Have We Had Enough of Capitalism?

And why do we only get two choices?

Photo by William Gibson on Unsplash

Since 2010, the well-known pollster Gallup has been asking Americans about their perceptions of Capitalism and Socialism. According to a recent Gallup poll, only 54% of Americans view capitalism favorably, down from 60% in 2021. Here is how the data looks from 2010 up until today.

If you extrapolate this trend out, Socialism will pass Capitalism as the most popular economic ‘ism” in America in about 2055. Just one problem, we should be well into collapse by then. One other problem: Socialism is not the only other way to organize an economy. That Gallup focuses on only these two options is not surprising, but also a bit infuriating. I’ll get to that in a bit. But first, let’s dig a bit deeper into the survey.

According to the survey, the opinion of “Big Business” in America is even worse.

But “big business” is such a silly term, and big business makes an easy villain. Most people in the US are employed by small businesses - which they like. According to the same survey, Americans are overwhelmingly positive toward small business (95%). The big business question is slightly interesting, but I don’t think there is much news there. Most people are positive about small business because their lives revolve around small businesses. It is interesting to see that “big business” has a far more negative score than Capitalism, as the two are so intertwined. Each depends on each other to maintain their grip on power. Perhaps people blame companies more because they are more identifiable. It is easier to blame Coca-Cola for something than an abstract concept like Capitalism that doesn’t have a headquarters, or a CEO you can loathe.

The old Capitalism / Socialism two step.

But why is Gallup asking only about capitalism and socialism? I checked out the data that Gallup linked to in the survey and saw that those are the only economic systems given as choices to survey respondents.

That’s like asking people their preferred ice cream flavor, but only allowing them to choose chocolate and vanilla - and chocolate and vanilla mixed together is not an option either. But that is exactly what America is. Socialism is all around you. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the whole insurance industry, the revenue sharing of the most popular sport in America, the NFL. All are pretty socialist.

Socialism and Capitalism exist together in most countries around the world, as do policies and ways of knowing and ways of living that don’t fit in either system.

Is a community garden communism, or is it just being a good neighbor? Is the “buy nothing movement” actively anti-capitalist, or is it just people realizing they shouldn’t waste things for no good reason.

Get your head out of the Cold War Gallup.

I challenge the people at Gallup, and the rest of the economic and financial world to look beyond the economic paradigms of the last century. Failing to do so is just lazy.

Capitalism and socialism aren’t the only isms out there. Why don’t we ask people if they want to return to a feudal way of life where they are serfs and all the wealth and property belong to a few people. You might want to look out the window and ask that question, because in case you haven’t noticed, that is where we are going. Some clowns are even writing essays warning of Neo-feudalism on this platform.

If you ask former Greek Finance Minister, Yanis Varoufakis, we are already in a techno-feudal society. I think I may have to write a separate essay on this one, but in a nutshell, Technofeudalism Technofeudalism suggests that modern tech companies operate like the feudal lords of yore, controlling data and information to the extent that the average person has very little agency. The reality we live in is one that is curated by algorithms and what brings the most profit to the tech feudal lords.

I politely ask the people at Gallup to ask questions about a sharing economy (those community gardens and buy nothing). They should ask people about their feelings on donut economics or a well-being economy so that people know those are options. Ask them if they feel that they live in a neo-feudal or techno-feudal world. The answers will be much more enlightening than the tired Capitalism vs. Socialism trope.

And if you are going to ask about capitalism, why don’t you ask about it this way:

“Do you prefer and economic system that concentrates wealth in the hands of few, introduces false scarcity into the world by capturing the commons and forces most people in that system to work more than they naturally want to or need to just to keep the system profitable for those at the top, while forcing us to overconsume to the point that we are destroying our ecological life support system just to keep profits up?”

Ask it that way. Let me know the results.

Capitalism isn’t evil. It just doesn’t work.

Capitalism is just a loose collection of people who have loosely agreed to loosely follow a loose set of rules that keep regulation loose so that those at the top can be loose with their ethics and be handsomely rewarded. That really doesn’t work out well for most people. Instead of pretending that capitalism and the old Soviet model of governance are the only ones on offer so as not to invite descent, let’s open the floor to other ideas.

I chose “Degrowth is the answer” for the title of this blog not because I think Degrowth is a Utopia (nothing is), but because capitalism isn’t one either, and we are told that it is. Capitalism only works for a small subset of folks at the top, and the rest of us get a lot of decent toys in the short-term, and a dead planet in the long-term. There has to be a system we can build that works better.

And here’s a little secret: you can take the things that work from capitalism, socialism, feudalism, a gift economy, community collaborations, and just being a good neighbor. You can swirl chocolate, vanilla and strawberry ice-cream together. Where is our Neapolitan economic system? Let’s talk about that, and survey people about that instead of just pretending and we live in a global world with only two news outlets, two soft drinks, two streaming services, two books to read, two friends to talk to, and two economic systems to choose from.

A gentle challenge to the folks at Gallup: Survey people about what they think of degrowth policies. You will find that they generally like all of them. And then survey our leaders and ask them why they won’t give the people what they want.

I did my own survey.

Those who have been reading this blog for a while know that on Fridays I set up the Monday essay by sharing a “Terrifing/Inspiring Thought of the Week” that refers to Monday’s essay. I shared the headline from the Gallup poll with my readers last week and asked them if the loss in faith capitalism was terrifying or inspiring.

I think you could have guessed the results from this crowd.

I know that 44 respondents from the subscribers of a “pro degrowth” blog do not make a statistically significant sample. But you know who does have access to such a sample? Gallup. I invite them to steal this question for their next survey.