The Bees

Tonight, I saw a film about bees.

Swiss film director Markus Imhoof's documentary, More Than Honey (2012), talks about the current situation of honey bees on Earth, the change in their relationship with humans over the last century, and what may be in store for their future. I don't consider myself a bug guy, but I was moved by this film.

"One-third of what we eat wouldn't exist without bees."

I have spent a lot of time loving capitalism. Because of the culture in which I was raised, it always seemed unequivocally right to me that every human should earn a salary proportionate to their work output. You work hard and you see the benefit of that hard work in the form of a satisfactory pay check. The free market seems, naturally, the correct and good economic system in which to live: if you want to start a business or offer goods to consumers, you can do that, and you're free to grow your business and increase your output and production and gain proportional profit and everybody wins because consumers get what they want or need and you get their money to make your business even better. 

And I'm sort of ashamed that it took me this long to realize, but I think I hate capitalism a little bit. Or, I guess, I hate the way that American culture applies capitalism in its economy, politics, and worldview. I do think that good, hard workers should receive pay proportional to the value of their output. I do think that humans should have to right to pursue a business venture of their choosing, and should have a right to grow their business. But when does it end? 

What I mean is, More Than Honey depicts several beekeepers and bee-product producers around the world. One of them is American company Miller Honey Farms. I was aware while watching the film that American industry and big-business were purposefully being portrayed negatively, but they just seemed rotten. It appeared that the use of bees for fruit-tree pollination on a massive scale (try 810,000-acres-of-almond-trees-and-that's-only-almond-trees massive) was taking a horrible toll on the global bee population. The bees are subjected to high-stress situations, pesticides, synthesized antibiotics, and disease as a result of bee keepers and fruit producers trying to maximize product output and decrease loss. But that's eroding the global bee population, which is also extremely harmful to humans.

So should we impose more severe limits on businesses? Should we let Walmart and Nike and Miller Honey Farms run amok until they ruin the universe? Or do these companies generate enough jobs and contribute enough to the national and global economies to make their exaggerated existences worthwhile or even necessary to progress?