Capitalism Doesnt Want to Solve the Worlds Challenges, It Wants to Make a Business Out of Them

By Martin Murphy

Guest Writer for Wake Up World

Capitalism doesn’t want to solve the world’s challenges, it wants to make a business out of them.

But the real challenge is that not enough of the majority are “being the change in business” that we want to see in the world… probably because making ethical choices involves making sacrifices and actually doing something.

Would you give up using your smart phone because it might contain ‘Blood Minerals’?

Unfortunately we’re all hoping some bright spark is going to come up with an answer that allows everything to stay the same, while the moral dilemmas and environmental challenges neatly disappear.It ain’t going to happen. It’s time for those who’ve lost faith in capitalism to rewrite the business software.

Why should you get involved?

Why? Because lessons are repeated until they’re learned. Moreover, each lesson is more costly and swifter to return. Financial upswings will become ever shorter, the downturns even longer. If it didn’t get you this time, it’s just a matter of time.

Anyone who believes in indefinite growth on a physically finite planet is either mad, or an economist. ~ D. Attenborough

This version of Capitalism hasn’t work for a few decades for the majority; wages in real terms have stagnated at best or gone into decline. Capitalism has improved the lot of a few developing countries, but they will reach threshold points too, arriving there sooner than we did.

We need an evolutionary next step. But what will it look like, how will it work and – more to the point – what will we call it?

The reality is that we need another name for a new economic system, but it could just as well be you who comes up with the name. There are no heroes out there – we’re all the heroes we’re waiting for, so get your thinking caps on. (Feel free to leave your ideas below!)

To help you come up with a name for this alternative style of economy, here are some traits and comparisons to help you.

These are some of the hard choices and differentiators we face if we want the world to become a more socially just, environmentally sustaining and personally fulfilling place to live.

Quality vs. Quantity

Do you need to keep replacing your cheap import TV or laptop with its built in obsolescence or would you be willing to do without until they created a home grown version built to last and easily upgraded with new parts as opposed to having to throw away the whole TV just to get the latest version?

Ethical vs. Exploited

At the moment a lot of developing countries are coerced into producing cheap goods or services. Would you refuse to buy anything which is not ethically produced or continue to buy products which often force under-age labourers to work for a pittance?

If you’re going to change the world, it’s going to be very uncomfortable. ~ Peter Joseph

Ecocentric vs. Egocentric

The idea that we should grow perpetually is actually an egoic need. The ego doesn’t like to let go of what it has gained or to stop gaining at the same rate.

As consumers and supplier of goods and services within society, we would have to be willing to forgo some of our own emotional needs and ponder on the ecological impact of our purchase decisions and the way we conduct business.

Informed vs. Influenced

Corporations are experts at managing your perceptions and siphoning money upwards and out of the communities they prey on. Most of the big food corporates don’t support GMO labelling, so I guess that’s a good reason why we should. We need an educated population immune to propaganda and marketing.

Circular vs. Linear

The next economy would insist products mirror the production cycle of nature in that something comes into existence and is able to be reabsorbed back into a closed loop, circular system. The alternative is to turn the planet into a giant landfill site.

Open Source vs. Oppression

The new economic system could allow developing countries to bypass stages of technological evolution. For example, many in Africa have a mobile phone but bypassed the use of landline telephone technology. India and Africa, due to its lack of infrastructure, could actually produce a lot of clean energy, if we shared the technology.

A no-growth economy is a curious creature to think about, but as Sherlock Holmes once put it: once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. ~ J. Rowson

Transparent vs. Taking Liberties

We tend to base our decisions of economic viability, without taking into account the “hidden externalities.” It isn’t as cheap or as healthy as it’s perceived to shop in large retail stores compared to buying local produce. Add the packaging which you pay to dispose of, the environmental costs and the time and fuel it takes to drive to a central retail outlet—it soon mounts up.

Balanced vs. Extreme

We can see the damage that too much power or a one-sided political or economic ideology or philosophy has on the environment and society. Nature provides her own strategies for remedying such situations and bringing the world back into balance.

Although nobody in authority is admitting that there could be a viable alternative to capitalism, you can bet the answer involves being adaptable, balanced between ecology, environment, knowledge and behaviours.

Cooperatives vs. Corporations

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