Let's shake up the world

BUSINESS. CLIMATE. WAR. What if we redefined corporate dividends and abolished war?

What’s necessity?

In Shakespeare’s Henry IV, there comes a scene where the king cannot sleep. He wonders that a ship’s boy posted high on a mast as look-out can sleep at his station in the wildest of seas and yet he, in all his comfort, cannot get a wink. Henry is a troubled man. His railing is interrupted by his counsellors, who advise of rebellion fermenting in the North, and the necessity of dealing with it. “Are these things then necessities?” he asks. “Then let us meet them like necessities.”

Necessities. What are those? What is necessary? And what can be dispensed with? Across the ages, innovators and inventors and the insightful have time and again responded with that which seemed impossible, i.e. that nothing is impossible. Even the ancient Archimedes proposed a device that could lift the Earth. And, on that model, men and women have devised solutions to move, not the Earth, but Heaven and Earth. It behoves Mankind, therefore, to embrace the spirit of innovation, to apply insight to invention and redouble its efforts to do the impossible: to preserve the lives of thousands, perhaps millions; to preserve the diversity of species that is so fundamental to our existence; to instil hope and quash despondency; to lead and no longer begrudgingly follow; to not place individuals at the top of the pile, but to preserve the pile; to not save the planet, but to save itself and thereby the planet.

Is it worth saving the planet?

The single biggest stumbling block on the whole ecological movement is cost; be it measured in terms of lost opportunity, limited exploitation, augmented outlay or relinquishment of market power, ecology hits the bottom line. When government spends to save the environment, it costs, the taxpayer; when corporations invest in systems to improve procurement or limit pollution or reduce the burden posed by their products, it costs, the stockholder; when individuals take to the streets to protest, take care how to dispose of waste, take time to select inputs that will contribute to the environment, it costs, the individual. Cost is common to everything that will save the environment. In all else, this results in a cost-benefit analysis, the question being: is it worth it?

The flip side of Is it worth it? is Cost what it may. Cost what it may is the tenet we adopt when the goal to be achieved assumes an importance that outweighs cost. Examples include air-sea rescue, vaccination against disease and, occasionally, military invasions. In the ecological arena, therefore, the debate turns on the two questions: Is it worth it? and Should we do what is necessary, cost what it may?

I don’t believe that anyone has yet calculated the carbon footprint of a war. We know how many tanks are destroyed, how many ships sunk, how much cargo lost, how many lives snuffed out. But, sickened as we are at such numbers, we do not turn to the more aesthetic aspects, such as their carbon footprint. However, we do institute laws, backed with penalties, to oblige people to sort waste, to reduce travel, to fine-tune our ways of life with the mantra that every little counts; every little does count, but only the littles count that are feasible; those that are not, remain untouched. The problem is not feasibility, it is Man’s readiness to attack an issue perceived as impossible. Secondary to that is the question of whether the planet is capable of saving; and with that, whether the pile, us, Mankind is capable of saving. And on that, opinions are divided into four camps: the ayes, subdivided into the we have plenty of times and we have little times; the nays, for whom it’s not worth the effort; and the neutrals, who say there is no problem.

If saving the planet were a garden fête, we could analogise as follows:

• Let’s do it, but we can put off the preparations for a month or two;

• Let’s do it, but we need to get cracking with preparations now;

• Let’s not do it, it will cost us too much; and

• What’s a garden fête? I’ve never heard of a garden fête, can’t conceive of what a garden fête is, and am not interested even if I could.

Few would disagree but that any one of those stances would amount, globally, to an irrelevance. Whether the garden fête goes ahead, prepared for now or later, doesn’t occur or is an unknown in some people’s minds, does not matter a hoot. Does the environment matter a hoot?

Only bullets differentiate war from trade

If warfare leaves an avoidable carbon footprint, then, quite simply, we must eliminate warfare. Or, is that impossible? We’ve not succeeded in 2,000 years of recorded history, but, then again, how hard have we tried? Warfare comes in two forms: the first, the more obvious, is as war; the second, less obvious, is as trade. Trade is warfare, conducted during peacetime. Whereas in war, one party is forced into a position whereby it concedes a victory to an attacker, in trade one party is forced into a position where, whilst the canny victor strives to ensure his defeated partner’s survival (at least until it performs its contract), it also endeavours to maximise its gain, to the cost of the other. It does this at the behest of stockholders. And those in control who obtemper the demands of stockholders have a stake in the gain, called a bonus. This works in war as well: duchies, fiefdoms and earldoms were the prize that generals could expect if they helped to win wars. It’s a system that works, although it is predicated on three factors: the greatest prize goes to him who commands; the graft is done by minions; and all parties accept the system. Acceptance can be forced by enslavement of the minions by the commanders, or it can be contracted, whether explicitly or implicitly through some sort of social contract. Either way, if acceptance is not forthcoming, it is a system that breaks down. Acceptance can fail in the case of strikes, desertions, or revolution.

Can systems be changed?

Systems get changed, be it from below or from above. One cause of change is enlightenment: an unfairness is recognised by a party who has the power to remove it, and the situation is put right. Another is force: the revolution just spoken of. And a third is a recognition by all, perhaps as the result of strikes or threats of revolution, perhaps as a result of enlightened policy, that the system needs changing. The application of forces of change rarely succeeds unless it goes hand in hand with enlightenment. The force, initially resisted, comes to assume not just physical form but moral form, and change comes not because it has no choice but to come, but because it is morally justified as well.

If warfare, be it in the shape of war or of trade, is the system that needs changing, and needs changing because it lies at the root of the climate change challenge, who, then, will be aligning with the two persuaders of change, force and enlightenment? Those who advocate force are held back because they seek an enlightened world, and their enlightenment cautions them against applying the force; the enlightened try persuasion, but baulk at force. Enlightenment is at one and the same time a sine qua non for systemic change, but needs the readiness to apply force, in at least some part, otherwise must concede its futility.

Abolish war. How?

Let me deal quickly with the question of war. We must stop it. Those with the right mind must unite and vow that if others, be they within or without their ranks, usurp the peaceful order, they will face the wrath of all and be destroyed. There is no other way. Because those who would oppose such a policy would themselves destroy the right-minded. The spectrum of war now possesses only two colours: black, and white. On or off. With us or against us. Succumb or fight.

The problem with trade is the people who trade

What drives trade is stockholders. The stockholders of corporations are akin to states: they effectively tell the corporation where to attack. The directors are the generals on the battlefield. The analogy isn’t perfect, but they stand between, on the one hand, the corporation’s workforce, its foot soldiers, and its overlords, the owners themselves. 

The ecological argument, much simplified, is that corporations seek profit at the behest of their stockholders, who engage the services of directors to maximise their dividends, and whom they repay for their efforts with bonuses; in so doing, to some extent or another, they pay heed to the interests of the societies within which they operate; they do some of this because government orders them to (holidays), because of a scarcity of skills, so as to attract the best labour on the market (hospitalisation insurance policies), because they believe it improves their output (Google’s interactivity systems to swap ideas) and, just occasionally, because someone somewhere pricked their social conscience (the environment). Aside from those things that a corporation must do because the law says it must do it, the question of how much hospitalisation insurance they grant, how many extra holidays, how much time is wasted in frivolous interaction, and whether interaction is far from frivolous are all matters falling within policy; policy is driven by stockholders, and is always subject to the cost in terms of dividends in their pockets compared to the benefit, in terms of dividends in their pockets. So, what if we did away with dividends?

At the present, companies are being exhorted to do all they can to protect the environment. Some are fairly good at that, some suck. Very few excel. We can rely on the continuation of this fair, suck, excel mish-mash and hope that everything will turn out fine. Or, we can take matters into different hands. Because, no matter how high-sounding a corporation’s environmental ambitions are, there are few tools available to force them to act. There is one large tool persuading them not to, and that is stockholders.

Would there be problems? You bet!

Are there problems now? You bet!

Rearranging the stock market so as not to eliminate stockholders but rather to reassign their role will be a challenge never before encountered. The stock market is, if anything, a carpet. It is a carpet laid over the expanse of a ballroom. With bubbles in it. Press down on one bubble, another will emerge elsewhere in the ballroom; and stock markets have an abhorrence, if of anything, of change; this is actually a little strange, because people play the stock market hoping for precisely that: change. And yet change ruffles the stock market like nothing else. Reassigning the role of stockholders may well initiate turbulence, but not for all time. Not addressing the climate challenge will certainly cause turbulence, and that turbulence would be for all time. There may be trouble ahead; there is little love and a scarcity of romance; nevertheless, we have to face the music, but cannot afford to dance. These things are necessities; so, let us meet them like necessities.

I have a dream

I had a dream; God spoke to me and he’s pretty stroppy. (Well, they said it in Scent of a Woman, so why not?)

“Hello. Almighty God, Allah, Supreme Being here. You all got your sound on? Good. Let’s Zoom.

Graham’s been on at Me and he’s been thinking about a few problems you’re having down there on Earth. Now, I’m very busy up here, but what he says is happening to the Amazon and with Amazon, well it all has One amazed.

Now, I know Graham sits there on his tod and has quite some things to do, what with repairing the stoop, and painting a Spanish flag and the ironing and everything, but he has had a bit of time to think about the question of “What is wrong with this world, and how come we had a summer where the temperature didn’t dip below 20°C for three months?”

He says trade and war are causing conflict, and Earth is suffering. So, if you don’t mind, let’s end the conflict and switch things around so that there is more unity and togetherness and less shooting each other, shall we?

Good. So, I’ve made some decisions. Concerning two prime areas of concern, if I can just direct your attention to those items on our agenda for the next century or two: war and trade.

First, war.

The world’s nations will be fixed for ever within the borders as they exist on D day.

Disputed territories will be taken under protectorate status by the United Nations or whoever we can get who’s daft enough to agree to do the job. They will be governed in perpetuity by them.

Each country shall govern its own people as it and its people see fit. There is no mandated democracy, autocracy, oligarchy or anything else. You rule your country as your country sees fit. No one will interfere with you and you will interfere with no one else. If you engage in activities that have a seriously deleterious effect on your neighbours – like nuclear power stations, shovelling effluent into a river, or attacking other people’s cyber – you will be ordered to stop. If you don’t stop, you will be destroyed. First your government will be destroyed, and then, if you still don’t stop, your people will be destroyed. We are not mucking around any longer. Do you think Sodom and Gomorrah were a joke?

If you can’t settle your differences with other countries without launching military attacks on them, then you are pathetic.

Stop making these bombs. Put the money where it’s needed, into the welfare of your people. Heck, it’s their money isn’t it? All bombs do is let you go and nick someone else’s money in another country. Now, chaps, that’s hardly fair, is it?

Now, trade.

Laissez-faire is a policy that has led the world to the brink of destruction. And yet no one seems prepared to admit that laissez-faire is the problem. Letting people do what they want and then realising that that has led us to Armageddon just don’t seem to click. Never has a world so wanted to have its cake and eat it.

Trade will continue, nothing wrong with selling stuff abroad. Make it, flog it, get the money. That’s war enough. If you’ve got nothing to make, do basket weaving. Or host a blockchain generator. Or something. You got along before the Internet, you can get along now.

But, companies will no longer have stockholders as we know it. Yes, even USS Enterprise found new forms of life, and the stockholder will be reborn in a new form. Companies can make profits, no problem. Their bank accounts will be held under the supervision of a government trustee. Everyone will get a dividend of 2.5% on their stake in the company. If there isn’t enough to pay 2.5% or whatever it is, you get whatever the dividend works out at. The rest goes into improving life for everyone and stopping global heating. If you think it’s unworkable, you should take a long look at the state of the planet as it currently is. If you think that that’s workable, you live in cloud-cuckoo land and need certifying. It can be arranged.

Companies will no longer be wed to the idea of feathering their stockholders’ nests, but will turn their focus to employing ordinary men and women, so they can raise families and go on holidays to St Tropez. And places like that. But without the plastic.

You don’t need to go to church or believe in Me – we can sort that all out for you in the next life. But just don’t bugger up My nice little world in this life, if you don’t bloody mind.

Now, the modalities are up to you. You invented steam engines and microprocessors and figured out the genome (I’ll never work out how you managed that, I did try to make it as complicated as possible), so, clever clogs, figure out how we’re going to do these little tasks for saving the planet. Won’t take you long.

Any questions?”

Er, no, dear Lord.

It was just a dream. God doesn’t get stroppy in reality. He lets us get on with things and tries to guide us and encourage us, but He doesn’t control things, and He forgives us when we get it wrong.

Abraham Lincoln said you can’t please all of the people all of the time; and Pozzo in Waiting for Godot says there’s just a much happiness in the world as there is unhappiness. H. G. Wells in his book The Time Machine looks at the future as occupied by the Eloi and the Morlocks, in which bliss is apportioned between the happy, the Eloi, and their exploiters, the Morlocks. The Eloi have no work and laze in the sun beside idyllic pools like gods on Olympus. The Morlocks live and work in deep, dark mines underground and, every now and again, sound a siren, summoning the Eloi to their subterranean destiny as slaves, thus according with what both Pozzo and Lincoln said.

But what if Pozzo and Lincoln weren’t right? What if we were able to achieve a status whereby everyone was indeed pleased all the time and unhappiness simply ebbed out of existence? Our world is shaped as it is through forces of nature, which mankind has sought to husband, enjoy and exploit. But the drive to expand in influence and riches that has brought success to many has also brought constructive slavery to many and penury and death to many. Those who deny any evidence of a deity might question their own ineffectiveness in conquering the world with their greed, for, if there is no God, then there is no restraint to their diabolical ambitions, and yet they still fail in their goal of conquest. Is it just work in progress?

A security alliance to assure world peace is a dream; it’s not a pipedream - it is achievable and, while not exactly a blueprint, this piece contains some germs of ideas that could with expertise I do not possess take us somewhere that is a better place than where we are now. And if mankind cannot achieve that, if it cannot achieve a state in which it does not covet what is owned by others, does not desire that which others rely on to exist, where exchange - of labour for purchase power or of goods for value - means exactly that and not extortion, where one does not wage war for material gain, no matter how high the vaunted principle may be, then what are we doing this all for? Why, then, are we even here? To win a contest? And, if so, what, then, is its prize?

William Shatner, famous for his role as a spaceman on TV, recently went to look at the prototype location for his films, his “final frontier”, and he returned to Earth in tears. Not at its beauty but at its desolation. To him it represented nothing but death; it was in looking back, at Earth, that he saw the life and the beauty. A poignant moment.

Ukraine’s Andriy Yermak is putting forward proposals for a new world security and I don’t believe his rhetoric is empty. Ukraine may be in earnest need of it, but to deny that the rest of the world also needs it would be to deny the sorrow wrought over all of recorded history. As for trade, its effects are many, and we must surely seek to eradicate the incentives that cause men to pay scant regard for either their fellow men or the environment in which we all live.

For long, we have been ruled by greed and avarice. It is time to vaunt compassion and understanding. It is to have compassion with one another, and understanding of our universality, that we are here. And, if we cannot in 2,000 years summon the volition to achieve these things owing to the selfish desires that lurk within us, then we are not worthy of the name homo sapiens, we are unworthy legatees of the discoverers of old, we have learned to fight but not to be wise, we lack the truly big picture, and we deserve naught but the destiny that we lay out before us: a red carpet of quicksands.

If we truly seek a new way, we must not for a second imagine it will be easy. It will be hard and it will be turbulent, but the prize, the glittering prize, at the end will be so worth the having - that, we should covet. All we need do is banish our greed, and compassion and understanding will serve us well for much time to come. Till the end of time.