Will Corporate Capitalism be Fading Out?

Now before we get all political, let me make a few points: capitalism has done some pretty good things. It's gotten us where we are today, roughly, but it has developed mankind at a huge rate since the Industrial Revolution. The corporation model has provided vast amounts of resources so that aspiring academics could develop many of the great technologies we have today, either by hiring scientists, engineers, developers, etc; or by creating the economic basis by which our government was able to support such research, take NASA for example.

However, capitalism has its dark sides as well. As an entity that focuses more on profit than progress, the development it has created has also been hindered by the same model as competition stifles cooperation amongst researchers. Also, the profiteering model is a very clear breeding grounds for corruption, and companies will go to great lengths to protect their markets from revolutionary designs that will be more ethical but challenge their positions at the top. A particularly gruesome example of this is when some major medical company attempted, and thankfully failed, to copyright strings of human DNA that could be used for research to fight disease.

So capitalism has some good, mainly in that we needed it to get this far, past tense. But the playing field is changing now. We live in a world where kids can build nuclear reactors in their garages, and the dissemination of technology and information is only increasing exponentially. We live currently on the brink of 3D printing technology, which in the next decade might be so accurate as to reach the molecular level. That's the technology I want to talk about today.

Everything's Booming, Almost

Mankind is going through a chain of booms. We've experienced the population boom, economies boom on and off, and most influentially the great technology boom. Additionally, there's been a data boom, a communication boom, and it can even be ventured to say we're beginning an ethics boom. What's missing?

Let's talk about a few things mentioned above. Population and economy are discussed extensively enough in other sources. What is this technology boom though? It's not as clearly defined, nor are it's ramifications. We know computers were invented only a handful of decades ago, and they've evolved at an exponential rate since then. What does this mean for us? Well, according to some sociologists, cultures merge from the technology of their peoples. This seems accurate enough, it's observable today, especially in the first world, but our technology has also lead to a globalized economy as companies spread across multiple nations, countries and their people communicate over the internet, Google creates a map of the entire planet. This leads to impacts on third world countries, and their cultures have been influenced slightly. Throughout the connected world, people are demanding more things, things like more jobs, more food, more connectivity, more rights, things that we didn't need to emphasize on as much before our population boomed. How do limited resources and large numbers of people influence culture? Let's just ask al-Shabab.

Deep Economy - Eating Locally - Taking Notes

Part One of this this review can be found at: http://dylanwheeler.blogspot.com/2013/04/deep-economy-economic-growth-taking.html

Chapter 2 of Bill McKibben's Deep Economy discusses the utmost important sector of any economy known to human beings: food. He highlights the many problems in our globalized food system and offers solutions and examples of how his solutions work.

I'll start by explaining what has become of the food system. Not so long ago, nearly half of America's population worked in agriculture, and that was the minimum needed to sustain our society. People's lives and cultures were centered around farm life, the reason our schools take a two month summer vacation is because parents needed their children to help work the land during the large summer harvest. Since then however, our economy has changed; and now only 1% of our population works our farms.

Deep Economy - Economic Growth - Taking Notes

The book subject of this review can be found for purchase at Amazon.
Also, information on the book can be found on Facebook.

Me being the eccentric little bibliophile I am, when I received this years tax return I was absolutely ecstatic at the prospect of going on a little shopping spree at the nearest Barnes and Noble. I picked up a book titled Deep Economy by Bill McKibben. I've finished the first chapter, and here's my thoughts...

Chapter One, After Growth, talks about a lot of, for lack of a better word, politics. Politics in a more modern sense in which everybody gets involved, not just the politicians. The author takes a lot of time and ink to convince you that since the rise of the industrial revolution and the workings of Adam Smith, the whole planet has been convinced that the absolute best thing human beings can do for the economy is to continuously improve economic growth. This idea has been around for so long, in fact, that it's become imbedded into our very culture. McKibben even discusses it as something akin to religion, and of course he quotes many authors and economists and experts and sociologists, and cites many a research paper and report, but I'll let him convince you of his ideas by encouraging you to read the book. Regardless, that's the point he's making, that growth reigns supreme in our modern economic culture, and for good reason: it's worked.

A Freedom Once Born must yet be Nurtured (Edited)

Now, this is a report I wrote about three years ago, so some of my outlook has changed, but I'd like to post it here anyway, for the sake of discussion if nothing else. Enjoy.

(Edit: Again, as this post gains attention, I want to emphasize that I did write this material, but it was some time ago, in fact it was a report for school. I wrote passionately and at that time I agreed with all it's content, but as I've grown, some of my outlook and worldview has changed. This is not the time or place to go into such detail, but I will say I'm far less anti-capitalistic. I'll admit it has it's problems, but it has benefits too, and as I explore and study more in the future, my views on such matters will unfold. So please, check back into my blog sooner and later. This post is for discussion purposes, not an expression of present opinion.)

A Freedom Once Born Must Yet Be Nurtured

© Dylan Wheeler 2010
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Toiling, sweating, heaving and shoveling dirt and gravel, a man uniformed in yellow and orange works on the roadside, reeking of wet cement, his feet slipping in muddy clay. Such a man he was, to be looked upon with envy by another. The second stood, fingers clenched hopelessly to a wire fence, longing to cross the yellow tape with black 'do not cross' lettering. He then departs: turns in another job application to another corporation that is not hiring, stands in another multi-hour line of strangers waiting for too few food stamps, and then moves onward to make another withdrawal from an A.T.M., to have another access fee deducted from his hard earned money. He is not unemployed, but his hours are too few and far between, and no-one dares to tell his irritable boss for risk that he might be put off. Both men in this example walk the streets they built, a common sight for those who drive. The tires of new cars made in other countries that cost more than college tuition pummel the cement that the workers thrive on, their drivers distracted by wireless headsets connected to hundred dollar phones, driving back to yet another pompous restaurant to pay too much for yet another meal, one to be half eaten and refrigerated in metal foil and forgotten until found rotten and thrown away, into a black bag to be tossed on the same road they spit their gum on, the same sidewalk the workers built. The black bag lies there, until the same underpaid workers haul it away and bury it in a landfill with a different shovel crusted with the same dirt. Their government calls it freedom; freedom for men to 'choose' where they wish to work, and freedom for business bosses and managers to choose whom they hire and fire at will; and shrugs it off.