One to Zero: What Capitalism Ignores, and How to Build the Future
In his book Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future, Facebook investor Peter Thiel argues that founders should build startups that are so innovative they don’t have competitors. It’s best, as the title indicates, to go from zero (nothing) to one (something original). If you do this, you’ll have a monopoly. And this is good because, according to Thiel, “monopoly is the condition of every successful business.”
Thiel might be right about all of this. But what Thiel doesn’t account for — and what capitalism itself doesn’t account for — is the process of going in the opposite direction, from something back to nothing, the way nature does. Life gives way to death, which creates nutrients that give way to life. One to zero to one to zero to one.
Capitalism is good at getting products on shelves, but it isn’t so concerned beyond that — about the full life cycle of products. It doesn’t account for going from one to zero, and so it ultimately results in a lifeless, flat-lined zero.
- We produce more than a million plastic bottles every minute. More than 90% end up in landfills instead of being recycled.
- We cut down a forest the size of Portugal every decade and leave much of the land barren instead of replenishing 100% of what we cut.
- We create products with indestructible toxic chemicals that poison our bodies and have been found in breastmilk “at levels nearly 2,000 times what is considered safe in drinking water.”
Why is this happening?
Because, as the writer David Bollier says, “Markets do not really care about human need; what matters to them is consumer demand.” And since consumers demand going from zero to one, we forget about going from one to zero. That’s why we produce billions of plastic bottles, even while we ingest 70,000 microplastic particles a year against our best interests.
Framed in a more positive light: If you want to make money, you must “create value for people with money,” as Gumroad founder Sahil Lavingia says. And it’s true. That’s the secret. Create a product that can be sold to people who have money, or convince venture capitalists that they can sell their share in your company to someone else for more money. That’s how this game works. Amass money for those who already have it, and you’re gold.
It follows that groups without money can’t win. Children, animals, trees, our descendants. They’d plead with us not to harm them if they could. But they can’t. They don’t have the money. So we do what our current system demands and go from zero to one, full stop.
Groups without money can’t win. Children, animals, trees, our descendants. They’d plead with us not to harm them if they could. But they can’t. They don’t have the money.
To see why this system is a dead end, consider a thought experiment about an artificial intelligence that’s programmed to do one task: Create paperclips. This AI takes all the materials it can find and turns those materials into the single product it’s designed to create. Paperclips, paperclips, paperclips. A world full of them. In the process, the AI lays waste to Earth’s natural resources. The AI doesn’t mean harm. It’s just doing its job.
Such is our current system — a system that’s designed to turn everything on the planet into capital.
But you can’t grow a forest from a plank of wood. When everything’s capital, that’s the end. We break nature’s cycle, and then the cycle breaks us.
Perhaps you’ve seen that a majority of young Americans now have a negative view of capitalism. Perhaps you’ve seen the responses as well: “So you want communism? Like the Soviet Union?? Venezuela???” It’s all a false binary. Contemporary capitalism and authoritarian communism are not the only two possible modes of human existence, and social and economic systems from the past 300 years won’t get us through the next 300.
Certain countries are already making inroads on this front. Norway, for instance, has reached recycling rates of 90%+ through its deposit return scheme, which combines market forces, government regulation, and a shared sense of public responsibility to help people view all single-use containers as borrowed rather than purchased. The country isn’t free of problems (as evidenced by the fact they’re recalling foods containing toxic pesticides). In addition, some people might argue that their system is still, in fact, capitalism, while others might call it socialism.
Whatever label we use for the new model we desperately need, one thing is clear: We must account for the full life cycle of what we make. Creating a wooden plank isn’t the end of the process; planting a replacement tree is. Putting tuna on a shelf isn’t the end of the process; replenishing the fish is. Selling a cleaning product isn’t the end of the process; ensuring that the chemicals used can safely return to nature instead of live forever in our bodies is.
We need a system that, in a phrase, accounts for going from zero to one and back to zero. We can’t wall ourselves off from nature and pretend we’ve transcended it. We must follow the cycle of life and death and life and death and life. Even recycling falls short in many ways, as a bottle recycled 1,000 times never gives way to new nutrients the way nature’s cycle does. In so many ways, we need completely new ways of envisioning the world.
Is it possible? I believe so. “We live in capitalism,” wrote the author Ursula K. Le Guin. “Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings.” Then she added, “Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings.”
Those without power or money would plead with us to imagine their future if they could. We should listen.
