Too Fast for Too Many by teresa@voxroxmedia.com - HTML preview

Dealing with limitless growth

If we assume we are about to face growth with no limits, or even if we just assume that we are about to face growth unlike anything we've known before, we need to consider, and certainly be very concerned, about how such infinite growth will interact with the finite resources available to us today in our planet. Physicists, Mathematicians, Analysts and Futurists talk about complex concepts like "Biological carrying capacity", "Resource Wars", "Eco-ethics" which, most of us can't begin to comprehend. But to me, it all comes down to this:

• In an already crowded planet, on which the human population is destroying natural systems at an unprecedented rate, we are encouraging exponential growth in both population and per capita resource consumption.
• Half the world's population has inadequate food, shelter, education, and medical care and yet we do not provide countries afflicted by the worst problems with major assistance to stabilise their populations until all citizens have reached acceptable subsistence levels.
• Affluent countries are enabling poor countries to reduce temporarily the impact of exponential population growth by exporting people who are generally the most talented in the poor country and are badly needed to help solve problems there.
• Technological advances are not applied at a sufficiently fast pace to bring disadvantaged populations up to speed with some of the most basic needs particularly in regards to education.

Why, in summary, have we so little regard for posterity that we encourage the kinds of growth that exacerbate these unsustainable conditions?

Greed and an insatiable desire to accumulate capital are the main reasons. "A winner takes all" mentality.

In a report released by e xfam in January this year, the international philanthropy organisation warned that the richest 8S people across the globe share a combined wealth of £1tn, as much as the poorest 3.S billion of the world's population, and it went as far as saying that the

"World's 100 richest could end global poverty 4 times over."

Chilling.

And yet, poverty is increasingly extending globally: "In the UK inequality is rapidly returning to levels not seen since the time of Charles Dickens. In China the top 10 percent now take home nearly 60 percent of the income. Chinese inequality levels are now similar to those in South Africa, which is now the most unequal country on Earth and significantly more [inequality] than at the end of apartheid. […] In the US, the richest 1 percent's share of income has doubled since 1980 from 10 to 20 percent. For the top 0.01 percent, their share of national income quadrupled, reaching levels never seen before."

Executive Director of e xfam International Jeremy Hobbs said that "we can no longer pretend that the creation of wealth for a few will inevitably benefit the many - too often the reverse is true." Hobbs argued that concentration of wealth in the hands of the top few minimises economic activity, making it harder for others to participate: "From tax havens to weak employment laws, the richest benefit from a global economic system which is rigged in their favour […] even politics has become controlled by the super-wealthy, which leads to policies "benefitting the richest few and not the poor majority, even in democracies."

That's precisely David Simon's thoughts. The creator of the extremely popular TV series The Wire believes that supply-side economics in the US has been shown to be bankrupt as an intellectual concept. "Look at the divergence in the economic health of middle class families or the working class, what's left of the working class -- certainly the underclass -" he instigates us, "We are becoming two Americas in every fundamental sense. That may be the ultimate tragedy of capitalism in our time, which is that it has achieved its dominance without regard to a social compact, without being connected to any other metric for human progress."

Two consequences derive from these alarming facts and thoughts:

•  We cannot rely on governments to help the disadvantaged free themselves from a cycle of poverty that will help them deal with the astoundingly fast changes ahead of us. It is not in their interest to close tax havens, reverse regressive forms of taxation, boost wages proportional to capital returns or to increase investment in free public services. Therefore,
•  We need to maximise the use of resources currently available to us all, digital natives and immigrants alike, to curb extreme poverty and give everyone a fighting chance before technological acceleration curtails any chances they have to enjoy the bare minimums.

How?

With inventiveness, collaboration and massive doses of selflessness.

Just like Professor Sugata Mitra did and is still doing.