Episode 29
Transcript:
Peter Joseph:
Good afternoon. Good evening and good morning everybody. This is Peter Joseph, and welcome to episode 29 of Revolution Now! The date is September 15th, 2021. This podcast has passed the one-year mark and I hope it's been informative. It may seem like a nominal little 30-minute event, a few times a month but actually, a great deal of preparatory work goes into each one of these. And it has been a challenge to keep it up. And as stated before, I do intend to have interviews and multiple-person conversations in the future. But as you may have figured out there really aren't that many activists out there with the particular perspective that's being put forward here, sadly. So I've been hesitant to bring that forward as of yet, because it will change the tenor of the conversation in many cases, deviating from the bigger picture, which is something I want to avoid for now. But I do have a running list of suggestions you folks have kindly offered and I appreciate that.
As an aside because I feel guilty, my original plan for a lot of these podcasts pieces was to refine them and then source them in a formal article and put them on the medium account. But article writing as I've found is a different animal and it's a far more arduous and detailed process, which is why I've been lagging with it, particularly when it comes to editorial and sourcing. But I do plan to catch up and I apologize for the lack of prolificness on that front. I've got a lot of simultaneous projects going on right now, and I want to be efficient, hence keeping priority with things that have the most exposure and effect. Which includes my upcoming lecture, my new film and a new book. All of which are moving past just the diagnosis of the system and into more detailed and prescriptive work.
Broadly, my most fundamental conclusion is that there is a way to build out from the inside, without the need for some kind of independent landmass or independent government. Building out the kernel seeds of a post scarcity post-capitalist society using pivotal leverage points at a small scale slowly scaling it up as more participation occurs. Removing the fuel from the existing economy by reducing the circulation of money. And suddenly, we have a new attractor pulling people in, deflating the old system. That is one critical component of a larger scale networked activist approach that I will again, expand upon fairly soon in my talk and more formal writings. I will also put into circulation relatively soon, a peer review style paper that models the existing system, models what a sustainable system is and this activist technical approach that I just mentioned.
Now, quickly returning to the subject of the podcast itself. Over the past year, there've been 28 episodes and about 15 to 16 hours of analysis and content surrounding this structuralist, systems worldview framework with various fragmented treatments on solutions through this lens. A great deal has been talked on the subjects of system level failure in our current economy, the components and reasons for that failure, the evolution of the system since its inception upon the neolithic revolution that set it in motion, the leverage points that can lead us into a post scarcity, post-capitalist world as they exist now. Along with the more temporal technological advancements at our disposal to assist such changes. And within all of this, there has been the subject of critical public health, epidemiological ramifications inherent to the system and what it has done to our psychology, our sociology and physical health, our sociality. Along with of course, the ecological consequences that are systemically output as market externalities in the form of land pollution, soil degradation and so on and so on.
And for the sake of clarity, before I move into the core content of today's podcast, which is about how to argue against market economics or capitalism, addressing some of the most common myths and propaganda that support the system. I want to return to this term structuralist for a moment. As an aside, I was recently criticized for using an ist or an ism in my communication as historically, I tend to encourage people not to use isms in description of anything because of the inherent vagueness. But this is more specific to broad social system debate, not intellectual frameworks. Meaning, when you argue you have a problem with capitalism more often than not someone jumps up and says, "Oh yeah, well, what do you suggest then? Socialism? Communism?" The mess is not only the vagueness of such terms, but the polarized political propaganda that has framed the debate for a century.
If it isn't capitalistic and only be socialist and so on and so on. And of course this is still very much the case today in debate with a staggering lack of creativity and fundamental ignorance of what economics means. It's so bad in fact, that most economists see markets as synonymous with economics and the use of money and trade as simply given without any question whatsoever as to potentials otherwise. So obviously, the difference between the term structuralism and say communism is structuralism isn't a social system conception, bound to great semantic interpretation or historical interpretation. It is simply a perspective of causality in human society. Structuralism simply means we are accounting for larger order causal relationships when thinking about social affairs, human behavior, our resulting institutions, and hence the root of the zeitgeist itself. We do not live in an empty playingfield. Simply making things up as we go along in a blank void. We are guided by what has come before us, the traditions, values, incentives and institutional processes and systemic frameworks by which we are groomed into and either are rewarded or punished by.
Hence, perpetual operant conditioning guiding the species. Just like exposure to religion can conform all sorts of ideas, beliefs, and behaviors in people- so does an economy. The difference in severity is the economy is the means of actual physical survival. And hence the power of that influence is likely the most powerful of all sociological influences when it comes to human behavior and our belief systems. But more specifically, if we were to break down the structuralist view, we find four basic context of importance, four. Which is the bio-psycho-social model plus the natural laws of the habitat. While the first three exist in constant synergy as talked about before. Our biological propensities, our psychological propensities and our sociological propensities. The fourth has to do with not the propensities of our habitat but the natural laws that actually govern it.
Hence the structure of nature as science has come to understand it in regard to what is required for us as a species to survive. Hence the lack of sustainability that needs to be avoided as it will lead to social instability and ultimately the demise of our species in the long run, which is clearly on pace by all metrics. So quite simply, if the structural properties of our most dominant guiding institution of survival, our economy are in conflict with the structural requirements of nature as it pertains to our survival, we do not have a workable system. So that is point one I would like to make out of four, the incompatibility of the habitat as discussed in the prior two podcasts given the fact that we have a growth economy that is driven by cyclical consumption that is required to keep the game going, coupled with the competitive ethic that always demands mass expansion, economies of scale, in order to compete intrasectorally.
Second, we have our biological nature. Not only our requirements for basic survival, but what is inherent to our shared evolutionary psychology. In the words of Gabor Mate , in life there are things that need to happen to a human being to foster and further positive physical and mental health, particularly in childhood. And there are things that should not happen for the same reason. Hence, there is a common structure. Not universal to everyone, but a basic structure of mental and physical health requirements that put demands on the environment and the need therein to support systemically those needs through the social structure. Hence the economy once again. If, for example, the social system, as with capitalism today, is creating vast inequality, which is creating childhood poverty, we see such a conflict in public health. As the large scale ACE studies, the Adverse Childhood Experience studies that I talked about in my book, The New Human Rights Movement show: poverty is one of the most pronounced preconditions that leads to a range of statistically relevant public health disorders, biologically, in the form of loss of IQ and beyond.
Hence, if he removed poverty or the cause of it, you improve or remove such outcomes. We certainly have the potential to end poverty, but our economy will not allow for it. So there's that, structural biology of the human being on average, in contrast to the structure of the economy. Now, moving on. Third, we have the psychological. And again, just to be clear here, in the bio-psycho-social model everything overlaps as naturally, if something like an adverse childhood experience, say the form of child abuse, can foster mental health issues creating abusive adult behavior as a result of that precondition, clearly it is a psychological outcome, but it's also sociological and biological simultaneously. And as an aside, if you're new here, I apologize if this is foreign to you, but this has been talked about at great length before and in my book and I can't keep going back to square one when I develop these arguments. So please look into it if you're not familiar.
Point being, an adult that has become aberrated because of an early childhood trauma is most categorically suffering from a psychological disorder, even though other factors are present. And that's one variant of this, there are others. Such as studies that show how the more wealth and income people get the more antisocial and selfish and greedy and indifferent and apathetic they become. Lots of study on that. While on the other side of the class, spectrum people existing in relative poverty and deprivation will have a statistical inevitability of common crime, robberies and other aberrant behavior. In turn building cultures of such behavior as we see with gangs, mafia and so forth. It's complex of course, but the overwhelming correlations and hence implied causality is extremely strong after generations of empirical data when it comes to the psychological effects of socioeconomic inequality across the spectrum.
When we contrast less scarce and equitable conditions with the opposite, we see different psychological profiles. And that's not just for the human species that also goes for our primate ancestors, which have similar relationships when it comes to evolving or existing in the long and short term in scarce or unscarce conditions. Such as the example of the chimpanzees versus the bonobos, which has also been talked about before. And finally, to wrap this section up, the fourth component, the sociological. Now to me, the sociological is the most important category in the system dynamics between the biological, psychological and ecological in terms of rules of the habitat. As the sociological accounts for all of them by default, which is why my preferred discipline of interest, if I have to have one is sociology. And I always cringe when I hear a pure psychologists speak such as our good friend, Jordan B. Peterson, as if the only tool you have is a hammer, you see everything as nails.
You can't understand any psychological disposition or behavior without a sociological context. And to an arguably less degree a biological context. I say lesser degree because understanding sociological phenomenon gives you options in problem solving, right? We can change sociological conditions, we can't change biological ones per se. And certainly can't change the natural laws of our ecosystem when it comes to sustainability issues related to the structure of the economy. But that's somewhat secondary here. And I don't want to regress, let me stay away from tangents because I'll fly off the handle. So this fourth issue of sociological structure is best embraced through the lens of epidemiology. Just as a flu can be predicted based upon empirical patterns and the study of conditions to show that X amount of people will have it in a given year on average. So can a range of human behaviors and outcomes.
There are clear socioeconomic links to for example, heart disease, cancer, diabetes, mental health disorders, white collar crime, blue collar crime, mass shootings, child abuse, and the litany of other negative outcomes occurring on the population level, statistically. At the same time, the same mass behavior is creating a huge array of negative market externalities as touched upon before such as poverty and pollution, which can also be measured and predicted. All of this is to say once again, that the structure of our social system, the economy, most notably within it, is provably engaging and disturbing various degrees of balance. And hence the relevance of taking a structuralist perspective to get a handle on this causation and figuring out how to change it. So I'm going to leave that for now, but I hope that four-part summation helps in terms of the broad perspective, clarifying what this podcast is all about and why the social science, systems science perspective is so critical to future problem resolution.
Seems obvious enough, but very few people are actually thinking this way, sad to say. All right, now let's move into the core interest of today, finally, constructing arguments against the market system of economics and understanding existing misconceptions and propaganda. Now, you might say to yourself, "Wait, what? Isn't this all you've been talking about directly and indirectly for 28 episodes?" Well, yeah, of course, but a friend of mine recently asked me which one of these podcasts presented the best arguments against capitalism in a summational way, right? Common idea to assume some program can just lay out a list like the top five reasons capitalism sucks. And that's all you need, you can take that to anybody and get your point across. But obviously it's not that simple, but I did appreciate the question. We're dealing with a complex system, a complex adaptive system to be clear and any clear cut statement of fact requires supporting arguments.
Often endlessly so in fact, depending on who you're talking to. And to make matters worse, when you do debate these issues, you are inevitably up against hyper reductionist, oversimplified counters, and declarations that sound reasonable in abstraction. Why? Because simple works. The way people think about our society and digest it are always simplified in both conception and communication, unfortunately. You know the drill, anything that repeats in society as a phenomenon will eventually just be decreed as human nature: "oh, people are just greedy," stuff like that. And if you can make something sound really simple and relate to people's common sense, like every single sentence out of a politician's mouth, people will generally believe you because it makes them feel comfortable. In fact, same for a traditional political activist as well. Complex nuanced discussion of sociopolitical theory is not going to get you that round of rambunctious applause as much as some overt moralistic declaration by some ideologue standing on a stage, screaming into a microphone righteously.
I remember the experience of giving a talk at occupy wall street in Los Angeles on a stage in front of thousands of people. It was very uncomfortable for me. After going on after litany of high energy, very platitudinal gestural speakers, after getting mad applause, after every declaratory statement. I think I went on after the drummer of The Doors, John Densmore, which was very surreal. But I listened to everyone and I appreciated their sentiment, but it's not a communication that actually does something any more than inspire people. And again, there's a place for that, but constructive developmental contribution for social change just doesn't work that way. And as time we realized that. And what you're going to find in any debate with a pro capitalist or pro establishment individual is they resort to highly simplistic examples, analogies, historical events, broad statistics, and general theoretical idealized notions that make sense, but only in a highly superficial way.
Not to mention appealing to common tradition. So first I want to give two common examples of what I've just said. One in the context of inequality and the other in the context of environmental issues. First, the issue of poverty. How many times have you heard defenders of capitalism say that the dramatic alleviation of extreme poverty over the past 50 years has occurred due to markets and hence if we just let free markets flourish, poverty will just continue to decline and make capitalism the hero that it is? This is common UN, Bill Gates stuff. They flash a chart of poverty reduction based on UN metrics and everybody cheers at the fruits that capitalism has brought to the world. Yet at a minimum, there are at least four things that are not discussed, which actually qualify the entire argument, proving it to be nonsensical, misleading, or marginal at best.
One, what caused the poverty to begin with? Two, what are the true mechanics of this trend under the hood? Three, what are the metrics used exactly and how relevant are they, really? And four, based on what they do claim, can this process actually continue? Now, I've already approached this conversation in prior podcasts so I'm going to move quickly with it. And I do suggest the work of Jason Hickel, author of The Divide, who has always approached this subject very well. And you can see his articles on the issue, but let me give the broad strokes. So the first question is what are the mechanics of creating inequality and hence poverty to begin with? Poverty is anthropologically well-recognized as an advent, a consequence of the neolithic revolution, where the kernel seeds of market economics was developed. Private property and then gross maldistribution of the surplus of the fruits of labor.
This is also reinforced by all equilibrium theory attempts, which prove contradictory, to their (economists) interests, that the game, when set in motion, the market game, always gravitates towards imbalance. With huge amounts of money and income going to a small section of the population, all things being equal. This occurs both on the domestic level, micro level, and the international level, macro level. As we have seen empirically regardless of state intervention to try and stifle the problem. That framework is critically important to understand. It's like saying, and this is kind of a bad analogy, that a chemical in our food that causes cancer can actually be used to treat the cancer if ingested at a larger dosage, which brings me to the second issue to bring out. Question two, can this process continue? Can we continue to alleviate poverty with the same mechanics we're using now? Fact is, the entire basis of the alleviation of poverty is done by maximizing industrial activity and hence economic growth and trickle down is what finally bleeds over into the poor, elevating them slightly, lifting all boats a couple inches off the ground.
Yet, we are now reaching critical limits of growth, both from a resource standpoint and pollution standpoint. We desperately need de-growth. Therefore the entire process cannot continue. In fact, the whole thing has been an illusion, a grace period of euphoria that can't be sustained. We have alleviated poverty temporarily in this mass industrial growth period lunacy of the past 50 years. This is why capitalism prior to the industrial revolution didn't even come close to resolving poverty. The third question is, what are the mechanics that actually exists under the hood? And can those mechanics exist outside of the detriments of market behavior? Are they separate? Is it just markets? And obviously, the answer is science and technology and creativity. By force of market growth yes, you have constant invention because everyone is coerced to have to sell themselves or their ideas. So yeah, as a side effect, you're going to create efficiency.
Technologies will flourish both wastefully and with some degree of efficacy. And efficiency happens, more resources become cheaper and get to people that once didn't need them. Again as a side effect of growth, but still the fruits of technology, science and creativity. Can it be done another way? Can we have science technology and creativity without this need for obsessive growth and the market dynamic competitive environment? Obviously. But of course that conversation is taboo, people lack the creativity to even consider it. And this is something, of course, I've talked about a great deal and other theorists. It can be done. Point being the true underlying mechanism of alleviating poverty on this planet has not been markets, but the fruits of creativity, science and technology, which markets simply exploit. And to think you have to have markets to do this is just cynical and unfounded.
And the fourth point, what about the metrics themselves used by the United Nations? What does it mean to take, say three quarters of a billion people out of extreme poverty? What does that mean? Where's the threshold? Well, actually not very much. Because you're dealing with a nominal change relative to effectively arbitrary baselines that really have no true relationship to a standard of living that's viable. Moving from a person living on $1,75 a day to $2 a day might seem dramatic if you're crossing some magical threshold that officially declares them now out of extreme poverty. But what does it really mean? In 2015, Peter Edward of Newcastle University calculated that in order to achieve normal life expectancy of just over 70 years, people need roughly $7,40 in US dollars a day. Which means based on that standard, an "ethical poverty line" as he calls it, more than 60% of the world's population is in debilitating poverty.
And even more dramatically, and I'm not going to go into this because I think I've made my point, Jason Hickel points out that if you look at the actual trends, broadly, more people are actually going into poverty based on these levels than are actually being alleviated. In other words, with the standard metrics, we're seeing slow alleviation of so-called extreme poverty but in the ethical poverty line, we're actually seeing an increase of poverty in the longterm. And sad to say, we've already seen poverty increase in a far more dramatic fashion during COVID. And that's only going to increase as the limits to growth and the walls close in ecologically, just watch. Now, moving onto the other example, the environmental example. And by the way, I've chosen these two examples very specifically because they highlight, each of them, contextually, the two major arguments I always put forward against the system, which is that the system is always going to produce caustic, destabilizing, socioeconomic inequality and increasingly so, and is always going to be environmentally unsustainable.
So this environmental example has to do with the common claim that private ownership, private property, and hence the utilization of resources and land within the market framework actually serves to protect resources and land rather than (misspoke) [create] harm or over exploit them. Some may be familiar with the tragedy of the commons. This is an old economic observation and contrived theoretical assumption that if you have, generally speaking, a resource in common, such as fish in a shared lake with open access to it, without any controls or ownership, people will just come and impulsively fish that lake until all the fish are gone because of the self-interest incentive. This, of course, is very much contradicted by indigenous cultures that have had a practice of engaging with sustainable interests, regenerative interests, respecting balance. But that's secondary here. Let's focus on the Western view. This concept of private property translated into responsible stewardship, which has often been a response to this traditional perception of the tragedy of the commons.
So the premise is simple. If you own something you're going to take care of it, right? So in theory, if you own a fishery, you're going to take care of the fish population in that region that you're fishing. If you own a forest, you're going to take care of those trees to make sure they regenerate. You're not going to allow deforestation, right? The premise is based on a philosophical half-truth with very few tangible, empirical examples that are not dubiously circumstantial. Yes, if you own something, you're probably going to take care of it more than something you don't own, but that's a very generalized phenomenon. Kind of like the cynical view of having a rental car. You don't really care what kind of gas you put in, or how many potholes you hit as long as it's not too damaged versus a car that you actually own and hence, feel more responsible for.
It's a simple idea that gets translated in a completely obnoxious way. I even tried to find empirical examples of this used by capitalist defenders. And I actually had a very, very difficult time finding anything that was worth sourcing. And it's not even worth the effort, frankly, because the broad statistics we see in society contradict the entire concept. Every life support system in decline and an exponential destruction of biodiversity. We have resource overshoot accelerating and beyond and beyond. In a couple of decades, there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish by all trends. Yes, I know the counter-arguments as well. It's all about state subsidies in this strange idea that because subsidies reduced direct responsibility for corporations, they therefore don't behave the way they're supposed to. And this sort of flimsy, rational economic man argument is put forward. Yet in reductionist debate, these things do come up when the subject of environmental decline is brought up with people claiming that if the free market was really allowed to be free and private property was truly respected, ecological decline would not be an issue.
Yes, it's ridiculous, but it does come up frequently and so I wanted to bring it up. In fact, as an aside, it's important to point out that you're always going to find some kind of caveat counter-argument. Usually, involving a disturbance of the free market theoretical potential. Removing its capacity to achieve its ideal end. And of course, government and the state has always been the ultimate boogeyman. When truth is state government is just another business working on a different level but on behalf of the corporate infrastructure, as I've addressed numerous times. So even if it were true that the state intervention is messing up the capacity for the free markets private ownership model to preserve and have stewardship for the environment, it's still part of the entire system. Therefore the disturbance is another systemic consequence that's to be expected. I hope that makes sense. In the end mass neoliberal globalization, doesn't give a damn. Corporations, graze and pillage, and they move on to the next area to graze and pillage.
Private property is obtained. Resources are exhausted on that property. The property is sold. Then they move on to the next plot to exploit and maximize and so on. As of course, most fundamentally you would expect in a system that is based on infinite growth and requires constant cyclical consumption to keep itself afloat, without option. Now, I have a whole bunch of shit that I didn't get to and I realized the time. I have a really a lot. So I'm going to make a part two of this and to go into all the myths and then the structure of argument. And I'm going to hope to get that out before two weeks from now, because I don't like truncating these things. But bear with me as I have a lot going on. At any rate, I hope that's helpful. I appreciate everybody that's listening. This program is brought to you by my Patreon and I have other things I want to do announce, I can't remember right now, but I'll be back soon enough. All right, folks, take care out there, be safe and I'll talk to you soon.