I went on a bit of a rant towards the end of this post about capitalism, things ending, and so on that I think would benefit from a second, more detailed rant today.
First, my main idea wasn’t necessarily a criticism of capitalism. It wasn’t even a criticism of LeGuin’s criticism of capitalism. I wanted to make a much simpler point - if things tend to end when they start going poorly, why do so many bother to point out that capitalism would also end when it starts to go poorly?
I suppose it is possible that answering this question should consider the details. A commonly cited detail whenever someone predicts the eventual doom of capitalism involves limits – the limit of available resources, the limit of the planet’s size – and how eventually continued growth will press us up against those limits. Fair enough. But the underlying assumption built into that point is that we would continue pressing on and on against those limits. I don’t buy that assumption because I think if we were at the limit and we knew we were at the limit, we would stop.
This is a thought I could easily be wrong about. The concept of collectively knowing we were at the limit when the collective numbers in excess of seven billion is a staggering thought. In fact, I’m fairly certain that it is nearly impossible to determine the exact point of this limit (and I recognize that this makes it even less likely that we would ever know if we were collectively above or below the limit). However, I’m not sure I want to spend too much time thinking about how to calculate the exact point of this limit – I’ll leave that bit of number crunching to the experts.
Instead, what I think about is what would happen if we did reach that limit one day and we all knew it. I suppose there are only two solutions. The first option is horror movie material – World War III, endless famine, climate-change induced super storms – and probably not worth going on about (not even I have too many interesting ways to describe a variation of we are all screwed). The second option would mean improved sharing. For what it’s worth, I’d vote for sharing (though I guess I should be ready for anything were it to go to an actual vote, but no matter).
LeGuin touched on this thought about sharing in a different essay and her conclusion was somewhat pessimistic – she wrote that we are grossly under-prepared for a world that demands constant sharing of critical resources. I agree with her to an extent – at the moment, we aren’t very practiced at sharing important resources like water or shelter. But this doesn’t mean we are bad at sharing. In fact, I would argue that we are pretty good at sharing essentially irrelevant things (like cookies, selfies, or links to this blog). I also commonly observe the people around me trying to help each other (by holding doors, carrying the dishes to the sink, or warning people that the link to my blog is a phishing attempt). I would argue that from my experience most people are pretty good at sharing when given the opportunity and I think we would probably figure something out if we really needed to, collectively, in the pre-apocalyptic future.
All this is well and good but maybe it’s a little too far off in the distance to make much use of now. Capitalism will end in the future, I suppose, but what does this mean for my weekend? Well, I think if the choice in the future is going to be all-out catastrophe or being good at collective sharing, it’s probably a worthwhile investment to start finding little ways to share now, you know... just in case. This way, the collective option will be more feasible on that day in the future when we might be asked to make this group decision.
I think there are some signs that people’s weekends are already being impacted by this possibility. Anyone who is uncomfortable with how Western governments are responding to all the people fleeing their homes for the safety of Europe or the USA is already exercising this sharing muscle. At some basic level, such a person wants to share the land, security, and opportunity we have with those who have been denied these bounties through the cruel lottery of birthplace. From my point of view, those fleeing their homes and embarking on the dangerous journey to Western borders are a good example of the limits of capitalism. For them, the system has already reached a limit and they are living examples of one answer to the question from above: forced into the horror movie material of fleeing unlivable homelands via overcrowded boats or perilous journeys across war zones.
And the worst part is, reader, their only hope for a happy ending is us becoming better at sharing.
We worry about the question of catastrophe in the future because we see what the answer looks like every time we turn on the news in the present. We saw the answer in the cages on American soil detaining ‘temporarily’ orphaned children just as we saw the answer in those fleeing the blasts from the bombs we helped bring into existence. But we've also seen seen the answer in all those who work to reunite those kids with their suffering parents. We've seen the answer in every charity that digs two wells for each one we’ve filled with rubble.
The people who show up unannounced and uninvited to our border are fleeing from a past that we worry will become our future. Shouldn’t we treat them as we would like to be treated? Shouldn’t we share with them what we would ask be lent to us? I’ve long liked the idea that we should be who we needed when we were younger – collectively, though, perhaps we should try to be who we will need when we are older.
