“Capitalism is based on the notion that you can enjoy limitless growth in a closed finite system. In biology such behavior of cells is called cancer". - A stupid meme
Anyone who knew me in college could tell you I was a lefty. I would have probably agreed to this meme back then, but as I grow older and wiser, I must speak up. I’m tired of people saying inflammatory things that are wrong.
Capitalism isn’t based on the notion that we can enjoy limitless growth in a closed system. You don’t need to look up the dictionary definition of capitalism to know that.
Now, lefties may say that capitalism implies this idea, but it doesn’t. Capitalism, above all else, is a social system, not a material one.
Natural resources are important, but as economies grow, these resources become less important for growing wealth. If accessing (and depleting) natural resources was the primary driver of economic growth, poor countries with insufficient environmental protections would have the world’s largest economies today. They don’t.
In countries with environmental protections, you would see less economic growth in absolute terms than they had before they had such protections. You don’t.
There are two reasons why this is the case.
First, the profit motive drives businesses to spend less when creating their goods so their costs can go down. Just look at a soda can or car - they are both lighter and use less metal than they did 50 years ago. The government didn’t make them do that, the market did.
Second, capitalism is a human-centered system. We have material demands that need to be met by the market, but our needs go beyond the material.
Less than twenty percent of the world’s biggest economy is agriculture and resource extraction. Why? Because in evolving to meet human needs, economies progress in what they produce: from agriculture and resource extraction to manufacturing goods to providing services to creating new technologies. It’s why Amazon’s market cap is about forty times that of Monsanto. In rich economies today, the average worker creates value by providing a service, not by depleting natural resources.
The implication of the meme is that humanity and capitalism are cancers on Earth. I hate this rhetoric because it’s misanthropic and borderline genocidal. In reality, capitalism is more like puberty: human civilization grows rapidly, changing our planet forever, just as human beings are changed forever by hormones during puberty.
But the growth and rate of ecological change does not stay constant. Could you imagine if your height and hunger increased forever at the rate of change you experienced between age 11 and 16? We’d be taller than apartment buildings, and there would not be enough food for everyone.
Growth never lasts forever. Built within the physics of growth are the forces that eventually stop it. For economic growth and resource depletion, it’s human innovation, markets, recycling, and resource conservation. If you hear that and still call people cancer, your problem is not with capitalism, but with people. Grow up and get a job.