The Two Great Needs Capitalism and Democracy Can Never Fill
Once society widely understands what needs can never be met with democracy + capitalism, humanity will start seeking a better way forward. What are the two great problems that modern society cannot solve?
What Capitalism And Democracy Do Well
Many would argue that capitalism is the most efficient system to distribute resources and to create wealth. Democracy gives the false impression of enfranchisement. We will not discuss what either system does not do well here. Both are facade names for The Control System.
Fairness — The Need That Capitalism Can Never Provide
I define fairness in a broad stroke to include fairness between people and all species over the long-term. Regeneration is a better term than sustainability. Why sustain something that is working poorly? Would one rather have a thriving or a sustainable marriage? Ecosystem means self-reinforcing, regenerative, closed loops and the inalienable right for all life to live freely.
Freedom is a word that has been stolen by democracy. Freedom of the few is tyranny of the many. Freedom to exploit by the wealthy through low wages and high profits is a false freedom. Freedom of a single person to destroy all life on their private property is naked disregard and destruction of all other life. With freedom comes responsibility to care for all life: the givers of life and the ecosystems that support it.
Capitalism is not an ecosystem. It is the most efficient exploitation system. Ecosystem means regenerative system of life. Capitalism is an anti-life or ecocide system. The greater the conversion of life to “resources”, the greater the profit. The higher the degree of specialization, the greater the disparity of wages. The more creative a financial instrument, the greater the concentration of wealth. The more capitalism succeeds at its goal to generate profits, the more it fails at fairness to all life, especially non-human. The more efficient and complex it is, the greater the exploitation of wealth between humans.
Capitalism has turned humanity into a mad species blind to a system requiring destruction of the Earth to live.
The greatest threat of capitalism is that it disconnects the feedback between our lifestyle and life on Earth. For example, imagine that every time you went shopping a small piece of your own home was somehow destroyed. This would be a direct link; buy something and a park of your house or body is taken. This is essentially what happens in nature but we do not see it: a small portion of someone’s home in the forest is destroyed every time we buy something.
This seems trivial, but it is the single distinguishing element between civilization and tribalism. Capitalism most efficiently externalizes costs, commoditizes and domesticates life. Tribalism directly connects our life with the health of the wild natural world. If nature is suffering, we suffer.
It is impossible for Capitalism to be fair between humans and all other life. We need to evolve a new economy or re-discover the original human tribalism for a fair and sane livelihood.
Beneficial Social Coordination — The Need That Can Never Be Accomplished by Democracy
Democracy is essentially an every man or woman for himself system. By giving people a false sense of input or enfranchisement, democracy avoids more excessive authoritarian control. Control in democracy is barely hidden from view, yet so obvious. For example, we vote to give our power away to someone whom we do not know to make decisions for us, to tax and even imprison us.
Democracy is the glove for the hand of civilization. They go together and reinforce each other. Democracy allows us to vote for any political system we choose and capitalism allows us to consume and partially work as we choose. This gives us the illusion of freedom as we live with our wage slavery, our deficient education, grasping-consuming life.
Civilized humans run around like selfish errant missiles living their lives, exploiting one another and destroying the Earth to live. Capitalocracy © (capitalism + democracy) completely erodes any possibility of beneficial social coordination. Democracy allows the influences of education, economics and communications to direct human behavior.
The root of human behavior is education and incentives. Modern education is the downloading of a program as part of the control system. We are taught how to read, write and offered limited teachings of liberal arts. What we are not taught in childhood, but would be beneficial to the regeneration of society, would be to learn how to identify every wild plant and its uses in our ecosystem, along with how to make a living wildcrafting.
Democracy and autocracy are human organizational systems created to control people living in large groups of strangers. Over 99 percent of everyone we see is not our extended or immediate family. Our minds were not evolved to live in large groups of strangers. Indigenous communities are generally less than 150 people interdependent on each other and a healthy, diverse, wild nature for their survival. Small tribal groups gives us true community and cradle to grave security.
Because civilized economies detach human livelihood from the Earth through domestication, humanity no longer has an incentive to work together for the benefits of the Earth.
The purpose of Capitalocracy is to reduce riots and war to a level that allows the economy to benefit the wealthy and create a token indebted middle class here and there. Capitalocracy gives people the illusion that because they have a little money, they are somewhat in control of their lives.
To restore the Earth, we need to slowly reduce human population by 10x with one-child families, end plant and animal domestication, and break society into small groups of interconnected people. Democracy does not provide the incentives to coordinate society to make this happen.
What is beneficial for capitalism and democracy is not beneficial for the Earth. Capitalism is based on wealth and control. True wealth is not measured by civilization. True wealth is the extent of fully-intact biodiverse old growth ecosystem.
The domesticated Earth we have today does not even look like the natural wild Earth. One of the only places left on Earth that resembles the natural wild Earth of ancient times is in the tiny patch of California old-growth redwood forests. Gone is almost all of the original plant and animal life, clean water, flowing rivers, and healthy top soil health. What is now midwest farm land was once endless prairies of perennial forbs as tall as a man on a horse with herds of buffalo and passenger pigeons in the millions. Eastern forests are missing entire tree species; the American Chestnut and Elm have been lost to foreign blights. Native Americans from the past would hardly recognize the very place they lived.
The way that America was before Columbus was found lost at sea and Europe and Asia were before civilization is hugely significant. The original wilderness Earth was healthy. Civilization has caused humans to shatter every ecosystem on the Earth. Every regenerative system on earth is now broken and we are winding Earth down to become a desert planet. Humans do not live long enough to appreciate the decline. Humans have environmental amnesia.
Complete desertification of Earth is inevitable unless civilization is abandoned and human population is reduced by at least 10x with one child families.
Democracy, and all other civilized political systems, prevent us from beneficial social coordination. Civilized organizations only protect and benefit civilization, and not the Earth. Civilization sees the Earth as “resources” to consume and grow civilization.
Democracy’s control system, capitalism’s domestication, and civilization itself cannot be saved because they make us the destroyers. Fossil fuel decent and climate change will start pushing people to walk away from civilization back to the only human livelihood that ever worked: indigenous tribalism.
We must re-member to re-connect our livelihoods to Earth’s health. What we do to Earth…we do to ourselves…when we poison Earth…we poison ourselves…when we disrespect Earth…we are disrespecting ourselves…when we honor Earth…we honor ourselves.
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Chuck Burr is author of Culturequake: The Restoration Revolution.
Post Editor, Beth Brown — Beth is a lifestyle writer and former assistant news editor of the Easley Progress. She graduated from Columbia College with a focus on Writing and Public Affairs. She is also a singer/songwriter/musician, yogi, activist and Love Warrior for Mother Earth.
Art: Giant Redwood Trees of California by Albert Bierstadt
Originally published at http://culturequake.com on April 28, 2020.
