Capitalism’s problem

Fundamental property right

Capitalism as we know it has two egregious flaws: it relentlessly widens inequality and destroys nature.  Its ‘invisible hand,’ which is supposed to transform individual self-seeking into widely shared well-being, too often doesn’t, and governments can’t keep up with the conse­quences.  

the most oft-forgotten fact about property rights is that they do not exist in nature; they are constructs of human minds and soci­e­ties.  The assets to which they apply may exist in nature, but the rights of humans to do things with them, or prevent others from doing them, do not.  Their design and allocation are entirely up to us.

From 

the Baffler

THE MACHINERY—THE ACTUAL FORM AND FUNCTION—of twenty-first-century capitalism is an extractive circuit which quite literally crisscrosses the world. Its global value chains stretch through physical infrastructure and “frictionless” financial flows at the speed allowed by fossil fuels; telecommunications;  and geophysical, technological, psychosocial, and bodily limits and “optimizations.” It connects economically and ecologically dispossessed agricultural communities in the Global South with regimes of hyperwork in the Global North; rare earth “sacrifice zones” with refugees; migrant labor with social reproduction; ocean acidification and atmospheric carbon with profitable opportunity.