Thursday, July 23, 2015

Natural capitalism is not conscious capitalism

In this article on Mackey's conscious capitalism Paul Hawken, coauthor of Natural Capitalism, warns: "Without a systematic and coordinated approach to climate change, energy production, oceans, food, militarism, poverty, and other issues, there will be an ecological and corresponding social collapse because the shadow side of private enterprise is parochialism and narrow self-serving interests." These issues are only superficially addressed by Mackey, and when he does it's from a purely libertarian capitalist position.

To further show the differences, see this from a Hawken interview:


"So when it came to titling it for the magazine, we called it Natural Capital -- 'ism.' It had nothing to do with capitalism, as such. It was actually meant to tweak the Mother Jones readers. And some of them were really mad, and my editor was fired for it. And was fired by people who had not really read the article. They felt like it was just about granola capitalism, or we were justifying capitalism. And it had nothing to do with capitalism, and it still doesn't. Now Amory (Lovins) and Hunter (Lovins) interpret it that way. But as a coiner of the term, and as one of the two authors of the book, I can tell you that "Natural Capitalism" is in no way meant to imply or be a justification or bull work to capitalist systems, which I think, are basically pathological. I believe in commerce, I believe in entrepreneurship, I believe in business, I mean I want to make it really clear. But capitalism? No. I don't hold trump with that at all. It was meant to be a double entendre. A pun, a pun."

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