Our current economy based on competition works most effectively in a context of scarcity, which is enhanced when we distrust each other and look to the market to meet all needs. While the globalized market may have brought abundance to many, it has also created great wealth inequality and ecological crisis. To many current thinkers, finding a way forward includes re-creating community on a local level. The intentional community movement is a crucial part of this cultural evolution.
Political Revolution Versus Cultural Evolution
“Culture changes when a small group of people find a better way to live, and the rest of us copy them.” —David Brooks (54:50)
The idea that the bulk of humanity will be persuaded to embrace the perennial philosophy and create world peace or an equitable society seems improbable to many. One reason centrally planned communist states may have consistently failed is Gall’s Law: functional complex systems evolve from functional simple systems; complex systems designed de novo rarely succeed and are difficult to repair. The success of democratic socialism in some nations might be attributed to its leveraging of fundamental human instincts. For example, on the positive side, market economies are based on reciprocity norms that are observed in other primates. On what many consider the negative side, cooperation may be higher in nations with democratic socialism, such as scandinavian nations, because of their relative ethnic homogeneity. These are drives rooted in our nature, not merely culture or political structure, as attested by neurochemistry research. Our attempts to engineer large-scale cooperation often involve manipulating culture and technology. However, what if optimal freedom and flourishing are inherently tied to group sizes within the Dunbar number? In such smaller groups, our fundamental social mechanisms operate with greater balance. This very attempt to manipulate culture for specific ends is what we call politics. If we were to abandon the pursuit of power over others through these political games, we would necessarily have to tolerate diverse practices, even those we find objectionable. This would limit our influence to use of persuasion or trade, never permitting coercion. The counterargument often raised is the need for defense against aggressive groups with expansionist ideologies. Perhaps this fundamental shift could only occur in specific contexts: after an economic collapse, in the absence of nation-states and hostile groups with weapons, or with a significant increase in collective self-awareness. Too few of us have the form of moral wisdom gained from the realization of the ultimate futility of power, status, and ease—a truth recognized by the Roman emperor who stated, “I have been everything, and nothing is worth anything.” The widespread adoption of the perennial philosophy might necessitate a new mythology that resonates with ancient understanding, echoing the claims of spiritualists, mediums, and near-death experiencers across various belief systems. This mythology, already prominent in the green quadrant of the U.S. political compass, makes the assertion of our interconnectedness through karmic law. This echoes the monotheistic notion of a universal kinship through our shared origin as children of the divine.
In “a short story about what happened to the U.S. economy since the end of World War II,” Housel (2021), writes the following:
The Tea Party, Occupy Wall Street, Brexit, and the rise of Donald Trump each represents a group shouting, “Stop the ride. I want off….I’m going to fight for something totally different, because this—whatever it is—isn’t working.” Take that mentality and raise it to the power of Facebook, Instagram, and cable news—where people are more keenly aware of how other people live than ever before…. And the era of “We need something radically new, right now, whatever it is” may stick around. (sec. 10)
Rana Foroohar is a columnist at The Financial Times, and the author of several books on the economy, including Makers and Takers and Don’t Be Evil. Her view is that a decade-plus of loose monetary policy has been the economic equivalent of a “sugar high,” which kept the prices of stocks, housing, and other assets going up, even as the fundamentals of the economy have been eroding. This “everything bubble,” as she calls it, was bound to burst. Many political commentators, even prior to the economic instability and tariffs at the beginning of the second Trump term, predict a much less globally interconnected world. Some had seen this shift coming.
They call it the dual circulation economy, but basically it’s about producing local for locals. I think we’re moving to a much more localized regionalized world … and I think in that world you have to change the paradigm, because you cannot surf the wave of financialization and globalization anymore, because the paradigm is shifted. So you have to create some more income-led growth at home. (New York Times, 2022, 56:38)
Sowell (2008) persuasively argues that concerns about wealth inequality and wage stagnation in North America sometimes stem from misleading statistical data. Regardless, there’s undoubtedly room to improve our overall lifestyles. While modern city life offers significant gains in physical comfort, convenience, and individual choice, it often entails a loss of values prized in traditional land-based cultures, such as physical health, natural beauty, and strong community bonds. These benefits, once inherent, now require deliberate cultivation in modern life. Cynically, some assert these are deliberately commodified by those with a zero-sum mindset, making these benefits inaccessible to many. This isn’t a call to return to an idealized past but rather an effort, among others, to envision a synthesis of the advantages of both land-based and city-based cultures, while acknowledging their respective drawbacks.
Values Eroded by Business-as-usual
Freedom. Schmachtenberger (2020) poses a crucial question: “How do we leverage our technological capabilities not to exert power over others, but to gain the strength to resist being controlled by external powers?” (24:56). The U.S. founders attempted to enshrine legal safeguards against tyranny, though with limited and evolving success, as clever mechanisms to concentrate power and wealth have consistently emerged. While governance is necessary, there’s growing dissatisfaction with its current form—increasingly perceived as a government for, by, and of corporations, on which we are significantly dependent, and many of us are even a part of. Bang (2007) defines freedom as “the ability to choose to live in a system which one feels comfortable or satisfied with” (p. 163). Gilman posits that this choice is expanding as “dominator functions” weaken, paving the way for “self-organized consensual collaboration” to become more prevalent. He argues, “Choice destroys the power of coercion. You can’t have a violence-enforced hierarchy when people can choose to walk away” (Context Institute, 2014, 14:45). The same connectivity that fueled the Arab Spring, capable of repeatedly challenging institutional control, lacks an inherent capacity for maintaining order and safety. This presents an opportunity to cultivate a commitment to and vision for ultra-local sovereignty that respects the autonomy of all other groups. We must acknowledge that while individuals and families in many nations appear to have numerous choices, many economically experience their lives as severely constricted. Those in low-wage work often feel trapped by the economic necessity of having little free time and little or no financial security, and are especially discontented by constant access to images of others’ opulent lives. Few in the working class simultaneously own their property outright and possess sufficient wealth to protect, maintain, and pay taxes on it. Many who could be considered well-off still feel their prosperity is precarious, built on increasingly undesirable trade-offs that diminish their sense of freedom. These trade-offs are not immutable and can be renegotiated.
Radical anti-establishment factions advocate for the elimination of all power dynamics. Anarchists believe in personal freedom from any external control. However, this perspective overlooks the realities of human nature. Trade-offs are inherent: absolute “freedom” to act without constraint inevitably extends that freedom to those who would exploit others, necessitating enforced regulations for safety. Even in pre-governance primate societies, leadership existed. Historically, human groups grew larger, eventually leading to the government and corporate bureaucracies that now govern us, arguably because we derive benefits from the resulting order and increased safety. Some anarchist writings naively assume a universal inherent lack of tendency to oppress among the non-ruling population, a notion unsupported by evidence. Solzhenitsyn (1974), after years of political imprisonment, wrote that “The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart” (p. 168). It’s a fallacy to believe that simply installing our favored party would usher in Utopia. Similarly, another ousting of the ruling class or a “burn it all down” approach would not inherently improve the situation. An Argentine who documented his nation’s crisis in 2000 and after noted, “With the social degradation that follows an economic collapse comes depravation of many kinds” (Aguirre, 2011, para. 3), citing the worsening of child abduction, sex trafficking, and organ harvesting during such downturns. Enforced laws within groups prevent more abuses than reliance on individual self-restraint. While enforcers themselves can be among the worst abusers, supporting the best actors and challenging the worst is a more effective strategy than rejecting all forms of hierarchy.
“Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery; none but ourselves can free our minds.” –Bob Marley
Equal opportunity. Recognizing that individuals differ in strength, intelligence, and adaptability underscores the reality of our unequal starting points. Moreover, the assumption that everyone can be socially pressured to prioritize those with apparent disadvantages is unrealistic. While some argue for legislative remedies to address this lack of inherent fairness, empowering fallible individuals with such legal authority risks unintended negative consequences that could surpass any intended benefits. Evidence from past attempts to enforce equity suggests this approach has not yielded satisfactory results. Instead, we should seek ways to promote equal opportunity and care that do not depend on the questionable assumptions and tools advocated by both sides of the political divide. Ultimately, neither political party can legislate a sufficient solution to a cultural problem without creating new problems of equal or greater magnitude.
What I want is so simple I almost can’t say it: elementary kindness. Enough to eat, enough to go around. The possibility that kids might one day grow up to be neither the destroyers nor the destroyed. That’s about it. –Barbara Kingsolver
Independence. It’s natural that those with sufficient wealth often choose to live independently or as nuclear families, seeking to insulate themselves from the problems and consequences of others’ decisions. They may have compassion for others and yet believe more in personal accountability than in their own obligation to unquestioningly sacrifice for others. Yet, this desire for separation belies our fundamental interconnectedness. We’ve shifted from reliance on tight-knit communities to dependence on a global network, where we can remotely secure employment and engage in impersonal transactions to meet our shared needs and desires. Although we label this “independence,” the reality for most in the WEIRD world, beyond isolated exceptions like Alaskan homesteaders, is a profound physical dependence on vast global production and supply chains. Brown (2017) cites biological research demonstrating that human strength, as a social species, arises not from individual self-reliance but from our collective abilities in planning, communication, and collaboration. Our evolutionary trajectory has prioritized interdependence over solitary autonomy; our ultimate individual capacity is to be a dependable member of the group. We are social creatures, inherently driven to belong.
When contrasting collectivist cultures, Talhelm et al. (2014) point out advantages found in individualistic societies, including (a) the social and legal freedom to leave unfulfilling relationships, and (b) more effective communication often due to norms that encourage direct conflict resolution. They also note that a potential downside of individualism is a reduced concern for individuals outside one’s personal network.
The ways individualist and collectivist cultures approach seeking support in times of need mirror political polarities. Socially conservative individuals often prefer to depend on their immediate social circles—neighbors, churches, and family—for assistance. This preference is often driven by their geographic context: they tend to live in smaller towns and rural areas, where access to government programs may be limited, making local support networks more relevant. Socially liberal individuals, on the other hand, often advocate for government-led programs and legislation to provide aid to those in need. This approach is often influenced by their living environments: they tend to reside in more urbanized areas, potentially farther from family and with weaker local ties, making large-scale, government-administered systems a more logical source of support. This preference for large-scale support systems aligns with the societal shifts described by Alvin Toffler in his 1970 work, Future Shock. Toffler’s analysis highlights why the socially liberal viewpoint has gained traction, particularly in the WEIRD world where the necessity of relocating for employment has become common. Our post-industrial society is characterized by transience, where both material goods and human relationships are increasingly treated as disposable and temporary.
Self-sufficiency. This is fundamentally about taking responsibility and relinquishing the illusion that any external entity—be it the government, a spouse, a religious institution, or parents—will provide over the long term. A sense of personal sovereignty can arise when we become individuals on whom ourselves and perhaps others can depend, rather than constantly seeking someone stronger to rely upon. However, the aspiration for self-sufficiency often overlooks the significant support provided by the existing infrastructure into which we are born. No one is self-sufficient except the “loincloth man” who lives alone in a national park, sleeps in a cave, and lives off what he hunts (Sincero, 2013). Certainly he is independent, as long as he stays away from the authorities who would fine him for poaching. Few want that extreme of independence. Self-reliance could be understood to mean we are givers as much or more than we are takers. We are so tired of the takers, whether we believe the story of the right or of the left, about who the biggest takers are. To move on, can we agree both stories have some degree of validity? We need to get out from under the thumb of both.
There are people who are dependent upon this social system which is killing the planet. I mean that’s—part of the problem is that just like any good abusive situation, we have been made dependent upon the very system that’s exploiting us, and part of the reason that we don’t fight back more is because if your experience is that your water comes from a tap and that your food comes from the grocery store…you will fight to the death to defend that system that brings you your food and water, because your life depends on it. And similarly…if your experience is that your water comes from a river and that your food comes from a land base, you will fight to the death to defend that, because your life depends on it. But we have all been so made dependent on this system. (Jensen, 2011, 36:04)
Justice. Accountability is significantly diminished within our global economic system due to the fluid nature of roles in business and politics, coupled with the difficulty of tracing effects back to their precise causes. By the time we unravel the complexities of who did what, when, and to whom, holding individuals or entities responsible often becomes impossible. This lack of accountability is further exacerbated when exploitation remains concealed from end consumers. It is my hope that our embrace of modern comforts is not rooted in ignorance of the discomfort they may inflict upon others. Indeed, the ability to deny and perpetuate this unfairness is a key characteristic of privilege. This is a privilege held by everyone who buys products made or refined with cheap foreign labor. Power inequities have shaped a system containing elements of meritocracy, yet simultaneously disadvantage many, where comparable effort, skill, and talent yield significantly lesser outcomes. Within a competitive framework, we depend on a foundation of fair play and a degree of transparency, both of which appear to be eroding. In this competitive economic landscape, a willingness to exploit can often be the determining factor between substantial wealth and mere subsistence.
Sovereignty. Our desire extends beyond mere self-sufficiency; we yearn for sovereignty, most simply defined as a self-governing state. Nationalists champion sovereignty, seeking freedom from rule by entities like the United Nations or perceived shadowy cabals. Yet, even within our sovereign nation, many feel disconnected from their leaders’ decisions and powerless to effect change. The call for stronger state rights often clashes with a desire for unrestricted interstate travel and a unified national military, highlighting the complexities of desired sovereignty levels. What constitutes an ideal and achievable level of group sovereignty? We face inherent trade-offs: funding a robust military to safeguard national sovereignty can paradoxically lead to fears of domestic government overreach. The pursuit of sovereignty often stems from a desire to sever ties with those perceived as taking without consent, whether through illicit means or legal mechanisms. The distinction blurs between a pickpocket, a government inflating its spending power at the expense of individual wealth, and financial institutions benefiting while burdening taxpayers with the consequences of economic crises. The sentiment is often, “Let them fend for themselves.” Ultimately, escaping exploitation may necessitate extricating ourselves from a system in which we, too, participate in exploitative dynamics—a realization that is not yet universally acknowledged.
Mutualism. Group self-sufficiency can also be understood as mutualism: interdependent relationships intentionally cultivated within a chosen community. Our current societal pressures, which prioritize work and career development, strain the vital social ties of family and community by limiting (a) the time we can spend with family and friends, and (b) our ability to remain geographically connected to extended family and communities in which we have social capital. Recognizing that organized, high-trust groups inherently possess more power than isolated individuals, we face a choice: either integrate into existing powerful structures (like corporations or governments) or form our own strong collectives to avoid being overpowered or exploited. These self-formed groups can be egalitarian, preserving both internal autonomy and external sovereignty. Our unity should be based on shared purpose and principles, not born out of fear of a dominant force or the precarity of lacking essential resources.
Perhaps we can move beyond the entrenched political, religious, and ideological conflicts that offer no prospect of resolution. Instead, let’s focus on establishing fundamental principles we can agree on, then implementing ground-level changes. If widely adopted, these changes could allow individuals greater freedom to associate with like-minded people while adhering to similar constraints. Basic needs, such as sustenance, would be met for all who contribute through work or who legitimately cannot. By ceasing unproductive conflict, we can then strategically leverage our existing freedom and power in practical ways. This concept of forming small, high-trust, mutually supportive, and self-governing communities striving for maximum group self-sufficiency is not merely theoretical; it is already successfully prototyped in numerous instances. While this path may not be the optimal or sole solution for everyone, it offers a viable way forward, particularly for those with limited resources. I believe it presents the most fulfilling and humane trajectory.
Assumptions About Cultural Evolution
This writing is based on the following assumptions, consistent with the core concerns of a group the Pew Research Center labels outsider left:
- Incrementalism is flawed: The idea of slow but inevitable progress toward a better future—characteristic of a group the Pew Research Center labels establishment liberals—is not accurate. The standard optimistic narratives fail to account for failure to resolve ecological destruction and biodiversity loss, economic instability from wealth disparity, and the inadequacy of material “standard of living” or GDP as measures of quality of life. Passivity or “business as usual” is unsustainable.
- Technology is a double-edged sword: While we will use available tools, technology is recognized as creating as many problems as it solves and will not be our sole solution (Vogels et al., 2020).
- Guilt is an ineffective change agent: Emphasizing problems to motivate action has led to burnout and has not significantly altered our destructive course. The progressive left has long used this approach, with diminishing results.
- Solutions need to be appealing: To overcome compassion fatigue and foster growth, proposed solutions need to include elements that are fun and engaging.
- Focus on tangible, grassroots solutions: Realistic solutions implementable by people with average resources and strong commitment are needed, leveraging counterculture energy.
- Build alternatives, don’t just fight the establishment: Shifting effort away from convincing the establishment and toward building and strengthening sustainable social structures structures (e.g., small regenerative farms, intentional communities) will be more effective than solely trying to reduce consumption or change established behaviors of the majority.
- Nonviolence and nonrivalry are essential: Long-term sustainable betterment requires refusing to participate in injustice, which includes behavior changes, not identifying and fighting enemies.
- Focus on healing and building over blame: While acknowledging injustice, a blame-centric approach hinders social cohesion. Healing and building are more productive than accusation and conflict.
The following subsections will explore further underlying assumptions. However, one question that remains open for individual consideration, and thus is not an assumption here, is whether the quality of life offered by modern society is inferior to that of traditional cooperative village societies. Similarly, whether global ecological and economic sustainability can be achieved alongside the continued existence of megacities is not an assumption, as it depends on numerous location-specific factors.
Corruption is Unsolvable by Government
“Within each one of us there is some piece of humanness that knows we are not being served by the machine which orchestrates crisis after crisis and is grinding all our futures into dust.” —Audre Lorde
- Increasing wealth disparity. The U.S. government, under either prominent party, won’t resolve the problem of increasing concentration of power and wealth, because the current version of capitalism has become the mechanism for that concentration.
- Corrupt power structures. If Einstein was correct that no problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it, then our economy won’t be saved by the democratic government of either side. Profitable industries—if legal or linked to legal industries for money laundering—have powerful lobbies that pay off politicians to promote their desired legislation. These practices are entrenched in the United States, because the duopoly prevents outsiders and controls even the idealistic or iconoclast leaders who become insiders. We are now in a plutocracy.
- Perverse incentive structures. As long as there remain economic incentives to exploit, even with the threat of harsh penalties, exploitations will not end. The current economic model disproportionately benefits the wealthy, so they are invested in business-as-usual, promoting harsher penalties to seemingly address criminality, but without implementing any solutions that are workable for the long term. Their solutions are punitive rather than preventive.
- Information channels that distract and entertain. Click bait largely ignores the injustices experienced by the most powerless, except for an occasional story that can cause a shock to draw fleeting attention. Many don’t want to know about or think about these topics, and the victims often cannot advocate effectively for themselves, so injustices only briefly make their way to our awareness, sometimes long enuf to prompt us to send money to a charity. The blame game keeps our attention away from the foundational causes of abuse and exploitation.
- Diversion of resources. For the majority now, there is too little time to do volunteer work when basic needs for food, housing, and medical care are barely affordable even in a dual-earner household. We simply hope that non-profits are doing something to help the most vulnerable. We increasingly recognize that philanthropy exists to lessen the symptoms of corrupt systems, often as a PR move that deflects our motivation to demand systemic change.
Organ harvesting is a thriving black market industry in which one organ can cost $200,000 or more (Wagner, 2014). Child sex trafficking numbers are unknown, but still practiced in the United States. Illegal arms trade remains rampant, by which terrorism, genocide, and oppressive governance are perpetrated. While illegal deforestation brings in “$51–$152 billion annually, the illegal timber industry simultaneously threatens the world’s forests and steals from local communities that rely on forests for food, health, and wealth” (U.S. Agency for International Development, n.d., para. 1). Creating single-use plastics is an $22 billion industry. These products are then illegally dumped or end up thru leachate in groundwater, releasing carcinogens and endocrine disruptors into the environment, killing marine life, and reducing male fertility (Rehman et al., 2018). The challenges numbered above explain why we don’t we have the political will to devote more resources to ending these crimes. Whatever political views you have, most of these we can agree should end; we simply emphasize different downsides and potential effectiveness of the various proposed solutions. These are already illegal, so we don’t need a legal solution. We need far more resources devoted to tracking down perpetrators and remediating the effects. It is up to us to make a start, to create containers, organizations that can receive the funding and use it effectively. Past victims and others who do pay attention these crimes—and work tirelessly—most often lack the resources and training to do work on the scale it needs to be done. Those focused on resolving these exploitations often experience burnout and poverty. They need more support.
A Fragile Peace and Prosperity Achieved Thru Exploitation
Capitalism’s success. Capitalism does what its proponents want it to: it creates plentiful goods and services for those who can afford them. Many of its proponents were and are well-intentioned. It allows for consistent comforts that in pre-industrial times were available only to royalty. Capitalism also rewards hard work and a growth mindset, motivates innovation, and demands a high degree of cooperation. Mariana Mazzucato, in “Why we need a mission-driven economy,” explains how businesses would resolve entrenched problems if policy motivated people to act in the best interest of the whole. Incrementalism can work, if policies are changed to not provide perverse incentive structures that increase the wealth divide.
Capitalism’s failure. It also has a dark side. Currently it does provide perverse incentive structures, and with politicians beholden to their campaign donors, it doesn’t appear this is likely to change. We’ve been fuming about it for decades (sometimes over false defamations, such as the email of Warren Buffet supposedly speaking out about congress giving itself a separate health care package from what other civil servants get). Many of the major problems we face now are the direct result of the last generation’s solutions to human problems. We are becoming more aware of the downsides of capitalism: externalizing the pollution created by our demand for convenience of disposable products, market demands created by advertising that plays on our insecurities and competitiveness, an increasing income inequality that creates pressure for us each to cater to the wealthiest customers and clients we can manage to attract, and lack of time for the unpaid work that nurtures connection and community well being. Some believe that it’s not the form of government but the ethics of both the governed and the governing, that make for an ethical society. While there is some truth to that, the fact is we have to start where we are, with the human nature and culture as currently expressed. What I have against under-regulated capitalism is that in its current practice, it economically rewards the worst in human nature: greed, false advertising, self-absorption, cutthroat competition, and a zero-sum perspective that encourages hoarding of wealth. The ideology is that the needs of the poor and/or powerless should be met by volunteers or whoever can make money from meeting those needs. As a result, the helping professions—public school teaching, social work, clergy—are among the lowest paid compared to professions with similar training requirements. Similarly, lawyers who are public defenders and doctors or psychotherapists who choose to serve low-income populations will be paid less.
Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century argued that the world is returning to an economy dominated by inherited wealth, brazenly influencing policy to the advantage of the 1%, and threatening to create an oligarchy. His assertions match those of the occupy movement that “capitalism isn’t working.” He shows how and why (a) income inequality as measured by the income of the top 1% in several countries has increased in the past several decades; (b) inequality is not a side effect, but a feature of capitalism; and that (c) without reform democratic order will be jeopardized. Altho he believes rising inequality can only be ended through state interventionism, he does not believe there is political will within governments to do so.
It may seem bleak, but we can work within these constraints to create a better world, without having to convince others to overhaul the national political and economic systems. Fortunately, transparency and quality information—available within our current context—may be a better protection than government regulation of commerce. Speaking against specific instances of corruption will get us further than bashing capitalism.
I asked my friend…former executive director of Food First if the people of India would be better off if the global economy disappeared tomorrow and she said “of course.” And some of the examples she gave is our former granaries of India that are now exporting dog food and tulips to Europe. So our people who are starving to death right now, because where they used to get their food is now making cash crops. (Jensen, 2011, 40:47)
Amorelli et al. (2021) is dedicated to exposing the unrealistic energy and climate change technology-based solutions that will waste billions on corporate handouts framed as “market-based mechanisms.” These short sighted plans distract us from real solutions that would serve our most urgent needs.
Resources: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/6/23/leaked-un-report-warns-accelerating-climate-devastation
Overview of Marx’s conflict theory: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/conflict-theory.asp
Global consumerism. Because the enjoyment of having a new handbag, a new car, a new house fades quickly, all our consumption doesn’t even satisfy us, but advertisers keep convincing people that it buying will solve their problems and make them happy. It seems most of us now recognize that a consumer-based economy dependent on constant growth is unsustainable on a finite planet, but we don’t know how to transition. Nor do we have a consensus for what we could or want to transition to.
The global economy has become a casino, and we’re all potential losers. One major casualty is our jobs are just taken over. Relocation to lower wage countries threaten the livelihood of virtually all of us: accountants, assembly workers, even CEOs, and when we retire it gets no better. As we’ve seen recently, pension funds are at the mercy of uncontrolled speculation. It’s not just in the west that livelihoods are under threat. (Local Futures, 2021, 22:36)
Fragile democracy. We’re going to agree that we need something better than the plutocracy the United States has become. What we ultimately need is possibly unlike any current form of national government we’ve yet seen, but it’s likely useless to debate what that should be. Any structure of government could be equally bad if those in the most powerful positions are unwise and unethical; conversely any structure of government could be equally good with wise and ethical leaders. Given the tendencies of human nature that exist in all of us, including those in government, to allow a way to curtail abuses of power, I tend to agree for now with Winston Churchill’s quip, “Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried” (McCoubrey, 2017, para. 5).
I have long since thrown in the towel on the Democratic and Republican parties because they are really a front group for the 1%, for predatory banks, fossil fuel giants, and war profiteers. –Jill Stein
The so-called free market. A free market is important. The United States does not qualify as having a free market, because of legislators paid to pass laws written by corporate sponsors that disadvantage smaller competitors (O’Dell & Penzenstadler, 2019). This helps drive the increasing wealth inequality. About 47% of U.S. citizens trust the government (ODEC, 2020).
It’s widely believed that whatever the social and environmental costs, globalization is unstoppable. It’s seen as an inevitable almost natural process driven by free markets and the so-called efficiencies of scale enjoyed by bigger businesses. If there’s one thing that political parties from the left to the right seem to agree on today it is the power and value of the free market, but the irony is that the majority of really polluting things that happened today would not exist within a genuine free market. Nuclear power couldn’t exist for example without massive state support, but there are billions and billions of dollars being poured into continuing business as usual, whether that’s subsidizing fossil fuels, whether that’s subsidizing huge monocultures, whether it’s giving corporate welfare to some of the already largest and most powerful corporations around. It’ll be impossible to maintain the current global economy as it is today without enormous support from governments around the world, and we’re about as far away from a free market as it’s possible to be. Support for big business comes not only in the form of subsidies but through the increasing deregulation of trade and finance under the auspices of such bodies as the World Trade Organization. The global level regulations are being increasingly stripped away, with the effect that transnational corporations and banks are free to operate across the entire planet. Meanwhile at the national level is ever more red tape and bureaucracy. This places an unfair disproportionate burden on small and medium sized businesses, and every year hundreds of thousands of them are going out of business. It’s basically a system which criminalizes the small producer and processor and deregulates the giant business. The leverage of international financial agreements and the world trade agreements levers people often against their will into a bugger thy neighbor dog-eat-dog global commodity market in which speculation is king, and real people in local communities are an afterthot. (Local Futures, 2021, 26:58)
Hidden exploitation. Profiting from exploitation, even to a small and normal degree, is unacceptable to some of us. Even if we do our utmost to keep our carbon footprint small and make contentious purchases, when we follow the supply chain back further, we have to admit we in the western world are all disproportionately benefiting from cheap labor of migrants and other nations, as we are externalizing the damage of pollution to wildlife or marginalized people.
Former Chief Economist of the World Bank, Joseph Stiglitz, agreed with Naomi Klein’s assessment of how big business and politics use global disasters for their own ends, and “a rich description of the political machinations required to force unsavory economic policies on resisting countries” (“The Shock Doctrine,” 2021, para. 14). Others criticize her failure to recognize “the necessary role of entrepreneurial capitalism in overcoming the inherent tendency of any established social system to lapse into stagnation” (para. 16).
Dependence. The economy isn’t set up to allow or encourage anyone to be self-sufficient in the sense of existing outside the economic pyramid. “The consumer culture that globalization promotes is increasingly urban” (Local Futures, 2021, 17:50). Only those who can purchase a multi-product farm outright and keep paying taxes on it could get close to self-sufficient. Self-sufficient farmers are marginalized, like the unpaid or low-paid work of caring, because they don’t contribute much to GDP.
GDP. After showing a string of American politicians stating the importance of GDP growth, Local Futures (2021) states: “It’s as if every problem we have can be solved by increasing GDP….poverty is the problem, more economic growth is the answer. Unemployment is the problem, more economic growth is the answer. Environmental decline is the problem, more economic growth is the answer” (30:20). “GDP is a good measure of economic activity, of money changing hands but a poor measure of progress or well-being. It lumps desirable expenditures (e.g., spending on food, entertainment, or investment in education) with undesirable expenditures (e.g., the costs of war, crime, pollution, and family breakdown)” (O’Neill et al., 2010, p. 13). Money changing hands enriches government, so those decision-makers are not motivated to revise their definition of progress.
The Current Economic Model Will Not Provide Enuf for Equitable Survival
Population growth and scarcity-driven conflict. If your solution is to preach the virtues of abstinence, pass out condoms, or provide midwives worldwide with copper IUDs that cost a few cents and last 10 years, more power to you. At the same time, the population will continue to grow. The U.N. Population Division expects world population, at 7.8 billion in 2020, to level out at or soon after the end of the 21st Century at 10.9 billion. Some estimates are 9 billion by 2050. With finite resources, it will take concerted effort to maintain civility and work toward equity. Ecologists warn, “There is mounting evidence that when populations are large and growing fast, they can be the sparks for both internal and international conflicts that lead to war….greater competition for an ever-dwindling resource pool” (Bradshaw et al., 2021, para. 9, 19). Brooks writes of the U.S. conflict in the middle east:
In this war, it appeared, there were no places of safety, and there could be no such thing as neutrality. This war would spare no one. This, I was discovering, is the nature of war: it abhors a vacuum. It expands until everything and everyone is subsumed by it. It resists all efforts at categorisation and containment. We keep trying to lock it into a box, but war keeps breaking out again. (Brooks, 2016, p. 33)
The western world creates enuf food and life necessities currently, but the monetary incentive structure requires some degree of scarcity to foster competition and incentive to produce. This ensures that even with the work of non-profits or government to redirect resources, little will go to those who need and cannot afford them. For example, crops without high enuf prices will not be harvested. Resources are hoarded. An intentional community member comments:
There seem to be a lot of people who have more than they need. You read about these people are buying houses for silly money in London and never live in them, and I think the founders of Braziers and my grandparents were right. This consumerism isn’t sustainable. (Braziers Park Channel, 2018, 13:13)
Pushed into urban life. The world population is increasingly becoming more urban. It behooves us to find a way forward that minimizes slums. There’s a TEDtalk that shows rural slums as virtually identical to city slums. It celebrates cities as having the potential to raise people from poverty (Brand, 2006). Altho some do make a successful transition from rural to city life, the idea that most are better off in urban than rural poverty is misguided, because it does not trace the problem of slums and poverty back to the root cause. The talk starts with a few slides of picturesque abandoned traditional villages in various nations as evidence that people are moving to cities, but there is not comment on the idea that those villages represent a lifestyle that could or should be preserved. While some leave their villages seeking better opportunities, it is also the case that policies favoring big agribusiness, exploitative lending and marketing, and sometimes climate change have created impossible circumstances for small farming villages worldwide. “In the less industrialized parts of the world, finding and holding onto a job is becoming increasingly difficult. The first victims are small farmers” (Local Futures, 2021, 23:13). Local Futures states the following:
Removing of people on land is the root of all unemployment. It is at the root of the creation of slums and the rural urban migration. [In a translation of an Indian language, a man states] ‘I don’t want to be a beggar. If I could have my land back, I’d go back to my main business, farming.’ Making people disposable in terms of working with the land is creating probably the biggest human crisis….100,000 Indian farmers have been driven to suicide. (24:00)
Such a thing as ending unemployment would never occur to Washington politicians because their corporate backers depend on the threat of unemployment to keep wages down. –Jill Stein
If your work is to upgrade cities, do it. Also recognize you won’t have a complete answer until you find a way to grow more food in cities and/or transport food sustainably from sustainable agribusinesses. Some have started a solution with rooftop gardens.
False metrics of progress. Establishment liberals and conservatives believe the doctrine that globalization is helping to alleviate poverty (Hickel, 2019). We may see statistics by the well-meaning Hans Rosling (2020) that define increased foreign earning in U.S. dollars as a reduction in poverty, but it is a false metric. Globalization provides them some products they want, but it is stripping village communities of their self sufficiency and food security. It is creating short-term westernization for a few and long term deprivation for many.
I haven’t been able to track down what writer quipped that the definition of GDP is the rate at which natural resources are converted to trash. Similarly, wasteful transport of food increases the apparent GDP, without creating any real value.
We often hear about efficiencies of scale, but actually the truth is what we’ve developed today is a system that could not be more wasteful. We have tuna fish caught on the East Coast of America flown to Japan, processed, flown back to America and sold to consumers. We have English apples flown to South Africa to be waxed, flown back again to be sold to consumers. The whole process involves incredible quantities of waste. A series of treaties, new ones almost every year, promote economic growth through international trade. As a consequence, countries today routinely import and export nearly identical quantities of identical products…. all of this at a time when rising CO2 emissions are threatening our very survival. (Local Futures, 2021, 21:21)
Booth (2020), a CEO in e-commerce and technology for 20 years, points out that the main driver of business growth today is easy credit, which is being created at a pace at which we will never be able to pay it back. Government policies still in use were set at a time when labor and capital were linked, an industrial era that counted on growth and inflation. He argues that these policies now incentivize inefficiency, and warns that on this course our world will become profoundly more polarized and unsafe.
Inefficiency and waste. This expected population growth is why some insist that we need cities and industrial farming, but this reasoning is misinformed, or is a pitch to get subsidies from governments.
At first glance high density urban living might appear to reduce per capita use of resources, but this is only true when compared with life in the suburbs. Compared to more genuinely decentralized living patterns [e.g., traditional small villages], urbanization is extremely resource intensive. This is particularly clear in the global south. The moment a person moves into the city the energy use shoots up, the water use shoots up. The infrastructure to run a city per capita is much bigger than the infrastructure to produce a high quality of life in a village. When hundreds of millions of rural people are pulled into cities, the food they once grew themselves must now be grown for them on giant chemical intensive farms. All this food must then be brought into the cities on roads purpose built to accommodate larger and larger trucks. Providing water involves enormous dams and man-made reservoirs. Energy production means huge centralized power plants, coal and uranium mines, and thousands of miles of transmission lines. Meanwhile much of the waste that is produced including countless tons of potentially valuable compost, must be trucked out of the city to be treated buried, or incinerated, or dumped at sea. The end result is that urban dwellers typically consume significantly more non renewable resources than their land based relatives. (Local Futures, 2021, 17:52)
Poor health. U.S. food production systems provide an abundance of poor quality food (Rhodale Institute, 2019, para. 22). This has led to a world with the seeming paradox of both hunger and obesity (cite percentages globally). Poor quality low-cost food contributes to obesity, now considered epidemic (cite). The hormones and antibiotics given to livestock contribute to human obesity (cite).
Unsustainable agribusiness. Our current agricultural production and transportation methods are unsustainable (Food Revolution Network, 2018), including inhumane factory farms. Large scale farming is said to make use of efficiencies of scale (Haspel, 2014), but that is true only for human labor savings, which passes on cost savings to both the agribusiness and end consumer. This analysis, Haspel admits, relies on the externalization of the cost of pollution, which can be substantial with nitrogen pollution of lakes and bays where it promotes algae blooms and destroys fish habitat. Pollution is also from intensive use of fossil-fuel-powered machinery. The Rhodale Institute (2019) states, “Agriculture accounts directly for 11-13% of greenhouse emissions and indirectly for another 12%.6. With our climate increasingly unsteady, we can’t afford to continue with current methods that erode soil and pollute the environment” (para. 6). Possibly the biggest argument against big agribusiness is that if we lose the pollinators, in part because of constant widespread pesticide use (cite), it won’t have been a good tradeoff to have excess of cheap food in the short term and too little food in the long term. In addition, with loss of localized food production, long transport increases waste. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (2019) states that one third of the food we produce globally is wasted. Holt-Giménez (2018), former executive director of Food First, explains this is a natural result of a food system that is financialized and speculative. Farmers produce a commodity, and those without access to the market risk starvation and death. He concludes that the answer to hunger cannot be resolved within capitalist markets. The answer must be something structurally unique. Secure access tenure, to water land, Local and indigenous knowledge systems, systems of exchange are accessible, fair, profitable, such as community supported agriculture (CSAs).