Capitalist monsters and how to restrain them: an essay by Abbey Chambers
Unsplash image by Donovan Reeves @donnehhhh
There’s an economic concept called a “common-pool resource,” or CPR. It refers to something, usually a natural resource, that must be shared among users in an economic system in order for that economy to function sustainably and in perpetuity.
CPR theory is more than a hundred years old, but, in the mid-twentieth century, American ecologist (and apparent racist xenophobe) Garrett Hardin reintroduced it into conversations and debates about how ecologies and economies work. In short, he grimly described how shared resources, and the economies that rely on them, are tragically doomed to destruction because people are naturally selfish and will act in their own best interests.
In true academic form, Hardin only pointed out a problem without also pointing toward solutions. In 1990, American political scientist and economist Elinor Ostrom published her book Governing the Commons, which presented a substantiated rebuttal to Hardin’s assertions, a rebuttal that won her a Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 2009. Her writing shows that ecologies and economies are not tragically doomed to destruction after all. This is because people have the capacity to share and regulate CPRs so that they are sustainable in perpetuity. Incidentally, such arrangements can effectively balance self-interest with collective wellbeing. (Whether people act on their capacity to share and regulate CPRs effectively is a topic that we’ll get into later.)
There are many examples of CPRs. Fisheries are a common one used to show how a CPR can be shared and self-regulated among users, as well as what can happen if a CPR is not shared and regulated effectively. For instance, if one fisherman in a fishing community overfishes in one location, they will destroy the natural ecosystem of that location. Their overfishing not only spoils the place for other fishermen, but it also spoils it for themself. Furthermore, overfishing one location diminishes the number of places available for fishing within the community, increasing competition at the remaining fishing locations as well as the probability of those locations also being destroyed by overfishing, as each fisherman would naturally work to maintain their own levels of profitability and quality of life. Ultimately, the community’s entire fishing economy could collapse, harming all the fishermen, including the one who initially chose to overfish.
Shared grazing lands are another common example of a CPR. If one farmer, in an effort to enhance their own profits, lets their livestock graze too much in one location, they could throw off and ultimately destroy the careful balance of the local farming ecology and economy, hurting their own long-term economic sustainability and quality of life, despite short-term gains.
The importance of managing yet another CPR—water—is playing out today as several U.S. states and two Mexican states, whose economies directly depend upon the Colorado River for economic vitality and quality of life for residents, try to figure out how to share this dwindling resource fairly and, if possible, even to preserve it in perpetuity in the face of climate change and after years of overuse. How they divvy up this resource certainly will have impacts that stretch beyond the Colorado River. For instance, more than 90% of winter leafy greens and vegetables are produced in the Colorado River Basin, specifically in Yuma, Arizona. Without a reliable source of water, where will these foods come from and how much will they cost Americans?
The point here, and what Ostrom’s work shows, is that it often behooves an individual (or even a community, or, as in the case of the Colorado River Basin, a state) to make concessions that may seem to hinder their immediate profitability, because those concessions actually benefit them in the long run. In order to perceive that long-term benefit, however, they must expand their view to encompass a more comprehensive perspective on their role in a larger economic system and understand that it’s not merely about short-term profit growth. It’s about long-term sustainability. It’s about not taking more than you need now so that there is some left for later. It’s about working communally with others who agree to operate by a shared philosophy so the entire system of resources and quality of life can be sustained in perpetuity for everyone’s benefit.
The CPR concept can be easily grasped when applied to relatively small economic systems, such as fishing and farming communities. Maybe it even seems simple when it comes to preserving a water supply like the Colorado River. But what does the concept look like if we scale it up and think about the entire U.S. economy as one, big, uber-complex CPR?
After all, economic transactions are the primary means by which the vast majority of us gain access to things we use to survive. Some of us grow our own food or sew our own clothes or barter for things we need or want, but most of us work to earn money and buy things to keep ourselves and our families alive and create a nice quality of life. We do not live to work. We work to live.
To keep our economy humming, we individually and collectively contribute resources, including our own time, effort, money, and creativity, as well as natural resources. We also extract resources from the system, for example, tapping into other people’s time, effort, money, and creativity. We use those things, and we add more resources to them, to create, build, or otherwise offer and distribute something new or different for people to consume, usually in exchange for their money. Then we extract again, use those resources, add to them, distribute those new or different things… Extract, use, add, distribute. Extract, use, add, distribute. And the cycle continues on and on in what we hope is an endless loop that keeps life on Earth going and going.
What is significant about this reciprocal cycle of individual and collective contributions, extractions, uses, and distributions is that it means the economy is ours, as a society. It belongs to all of us. Together we make it and remake it, and we keep it operating through both written rules and unwritten norms, which we mostly agree on and sometimes agree to change, either through our collective action or inaction. In short, we share it.
As a shared resource, the economy does not belong exclusively to any person or entity. As such, we all have a part to play in caring for it—adding to it, extracting from it, using it, and redistributing it—in sustainable ways so it will serve us well, not only individually but collectively.
Additionally, we must keep in mind that our stewardship of the economy is only temporary. Eventually, it will belong to and hopefully serve future generations, that is, future versions of ourselves, including our children and grandchildren, as well as the people who will live in our homes and communities when we move or die, and the people who will operate businesses, invent things, and continue innovating the ways in which we live and work so the quality of life on Earth can be better and better. The economy that we pass on to future generations is part of a legacy we leave when we die. In that sense, it behooves us to make sure we pass on something that is sustainable versus something that is tragically doomed.
When considering our economy from the perspective that it is something we must share, care for, and sustain so it will serve current and future generations, it becomes difficult to understand why there is so much support for deregulation and privatization policies among the American voting public, much of which seems to see the economy and the resources that sustain it as belonging to corporations, not to the people. We have ample years of proof of what underregulated and poorly regulated corporations and corporate sectors will do with an economy. By and large—and especially the largest ones—they will treat it like it’s theirs, not shared, and they will destroy it.
They will pollute the environment to make profits.
They will undercut workers to make profits.
They will automate jobs to make profits.
They will support segregation and polarization to make profits.
They will buy off our politicians to make profits.
Corporations are the preeminent incarnations of capitalism, and as such their goal is singular: make profits. Many of them—too many—are like monsters that are trained on this one objective, and they will indiscriminately gobble up every resource necessary to turn profits unless they are restrained.
Much of the American voting public seems content to sit back and watch these corporate monsters feed, especially if those voters feel that they are benefitting from the frenzy, but they don’t seem to realize how dangerously close they are sitting to the trough. Such voters continue supporting bought-off politicians who advocate for deregulation and privatization policies that give inordinate benefits to corporations, which reap more than they sow back into the economy, and generally seem to be doing more harm than good. Such voters must think they are not on the menu, but, in what feels like an increasingly unrestrained capitalist economy, how can any of us be certain we are safe?
I once heard someone say that capitalism is inherently suicidal. What he meant was that, since the only objective of capitalism is the accumulation of as much profit as possible, and capitalism guides corporate behavior, this drive for profit motivates the corporate-Capitalist use and overuse of every resource necessary to accumulate profits, leading to the destruction of those resources, which, without restraint, will ultimately lead to the destruction of the entire economic system. Pure capitalism is a system that does not have any sense of longevity. It does not restrain itself in order to preserve itself. It does not have any sense of its own life. It only knows what will keep it alive: profits. It does not understand that its own consumption will kill it.
Of course, capitalism is not an autonomous being. It is not actually a living monster, although in its purest forms it is indeed monstrous.
Capitalism is a social construct that was made by people, and we continue to have the power to shape it. But what does it say about us when we do not view our capitalist economy as a shared resource, a CPR? What does it say when we do not restrain corporations’ Capitalist drive to accumulate profits at all costs? What does it say about us when we do not value our individual and collective humanity, our time, effort, money, and creativity, as well as our natural resources, as the key ingredients in our economic system, we do not work to preserve and protect those vital building blocks, and we instead allow corporate monstrosities to feed on these resources—to feed on us, our potential, and our future—in their quest for profits?
Does it mean that we, like capitalism, are suicidal? Are we a suicidal society?
After all, the Capitalist drive for profits certainly will destroy us if we do not restrain and regulate it, and we are not doing a very good job of restraining and regulating capitalism.
We are destroying our workforce by allowing low wages and rewarding overwork.
We are destroying our communities by allowing private and institutional investors to buy and build whatever and however they want with little regard for economic, environmental, and social sustainability.
We are destroying our health by allowing corporations to lace our food, clothing, beauty, personal care, and cleaning products (just to name a few categories) with overprocessed, fake, poisonous, and carcinogenic ingredients and chemicals that harm consumers, workers, and our environment. Then we further destroy our health by allowing healthcare systems, health insurance companies, and pharmaceutical corporations to profit off of our sickness, forcing us to choose whether or how we live or die, or, if we can’t afford to live, forcing us to suffer and die. As one doctor put it, “We are all hostages to our health.”
We are destroying our environment by allowing corporate contributions and lobbies to influence discussions about climate policy, including which energy sources can be made accessible and affordable to us, how much carbon they are allowed to belch into our atmosphere, which methods they will use to dispose of manufacturing waste, which raw materials they will use to make products—products that seem to have shorter and shorter lifespans, which means we must replace those things more often, which means we must go back to the corporations to purchase more goods from them, which makes them richer and makes us more wasteful, forcing us to hurt our own environment more and more.
The list goes on.
We do all these things, relinquishing stewardship of our shared economic system to corporations and their corporate and political mouthpieces, and we don’t even demand that they and their rich executives, trustees, and shareholders pay their fair share of taxes. If we are not among those who perceive ourselves to be benefitting from this system, then we are afraid that if we don’t acquiesce to their interests and support their desires for more and more profits, then they will abandon us entirely. They will move their jobs overseas. They will raise prices to maintain their profit margins. And we, members of the American electorate, do almost nothing about it because so many of us either are complicit in the system or we are paralyzed by the fear of what the corporate-Capitalist monsters will do if we don’t let them feed on us. Perhaps, for some of us, we are both: complicit because we are scared.
We are killing ourselves for their sakes. We are giving up our resources and ourselves to these capitalist monsters, and we expect almost nothing in return. This is self-imposed death by capitalism. It is indeed suicidal.
This is the course we’ve charted and the course we will stay, until we can embrace the belief that this economy is in fact ours—our lifeline, our CPR, something we rely on and must share—and corporations and their boosters are participants in this system, not the owners of it. They take too much, they do too much harm, but we allow them to do it when we don’t support politicians that support our survival, and instead we contribute to and vote for individuals who are willing to betray us and sell us out to keep a merciless system in place for the benefit of relatively few individuals. We are committing a slow mass suicide by not demanding more from them, by not cutting off the political machine that enables corporate monsters to feed on us and our shared resources.
In order to save ourselves, we must acknowledge and vote with the conviction that this Capitalist economy belongs to all of us. We must recognize that capitalism must be restrained and regulated to prioritize our interests and desires, our potential, our future, and the sustainability of our shared economy and our lives, communities, and environment, over their profits.
Abbey Chambers is a consultant and researcher who studies socioeconomic inequities and exclusions in economic development and policymaking.
