Rationing

I was discussing the notion of rationing with a colleague the other day in the context of placing limits on capitalist consumption. The hosepipe ban imposed on us by the Water Companies in the South East reminded us of rationing due to the droughts arising from the global warming of climate change.

Rationing is a reminder of war years and scarcity. I am reading a book by Jason Hickel ‘Less is More’ at the moment, who has written alarmingly about how capitalism is extracting profit from a depleting planet. He emphasizes that capitalism is an economic system that creates scarcity. I often forget this when the conversation is about growth which suggests abundance. The capitalists who big up consumption and growth as the road to happiness resist the notion of limits, except those they produce. We have had a period of limitation during Covid, where we were limited socially and confined to our homes. This was definitely not popular to most. In future, we may need to limit our travel, not a popular suggestion in this holiday season.

But think of the rationing that is doled out to the workers and their families, by the fossil fuel industries. By the corporations and the public sector, that ration our days of ease to a couple days a week and a few weeks holiday a year, when research has shown it is perfectly possible to maintain productivity working 4 days a week.

So green limits? At the start of Covid, both of us thought that fewer cars and airplanes improved the air and noise quality of our streets. We agreed that our quality of life got a bit better. My brother said, at the start of Covid, he quite liked walking around the empty streets of Covent Garden, where he works. I tend to cheer when I hear of the difficulties of air travel companies.

Food rationing seems more and more likely. Food banks are perhaps an early pre-curser to widespread use of defacto rationing where the financialization of the economy has extracted so much profit that wages are no longer adequate to cover the basics of food. According to Hickel, starvation was very much part of the playbook of early capitalists to force peasants to accept poor working conditions as they enclosed the common land.

Is it the word rationing? Does it suggest hardship and lack? A war footing, perhaps, with overtones of fear and solidarity.