The conflict in Canada that places the investment in gas pipelines to advance progress in the export of energy at odds with Wet'suwet'en decisions about use of the unceded territory that is their traditional land base invites consideration of the role of capitalism in 2020 in enriching an oligarchy with little concern for the majority of citizens.
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Robert Reich says capitalism is broken and we need to fix it.
Robert Reich says capitalism is broken and we need to fix it1
Nick Bunker, Policy Analyst, Washington Center for Equitable Growth explains that predistribution, part of capitalism being “rigged” according to Robert Reich, is a rather opaque buzzword. He offers a deeper look at what it means and why it might matter for our thinking efficiency and reducing income inequality.
The term originated in an essay by Yale University professor Jacob Hacker and has caught on more in the United Kingdom than in the United States. In short, this approach prioritizes policies that more directly intervene in the labor market to reduce income inequality over polices that redistribute incomes after taxes are levied. For policymakers concerned about the incomes of those at the bottom of the income ladder, a predistributionist approach would favor raising wages, perhaps by increasing the minimum wage, over increasing government transfers to those workers in the form of, say, earned income tax credits.2
Bill McGarvey asks “What does Bernie Sanders’ win say about the future of capitalism?” “The American dream is rapidly becoming the American illusion,” said Philip Alston, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights in a 2018 interview with the Los Angeles Times. “The equality of opportunity, which is so prized in theory, is in practice a myth, especially for minorities and women, but also for many middle-class white workers.” This disconnect between rhetoric and reality is a foundational element in Eric Cheyfitz’s book “The Disinformation Age: The Collapse of Liberal Democracy in the United States”. He is the Ernest I. White Professor of American Studies and Humane Letters at Cornell University. His teaching focused on literature by and about Native Americans and African Americans that ran counter to traditional American narratives diagnosis.
In The Disinformation Age he argues that the notion of American exceptionalism has been a dominant narrative since our founding and that after World War II—when there was an expanding middle class, labor unions were strong and there was some movement toward economic inclusion of women and minorities—that narrative still had some credibility. Since the Reagan administration, there has been an exponential increase in income inequality that has skyrocketed through six presidencies, Democratic and Republican alike, right through President Barack Obama and President Donald Trump… Our inability to address the catastrophic issues we face is rooted in the fact that “we have trapped ourselves within the limits of capitalism’s imagination,” he writes. In the United States, the boundary markers of those limits are found in our sacred devotion to the concepts of property, profit, production and progress. “These four terms in conjunction with each other,” he says, “produce and guarantee the perpetuation of wealth inequality and environmental disaster.” The path to breaking free from those limits in Cheyfitz’s analysis can be found in “the theory and practice of Indigenous communities.” The traditional foundation upon which native life is built is “based in the idea of balance (kinship, reciprocity and sustainability)” not competition and productivity. Given what is at stake politically, morally and ecologically, failing to recognize the moment we are in and the opportunities available to us will have consequences far beyond a simple failure of the imagination.3
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| Two cultures |
Andrew Kurjata of CBC News reports the alternate route of the Coastal GasLink was too costly and posed greater environmental risks than a route endorsed by Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs. In an interview with reporters on Jan. 27, Coastal GasLink president David Pfeiffer was asked why the company wouldn't move the pipeline's path in order to avoid conflict. "We spent many years assessing multiple routes through the Wet'suwet'en Territory, about six years," Pfeiffer said. "The current route was selected as the most technically viable and one that minimized impact to the environment." Mike Ridsdale, the Office of the Wet'suwet'en's environmental assessment co-ordinator, stated that the alternate route would have followed a path through Wet'suwet'en territory eyed for use by Pacific Northern Gas for an expansion and looping project. The rejected McDonnell Lake route would also run through Wet'suwet'en territory, but would pass farther north, toward Smithers. Mike Ridsdale of the Office of the Wet'suwet'en said Pacific Northern Gas has considered the route for its own pipeline project, depicted in purple. (Pacific Northern Gas/B.C. Oil and Gas Commission) Ridsdale said the route follows "already heavily disturbed areas along the Highway 16 corridor, and away from highly known cultural areas, as well as away from the Skeena headwaters of salmon spawning areas that the Wet'suwet'en rely on." In a letter provided to CBC by the Office of Wet'swuwet'en, Coastal GasLink says it explored the possibility of using the McDonnell Lake route through aerial and computer reviews, and by meeting with representatives of Pacific Northern Gas. The letter — dated Aug. 21, 2014 — also outlines reasons Coastal GasLink rejected the route, including:
It would increase the pipeline's length by as much as 89 kilometres, upping both the environmental impact and as much as $800 million in capital costs. The pipeline's diameter, at 48 inches (121 cm), is too large to safely be installed along the route. (Pacific Northern's pipeline is between 10 and 12 inches (25-30 cm), and the proposed upgrade would be 24 inches or 60 cm.) The McDonnell Lake route would be closer to the urban B.C. communities of Smithers, Houston, Terrace and Kitimat. Re-routing the pipeline would impact an additional four First Nations who had not already been consulted by Coastal GasLink, which would add up to one year of delays to the construction process."From our perspective, the route was not feasible on the basis of those significant environmental and technical issues and therefore route examination ceased," said Coastal GasLink spokesperson Terry Cunha in a followup email to CBC.4
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The possibility that capitalism today is rigged in favour of accumulation of wealth by an oligarchy that has little regard for economic inequality may be at the core of investment policies that put profit before people.
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| Profit priority |
This capitalism stands in stark contrast to the traditional foundation upon which native life is built, in the virtues of balance like kinship, reciprocity, and sustainability.
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