Implications of the Biocultural Ethic for Earth Stewardship - Earth Stewardship: Linking Ecology and Ethics in Theory and Practice - page 124

Box 9.1. (continued)
It is critical to note that plutonomy is indifferent to the rest of humans as
well as to the rest of non-human living beings . A main socio-ecological
problem is the association of the accumulation of wealth with unrestricted
consumerism and a governance regime of indifference toward those who
are irrelevant to plutonomies today, “the rest.” A main ethical problem is
that under plutonomic regimes, the value of capital is placed above the
value of the life of “the rest” who represents the vast majority of human
and non-human beings. In order to avoid the commodifi cation of the labor
of non-plutonomic humans and the life of other-than-human beings, it is
necessary to change narrow economic discourses, structures, and policies
that today override fundamental ethical values and ecological scientifi c
understanding and advice, hindering the implementation of an urgently
needed Earth stewardship.
own rarefi ed economic bubble” (Freeland 2011 , p. 2). Plutonomy (from Greek
plouton = wealth; nomos =rule or law) is a combination between plutocracy and
economy, and Freeland critically states that:
The rise of the new plutocracy is inextricably connected to two phenomena: the revolution
in information technology and the liberalization of global trade. Individual nations have
offered their own contributions to income inequality—fi nancial deregulation and upper-
bracket tax cuts in the United States; insider privatization in Russia; rent-seeking in regu-
lated industries in India and Mexico. But the shared narrative is that, thanks to globalization
and technological innovation, people, money, and ideas travel more freely today than ever
before. (Freeland 2011 , p. 14)
The unregulated free market has allowed some persons (individuals or corpo-
rate entities) 4 to accumulate unlimited wealth (Piketty 2014 ). The excessive accu-
mulation of wealth and lack of limits on the free market and associated consumption
4 A legal person is a subject of rights and obligations that exists, not as an individual but as an
institution that is created by one or more individuals to fulfi l a social objective, which may be for
profi t or not for profi t. Hence, along with individual people there are also legal persons which are
entities that the law accords and recognizes as having legal personality and, consequently, the abil-
ity to act as legal persons - that is, the capacity to acquire and to hold real estate of all kinds, to
incur obligations and to engage in legal actions. In the case of the United States of America, cor-
porate personhood is a legal concept in which a corporation may be recognized as an individual in
the eyes of the law. This doctrine forms the basis for legal recognition that corporations, as groups
of people, may hold and exercise certain rights under the common law and the U.S. Constitution.
For example, corporations may contract with other parties and sue or be sued in court in the same
way as natural persons or unincorporated associations of persons. Richard Watson ( 1992 ) concisely
discusses the historical origin of corporate persons and the legal and moral implications for
environmental ethics. He criticizes that: “Corporations are not responsible moral agents. They can-
not reciprocate. They can have no primary rights because they cannot fulfi ll any duties. It is sus-
pected that the concept of legal personhood for corporations is a device to allow actually responsible
persons to escape punishment” (Watson 1992 , p. 27).