The problem isn’t politics; it’s really economics
Your article on electoral dysfunction (15 November) omits the real problem. It is not democracy; it is the economic system known as neoliberalism. It is creating an obscene level of inequality due to insufficient redistribution of money to counter the natural tendency under capitalism for transfers of wealth to the 1% from the rest of society.
Democracy in its current mode is incapable of preventing this maldistribution of wealth, which leads to a mistrust of the political system.
Don Kerr
Collingwood, Ontario, Canada
• Oliver Bullough’s article is indeed an eye-opener (22 November). Capitalism knows how to circle the wagons when the wealthiest face financial destabilisation or, worse yet, extinction. Yet extinction is what they might be facing if this massive swindle, based on appropriating huge amounts of capital (profits) earned by ordinary working people, continues. Bullough states, “If the richest members of society are able to pass on their wealth tax free to their heirs, in perpetuity, then they will be getting richer than those of us who can’t”.
One can see where this will lead. The gap between the richest and poorest will keep increasing until impoverishment will become so intense that people will rise up in revolution.
The ruling class is sowing the seeds of it own destruction. It seems as though Karl Marx might have been correct regarding the absolute impoverishment of the masses and the inability of capitalism to resolve its own contradictions. We shall see.
Robert Milan
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
• The end point of capitalism is that one person owns and controls everything. The US state of South Dakota understands this and has made a good start to this end.
David Huntley
Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada
A new consumer dawn may be about to break
How dispiriting to read The empire of the box (29 November), a gloomy foretaste of the planet’s formidable future.
But there may be hope. It is not impossible for a new generation to rise out of the debris of discarded cardboard. Following in the wake of Greta Thunberg, this as-yet-unborn generation would attend schools where compulsory core subjects include environmental studies starting at kindergarten level.
It could be the harbinger of a new non-consumer dawn. Every purchase, including food, would have to be justified. People will dress themselves from charity shops, acquire nothing plastic, nothing non-enduring or waste-producing, decry impulse buying and material excess, and use only technology of utility value that does not depend on extractive industries.
Recycling will be for them as routine and unquestioned as milk deliveries were for their great-grandparents.
And when in their studies they learn about the Amazon Age and the days of mass deliveries in the early 21st century, they will be aghast at such consumption, and ask “How could they?”
Jacqueline Walker
Auckland, New Zealand
Sustainable growth is a contradiction in terms
In his list of necessary solutions to the world’s problems (Angela Merkel must go, 29 November), Timothy Garton Ash includes “sustainable growth”. If the expression is taken to mean a 2% increase in consumption year after year, it is clearly a contradiction in terms on a finite planet.
If sustainable growth means the employment of more people to insulate our buildings effectively and to develop the production of more renewable energy, that would make sense.
On the whole, use of the expression “sustainable growth” is unhelpful and should be dropped from our political discourse.
Graham Davey
Bristol, UK
Science can only create mental models of reality
In the article An expanding universe (15 November), Robin McKie quotes Nobel prize-winner Adam Riess: “That suggests we are heading in the right direction in understanding the universe – though it just may be that we have at least one other step to take.” Here Riess makes a questionable assumption. The best that science can do is create another mental model that better fits our observations. The universe is not a human-made machine that can be fully described. It is infinitely complex so there will never be a final explanation of it.
Mental models are like maps: very useful. But we must not forget that our models are just models.
Edward Butterworth
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
