Why Capitalism Provides a Poor Adaptation for Survival

I observe a duality in human behavior so pronounced that it may even originate in the genome as two different modes of survival. There are those who believe that the source of all knowledge and the key to understanding reality resides in some form of authority: the Word, the Leader, the Father figure, or divine revelation. Everything and everybody must conform to the dictates of that authority. Here, society measures the ability to adapt by obedience to authority’s dictates. True believers do not recognize any other world that might intervene. One dies, if necessary, for the cause.
The other point of view is harder to describe. It recognizes that literal depictions of reality stifle discovery. This view employs interpretations of energy and experience to develop constructs from which evolve the mirrors of reality that allow us to adapt to the world in which we live. Change is inevitable. Mistakes will occur. This point of view holds that we must adapt to the natural world’s algorithms and not expect everything to adapt to our ways.
The first point of view only recognizes its orthodoxy. The other view relies on something akin to the scientific method: the creationists versus the evolutionists. After centuries of inquisitions based on orthodoxies that fought the rise of liberal democracy, the struggle for supremacy of one paradigm over the other continues. It may even be the overarching dynamic in politics and a cause of war.
I observe another duality with similar functions. One side of both dualities embraces hierarchy as the inevitable way to govern. This duality concerns the means of production. Society may organize itself on the basis of social classes or society may institute divisions of labor based on merit and ability. The former wastes talent and the latter produces synergies. Individuals seek the energy they need in the context of this duality. They may cooperate with the synergistic divisions of labor or they may appropriate other people’s labor in whatever ways the class system permits. This appropriation forms the biological basis of evil.
As resources diminish and populations grow, the pressure to return to the hierarchies of feudalism increases. In that future, well-paid technocrats employed by a moneyed elite will produce lucrative goods and a marginalized work force will provide labor-intensive services. Health care and education will become too expensive for many. Government will exist only to protect private property and to guarantee an elite’s profits. That is the vision of the would-be “masters of the universe,” which comes closer to reality with every election of either a dedicated usurper (Bush) or a pretend liberal (Clinton).
We do not live in a liberal democracy. A corporate oligarchy decides the limits of politics and the means of production. Liberal politicians went into the closet decades ago (since Carter’s one-term presidency) and now pursue a policy of offending no one regardless of how their policies offend nature and humanity. Otherwise, the corporate oligarchy will cut off their campaign money. It seems that many have abandoned hope of a better future for all. Talk is cheap; reform is expensive. To what do we owe this reversal of evolution?
After much research and thought, I conclude that we are what we adapt ourselves to. Natural selection provides the context for understanding the human condition. That which seems impossible to imagine makes sense upon discovery of what that behavior adapts us to. The environment changes people. We need to be very careful about how we change it. Technology creates dangers and unintended consequences, not the least of which follows from adapting to our artifacts instead of to the natural world and the genetic instructions created by millions of years of adaptations to the natural world.
In more and more contexts we find ourselves adapting to the values of hierarchy. It is becoming second nature, even for people who suffer most from those values. How many unemployed by the exportation of American jobs supported George Bush and Bill Clinton?
Most of us find ourselves adapting to the business of making money. This is the focus of our adaptation. The corporate oligarchy, through its chosen means of production, largely determines the nature of work. Many spend their energies, even genius, protecting an elite from those with good reasons for making demands on their profits.
Adapting to the hierarchy that worships profit usually results in adapting to the wrong thing—reversing evolution. People worship that which appears to sustain them. Once it was animals; now it is money. Unfortunately, the religion of money hardly acknowledges the requirements of life. The CEO of British Petroleum’s suggestion that the damage done by its giant oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico can be redressed with money tells the tale. Such ignorance at the top predicts the ultimate failure of capitalism and the impotence of neo-liberal government (under corporate hegemony) to enact life-preserving limitations on technology inconsistent with the religion of money.
Economies of scale include unintended consequences. Measuring costs exclusively in dollars and not resource depletion produces pseudo-economics. Among other things, it increases dependence on hierarchy. Decentralizing the means of production would reverse that trend. The solar roof-panel, the neighborhood garden or windmill, river paddlewheels, geothermal heat pumps, biomass, and other local food and energy producing technologies free people from dependence on mega-corporations. Much has been done to discourage such technologies while the pretense of support for them comes from many mouths. Deception is the rule.
The ultimate failure of capitalism and its current means of production follows from natural selection’s paradox. Natural selection does not distinguish short-term from long-term adaptations in the short term. Short-term adaptations now use our resources at such a high rate that insufficient resources will remain for the long-term adaptations whenever society can no longer ignore the consequences of the short-term adaptation. For example, damages to the ecosystem caused by the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico will cost more in the long term than the value of the oil spilled had it not been lost. Generations of fishing losses alone will be staggering.
Capitalism produces “wealth” by turning real wealth (resources) into virtual (paper) wealth. That process discourages efficiency in the use of wealth. Wasting energy can actually be profitable for purposes of converting it into cash. If we do not invent accounting systems that preserve real wealth, we will move to the head of the endangered species list.
Only a morality based on survival of the species will produce the necessary changes. Survival of our children’s children provides the timeframe for applying strategies consistent with the algorithms of natural selection, which we must understand in order to survive.