WHAT WILL REPLACE CAPITALISM?

Can capitalism continue indefinitely as the primary economic system of our society? Do we want it to?

Continuous economic growth depends on the production and consumption of ever more goods. Yet we know that our planet cannot sustain that indefinitely.

In Amsterdam and a few other cities around the world, experiments are underway into a new way of thinking called doughnut economics coined by a UK economist named Kate Raworth in a 2017 book. It’s the idea that the upper limit of what we can produce and consume is dictated by the limits of our environment: our planet’s tolerance for pollution and resource extraction, especially with the looming spectre of climate change. But there is also a lower limit of what humans need to produce and consume in order to live a healthy life (nutritious food, clothing etc.). The zone in the middle between the “social foundation” and the “environmental ceiling” is the doughnut. The practical applications of this mindset are many and varied, but one example from Amsterdam is grocery store pricing that includes costs normally ignored, such as a product’s carbon footprint. The essence of the movement is to ensure that everyone has a decent quality of life, but by means that are sustainable and don’t overtax the planet.

I can’t say whether or not doughnut economics is the way of the future, but something will have to change, or we and our home planet will have no future.

What does science fiction have to say about the future of economics?

In the near term, it’s possible to imagine new technologies that might extract more resources from trash and recycled materials, or that would make the mining of asteroids financially viable. Those might help capitalism stagger on for a while. In the long term, there are as many different models as there are fictional worlds, confederacies, empires, or what have you.

One of the most optimistic examples of a possible future economy comes from the world of Star Trek. Within the United Federation of Planets (at least by the 2360’s of Star Trek: The Next Generation) money is no longer used. Thanks to “replicator” technology, any form of inanimate normal matter can be produced if there’s a sufficient energy source. So there’s no longer such a thing as “scarcity”—every citizen can have everything they need and, presumably, anything they want. Therefore, accumulating goods is no longer a motivator. They don’t even need to work for a living. Mind you, lots of people do still work, it’s just that their compensation for doing so isn’t monetary. Instead, they’re rewarded by the gratification of achievement itself, by social status and influence (or power, such as commanding a starship). People work for a sense of self-fulfillment, helping others, and simply doing good.

Does that sound like any human beings you know? Yeah, that’s a problem—in our experience human nature just isn’t that selfless. Still, it’s a nice thought.

In what might be considered one of the earliest works of science fiction, the 1888 novel Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy features a man who falls into a hypnotically induced sleep and awakens in the year 2000 to a United States that’s a socialist utopia. No work for money; every citizen is given an equal amount of credit to buy what they need, everyone retires at the age of 45 with full lifetime benefits, those who work in less attractive or more hazardous fields get more time off, and the reward for superior performance is essentially recognition. Like when your kindergarten teacher awarded you star stickers for good behaviour. Again, Bellamy doesn’t seem to have taken into account the desire to not only “keep up with the Joneses” but surpass the Joneses whenever possible. Hasn’t that always been the problem when trying to reconcile concepts like Karl Marx’s communism with the behaviour of real people? We don’t actually want to be equal to the next guy. We want to have it better than the next guy. And we don’t see an incentive for working hard if everybody—go-getters and slackers—are going to have the same lifestyle anyway.

Many science fiction empires and societies include invented monetary, business, and exchange-of-labour systems, though not that many include economics as a significant focus. In several early stories (from the 1950s) by Frederick Pohl and CM Kornbluth, constant consumption is required to maintain national economies, advertising is a crucial tool of government, and citizens must meet a quota of goods to be purchased. On the other side of the coin (so to speak) the economics of overpopulation and scarcity figure into a good amount of SF. And looking into the far future, just try to imagine the economics of a society in which humans have “uploaded” into digital form, without the needs and wants of physical bodies at all! (See writers like Charles Stross.)

What about the near future? Cory Doctorow’s 2003 novel Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom introduces an economy driven in part by whuffie which reflects a person’s social status and influence (picture being able to get the good things in life according to how many likes you have on Facebook). There are also elements of a “reputation economy” in 1999’s Distraction by Bruce Sterling, and somewhat similar concepts elsewhere. I don’t know about you, but I don’t relish the idea of a society where people enjoy greater luxury and other perks just for being publicity whores (oh, wait, we have that already!)

Doctorow’s 2017 novel Walkaway features a “post-scarcity” society in which those who don’t want to participate in a rigged capitalist system run by the zotta-rich just drop everything and walk away. But where the walkaways congregate, most still want to accomplish things, it’s just that work isn’t required to get food and shelter, and rewards aren’t necessarily material.

All in all, capitalism probably isn’t sustainable forever, yet replacements as described in science fiction include any number of post-apocalyptic stories (pessimistic) and some that are perhaps overly optimistic (like Star Trek). A future economy with financial equality, no consumer pressure, and a minimalist lifestyle would require a big change in human nature. But, after all, there are plenty of stories that imagine changing human bodies and brains in innumerable ways. Maybe long-time traits like selfishness and greed can be changed, too.

Conscience engineering, anyone?