Words&Dirt

“Who can possibly save all the people of the world? Tengo thought. You could bring all the gods of the world into one place, and still they couldn’t abolish nuclear weapons or eradicate terrorism. They couldn’t end the drought in Africa or bring John Lennon back to life. Far from it––the gods would just break into factions and start fighting among themselves, and the world would probably become even more chaotic than it is now. Considering the sense of powerlessness that such a state of affairs would bring about, to have people floating in a pool of mysterious question marks seems like a minor sin.”

––1Q84, by Haruki Murakami, pg. 380-1

“When people feel that the system is unfair and arbitrary and that hard work does not pay off, we all end up losing. This is due to several related negative consequence, including widespread cheating or stealing, mounting distrust, and a willingness to forgo joint gains for the sake of preventing those who are well-off from becoming even better off. The gross national product may nonetheless rise due to additional spending on security personnel, accountants, auditors, lawyers, screening devices, monitoring equipment, and so on, but these defensive expenditures do not improve the quality of life of the typical American. The other negative consequence, as we have seen, is chronically inadequate demand for goods and services caused by insufficient purchasing power and economic insecurity. Together, these responses impose incalculable damage to an economic system. They turn an economy and a society into what mathematicians would call a ‘negative-sum’ game. When capitalism ceases to deliver economic gains to the majority, it eventually stops delivering them at all––even to a wealthy minority at the top. It is unfortunate that few of those at the top have yet to come to understand this fundamental truth.

This dynamic threatens not only American capitalism; capitalism is failing elsewhere as well. By 2014, wages were stagnant or falling and economic insecurity rising in much of Europe and in Japan. Consumers in China were gaining ground, but consumption failed to grow as a share of China’s increasingly productive economy, while inequality in China soared. China’s wealthy elites were emulating the most conspicuous consumption of the rich in the West, and corruption there appeared to be endemic.

If history is any guide, reform is likely to begin in America and inspire reform elsewhere. That’s because Americans have always tended to choose pragmatism over ideology. When we have recognized a problem and understood the reason for it, our habit has been to get on with the messy job of solving it. Whenever capitalism has before reached points of crisis, we have not opted for communism or fascism or any other grand scheme. Again and again we have saved capitalism from its own excesses by making necessary corrections. We have counteracted whatever political and economic power has become too concentrated for the system to sustain itself. It is time for us to do so again.”

––Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few, by Robert B. Reich, pg. 166-7