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Ecological Crisis and the Tragedy of the Commodity
Ecological Crisis and the Tragedy of the Commodity
We live in an era of ecological crisis, which is a direct result of human actions. Natural scientists have been debating whether the current historical epoch should be called the Anthropocene, in order to mark the period in which human activities became the primary driver of global ecological change.[1]
Initially, it was proposed that this new epoch, corresponding with the rise of modern capitalist and industrial development, began in the eighteenth century. The growth imperative of capitalism, as well as other sociocultural changes, is a primary factor generating major environmental problems that culminate in ecological crisis.[2]
It has become increasingly clear that humans face an existential crisis. The environmental writer and activist Bill McKibben explains:
Earth has changed in profound ways, ways that have already taken us out of the sweet spot where humans so long thrived…. The world hasn’t ended, but the world as we know it has—even if we don’t quite know it yet. We imagine we still live back on that old planet, that the disturbances we see around us are the old random and freakish kind. But they’re not. It’s a different place. A different planet…. This is one of those rare moments, the start of a change far larger and more thoroughgoing than anything we can read in the records of man, on a par with the biggest dangers we can read in the records of rock and ice.[3]
Many modern ecological problems are referred to as a tragedy of the commons, a concept developed by Garrett Hardin in the 1960s to describe the overexploitation or despoliation of natural resources.[4]We contend that they are actually associated with the tragedy of the commodity.
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How Venture Capitalists Came to Rule the World
How Venture Capitalists Came to Rule the World
This was no utopian idea. After World War II, a number of European governments invested heavily in key sectors — electricity, steel — toclose the technology gap with the United States. Similarly, the South Korean government built up a shipbuilding industry in the 1970s from nothing into the largest and more successful in the world. To a certain extent, the Pentagon accomplished something similar with the Internet (though no American would dare call such a thing “socialism”).
Industrial policy has never really gone away. Many governments, including China and the United States, have focused funds on the clean energy sector (wind turbines, solar cells). But the prevailing economic orthodoxy since the creative destruction unleashed by Reaganomics has been that the invisible hand of the market, not the state, should determine winners and losers.
It turns out, however, that the market’s hand is very often not invisible at all. Actual people, with very visible hands, are picking the winners and losers in the marketplace. Consider the impact of venture capitalists.
Although they’re responsible for only 0.3 percent of U.S. GDP, the influence of these elite investors is disproportionate. Their decisions determine how you communicate, how you shop, how you organize your life. Venture capital has been instrumental in launching companies that today make up over 20 percent of America’s GDP.
The Apex of Industrialism:Manufactured Fake Shit
The Apex of Industrialism: Manufactured Fake Shit
The Dr. Pooper Papers, Issue #2:
While it would be nice to think that in times before the industrial era that farming was a wholly benevolent practice, the truth of the matter is that similar to today, agriculture actually began with annual monocultures.
Nonetheless, there did emerge over the millennia various farming methods and practices of which were adapted to the unique and sometimes changing conditions of their particular places. Likewise, many different practices have been employed by many different cultures in order to maintain fertility of the land.
Those people of the Far East, as described by F.H. King in his (1911) book Farmers of Forty Centuries: Organic Farming in China, Korea and Japan, meticulously made efforts to return all organic materials back to the soil: food scraps, animal manures, straw, as well as night soil (human waste). As King put it,
when I asked my interpreter if it was not the custom of the city during the winter months to discharge its night soil into the sea, as a quicker and cheaper mode of disposal, his reply came quick and sharp, “No, that would be waste. We throw nothing away. It is worth too much money.” In such public places as railway stations provision is made for saving, not for wasting, and even along the country roads screens invite the traveler to stop, primarily for profit to the owner, more than for personal convenience.
Similar-minded practices include growing certain crops with the specific intent of plowing them back into the ground to reinvigorate the land with organic materials, while others, to varying degrees, have drawn upon outside sources to supplement fertility.
