate (think of a flash mob choir bursting into song in the rush hour at a metropolitan railway station).
The more our heroes engage with the detail, the more they and the AI identify glaring flaws in the way we have been doing things which their new approaches may address. Instead of the current broken system where global food is controlled by four multinationals and has been reduced down almost exclusively to three crops, introducing not only dreary uniformity in our diets, but frightening fragility in the system itself, we could return to a situation where far more of the produce consumed is grown nationally, if not locally, re-establishing far more varieties.
Similarly, instead of the current perverse system where the care of our neglected young or very old is undertaken by workers paid below the living wage and with no time to do the job to the standard they would wish, whilst public authorities are charged exorbitantly for seeing their statutory duty met by private equity funds making eye watering profits, the care of loved ones could be undertaken by those with more space and time to take on (part of, at least) the role themselves and professional carers could be paid properly to provide the rest.
The same applies to housing and energy and finance, essential aspects of our lives: the current system would be rejected by any objective analysis of what will deliver the greatest benefit for the greatest number, now and into the future. We are out of time to put up with that inefficiency and the collateral damage it will cause.
Strange as some of the proposals above may sound to ears accustomed only to one tune, the stakes now are such that the radical act is not to embrace changes such as these, but to continue to trust in what we are already experiencing as a doomed project, led by the inadequate and the untrustworthy. Sticking with that system offers nothing more than increasing desperation — and anger, as those tasked with leading us scramble to secure their own immunity from the consequences of their choices. It is time to get real — and to be the everyday heroes we need now, by imagining, talking about and making possible the changes we need to offer a future to be embraced, not feared.
[1] A person who is regarded as being deliberately ignorant or old-fashioned
