Overhauling Capitalism
Michael Hallam
(02 April 2003)
Many of the well-intentioned people who wish for global equality and justice reject capitalism. This is a mistake. However, there is a caveat. For the emerging Global Economy to be truly sustainable the real environmental costs of human activity need to be brought fully within the economies costing structure. This would radically re-define what constitutes a profitable activity and would set the stage for the development of form of economic globalisation which is genuinely egalitarian.
Given the choice few of us would chose to go back to the kind of subsistence land-locked lifestyle of the average Medieval European. Since the Enlightenment European (and American) society has changed beyond all recognition, largely due to a newly discovered relationship to nature which allowed for the development of modern science and the application of new technologies in economic life. These technologies gave birth to the industrial revolution which has since emancipated the population of the West from the burden of subsistence work and which has delivered a range of goods and services previously undreamed of.
In the last few decades this aspiration towards a Western lifestyle has become the aim of the greater part of the worlds population and is the stated goal of the move towards developing a single global market place. The free-market economic model, which has come to be known as capitalism, represents a big step in the evolution of human culture when it is contrasted with the system which is replacing, namely the old feudal system.