I have to admit that a lot of my thoughts and feelings on consumerism, environmentalism, capitalism and society, essentially come from the gut. I do read around the issues a lot, but I'm not really one for remembering quotes or statistics accurately. On the other hand I think my subconscious does a great job of processing the information and making sure that at the appropriate time I feel my way to the right decisions in my life. I guess you could call my green/socialist/liberal tendencies a kind of faith (which, BTW, in the conventional sense I haven't got).
However, over the Christmas period I did do a bit of thinking and an idea christalised in my mind and has stuck there. I think, even without a bunch of stats, that it is fairly incontrovertible. I would hope that anyone, even without doing a lot of analysis might see that it is true.
The idea is this:
In a capitalist society in today's world of finite resources, most people only get materialy richer at the expense of others elsewhere in the world, becoming, in some way, poorer.
Maybe you think that this is a bold assertion. Maybe you believe in trickle down economics and that regardless of what you spend, and on what, that you are providing employment for others and this is a good thing. I beg to differ.
To support my theory I'm going to run through some of the evidence that I see around me - in no particular order.
One recent discussion in the media has been about immigration, particularly in the light of two new countries (Bulgaria and Romania) acceding to the EU and the arrival of many Poles (maybe 500,000) on our shores. While there has been lots of discussion of the strain that immigration puts on our social services there also seems to be agreement that it has boosted economic growth here, not least because immigrants are prepared to do the work we Brits are no longer prepared to do. There is of course an argument that people wouldn't come here if they didn't want to, but I think that is a bit simplistic. First of all I don't think that the majority of immigrants would come to the UK if there were reasonably well paid jobs for them at home - except maybe for young people keen to travel and explore the world. But in reality many skilled immigrants can earn higher wages here doing low skilled work than they would do at home doing more highly skilled work. This is not only unfulfilling or even degrading for the individual, but also means that their home nations suffer socially and economically, widening the divide between rich and poor nations even more. Perhaps the absolute worst example of this (although they do do skilled work in the UK) is when African and Asian medical staff come to work in the NHS leaving their own health services understaffed. By creating a high demand for immigrant workers we damage other countries.
City bonuses this year were said to have risen to £3 billion. On the back of this many City workers were able to go out and simply buy additional properties in London and elsewhere, causing property prices (and even underlying inflation) to rise even more and putting home ownership further beyond the reach of low paid workers. Quite simply, this is not fair. Many City workers are paid totally disproportionate wages for the work they do, but they operate in a closed shop. The City operates a cartel that relies on average people (often via a long and obscure chain) essentially being forced to deposit their savings with City institutions that make huge gains without risking their own capital. The same argument about City properties goes for second home ownership around the country by any highly paid workers. Quite simply, in the vast majority of cases, anyone who has more than one home is depriving another family of a place to live.
A third example is in the use of energy. We have more than likely reached
peak-oil. From now on, oil production is going to fall. Yet people in the developed world still aspire to at least two cars per family, holidays abroad using air travel, and for the very rich, maybe the purchase of one of the biggest gas guzzlers of all, a powerboat. Planting a few trees to offset carbon emissions and assuage your guilt (Mr Blair) is not enough. People in the developing world will never be able to enjoy the benefits we have had from burning oil, and yet, by and large we show no signs of restraint - NONE! In fact we are denying not just the third world, but also our own children and succeeding generations, any chance of using this simple, portable source of energy, while we still have no idea off how it can be replaced. The more we continue to create a dependence on oil the harder it will come when supplies dwindle. Even talk about bio-fuels is totally untenable to meet current demand - already good arable land in Africa is being used to produce crops for bio-fuels when it ought to be being used to grow food.
There are of course many other examples. In fact most of the disposable junk, fashion items and excess packaging that seem to have become essential to many people in this country have an absolutely unambiguous deleterious effect on the lives of others around the world.
What follows on from this to my mind is that it is essentially immoral to continue to accumulate wealth, once you have achieved a reasonable level of security for yourself and your family. At the very least it is essential for the wealthy to find more productive ways of investing their capital than to put it into the hands of faceless institutions where morality is forgotten in the pursuit of wealth. Furthermore, it seems to me that the very wealthy (and his is going to take a lot of soul searching!) need to actually stop accumulating more material possessions and maybe redistribute some of what they have. I am slightly heartened by the likes of Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffet, but people at a much lower threshold need to start following suit and actually trying to do good with their money. We live in a world of finite resources. If those born into wealthy families in wealthy countries use the power that that gives them to accumulate even more, then those born into poor families in poor countries will necessarily have less.
Essentially we need a step change in the way we value our time, our relationships and our achievements. The problem lies in the way we think, but as an optimist I believe that it is mainly due to nurture rather than nature and we can change. We simply need to value material things less and other things more. Greed is not good.
Am I ranting?
Time for bed.
