The Wealth Supremacy Mindset
The image above is taken from the cover of the book called 'Teaching White Supremacy' by Donald Yacovone. The cover features a famous painting by John Gast called American Progress. This article discusses the legacy of White Supremacy that we are still teaching in our universities and schools, and gives it the new name 'Wealth Supremacy'.
Redefining White Supremacy as Wealth Supremacy
The ‘White Supremacy’ teaching has morphed into a general sense of arrogance surrounding formal education. In overdeveloped societies academics and well-educated people usually succeed in earning more money than the less well-educated. Consequently they tend to consider themselves superior, and they often seek to impose their judgement and their values on other people and other cultures. This article explains why it is appropriate to call this arrogant mindset ‘Wealth Supremacy’, why it is widespread, how it goes beyond skin colour, and how its roots lie in ‘White Supremacy’.
The Wikipedia entry for ‘White Supremacy’ claims that the institutionalised racial prejudice that was adopted during the European era of colonising and slave trade was a tool to defend the power and privilege held by white people. This is misleading, because the only people who really enjoyed power and privilege during the ‘white supremacy’ era were the wealthy land-owners. Owning money and land, or being brutish enough to successfully steal it from others and thereby become wealthy, has essentially defined our global social hierarchy ever since we ceased to be hunter gatherers. Since that time, it has been the affluent land-owners who have wielded significant power and privilege on the global stage.
Racism Invokes the ‘Divide and Rule’ Principle
The adoption of a racist mindset by those in power simply provided an opportunity to strengthen the arrogance and the brutality employed by the rich and powerful white people to dominate populations in the colonies. The white workers in their own homeland were often treated with similar arrogance and brutality; workers of all skin hues were always essential to sustain people in their positions of wealth and power. This still applies, but the brutality is rarely physical nowadays: instead, it is a deep-rooted psychological hold, born out of coercive commercial advertising. This minimises awareness in the populace that they are being manipulated. Workers are obliged to fit into the frantic model of growth economics to survive.
Convinced of their own supremacy, the rich and powerful found xenophobia was a useful diversion tactic. Despising other groups, or blaming failures on other groups, caused the populace to become preoccupied with sneering and ridicule and fighting between groups, so that they lacked the unity required to challenge their rich and powerful oppressors.
We are currently exceeding the carrying capacity of Earth by about 5 billion people, and overconsuming per capita on average by about 0.8 global hectares. A global hectare is a biologically productive hectare of the Earth’s surface. The rich and powerful are still steering the rest of us in a direction that further degrades our environment daily. This is achieved with the full support of the majority, because of the long-standing psychological hold that keeps them subservient and respectful to the rich and powerful individuals or organisations.
The schools and universities in the affluent and overdeveloped countries teach the wealth supremacy mindset. These countries are often seriously overpopulated with regards to their available biocapacity, and they are always overconsuming on average per capita. With climate breakdown and ecosystems collapse destabilising economies everywhere, people are all looking around for others to blame and oppress. The last thing on their mind is the possibility that their entire modern techno-industrial civilisation was always unsustainable and unjust at its core.
The cultural arrogance that comes with wealth supremacy means that repeated economic failures do not give rise to any better economic models. For example, when the UK economy was struggling, politicians chose to blame their European partners. This resulted in their split away from the Europe Union in 2020. The UK economy is much worse nowadays, and still there is no review of the economic model. Instead, immigrants are the new scapegoat.
Immigrants are becoming a popular scapegoat the world over. As the global economy continues to nosedive, people are desperately trying to escape failing economies and ecosystems. Raising resentment against immigrants is a way to distract from the reality that the world has an unsustainable economic model.
When we see right-wing governments seeking to block immigrants whilst encouraging local child birth, this reflects the supremacy view that believes ‘our’ culture is the best so we want more of ‘us’ but we don’t want any more of ‘them’. The rising number of immigrants globally is just another symptom of the violence and poverty that arises from an unsustainable, and ecocidal economic model.
Many are waking up to the deep injustices that are required to fuel the overdeveloped economies in the affluent countries. The term ‘woke’ has become a useful insult to throw at anyone who reveals some aspect of the hypocrisy that is built-in to the wealth supremacy society that now dominates the overdeveloped world.
Learning a Little from Two World Wars
During the two World Wars there arose some understanding that the landed elite were not always wise in the way that they wielded their power and privilege. Our creative community in drama and arts helped to reveal the frequent folly of the rich officers who sent hoards of men to their deaths during World War I. For example, skilful ridicule was achieved in the UK comedy series - Blackadder.
Likewise, poignant humour is invoked to reveal the helplessness and vulnerability of the wealthy in a play by J.M. Barrie. The Admirable Crichton was written in 1957, it tells the story of a ship-wrecked wealthy aristocratic family who come to rely on the initiative and ingenuity of their butler and other servants for their survival. The younger members of the aristocratic family begin to mature emotionally as they enjoy the freedom and the challenges of surviving in the wild. As time passes, with no hope of rescue, the butler becomes the revered leader of the little isolated community, and the daughter of the aristocrat even hopes to marry him. After being rescued, the old roles of wealth supremacy and dominance have to be resumed.
This play demonstrated how real survival skills are often unlearned by the rich and well-educated people. This is often the case throughout the overdeveloped affluent countries in Europe nowadays. Many of their civilians would have no idea how to survive without the fossil-fuelled infrastructure that supports them in comfort; and there is simply not the space nor the biodiversity for these people to attempt self-sufficiency anyway. This does not apply in the USA as yet; for, although they have horrendously high overconsumption per capita, they have not yet arrived at the same levels of overpopulation as Europe. There are already some ‘prepper’ communities emerging as people can see that civilisation collapse is now unfolding. Billionaires are reportedly building bunkers.
After the genocidal atrocities exhibited during the second World War, and with the growing impact of technology in all walks of life, there were many attempts in the UK, Europe, and the USA, to address both wealth inequality and xenophobia. This period allowed many people in those countries to be able to own their own houses. However, these assets are now steadily drifting back into the hands of the very wealthy. There are several reasons for this reversal of the post-war trend.
Why Wealth Inequality is Growing
The Inflation Reduction Act passed by the USA in 2022 is just one example of money that is in theory addressing climate change, but in practice is accelerating ecosystems collapse and increasing wealth inequality. We cannot address wealth inequality without taxing the property assets owned by the very rich. Note that a policy of this type has been implemented in China. There are other reasons which are being revealed by a growing number of ‘out-of-the-box’ writers who are challenging and analysing growth economics and global geopolitics from many different angles:
Together, this new breed of economists and revelatory authors are explaining how our financial model causes wealth inequality to increase, and causes our politicians to become pawns to the very rich. They are exposing the influence that wealthy individuals and organisations have in the media, politics, and within our education system.
The excellent efforts from all these authors are helping to alter the wealth supremacy mindset, and open minds a little bit. However, these authors do not address overpopulation nor overconsumption, nor the ecocidal role that growth economics plays in our economy. They do not mention ecological overshoot, mass extinction, I=PAT, nor ecosystems collapse. None of these items are on the radar at all at the moment; our academics are entrenched in the supremacy mindset, so they cannot bring themselves to admit the extraordinary level of danger to which we are now all exposed. Instead they preach false hope, and unrealistic suggestions that we can fix our collapsing ecosystems with more People, more Affluence, and more Technology (ref I=PAT).
Mindset Shift or World War III?
The wealth supremacy mindset is very arrogant. It will not admit that we cannot solve our ecological problems without an equitable economic Degrowth exercise that addresses both overpopulation and overconsumption. It delivers such a deeply entrenched sense of superiority and entitlement, that we are not allowed to admit our abject failure to steer in a wise direction. Rich universities do not wish to break away from teaching the wealth supremacy mindset, for they cannot imagine any other model. Thus, our academics and scientists just tinker with technical innovation rather than consider profound mindset shift. Delusional technical solutions are pursued, and only a tiny minority point out that overpopulation and wealth inequality must be curbed before we can become sustainable.
Academics deliberately overlook the I=PAT insight from environmental science. This insight reveals that the three main drivers that cause humans to degrade the natural environment are: population size, affluence, and technology. Neither overpopulation nor overconsumption are being addressed in a noticeable manner. This barrier in our discourse is preventing a global socio-economic mindset shift in which we collectively aspire to return within the carrying-capacity of the Earth.
Instead, there is a rise of the political far-right in the USA, the UK, and Europe. There are numerous genocides and brutal resource conflicts underway globally; as the wealth supremacists try to extract resources for their ecocidal transition to ‘renewable’ energy sources. The most visible genocide is the one in Israel which is being live-streamed by Israeli soldiers proudly posting their war crimes on social media. This reveals the profound hypocrisy within the USA, the UK, and Europe who, to date, are all declaring their support for Israel. The International Court of Justice that was set up to prevent the recurrence of the atrocities that we saw in World War II with the genocide of the Jews by Germany, is now proving itself powerless to stop the slaughter of Palestinians. The USA, the UK, and Europe are still openly providing financial and psychological support to Israel to continue disrupting the Middle East, as well as the genocide of Palestinians.
The universities in the main support Israel. They need to lead the way in condemning the genocide. They also need to lead the way in condemning the unsustainable global economic model. Until the academics lead the way, we shall never see any political party suggesting an economic model that differs from the ecocidal and therefore suicidal model of pronatalism and growth economics. Therefore, the onus is on academics to find some humility, and to admit that we are steering a very violent and unwise direction right now.
Inequality is Perpetuated by Wealth Supremacy Education
The UK education system was designed to fuel the industrial revolution. It was exported to the USA and the former UK colonies, and many other parts of the world. It is much admired because it is designed to fuel GDP growth. Thus, the wealth supremacy mindset is taught in many schools and universities worldwide. Students are persuaded to accept the unequal distribution of land and wealth. Students are taught to believe that if they work hard they can ‘succeed’. The media and coercive consumerism then encourages young adults to want a family, a house, a car and to feel free to spend the money earned however they choose, within the law.
Therefore, in our dominant 'wealth supremacy' society, when someone becomes a ‘success’ it will usually involve becoming wealthy, and it is most likely that they will do considerable ecological harm to Earth during their life. ‘Successful’ people are likely to have children and buy ever more non-essential goods and services when they increase their salaries. Anyone who manages to climb this ladder sees it as their right to spend their money however they wish within the law. As yet, there is no law against ecocide, and the laws that are proposed do not challenge the ecocidal qualities of growth economics.
Topics such as cultural diversity, ecological equity, healthy ecosystems and biosphere are all secondary to our first allotted task which is to work hard to sustain the ecocidal global economy into which we are born. In this way, most people in the global North have been are taught to serve this self-destructive unsustainable cycle.
The priorities and beliefs within our wealth supremacy culture, mean that the individuals and institutions that exhibit the greatest aptitude for exploiting natural and human resources, are the ones who have steadily acquired power and influence over the fate of the majority. At the same time, those who have done the least environmental damage, are increasingly disempowered and dispossessed of land.
Anyone who does not fit into the dominant wealth supremacist worldview is often viewed with contempt and considered a failure or a leech on society. Our legal system has been constructed to protect the assets for the affluent. Therefore, it is engineered to overwhelm any dissent against the status quo. For example, Rupert Murdoch and Elon Musk have purchased powerful platforms to amplify their own opinions.
Affluent people can use their power to continue to reach out to grasp all the opportunities to exploit Earth’s remaining richness. They can also use their power to silence any objections to the many regional conflicts that arise as a consequence, for example: indigenous people who are being displaced, killed, or exploited. Some countries suffering such tragedy right now: Palestine, Sudan, Congo, Yemen, Ukraine, the Maasai in Tanzania.
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The wealth supremacy model encourages the most belligerent and bold amongst humankind to rise up and dominate over others.
The Wealth Supremacy Mindset
Because so many countries have inherited the same education system that originated in the UK, their leaders usually follow the wealth supremacy mindset. For example William Ruto the president of Kenya, had enough money to bribe the electorate to vote for him. How Ruto acquires so much money might be explained, if he was ever convicted of the corruption charges that have been levelled at him in the past.
In many ex-colonies, leaders were often assisted into their position with the help of the white colonisers who were keen to instal the same mindset globally. The wealth supremacy mindset teaches a shared belief that we must maintain the modern techno-industrial society that currently dominates global commerce, militarisation, and geopolitics.
Former UK colonies were exploited commercially and were aggressively persuaded to become locked into a trading dependence. In most cases they now grow non-essential foods like tea, coffee, tobacco, and chocolate for the benefit of the wealthy overdeveloped countries. In this way the local ecosystems and biodiversity were reshaped and damaged to supply non-essential commodities; this resulted in less land available for the locals to farm and for wildlife to roam. This commercial dependence still exists today. The wealth supremacist mindset views this process as ‘helping them to develop’. It disregards the injuries that were inflicted on their ecosystems and their cultures for the benefit of the coloniser. It also disregards the overall injury to Earth’s ecosystems, for which all of life on Earth is now paying the price.
In most of the global North we teach the supremacy of affluence. We believe that affluent individuals and institutions are entitled to maximise the exploitation of nature and human resources. The existing hierarchy of power is misrepresented to the public as a meritocracy and a democracy. Matt Kennard explains in this interview how rich corporations and rich individuals are now running the show, rather than politicians. For example, the USA recently saw the Israel lobby spend millions of dollars on advertising to ensure that pro-Palestine nominees like Cori Bush were not selected. Elon Musk is openly trying to bribe registered voters.
Democracies morphing into Oligarchies
Another example arose in the UK, when the Israel lobby smeared the labour leader Jeremy Corbyn as an antisemite. This happened before the widespread realisation that Zionists had been deliberately conflating anti-Zionism with antisemitism to silence critics of the decades long ethnic cleansing operation in Israel. This is an example of how democracies can turn into oligarchies. The government in the USA and the UK are both at the mercy of rich organisations like those that make up the Israel lobby. Consequently, the UK Labour party under Keir Starmer is just as right-wing as the previous Conservative government. As we watch the genocide in Israel unfold, it becomes increasingly obvious that we are at the mercy of the rich and powerful who benefit from arms production and sales.
Supremacy infects the United Nations SDGs
The wealth supremacy mindset is firmly embedded in many of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, abbreviated as the SDGs. Although many realise that our global culture is unsustainable, neither pronatalism nor growth economics have been declared openly as key drivers in our ecocidal impact.
The SDGs assume that the wealth supremacy civilisation is superior to the local culture of subsistence farmers, and that they therefore need to be educated and developed to adopt this mindset. This is a false assumption. Subsistence farmers have their own cultures, which often involve a profound connection and respect for the natural environment. These cultures are far healthier emotionally than the exhausting wealth superiority treadmill that is drenched in non-essential commerce, and brutal use of militarisation.
Both subsistence farming and the culture of wealth supremacy have ecocidal qualities; since whenever resources appear to be plentiful, we all have a tendency to overpopulate. Wherever there are more affluent individuals there is also scope to overconsume and to take more than we need from Nature. This problem is minimal in areas of the world that are dominated by subsistence farming, and people have very little money.
Sadly, the SDGs do not call on the overdeveloped and overconsuming wealth supremacy countries to reduce their ecological footprint per capita. Neither do they call on anyone to actively educate about overpopulation and ecological overshoot; nor do they suggest that it would be wise to facilitate free access to contraception, sterilisation, and abortion procedures wherever these would be welcomed. On the contrary, in many American states abortion is now banned.
Those who are entrenched in the wealth supremacy mindset can learn a great deal from subsistence farmers. The fact that the pledge to eliminate poverty (SDG1) takes precedence over eliminating hunger (SDG2) implies unwisely that money is more essential for survival than food; this is clearly not the case. It also reflects the desire to entrap subsistence farmers into the wealth supremacy mindset.
Suggestions submitted to the UN High-level Advisory Board
In 2022 two papers were submitted to a public consultation run by the UN High-level Advisory Board on Effective Multilateralism. Flowcharts were provided representing a global mindset shift to return us within the carrying capacity of Earth. These flowcharts are replicated at the end of this article, with links to the two documents, A Framework for Maximum Mitigation, and The Ego to Eco Journey in Leadership and Governance.
Xenophobia as an Optional Extra
In many countries the wealth supremacy viewpoint is deliberately augmented with ‘us’ and ‘them’ xenophobia. For example, Islamophobia is a popular trend right now in the UK, Europe, and the USA, with Iran being selected as the bogey man. In Israel this is combined with the genocidal Zionist ideology that is taught in their schools. Xenophobia as a diversion tactic still works to confuse the majority, and usually ensures that they do not unite to topple the powerful wealthy elite. Xenophobia is an easier mindset to adopt than facing up to the frightening reality of climate breakdown and ecosystems collapse. Most middle-class people find it simpler to blame another for their misfortunes, rather than to seriously consider the emotional challenge of imminent extinction or the complex challenge of reducing their ecological footprint.
Can We Exit the Wealth Supremacy Culture?
The wealth supremacist believes that the modern techno-industrial global civilisation that dominates the world today, is vastly superior to the civilisations that have trodden gently on their indigenous lands. Most people within wealth supremacy societies have adapted to some extent to this mindset; and will, to some extent, have accepted the wealth inequality that comes with it.
The wealth supremacist believes that individuals and organisations that successfully and efficiently exploit natural and human resources are fully entitled to become wealthy and powerful by these methods. They view this arrangement as a meritocracy, even though they themselves will suffer from the ecological damage and the inequality that results.
A wealth supremacist will struggle to imagine an alternative global society where huge wealth and power inequalities do not exist. They will not believe that humans are capable of coexisting peacefully with a shared aspiration to shrink the global economy and population back within the carrying capacity of Earth. Such an idea is completely alien to the mindset that they have been taught and lived all their lives. It requires a huge leap of imagination for an individual or institution to evolve from being a cog in the wealth supremacy hierarchy, to envisaging a global community focussed on equitable economic downsizing.
Educational institutions in the global North, teach us to fear that if we deliberately slow down the frantic production line of non-essential goods, services, and weaponry that drives our globally ecocidal machine, we shall all be thrown into global economic crisis. Money is rated above stable ecosystems, we fear economic failure more than ecosystems collapse; even though the latter is now causing the former, and our economists remain blind to this reality.
Money is only of use to people living in a thriving economy. The ever growing global economy is an illusion that is maintained by those who are trapped in the wealth supremacy mindset. As ecosystems collapse, propping up business-as-usual requires more and more money. Our economic growth bubble is already bursting and deflating. The essentials for survival, food and clean water are getting harder to source. The USA’s persistence with printing more and more money is simply increasing the global wealth inequality and ecocidal activities.
Our fear of challenging the wealth supremacy culture keeps us trapped in an ecocidal social model which increasingly destabilises the ecosystems and biosphere on which we all depend for survival. A global economic crisis is becoming increasingly likely because we stubbornly choose to adhere to the wealth supremacy mindset. The global economy has been in decline for decades, with wealth inequality steadily on the rise. There are many symptoms of growing financial instability.
For example, the Financial Conduct Authority in the UK is steeped in escalating misconduct that has been spiralling out of control for decades. The Transparency Task Force organisation provide a long list of illegal financial practices that they laboriously challenge through the judicial system. A judicial system that is already overwhelmed by the volume of cases. A judicial system that is designed to perpetuate wealth supremacy and the inequality that comes with it.
Who Is Not a Wealth Supremacist?
Those of us who live our lives surrounded by modern comforts, and have never been exposed to a lack of food or lack of drinkable water, will all be trapped in the wealth supremacy mindset. Most of these people will be unaware of the bullying and exploitative system required for their comfortable lives to continue. As mentioned earlier, there are now many voices emerging that are challenging our economic model and our worldview, and they are coming at it from a multitude of angles. This includes many little-known voices like my own, on authoring platforms like Medium and Substack. Some of the voices, like Chris Hedges, were forced out of mainstream media because of the courageous battles that they fought on behalf of the oppressed.
There is an avalanche of debate unfolding at the moment amongst those who have been trapped within the wealth supremacy culture their entire lives. A few can see the unfolding climate breakdown and ecosystem collapse driving global economic collapse. Many can see the moral failure of the USA, and the UK to prevent Israel’s horrific genocide of the Palestinian people. Many can see the possibility of a third World War looming and are asking question ‘How can we avoid WWIII?’, ‘What direction should we head in?’, ‘Should we stop doing what we are doing?’
If you have reached the point where you are asking such questions, the flowcharts below may give you some ideas. They come from two papers that I submitted to the UN in 2022, A Framework for Maximum Mitigation, and The Ego to Eco Journey in Leadership and Governance
A Framework for Maximum Mitigation