Quote image editor
“When capital has bumped up against limits to profit-growth in the past, it has found fixes in things like colonisation, structural adjustment programmes, wars, restrictive patent laws, nefarious debt instruments, land grabs, privatisation, and enclosing commons like water and seeds. Why would it be any different this time? Indeed, a study by the ecological economist Beth Stratford finds that when capital faces resource constraints, this is exactly what happens: it turns to aggressive rent-seeking behaviour. It seeks to grab existing value wherever it can, with clever mechanisms to suck income and wealth from the public domain into private hands, and from the poor to the rich, exacerbating inequality.” — Jason Hickel
When capital has bumped up against limits to profit-growth in the past, it has found fixes in things like colonisation, structural adjustment programmes, wars, restrictive patent laws, nefarious debt instruments, land grabs, privatisation, and enclosing commons like water and seeds. Why would it be any different this time? Indeed, a study by the ecological economist Beth Stratford finds that when capital faces resource constraints, this is exactly what happens: it turns to aggressive rent-seeking behaviour. It seeks to grab existing value wherever it can, with clever mechanisms to suck income and wealth from the public domain into private hands, and from the poor to the rich, exacerbating inequality.