How much is enough? Why our current economic model is unsustainable
In the movie Wall Street, Gordon Gekko - an obscenely rich corporate raider - is asked: “How much is enough? How many yachts can you water ski behind?”
I thought about that last week when I read that the CEO of Sibanye-Stillwater, Neal Froneman, received R300 million in compensation for the 2021 financial year.
I tried to wrap my head around that many zeros – all eight of them. My calculator told me that it amounted to over R800 000 per day – if he had worked every day of the year. “What could you possibly do with that amount of money?” I wondered.
“How much is enough?”
At the time I was on a bus leaving a very poor part of Nairobi in Kenya. I had just visited a recycling facility, where desperately poor women were sorting through steaming, wet rubbish with very little protective gear. Some confided in us that they earned a meagre 450-500 Kenyan shillings (less than R70) per day. Of course, I couldn’t help noticing the shining Land Cruiser Prados parked outside the factory – presumably belonging to the owners or managers. Despite the medieval conditions these workers were still better off than those we saw earlier at a landfill site. There, amongst the pigs, people were picking through the stinking, disease ridden mountains of waste in the hope of finding plastic that they could sell for a few cents to feed their families.
Back at the hotel, I switched on the TV, where disease experts were questioning whether the rapid dropping of all COVID regulations in many countries around the world was wise. They emphasized that we would never be able to go back to the same pre-2020 normal. “We have to find a new normal,” all three panelists insisted.
Thinking back over the Froneman article and the scenes of earlier that day, I reflected on the fact that this was not only true of COVID.
It seems to me that we have also arrived at a point where we have to take a wider look at our world and what we have come to accept as normal – such as our current economic system. Since the industrial revolution we have adopted an economic model which is based on an endless pursuit of growth; where headline earnings trump everything and the pursuit of individual wealth is valued more than the common good. Thus, we have come to believe that the exploitation of people (i.e. where CEO’s get R890 000 a day and workers R70) and the destruction of the environment are just unfortunate bi-products or collateral damage to make the system work.
How can we then be surprised when people rise up in angry protest such as we saw in July last year and again this weekend when workers from Sibanye-Stillwater disrupted the May Day rally where the President was due to speak? (According to reports, the reason for their anger was that they wanted R1000 increase per month and Sibanye was only willing to offer R700. The difference - a mere 0,0001% of Mr. Froneman’s 2021 salary.)
I ask again: “How much is enough?”
In his book “Let us dream” Pope Francis relates the Bible story of the Tower of Babel. The tower was built as an ego project by the people of Babel. A huge amount of stone was needed to build this very high tower. According to some ancient texts, if a brick fell it was seen as a huge tragedy and all work stopped and the worker was beaten. However, if a worker fell to his death, the work didn’t stop. There was a line of surplus workers waiting and as soon as someone fell, one of these slaves would step forward and take his place so that the tower could keep on rising.
Pope Francis asks: “What was more valuable, the brick or the worker? Which was considered an expendable surplus in the pursuit of endless growth?
If one thinks of all the workers who die every year in our mines and how they are immediately replaced by lines of desperate applicants, or the working conditions of the waste pickers as well as farm-, domestic- and factory workers, it seems to me that this question remains as valid as ever thousands of years later.
But it can change. There is nothing sacred about our current economic model.
Prof Kate Raworth of University of Oxford in her book Doughnut Economics: Seven ways to think Like a 21st Century Economist, describes a model that would measure the performance of the economy by the extent to which the needs of people are met without destroying the earth.
She is not the only one. There are numerous economists around the world who have accepted that our current model is unsustainable.
In “Wall Street” when asked how much is enough, Gordon Gekko answers: “It's not a question of enough, pal. It's a zero-sum game: somebody wins, somebody loses.”
The problem is that those who win, are a small handful whilst those who lose are the vast majority of people as well as the natural resources of this planet.
And yes, Gekko is right. It is indeed a zero-sum game, because unless we change our relentless pursuit of growth and wealth we will not too far in the future, “profit” or “grow” ourselves into extinction.