In his book,
The Insatiable Machine, author Trevor Jackson points out that capitalism is both both a powerful engine of material improvement and an insatiable force unsustainably chewing through a finite planet. It took centuries of accidents, violence, and political evolution to build a system that could lift average living standards sixteen‑fold while binding workers in Europe to enslaved labor in the Americas and pushing the climate toward catastrophe. Under current conditions, it is hard to imagine the end of capitalism, but easier to imagine capitalism-linked catastrophe.
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link 4That may be because capitalism plugs straight into something far older than factories, stock exchanges or even money. The human appetite for wealth and power is inherent and ancient. Long before anyone spoke of GDP, elites amassed land, tribute, titles and protections for their wealth and power. Today, the elites have vast wealth, data centers, financial clout, and political access with attendant power. The forms of wealth and power change, but the drive to dominate and to insulate oneself from vulnerability persists under dictatorship, aristocracy, empire, and even modern capitalist markets.
Education is sometimes invoked as an antidote. It’s a way to break the spell of demagogues, expose propaganda, and inoculate people at least somewhat against authoritarian deceit, distract and divide tactics. There is good evidence that civic education, historical literacy, and media competence can strengthen democratic norms and make it harder for would‑be tyrants and kleptocrats to consolidate power quickly. Labor unions and social movements, often fueled by knowledge, have at times narrowed inequality and forced concessions from concentrated wealth. Those successes were hard fought and often short-lived.
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link 7Education cannot erase the underlying innate human lust for wealth and power. At best, knowledge can only blunt and redirect it to some extent. Authoritarians understand this. That is why they aggressively act to capture and neuter schools, rewrite curricula, discredit independent media and weaken democratic institutions whenever they gain sufficient political power. At best, an educated public can stretch the length and depth of the “exceptional” periods when democratic institutions, public goods, and shared restraints hold the worst impulses of authoritarianism and kleptocracy in check. In a world ruled by an insatiable capitalist machine, that is probably the most realistic, non-trivial victory that forces for reasonably distributed wealth and power can hope to win.
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Given the human condition and backed by the evidence in the historical record, it seems that about the best the human species can hope for in the long run is reasonably regulated capitalism in a secular, rule of law-based democracy that is focused on service to the public interest before service to special interests. Left to itself and without restraints, capitalism alone will not be very nice to most people. Unrestrained capitalism is compatible with kleptocratic authoritarianism, arguably drawn to it by the human condition.
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