Imagine that I told you you had to build a machine with somewhere between a million and ten million parts, each one made to sub-millimeter precise specifications. Imagine I told you you’d have to build the organization of thousands of people to put it together. Imagine I told you it would take at least five decades.
Now imagine I told you the humanity’s future just might depend on it. Science fiction? Nope. Reality. That’s ITER, the world’s first large-scale fusion reactor — based in France, a joint social project between many countries. And it’s a perfect example of why capitalism is obsolete.
Maybe you’ve understood why already. But let me make it crystal clear. The great challenges of the future — we’ll come to precisely what those are in a moment — aren’t like those of the past. They are more complex, demanding, constrained, risky, and, perhaps most crucially of all, they are more risky. The world’s future depends on getting them right. The stakes are infinitely higher. If we get them wrong, we perish — whether through war, extinction, self-destruction, folly, thirst, famine. If we get them right — then and only then do we go on.
(Yes, the individualistic, competitive, and winner take all philosophies of capitalism no longer play any useful role in ensuring, or guaranteeing the continuing wellbeing of humanity; it has been useful, but reflecting on the ideas of Karl Max, it was only a precursor to something even greater and more applicable to allowing us to thrive.
Yes, if we are to survive the rigours fo climate change, the most measurable change wrought to society by capitalism, we need to take the fundamentals of the world’s prevailing economic system and replace them with values that are about sharing, along with an understanding that our place on Earth is dependent on us caring for all the other flora and fauna - Robert McLean)
