Rogat+-+SustP+-+Who+Cares+Assignment

Michelle Rogat Who Cares Assignment

__**Caption:**__ The form of the economy today, capitalism, is bad for the environment and for the well-being of society and is therefore not sustainable. Capitalism literally undermines the factors of input on which the economy is built, making it unstable and creating a wealth gap in our society and between countries. There is this sort of rat race going on in which people believe in the American dream, that if you work hard you will succeed in this country and get wealthier. That’s just not the case a lot of the time because of the low wages you get paid and the commodities you are brainwashed into believing you need to be a good citizen and to make yourself a better individual, and the debt you rack up and the bills you are forever paying off…. it becomes this rat race that doesn't allow for citizens to be good and involved citizens in their democracy. It’s easy to understand how someone who is working non-stop and is getting nowhere just feels drained and doesn’t have the energy to be a responsible citizen and watch the news, be involved in their community, and voice their own opinions on issues. That takes time and energy, both not a lot of people in our society have. The way in which the state of the economy is tied into politics is a bit too much I think. Government officials and politicians are always so concerned with how the economy is doing (through looking at the GDP mostly, which isn’t accurate to begin with) in order to understand how the welfare of our society is a whole. This thought process makes big business and the government have a questionable relationship, where there are several job positions that have conflicting interests as to whether to help big business save money and thus help the economy or to collect that money for the government to use on the people. The revolving door of politicians and business men in large oil, pharmaceutical, and other companies is absurd. No wonder many people feel the government is corrupt. This is bad for the environment because it pushes the ongoing extraction of resources, use of oil, and things that must continue “business-as-usual”. BAU is almost a form of denial, where you put the problem out of sight out of mind and decide to just continue on like nothing bad is happening, and that is what capitalism promotes and the environment is taking the toll. These are just some of the problems that capitalism creates and is a part of, there is a lot of systems thinking when I describe this, but that is simply because the way we organize our lives and make a living (the economy) literally involves our whole lives and everyone. There are the consumers, producers, factories, advertising, marketing, suppliers, buyers, businesses, citizens, the environment where the resource are taken from, the people and ecosystem that was dependent on that environment, politicians... I honestly think it affects everyone. And everyone should care. People just don't see it or choose not to because it is a comforting blind spot to have.



I took a systems thinking approach as to explain why capitalism is an issue for the environment and for sustainability. In capitalism the primary focus for understanding how our society is doing has become our economy, if the economy is growing and GDP is still on the rise then society is doing well. However, the GDP doesn't measure how well society is doing but instead only measures how much stuff our nation is producing without taking any externalities into account. (Singer) The focus of being a good and responsible citizen has come to mean being an avid consumer; the focus has shifted from our communities to buying commodities. So our focus is on production and consumption and being a consumerist society rather than actually being an involved citizen by participating in your community and government. This turns citizens into, you could argue, consumerist zombies that are stuck in a rat race where they buy and take out loans for school, buy into the economy to be good citizens, and continue to work non-stop so they could one day achieve the American dream and be well off.(Harvey) Being a country in debt to other countries can't possibly be good for the economy and well-being of a nation even if it is the only way its citizens and economy could continue to "produce and grow".

Capitalist societies have become fixated on this growth fetish, this idea that the economy should be able to continue to grow forever (Singer), and this logic doesn't seem possible to many economists (Harvey). The economy has a bunch of these internal contradictions because it exploits the factors upon which it is built until there is nothing left. Therefore it isn't plausible to believe that an economy in capitalism could grow forever, but that it is simply fueling this overshoot and collapse pattern of growth that previous societies have been through. (Singer)

Environmental issues that capitalism contributes to include the over extraction of resources, pollution, the boom of the Industrial Revolution, the global warming that it contributes to, externalities, outsourcing of jobs to less regulated areas and more. Corporations were born out of the growing capitalist economy with goals and motivations in line with capitalism, the goal to make money and increase profits above all else. In fact, corporations are legally structured so that their number one goal is to maximize profits for its shareholders, not the welfare of society. They only care about their bottom line, which in turn means they try to decrease their costs as much as possible by paying people less than they deserve for their materials and labor, outsourcing to cheaper labor markets with less regulations to follow, and externalizing costs such as pollution and toxic messes they create. (Abbott)

And since the government is so worried about how the economy is doing, because they are convinced that is a measurement for the well-being of society, the line between business and government becomes blurred. A lot of the time the government will work in cooperation with big businesses because they are afraid that strict regulation would hurt the economy, so the welfare of citizens and the possible health issues that could results gets pushed aside. There is this "revolving door" between business CEO's and government officials that makes you question whether or not the government is truly being run by the people and FOR the people. Now it is an interesting debate, because once someone has worked their entire career in a regulating government body, say on tobacco regulation, then once they retire they have all of this knowledge on tobacco laws and how policies are made and how they work... it makes that person invaluable to the tobacco industry itself. (Abbott) Currently there is no mechanism in place to keep this revolving door from occurring, where employees keep swapping between government and industry, but there should be something to ensure there aren't any conflicting interests of the people in government.

There are other ways to organize an economy other than capitalism, and guiding principles to decide how to address the economy in a better way would be to use a scientific approach by combining knowledge of systems theory, Gaia theory, and thermodynamics. Systems theory tries to take all angles into account to understand an issue in its complexity. Gaia theory is this understanding that the Earth acts as one whole organism in that it is self-regulating so as to keep things in balance. Thermodynamics is the law of physics that matter isn't ever really created or destroyed, simply changed and altered and distributed. (Stead) Alternative economic theories are in tune with these principles such as steady state economics which looks at the economy in terms of a balance and a measurement of material throughputs rather than growth, production, and waste. Industrial ecology is another economic system that uses steady state economics, and it focuses on the distribution of resources through material and waste cycles throughout an interconnected economy.

__**Resources:**__
 * Abbott, J., & Achbar, M. (2003). THE CORPORATION. Canada: Zeitgeist Films. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLFA50FBC214A6CE87&v=Pin8fbdGV9Y
 * Harvey, D. (2011). The Enigma of Capital: And the Crises of Capitalism (Google eBook) (p. 296). Profile Books. Retrieved from http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=JSDSDZ72aKsC&pgis=1
 * Singer, M. (2010). Eco-nomics: Are the Planet-Unfriendly Features of Capitalism Barriers to Sustainability? Sustainability, 2(1), 127–144. doi:10.3390/su2010127
 * Stead, W. E., & Stead, J. G. (1994). Can Humankind Change the Economic Myth? Paradigm Shifts Necessary for Ecologically Sustainable Business. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 7(4), 15–31. doi:10.1108/09534819410061351