It is a common assertion that people don’t want to sacrifice anything, such as living standards, to fight future threats like climate change, and it is probably true. Humans are not good at avoiding slow future threats. This is especially the case in a Plutocracy (such as most of the world now lives in) when most of the dominant classes understand that facing the threats could challenge their power, wealth, and accepted way of doing things. A big threat, like massive ecological upheaval produces an existential crisis for plutocratic power. This is especially true when many of the modes of making wealth seem to involve ecological destruction somewhere in their path.
One of the recurring motifs we hear, seems to be able to be summarised as “We can’t see how capitalism can solve ecological crises and destruction, therefore there is no threat, we can be concerned about” or perhaps “without destruction there is no profit, so there can be no threat”.
There are obviously some corporations whose executive officers disagree with this kind of position, but they seem in the minority, or handicapped by the usual demand for profit at all cost. I am reminded of an academic paper by Christopher Write & Daniel Nyberg which described how corporate greening starts of with enthusiasm, goes through cost cutting, eventually gets slammed for not delivering maximum profit, until the greening becomes little more than words. Greening is expensive. Paying decent wages is expensive. Not destroying things is expensive. Doing good work is expensive. All go against short-term profit.
Plutocracies are particularly inefficient at facing such threats because wealth concentrates power. The government, and government policy, is bought through money (for campaigning), knowledge, and knowledge distribution is bought through money, the media is nearly all corporately owned and largely protects corporate power. Business associations tend to be against doing anything that might disrupt them or lessen their influence, and the driven wealthy can then use the government to stop government scientists and public servants from communicating with the public. They can get tools of research shut down to help maintain ignorance. Business ends up buying public services and property through privatisation, gets contracts for services, and use “commercial in confidence” to make sure that the public has no idea of the monies involved. It can probably privatise the data, so that the contracting government has little direct idea of what it is doing, and this opens the way for fraud – say finding a person a job with a sub-company, to get the completion and then sacking them to get the ‘new’ client again. In this way, business becomes the government – giving the government the information it wants, directing people with State power, buying politicians, and carrying out services with no responsibility to the people. The only responsibility is to make money out of the situation, and that is threatened by change in approach to government. Encouraging capitalist profit driven markets does not have to encourage democracy, or understanding.
In this situation, if the ruling groups don’t want to do something, then it is hard to persuade them, or others, to do it. While this is reality, it does not make it useful.
Plutocracies are too invested in things remaining as they are to face serious change. They have to be dismantled slowly.
Obviously a sensible business will not behave like this. If the people in it do not recognize change, then they will go out of business. Change is also an opportunity. But business which acts as government has not learnt to do this. It has learnt to use the government to suppress threats to its profitability, and therefore becomes inefficient, unobservant of the surrounding world and frightened of change. This is reinforced by the hierarchy of business, in which people at the top routinely manipulate, or restructure, people beneath them, and people at the bottom routinely give their management the information they think the management requires. This affects the business information systems. In all cases, because there is no real transmission of information or understanding, everyone is governed by social fantasy. And if the business is wanting to avoid a problem like climate change, the fantasy is easily imposed on the world as reality – at least for a while.
Tags: Disinformation, disorder, economics
Climate, technology and chaos Blog 
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