As it speeds up, capitalism needs more energy, more food, more labour power, more resources.

It needs them fast and it needs them cheap.

We're used to thinking about the economy as the buying and selling goods, services and labour power, mostly for money.

But beyond that, there's a huge realm of expropriation, taking of things for free or as cheap as possible. This includes the supposedly free gifts of nature,

much of the work of women, enslaved people, and the people who live at the other end of the supply

chains that everyone in the rich world depends on. We got the cheap food of the modern world

by taking advantage of these

underpriced things. Capitalism doesn't just refuse to pay for these things. It can't pay for

them. And so when people fight back, when the price starts to rise, capitalism falls into

crisis. That's where we're heading now. But what does that

mean? The future is complex, and much of it is not pretty. But there's also a kind of hope in

there that we can begin to value the kind of systems and people and nature that we've all come to rely on.

Jason Moore is the author of capitalism in the web of life and many, many other essays.

Besides, this is one of those really huge conversations you can have,

not only with someone who is an expert in their field, but a

truly vast brain. As always, I'll be adding things to the map throughout. So, Jason Moore.

I want to begin with a sort of recent thing that has come out in the news, which is meal

replacement drinks and protein powders. I think of these as,

in some ways, the quintessential neoliberal food stuffs. Meal replacement drinks, people

are familiar with brands like Hewle and Soylent, perhaps, in America. These are objects that

profess to give you everything you need from food.

They are sort of complete meal replacements, all the vitamins, all the nutrients,

...