Conclusions

Notwithstanding the twin issues of global warming and the exhaustion of the Earth, lets assume that we think that a version of capitalism can meet most people's needs. And, assuming that a suitably powerful political movement representing the real needs of the bottom 90% of the population can be created, what would these changes look like?

• Precursor initiatives.
  Address the control of government by the rich and corporations:
  • Require all companies, publicly traded and private, with annual sales over $1 million to publicly report their audited financial results and ownership information.
  • Eliminate covert shell corporations and hidden banking practices.
  • Eliminate all corporate donations to candidates, parties, and interest groups.
  • Limit individual contributions to $1,000 and prohibit anonymous donations.
  • Shut down the paid lobbying industry in Washington.
  • End anonymity on the web and in the public domain. Ensure that every person creating content of every kind is clearly identifiable. This includes those producing corporate content online. Foster transparency in communications so that individuals can be held accountable for their words and actions in public. This applies to AI and AI-generated information. People should be aware when they interact with an AI device or AI-created content and know precisely who controls the AI system involved. Uphold a general principle of visibility and accountability in society.
• Democratize the economy
  • Comprehensive antitrust action to break up the concentrated markets and bring competitive capitalism back to life
  • Unionization of the majority of the workforce
  • Shift back to a full-time, permanent workforce model. Eliminate contingent, 1099 employment as a business strategy. Essentially, revert to the rules that were effective from approximately 1940 to 1985. This approach should apply to higher education, nonprofits, government entities, and the private sector. To maintain flexibility, guidelines can be established to permit organizations to hire part-time, temporary employees as a minor segment of their overall workforce.
  • Include worker representatives on corporate boards of directors
• Return the economy to the production of products and services, not extracting money.
  • End tax breaks for the rich and corporations. End subsidies for energy companies.
  • Align tax burdens with the income and assets of individual and business taxpayers for a truly progressive tax system. Those with more contribute a greater level of support.
  • End the financialization of corporations. Stock buybacks should stop, and the ratio of top management compensation (including all benefits and bonuses in any form, such as stock options) to average hourly wages and benefits should be limited to 25 to 1 (the ratio was 25 to 1 in the 1950s). This rule would apply to all types of corporations, businesses, non-profits, and public entities.
  • Dismantle the speculative finance sector. Reintroduce Glass-Steagall rules to separate commercial banking from investment banking. Eliminate derivatives, hedge funds, and all other forms of gambling that serve no productive function in the real economy. If financiers wish to gamble, they can establish private markets without government bailout protections.
  • Develop a strategy for Private Equity firms to reform their financial extraction practices, focusing on producing value rather than merely extracting money.
• Directly address income and wealth inequality:
  • Establish a living wage that is set regionally and automatically indexed to inflation. Include all workers in this scheme, including farm workers, domestic labor, retail employees, adjunct professors in higher education, and others.
  • Utilize federal spending to guarantee that everyone who seeks or requires a job has access to one. This spending should prioritize significant societal needs that the private sector does not address.¹
  • Ensure a livable income for individuals who are temporarily or permanently disabled.
  • Increase Social Security retirement benefits to create a livable system for all. Fund this initiative by eliminating income caps.
• Social policies
  • Healthcare should be a right; for-profit healthcare should be eliminated—essentially, Medicare for all. The system should be modeled after the robust universal healthcare systems available in every developed country except the US.
  • Create housing for the lower 50% of the population – eliminate segregated housing.
  • Universal access to free daycare and early childhood education. Head Start for everyone.
  • Fund primary and secondary public education through general state taxes, rather than real estate taxes. Ensure funding is equitable for all students within a state. Reintegrate charter schools into the public education system, looking to countries like the Netherlands for models that support a variety of educational styles while upholding high standards.
  • Restore public funding for public higher education. Limit tuition, room, and board increases to the inflation rate.
  • Improve and broaden technical/trade school education system.
  • Foster community development that prioritizes mass transit over car-centric models. Avoid supporting further suburban and exurban sprawl.
• Redirect national attention
  • Demilitarize the federal budget. Align our per capita spending with our global competitors. End the cycle of U.S. interventions around the world. Repatriate U.S. military personnel (160,000 are overseas today)and close the over 750 military bases outside the U.S. Target a Federal budget share of 2.7% (the EU target) instead of our current 13%.
  • Establish a national research initiative to develop and market alternatives to or alternative production methods for four energy-intensive components of modern life: steel, cement, plastics, and fertilizer.
  • Initiate a national dialogue on creating a vision for a sustainable, equitable, zero-growth economy.

First,  we need to create a sustainable and equitable economic system. By "sustainable," we mean an economy that does not contribute to global warming, species extinction, or the disruption and depletion of our planet's ecological balance. In essence, a sustainable economy supports our species without harming the earth. By "equitable," we mean an economic system that ensures access to food, housing, clothing, family life, education, health care, and other vital aspects of our social life in a fair and just manner without the enormous inequalities in income and wealth that typify the world today. No more billionaires with multiple mansions, super yachts, and private aircraft.

Second, the new sustainable and equitable system must be developed on a global scale. Everyone on the planet needs to adhere to the same essential rules for a sustainable and equitable economy. Otherwise, we will face ongoing conflicts over goals and outcomes.

Capitalism is fundamentally incapable of meeting these dual requirements. It inherently necessitates endless growth and the maximum exploitation of external costs to drive sales and profits. From a human development perspective, capitalism functions as a system of investment and production controlled by and for a tiny minority. Moreover, from a political standpoint, the rich and corporations, as the primary beneficiaries of capitalism, have demonstrated no intention of relinquishing their control over the system and the immense wealth they possess.

There are many proposals for achieving an equitable sustainable economy. Democratic socialism, eco-socialism, commons-based production, degrowth or post-growth economies, steady-state economy, and others. None of these have ever been fully fleshed out in terms of the institutions and mechanisms involved. There are no significant political forces aligned behind any of them.

 

To effectively tackle the challenges ahead, we must either adapt or create a new economic system and implement it within a very short timeframe. The effects of global warming and the exhaustion of the Earth are coming to a head in a matter of decades, not centuries. This second requirement contradicts the pace of human cultural adaptation.

As examples of the actual pace of cultural change, let’s examine three domains.

First, in human culture, our species has developed its current culture over approximately 300,000 years. Our contemporary mass societies have taken about 10,000 years to evolve. By culture, I refer to: “... the behaviors unique to Homo sapiens, along with the material objects that are an integral part of these behaviors. Thus, culture encompasses language, ideas, beliefs, customs, codes, institutions, tools, techniques, works of art, rituals, and ceremonies, among many other elements.”²

For a second example of change, turn to the history of the nation-state. Most accounts of the development of the nation-state as a form of human organization trace its initial phases to the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 in Europe. By the early 20th century, the nation-state had become sufficiently widespread as an organizational form to fuel two world wars. Today, there are 193 nation-state members of the UN.³ Thus, the nation-state has been evolving for more than 375 years.

Third, capitalism has evolved for approximately 400 years, with its beginnings marked by the formation of the East India Company in the Netherlands in 1602. Even the most recent phase, neoliberal capitalism, has taken over forty years to reach its current form.

This indicates something about the pace at which human culture and its institutions evolve.

The tasks facing us then are:

First, human culture must evolve a sustainable and equitable global economic system. This cultural change must occur worldwide. There can be no room for nation-states to compete against each other for resources. Alternatively, we could intentionally act through government to establish a new sustainable and equitable economy. This, of course, assumes that such a model already exists and that government can operate globally.

Second, based on current projections regarding the impacts of global warming and the depletion of the Earth, the timeline for achieving meaningful results in sustainability and equity is measured in decades rather than centuries.

Currently, it is impossible to envision a path forward that aligns with the timeline of the impending environmental catastrophe and the depletion of the Earth's resources.

From this vantage point,

the way forward

is very gloomy.....