Sixty days and counting - Kim Stanley Robinson [147]
CQ: Yes.
PC: And yet capitalism continues to vampire its way around the globe, determined to remain unaware of the problem it’s creating. Individuals in the system notice, but the system itself doesn’t notice. And some people are fighting to keep the system from noticing, God knows why. It’s a living I guess. So the system cries: It’s not me! As if it could be anything else, given that human beings are doing it, and capitalism is the way human beings now organize themselves. But that’s what the system claims anyway, It’s not me, I’m the cure! and on it goes, and pretty soon we’re left with a devastated world.
CQ: I’m wondering where you’re taking this. So far it’s not sounding that good.
PC: Well, think about both parts of what I’ve been saying. The biosphere is endangered and so are humans. Meanwhile capitalism needs undeveloped regions that are ripe for investment. So—saving the environment IS the next undeveloped country! It’s sustainability that works as the next big investment opportunity! It’s massive, it’s hungry for growth, people want it. People need it.
CQ: The coral reefs need it. People don’t care.
PC: No, people care. People want it, of course they do. And capital always likes a desire it can make into a market. Heck, it will make up desires from scratch if it needs to, so real ones are welcome. So it’s a good correlation, a perfect fit of problem and solution. A marriage made in heaven.
CQ: Phil please, don’t be perverse. You’re saying the problem is the solution, it’s doubletalk. If it were true, why isn’t it happening already then?
PC: It isn’t the easiest money yet. Capital always picks the low-hanging fruit first, as being the best rate of return at that moment. Maximum profit is usually found in the path of least resistance. And right now there are still lots of hungry undeveloped places. And we haven’t yet run out of fossil carbon to burn. Heck, you know the reasons—it would be a bit more expensive to do the start-up work on this country called sustainability, so the profit margin is low at first, and since only the next quarter matters to the system, it doesn’t get done.
CQ: Right, and so?
PC: So that’s where government of the people, by the people, and for the people comes into the picture! And we in the United States have the biggest and richest and most powerful government of the people, by the people, and for the people in the whole world! It’s a great accomplishment for democracy, often unnoticed—we have to call people’s attention to that, Charlie. We the people have got a whole lot of the world’s capital sloshing around, owned by us. The GOVERNMENT is the COMMONS. Heck, we’re so big we can PRINT MONEY! It took Keynes to teach the economists how that power could be put to use, but really governments of the people, by the people, and for the people have known what this means all along. It’s the power to do things. So, we the people can aim capitalism in any direction we want, first by setting the rules for its operation, and second by leading the way with our own capital into new areas, thus creating the newest regions of maximum profitability. So the upshot is, if we can get Congress to commit federal capital first, and also to erect certain strategic little barriers to impede the natural flow of capital to the path of least resistance but maximum destruction, then we might be able to change the whole watershed.
CQ: How many metaphors are you going to mix into this stew?
PC: They are all part of a heroic simile, obviously, having to do with landscape and gravity. A very heroic simile, if I may say so.
JQ: Heroic!
PC: That’s right Joe. You are a good kid. You are a patriotic American toddler. So Charlie, can you write me some speeches putting this into inspiring and politically correct terminology?
CQ: Why do you have to be politically correct anymore? You’re the president!
PC: So I am. More coffee? More hot chocolate?
ONE DAY AN E-MAIL CAME FROM LEO Mulhouse, out in San Diego, forwarding