HOW FREE ARE THE SO CALLED ‘FREE GIFTS OF NATURE’ AND WHAT DOES IT HOLD FOR CAPITALISM?
In early 2013, the international media presented us an interesting news about the sale of canned fresh air in China, the initiative was introduced by a millionaire who is in the recycling business. The sale of canned fresh air was simply as a result of the high rate of air pollution in China due to the increasing rate of industrial activities in the country. For the records, eight millions cans of this canned fresh air were sold in just ten days. As funny as it may sound, this is a really serious matter, being in a capitalist world, some profit seeking business men and multinational corporations may take advantage of this initiative and go to the extent of intentionally polluting the air in order to sell fresh air, and sooner than later fresh air would be on sale all over the world. Just imagining people going to the market to buy air, or people buying fresh air from hawkers on the street.
With the above information we can see that the sale of air is possible, if not imminent, and this would be in addition to the already on sale ‘’free gifts of nature’’ which include; water, land and fire. Of course it is no news to us that water is on sale in every part of the world, land is now one of the most expensive asset anybody can have, especially in Nigeria, as for the case of fire, for you to start a fire, you have to buy matches or a lighter, or good luck with the flints (striking stones or metals together to make fire) and hope you have all the time in the world. With all these happening, the question on every inquisitive individual’s mind is how free are the free gifts of nature? And the obvious answer to this question is that nothing is free anymore, because what was free has now been commoditized.
WHAT DOES THIS HOLD FOR CAPITALISM?
Simply put, Capitalism is an economic system which is characterized by private ownership of property, capitalism is all about making profit from everything, in a capitalist system money is the soviet of all things, and just as the American rapper, Rick Ross says, “if you ain’t talking money, then you talking nonsense”. The German scholar Karl Marx, is one of the foremost critics of capitalism, and he “predicted” that capitalism is its own grave digger, and that it is going to die out and give way to socialism where there would no longer be private ownership of property, but everybody would own everything and people would be given according to their need not according to their greed, as we see today, some countries have attempted to practice socialism to the full but have failed.
With the unfolding of events like the one discussed above, we would see that the end of private ownership (capitalism) is not yet in sight. Simply because people don’t just only own properties like cars, houses, jets e.t.c anymore but go ahead to own what is supposed to be the free gifts of nature. The fact is, paying for something gives you ownership of the thing you pay for. You pay for water, land, fire and every other thing and soon you may be paying for air. This simply means that nothing in this world is free, and as far as nothing is free, people would continue to own things, prolonging the reign of capitalism. So Karl Marx and co. sorry to disappoint you, your “prediction about capitalism” is still going to wait for a very long time.
NNAMDI NONSO.
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this got me thinking about the future. .