What can be done? Well, the governments of the world can undertake
what amounts to a vast clean-up campaign and a vast campaign of organic
renewal. The problem is the cost of an effective operation, which is enormous,
and thus must be paid by someone via some form of taxes. There
are only two ‘someones’: either the firms that are considered to have been
the perpetrators of the waste or the rest of us. If it is the former, the pressure
on profit margins will be impressively high. If it is the latter, the tax
burdens will mount significantly, a problem to which we are coming.
Furthermore, there is not much point in clean-up and organic renewal if
the practices remain as at present, since it would amount to cleaning an
Augean stable. Hence, the logical inference is to require the total internalization
of all costs. This, however, would add still further to the pressure
on the profits of individual firms. I do not see any plausible solution
for this social dilemma within the framework of a capitalist world economy,
and hence I suggest that this is the second structural pressure on the
accumulation of capital.