Global Capitalism and Global Warming

I dropped into my local computer shop yesterday to buy a couple of new hard drives. When you work with images you can never have enough hard drives it seems. The usual smiling man appeared behind the counter. I explained what I wanted and his reply surprised me. ‘I wouldn’t buy any hard-drives for a week or two their price has just doubled. They’ve had floods in Thailand where they are all made. I thanked him and said I would pop back in about a month. As I made my way home I pondered on the perils of global warming and finally came to the conclusion they were nothing compared to the perils of global capital. I was after all nothing other than a victim of supply and demand. Leaving aside that some wholesaler had found themselves with a warehouse full of hard-drives and had arbitrarily decided to double their price.

Then of course who created global warming in the first place? None other than the machinations of global capital and their never ending inducements to consume more, so we can have growth and in turn borrow more and continue to live beyond our means. Once manufacturers had a national or regional allegiance. But now Western technology is increasingly farmed off to Asia along with the factories and the jobs because things can be made more cheaply and the profits are correspondingly greater. So in the USA, Germany, France and the UK are jobs are increasingly at risk, but we mustn’t moan, it’s the purity of Capitalism we are told. But does Capitalism still exist or do we confuse it with the greed of a small number of unpatriotic individuals? The banks have had to be bailed out. General Motors had to be bailed out. Where’s the purity of Capitalism in that? Surely the weak and the inefficient go the wall. That’s the purity of Capitalism – a kind of financial Darwinism. Meanwhile it seems that the Chinese own trillions of dollars of American debt and all our Western know-how is continually being siphoned off and exported to line fewer and fewer pockets. I wonder when will the penny drop?

Of course I shall be returning to my local computer man because he looks after my best interests. Meanwhile I’m left wondering what would happen to my business if I doubled my prices over night on a whim?