Kim Robinson - Sixty Days and Counting

CQ: I don’t see how.

PC: For one thing, capital has a lot of capital. And a lot of it they keep liquid and available for investment. It runs into trillions of dollars. They want to invest it. At the same time there’s an overproduction problem. They can make more than they can sell of lots of things. And so all capital of all kinds is on the hunt for a good investment, some thing or a service that isn’t already overproduced. Looking to maximize profit, which is the goal that all business executives are legally bound to pursue, or they can be fired and sued by their board of directors.

CQ: Yeah, but crisis recovery isn’t profitable, so what’s your point?

PC: My point is there’s an immense amount of capital, looking to invest in new production! Because capital accumulation really works, at least at first, but it works so well it fulfills every necessity for a target population, and then every desire, and so it stops growing so fast, and without maximum growth you can’t get maximum profits. So you need to find new markets. And so, this has been what has been going on for the last few hundred years, capital moving from product to product but also from place to place, and what we’ve got now as a result is hugely uneven development. Some places were developed centuries ago, and some of those have since been abandoned, as in the rust belts. Some places are newly developed and cranking, others are being developed and are in transition. And then there are places that have never been developed, even if their resources were extracted, and they’re pretty much still in the Middle Ages. And this is what globalization has been so far—capital moving on to new zones of maximized return. Some national government will be willing to waive taxes, or pay for the start-up costs, and certainly to give away land. And there’s usually also a very willing labor force—not completely destitute or uneducated, but, you know—hungry. So capital comes in and that feeds more investment because there are synergies that help everyone. And so the take-off region develops like crazy, growth is in double digits for like a generation or so. China is doing that now, that’s what’s killing them. And so pretty soon the new area gets fully developed too! People have their basic needs, and they’ve created local capital that competes for profits. Now they’re another labor force with raised expectations. The profit margin therefore goes down. It’s time to move on, baby! So they look around to see where they might alight next, and then they take off and leave.

CQ: The World Bank, in other words. That’s what I told them. I lost my mind. I took off my shoe and beat on their table.

PC: That’s right, that meeting was reported to me, and I wish I had been there to see it. First you laugh in the president’s face, and then you scream at the World Bank in a fury. That was probably backwards, but never mind. I’m glad you did it. I think the decapitation is going rather well over there. The midlevel was stuffed with idealistic young people who went there to change it from within, and now they’re getting the chance.

CQ: I hope you don’t tape these conversations.

PC: Why not? It makes it a lot easier to put them in my blog.

CQ: Come on, Phil. Do you want me to talk or not?

PC: You can be the judge of that, but right now I am enjoying laying out for us the latest from geographic economics. The theory of uneven development, have you read these guys?

CQ: No.

PC: You should. As they describe, capital finds a likely place to develop next, and boom off they go, see? Place to place. The people left behind either adjust to being on their own, or fall into a recession, or even fall into a full-on rust-belt collapse. Whatever happens to them, global investment capital will no longer be interested. That’s the point at which you begin to see people theorizing bioregionalism, as they figure out what the local region can provide on its own. They’re making a virtue out of necessity, because they’ve been developed and are no longer the best profit. And somewhere else the process has started all over.

CQ: So soon the whole planet will be developed and modernized and we’ll all be happy! Except for the fact that it would take eight Earths to support every human living at modern levels of consumption! So we’re screwed!

JQ: Dad.

PC: No, that’s right. That’s what we’re seeing. The climate change and environmental collapse are the start of us hitting the limits. We’re in the process of overshooting the carrying capacity of the planet, or the consumption level, or what have you.

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.