Ecological Stability And A More Efficient Market example essay topic

Feasible Ways in Which Humans Can Combine Mass Capitalism and Environmental Improvements Subtitle: Expanding Capitalism into a Larger Global Mass-Capitalistic System, While Improving Our Global Environment and our Human Population's Standard of Living There has been an ever growing met beginning n 0's and 50's, whose premise is to either control growth or halt it all together. This movement has rallied around a green flag preaching the philosophy of saving mother earth from the current exploitation's that are taking place under the Western economic system. Many of these members of the Green Party view the current Industrial or Capitalistic Systems as the main enemy of the environment because of the way that a Capitalistic System considers natural resources that are scarce or irreplaceable a very valuable commodity. It is true that now that we have had time to evaluate the costs and benefits of an Industrialized society, we have recognized that there have been some costs or "externalities" that have developed out of our extremely prosperous time period. Some of these costs are urban sprawl, global warming, pollution, and the increase of greenhouse gases just to name a few. The Greens solution to deal with these "externalities" is to declare capitalism the enemy and wage a war in order to either sustain or end growth altogether while moving back to a more Welfare-like state.

Greens view the capitalistic model as one that tries to dominate and exploit nature for one's personal wealth and gain, and they fear that at our current rates of consumption and waste that we will quickly destroy the earth's natural environment. They have developed many clever techniques such as lobbying, generating large amounts of wealth, creating new social structures, forming political parties, and even making acts of terrorism in order to slow the capitalistic machine from growing ever larger. I do agree with many of the Greens and others that have worries about our earth and its' natural environment, and that something must be done quickly and substantially to correct the crisis that is looming. It is because of the West's recent success that we have been experiencing these problems and I feel that the same knowledge and labor that was used to create these economic successes can be used to find feasible solutions to our current global ecological problems.

I disagree with the Greens policies or ideologies about how we as a planet must go about correcting these ecological problems though. The idea of halting growth altogether or creating a policy of sustainable growth on a worldwide scale is not a feasible solution in the evolving global capitalistic market. Slowing or stagnating the growth of the world is not feasible because countries that have not reached the economic well being that the Western Hemisphere has attained will reject this idea with full force. Even if stagnating growth were an acceptable idea in the global community, it would create such a global depression in the West that the political leaders would be ousted or in the worse case scenario killed. Therefore, I believe in order to maintain and improve our global environment and standard of living we must begin looking for more feasible and practical ideologies and solutions that will incorporate our current economic and sociological systems with practical solutions that will not inhibit continual world growth and expansion. In the following essay I will try to answer the following question: How can we expand capitalism into a larger and more encompassing global Mass Capitalism with a Free Market structure and continuous growth, and still improve our global environment and our general standard of living?

Theory One- The Damages Caused that are Related to Progress Our current Free Market Capitalistic System has been quite a successful machine compared to other models which rely on more of a Welfare State such as Socialism or Communism. Other economic systems have collapsed, while Capitalism has remained in a phase of continuous growth. Recently though, we have started to gain conscientiousness about some of the costs that are related to our system. We face problems with an increasing gap in individual education, wealth, and social standings just to name a few. On a global scale we are also facing ecological problems of historic proportions. When the Western Countries were in the beginning phases of growth we used extremely high amounts of scarce resources in order to develop more efficient output.

Better technologies were created and there was a snowball effect, which created greater and greater amounts of efficiencies. We are not yet at the maximum amount of efficiency we desire, but we must look at the many problems that we created from this growth. The reason being there are others in the world that is currently at the same stages or lower stages of development that the West was at in the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. One of the main causes of these problems are that the Third World and emerging countries are trying to grow and compete in the market on the global level and they are using outdated techniques and technologies to grow and become competitive with the West.

They are causing ecological havoc that is preventable if we show global leadership abilities to cultivate and educate these countries into compliance with global environmental standards. We must not do as we are currently doing, which is using the relaxed environmental standards of these emerging countries and turning it into a competitive advantage for ourselves because we will eventually pay the costs of the "externalities" of this wastefulness in the future. A modern example of this is the Chinese project of the Three Gorges Dam. The Chinese are destroying and relocating thousands of acres of land and people, respectively.

This project could be eliminated entirely if the Chinese would use nuclear power instead, but for political and technological reasons they do not. This is just one of the many examples of what is going on now and is preventable if our leaders were spending the time trying to identify these flaws in our current economic systems instead trying to find ways to cause its demise. Once we realize that progressive leadership and guidance from the Western Hemisphere is a necessity in order to continue growth we can start developing feasible solutions to current problems. We can also spend time generating ideas and technologies that will create greater efficiencies and ecological stability in the future, but our leaders must first recognize the problem and secondly, decide to do something about it.

Currently, our elite leadership is not trying to maintain and spawn continuous growth throughout the world. They are trying to find ideological causes to put time and energy into rather than focusing on feasible solutions to problems that we are facing in the not to distant future. I f the elite leadership does not start focusing on methods that will stimulate future growth which will in turn create higher standards of living and better ecological stability then there is going to be a highly negative result. Our leadership and nation has loss the connection between the ability to create wealth and prosperity as was done in the past by exploiting others through violence.

We would like to forget that part of our history, but we cannot. If we do it might cause us to slip back into a Welfare State of guarantees that will slow growth, increase world poverty and other problems, which will once again shift to the focus away from ecological stability and back to personal survival. This will negate any small victories or achievements we have made in recent time. Theory Two- Incorporating Political and Economic Activism "Economic Activism involves the government stepping in to make sure that society's costs and benefits are factored into price and profit". The current method of "Economic Activism" is to use tariffs and quotas that are enforced by the government to force participants in the market to pay for actions that are deemed costly and inefficient methods of production and consumption. On occasion, producers are given benefits for choosing methods that are beneficial to society such as tax breaks or subsidies of some sort.

There are also other types of "Economic Activism" that could be created though that does not have to be guided by government. After all, True Capitalists dislike any government involvement in the first place. If government is left out of regulating the majority of the marketplace except to prevent monopolistic competition, I believe that industries will begin developing better technologies. This will in turn continue to lessen ecological problems because the market will actually promote competition between firms to produce the most efficient good using the best outputs and causing the least amount of "externalities". The only way this "true" form of competition in the marketplace is attainable though, is by cutting the huge bureaucratic regulations that big government creates. By cutting Western bureaucracies by a 1/3 or a 1/2 you could create a more efficient government, which would reduce taxes, allow more investment in personal saving and corporate technologies, which will stimulate growth in the market and cause technologies to advance at a much higher pace.

This high rate of continuous growth will help individual standards of living; it will create a more efficient labor force, and allow more room for future research and development. There are many variables standing in the way of this economic concept though. Whenever you have political and economic activism, you also have counter movements and sociological impacts. In our current Welfare State we have many people in our lower class that are undereducated and unskilled. This also goes for all the underdeveloped countries in the world also. In order for "Economic Activism" to be feasible we must consider a way to get the world's population that are unskilled and uneducated up to a level that will be efficient and productive in an ever increasing technological society.

The more the market grows the more we create social problems under the welfare state because of governmental guarantees. When the state makes guarantees it takes away wealth from the overall market which in turn slows growth and creates inequalities. If huge inequalities are allowed between upper and lower classes to continue to increase, then they will eventually reach a level where the masses will become extremely discontented with their leaders and they will revolt. Another possibility is that our increasingly expanding technologies will become so extremely complex that we will revolutionize ourselves so far that the lower uneducated classes will be forced into the Welfare state all over again because they will be unable to be competitive producers in the market place. We must create a sufficient structure to realize each individual most productive capability at a young age so that they will be maximized in the future to their highest potential output. If humans can maximize their own potentials then inflation will be highly reduced and less government and political involvement will be necessary to deal with business cycles and social problems.

This can only happen through an alliance between the governments of the Western Hemisphere and the financial markets. Theory Three- Feasible Solutions to Allow Growth and Environmental Stability Our main problem the world over is that our political and cultural systems are much slower to adapt and accept change than our financial markets and technological sectors are. We must create an alliance between our governments and financial markets in order to bring about or maintain an era of continuous growth that could lead to a new Mass Capitalism on global level. We are currently reaching a pinnacle in our current financial markets and ecological systems.

We have the option to expand growth and replenish the environment before too many harms are done. If we ignore anti-capitalistic ideology and do not allow our leadership to become complacent then we can continue to develop. There are many feasible solutions that will allow growth and be ecologically friendly at the same time. First, we must eliminate ignorance everywhere in order to allow the global market to grow because one weak link causes global inefficiencies. Secondly, we must always be continuing to invest large amounts of capital into research and development, which will result in more efficient technologies and less destructive behaviors.

There are many natural resources at man's fingertips that should be harnessed and turned into a part of the production process. One example is the Sun. Solar energy is the most efficient and cost effective piece of energy that exists in the world. If we could harness all of the suns energy then there would be no need to use inefficient fossil fuels which we use today that cause large amounts of green house gases.

Nuclear energy and Fusion are also very effective resources that could provide efficient and low cost methods of production and power. Unfortunately, in today's society there are many stigmas are associated with nuclear energy which causes this field to expand slowly. There are also many groups such as Oil producers who do not want to see the market in which they have a monopoly over become increasingly lower in demand. Although, if we could develop a substitute for oil then many countries would lose their strategic advantages which would allow the West to wield more power over these developing markets which would force them into compliance in a faster and less costly ways. Rather than depending on wars or economic sanctions which are very inefficient methods to enforce compliance. These are just a few examples of the current capabilities that we are on the verge of discovering to create more ecological stability and a more efficient market.

Concluding Observations In conclusion, I have tried give examples and theoretical solutions in the hopes of finding ways to expand capitalism into a more expansive global mass capitalism while at the same time continuing to improve our ecological stability and general standard of living. There will always be skeptics that will try to discredit these theories in order to promote their own agendas. Hopefully, the theories I have developed which try to build a consensus between the political, ideological, and economic groups will be a helpful way of continued prosperity in the future. First, by minimizing and repairing damages that we have already caused in the name of progress we can begin mending our environment. Secondly, by incorporating political and economic activism we can begin making forward progress in bridging the gap between economic growth and environmental stability. Finally, by creating feasible solutions through technological development hopefully we can make continuous growth and the world's ecological stability work as a developing partnership that will stimulate growth and create global prosperity.

I realize that these theories are just ideas and that there are many variables that I have not considered, but I firmly believe that continuous growth and ecological stability are both feasible solutions to our current environmental, political, and social problems.