Extractive Capitalism vs. The Psychedelic Renaissance

The term ‘extractive capitalism’ gets thrown around a lot, but in the case of a number of Canadian mining operations rebranded as psychedelic companies, the label is devastatingly accurate.

The TL;DR of why some Canadian mining outfits have pivoted into the emergent psychedelic space comes down to restructuring of shareholder and management priorities in extant publicly-traded companies.

Early stage mining companies searching for oil, gas, and minerals, are up against a binary result; either they hit pay dirt and find the resource they are looking to extract, in which case they will raise further capital and establish a mine - or they find nothing and go bust, leading them to look for opportunities to reinvent themselves and to put their existing corporate infrastructure and resources to use in another capital market.

And so a number of mining companies that have already raised capital and undergone the costly and time-intensive process of an initial public offering have joined forces with psychedelic startups looking to raise capital quickly and to take advantage of existing corporate infrastructure. This process is known as a Reverse Takeover in financial industry parlance. (RTO).

I’ve actually hosted the CEO of one of these companies on an earlier episode of the Mycopreneur Podcast, though I wasn’t aware of the mining industry connection at the time.

But do these egregious examples of extractive capitalism in the psychedelic space accurately represent the future of the psychedelic industry?

Or is there a middle ground between extractive capitalism and the anti-capitalist commune?

The intersection of psychedelics and capitalism has created numerous echo chambers of opinion and influence.

A sizable contingent of anti-capitalists in the psychedelic space argue that the inevitable end result of capitalism is extreme social inequality and environmental catastrophe;

The response from the other side is that capitalism is actually the best system ever invented for raising standards of living globally and for managing the environment - even if that means cleaning up some of the degradation caused by the growing pains of the system.

It’s my own personal opinion that the emergent psychedelics industry is akin to the parable of the blind men and the elephant; everyone encountering the phenomenon does so from a different angle, and only has perspective of the entire scenario according to their particular lived experience - which doesn’t excuse anyone from the conclusions they’ve formed based on incomplete information regarding the whole of the phenomenon confronting them.

In order to create the optimal scenario for a psychedelic future, whatever that may look like, I believe we have to start communicating effectively across party lines.

The chances of this happening seem increasingly slim to me, but identifying the chasms and hang ups between stakeholders with divergent perspectives seems like a good place to start.

It’s long been the case that there are deeply entrenched and powerful interests that actively seek to widen and weaponize existing chasms and hang ups between various demographics and stakeholders in society - and perhaps it is human nature that oftentimes, the ‘little people’ require little to no motivation to exacerbate and inflame dormant tensions between their camps.

The amount of infighting, bandwagoning, disorganization, and general undiplomatic behavior that I’ve seen coming from the ‘anti-capitalist’ psychedelic community virtually guarantees that the mining enterprise cum psychedelic company world view is going to steam roll over anyone who opposes them.

But I also recognize a glimmer of hope in the possibility of ‘constructive capitalism’ -

Perhaps not every economic and sociopolitical force has to be put in a box and defined in a Faustian good vs. evil regard.

As another one of the executives of a publicly-traded psychedelics company opined on a Mycopreneur Podcast episode -

“There are rich people who are assholes, and there are poor people who are assholes - but at least the rich assholes can afford to buy their own drinks” -

Alas, I am far from an economist. The views I offer are primarily intended as speculation informed by a detached curiosity accrued over nearly two decades of extensive psychedelic experience and global travel.

My particular area of interest and study is the emergent psychedelic media ecosystem that shapes and contours how we collectively consider and communicate about the consumption, trade, and integration of these medicines and molecules into the fabric of global society.

It’s my own personal observation that many people who attack and condemn the premise of capitalism do so via a straw man fallacy - to me, there is a world of difference between extractive capitalism and the philanthropy of for-profit companies like Patagonia, Ben & Jerry’s, and Dr. Bronner’s, to name a few.

I’m open to the possibility of being completely wrong about everything, and these open letters are an invitation to dialogue and deconstruct existing power structures -

But if I had to identity one great irony confronting the anti-capitalist psychedelic crowd - it would be that virtually every opinion and perspective contributed to the space has been platformed on overtly capitalist communication systems that extract user data as the price of admission to the psychedelic conversation.