It's Not Capitalism That's Bad - It's That We're Bad Capitalists

Here's The Question Nova Scotia Most Needs To Answer. Where Do Babies Really Come From?

Let’s put it bluntly: Nova Scotia has a choice. We can either continue as the economic colony we’ve been for centuries—digging, cutting, and hauling away our raw materials for others to process and profit from—or we can step into the future, creating wealth here at home by adding value to what we produce.

There are only four ways to create wealth:

1. Fish it from the sea.

2. Grow it in the soil.

3. Dig it from the earth.

4. Manufacture it.

For most of human history, we relied on the first three. And then, we started making things. We took raw materials, combined them with capital, labor, and machinery, and multiplied their value, and worth, in a way that nothing ever had before. That leap—from extraction to transformation—is what pulled humanity out of history and into the modern world. And suddenly, 200 years ago, we had more than enough - and we could trade at a level unimagined before.

We call it capitalism. And it changed everything.

This isn’t ideology. It’s fact. Every wealthy nation, every prosperous region, got there by owning their production, keeping their capital, and making more of what they once just harvested, mined, or fished.

Yet here we are in Nova Scotia, still behaving like a resource colony.

We dig. We cut. We fish. And then we sell most all of it raw, sending the real profits elsewhere. The lumber leaves, the lobsters leave, the minerals leave, and so does the wealth.

It doesn’t have to be this way. The only rational path forward for Nova Scotia is value-added manufacturing. It’s the only way to create sustainable jobs, retain capital, and build an economy where people can see a future worth investing in.

We need to process more of what we produce. We need to own more of what we create.

That’s the difference between a province that thrives and one that merely survives.

Capitalism isn’t just an option—it’s the only road to prosperity.

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We’ve lived this story before. The coal mines. The cod collapse. The pulp mill closures. The boom-and-bust cycle of industries that stripped the land and sea, left communities hollowed out, and exported our prosperity elsewhere. We were left with abandoned towns, poisoned lakes, and generations forced to leave because the only jobs that remained open to most were in government, fast food, or far away.

And now, what’s next? Selling off our last little lobster to the highest bidder? Shipping out raw lithium and rare earth metals so other countries can build the batteries and technology of the future? Clear-cutting our forests to feed someone else’s biomass plant? Or worse, not even doing it ourselves - just selling off the rights to all of it to grifters, hucksters, and con men, who take our money along with our natural resources.

We don’t have to do this. We can act like capitalists instead of feudal serfs, holding onto our resources long enough to shape them into something worth more than their commoditized weight.

Instead of exporting raw logs, we could be making engineered wood and high-value finished products -

Mid-to-High-End Wooden Furniture

Handmade Windsor Chairs & Heritage Designs

Mass Timber & Engineered Wood Products

Mass Timber Prefab Homes & Buildings, Entry Level homes

Craft, Artisanal & Lifestyle Products

Outdoor & Garden Products

Luxury Wooden Boats & Marine Products

Instead of shipping raw minerals, we could be developing advanced materials and battery technology here. Instead of watching our fishing industry get carved up by foreign investment, we could be building a vertically integrated seafood empire, owning the entire value chain from ocean to plate rather than fighting each other over harvesting commoditized and dwindling resources.

The past is full of cautionary tales. We don’t have to be another one. This is about making sure our kids inherit something better, not a province that once had wealth but squandered it away for quick cash. Let’s choose differently.

Nova Scotia doesn’t lack resources. It doesn’t lack talent, ideas, or ambition. What it lacks—what it has always lacked—is capital that stays.

For centuries, we've been bled dry by an economic model that sees wealth extracted, not reinvested. We dig, we fish, we cut, we harvest, and then we ship it all away—along with the profits, decision-making power, and future opportunities. The money leaves, and we’re left with wages, taxes, and the occasional philanthropic grant, as if that’s enough to build a strong economy.

It’s not.

The missing ingredient is keeping more of the capital we create. That’s the difference between being a colony and being a powerhouse.

And that means stopping the seamless, frictionless extraction of capital from our region. It means making capital sticky—so that when wealth is created here, it stays here, circulates here, and funds the next generation of businesses, industries, and innovations.

That’s how economies actually grow. Not by endlessly shipping raw materials, but by owning the means of transformation. By keeping the profits. By reinvesting in our own industries, our own people, and our own future.

This isn’t about protectionism. It’s about economic self-respect.

Nova Scotia needs to get back to the journey we abandoned: capital accumulation at home. That’s the only way forward.

This is Where Babies Really Come From

This isn’t just an economic argument. It’s a survival argument.

For years, we’ve been told that the problem is demographics. Declining population. Low birth rates. A lack of young people sticking around. The solution, they say, is to import more workers, more students, more people to fill the gaps left behind. But that’s just treating the symptom, not the cause. It’s both ham-fisted and a waning resource. It will not accomplish what is intended in the long run. And the cost, left unexamined, is too great. Growth is not paying for growth in this model.

The real cause of the baby bust? People don’t build families in places in decline - that feel temporary, unstable, or hollowed out. People don't have babies when they don't believe in the future. People don’t have babies when they don’t feel safe.

History proves it. People are not stupid babymaking machines. When people feel safe about the future, they settle down, create homes, households in the best sense, invest in their communities, and have children. When they don’t—when the economy is uncertain, when wages don’t keep up with costs, when local industries feel like sand slipping through fingers—they don’t.

Recent attempts worldwide have shown people can’t be tricked into it, bought, pushed, or incentivized. You can’t bring in immigrants to do it, we are all the same.

Only justified hope for the future brings babies.

The economists pushing globalism and comparative advantage got it wrong because they only looked at efficiency in numbers. They didn’t account for the intangible but essential human elements of hope, purpose, prosperity, and work.

Work

“Man's work begins with his job, or profession. Having a vocation is always somewhat of a miracle, like falling in love. I can understand why Luther said that a man is justified by his vocation, for it is already a proof of God's favor. But having a vocation means more than punching a time clock. One must guard against banality, ineptitude, incompetence, mediocrity.” said Adm. HG Rickover USN 75 years ago. We didn’t listen.

Each of us needs to feel, sometime in life, that our services are important enough so that someone other than the welfare department is willing to pay to keep them alive. Those who have never proved their usefulness remain forever at a disadvantage, because work is the basic way in which most of us relate to the world.

People don’t just need jobs. Many of us can work in the helping professions. They are all important. But to prosper we need to create. It’s in our nature both as individuals and as a group. Many among us need meaningful work—creating, manufacturing, and building things they can be proud of, believe in, and trust the future to.

"Warren Pryor" by Alden Nowlan

The poem tells the story of a young man whose parents work hard to give him an education so he can escape the struggles of farm life. He ends up working at a bank, dressed in a stiff suit, fulfilling his parents' dreams—but the poem hints at a quiet sadness, suggesting that Warren Pryor may not be happy in his new life, trapped in a different kind of hardship.

It’s a powerful reflection on the world of work we’ve created absent of work in any meaningful, vocational, sense of that word.

Warren Pryor

When every pencil meant a sacrifice

his parents boarded him at a school in town,

slaving to free him from the stony fields,

the meagre acreage that bore them down.

They blushed with pride when, at his graduation,

they watched him picking up the slender scroll,

his passport from the years of brutal toil

and lonely patience in a barren hole.

When he went in the Bank their cups ran over.

They marvelled how he wore a milk-white shirt

work days and jeans on Sundays. He was saved

from their thistle-strewn farm and its red dirt.

And he said nothing. Hard and serious

like a young bear inside his teller`s cage,

his axe-hewn hands upon the paper bills

aching with empty strength and throttled rage.

By Alden Nowlan

Here’s a quick accounting of WORK in Nova Scotia today.

• There are about a million people in Nova Scotia

• There are about 500,000 paid jobs in Nova Scotia

• 50,000 are government or near government - about 10%

• 80% of jobs are service-producing or “helping jobs” these are the jobs that primarily involve providing services rather than producing goods.

• That leaves only about 50,000 jobs to produce all of our wealth. These are the jobs that fish from the sea, grow on the land, dig from the earth, and manufacture.

It’s astonishing, disheartening, and a source of opportunity to learn that such a small portion - about 5% of our population’s labour - creates all our wealth. It means that we have tremendous untapped opportunity for change and growth within ourselves and our economy.

This is the hard law of history: When societies make things, when they produce and build, people put down roots. Prosperity comes. Families grow. Stability follows.

Now we have the fast food empty-calorie version of vocation. We have growth without prosperity.

If we want Nova Scotia to thrive—not just for a decade, but for generations—we need to stop sending our industries, our money, our youth, and our future away. We need to make things.

And if we make things, babies will come.

We’re like any other animal in the forest—we don’t breed well in captivity.

A stagnant economy, a hollowed-out job market, and a sense of no control over our own future—that’s captivity. It’s not chains and cages exactly, but it’s just as effective at keeping people from thriving. When life feels precarious, when the rewards don’t match the wearying effort, when every step forward feels like it’s benefiting someone else more than the person doing the work, people don’t build for the future.

They stop taking risks. They delay having kids. They move away.

Meanwhile, the places that own their industries, control their capital, and create things of value? Those places don’t have population problems. They have growing, stably growing, communities where people believe in the future enough to bet their lives on it.

That’s the difference. That’s why we can’t afford to just be a resource warehouse for someone else’s prosperity.

We need to stop living like economic livestock. We need to take back control.

The Answer is in our creative effort

The transformative power of capitalism is evident in the remarkable advancements in agricultural productivity over the past two centuries. Historically, feeding a growing population demanded extensive labor and vast tracts of land. Thomas Malthus, in the late 18th century, posited that population growth would inevitably outpace food production, leading to widespread scarcity.

But that’s not what happened.

To illustrate, in 1800, producing 100 bushels of corn required approximately 35 to 40 hours of labor. By 1999, that time had decreased to just 2 hours and 45 minutes, thanks to mechanization and technological advancements. Remember the graphs at the top.

These developments have not only staved off the famines Malthus feared but have also supported unprecedented population growth and wealth creation. Though it may not seem it, we live in an age free from labour as our ancestors defined that term. The shift from agrarian economies to industrialized societies, underpinned by manufacturing and technological innovation, has been the cornerstone of modern economic development.

Instead of just growing and shipping raw corn low-value commodities (or importing these products from elsewhere), a local processing industry could turn it into biofuel, distill it into premium spirits, or manufacture eco-friendly plastics—all keeping more capital, jobs, and innovation within the region.

In short, the more steps of transformation that happen locally, the more wealth stays home, and the more babies arrive.

All it takes is imagination and capital.

For Nova Scotia, embracing manufacturing and value-added industries is not merely an option but a necessity. By leveraging our resources through local processing and production, we can foster economic resilience, create meaningful employment, and ensure sustainable growth for future generations.