Faced by 'peak oil', global warming, decreasing fish stocks, and other consequences of modern economies, corporate power, and sophisticated technologies, it is clear we must make fundamental changes in the way we go about our business, if we and succeeding generations are to live even moderately well; the most fundamental change of all being to move from a growth-at-all-(externalized)-costs philosophy to an organic, cyclical view (see my previous blog "Economic Heresy"). The following, is based on my book, If Only Things Were Different: A Model for a Sustainable Society.
What is a 'sustainable economy'? There are many definitions; mine is: "One which provides present and future generations with a reasonably comfortable living while operating in harmony with the natural world." A 'reasonably comfortable living' includes clean air, water, and soil, good health, meaningful work, the beauty of the natural world, the provocation and solace of the arts, and the leisure to appreciate and enjoy it all--along with a moderate number of material goodies, many of which are locally made.
Some might consider my present lifestyle a model for a sustainable economy. My capital assets are limited--omputer, printer, radio, telephone, toaster-oven, and microwave--and my purchases few. At present, I can live comfortably on relatively little money because I live in a rich society. My landlord is financially secure (and generous) enough to charge a low rent for a furnished cottage; beautiful clothing is recycled through various charities, food is plentiful and cheap--but if many people lived the way I do, we would all be a good deal poorer, and I likely would have been forced to have had a job much more often, and for much longer period of time than has been the case, in order to enjoy the same standard of living I enjoy now.
The point is not my virtue in living thus, but my vice in not making a greater monetary contribution to the economy--a point I make in order to illustrate a further point, that simply cutting back on consumption, necessary as that is, is not sufficient to establish a sustainable economy. Poverty is not a means of conservation. On the contrary, poverty exacts a great toll on the environment, from the depletion of forests for firewood, to the pollution of drinking water, to erosion-causing farming methods (although, out of necessity, poor people are often consummate recyclers).
We need enough economic activity that almost everyone can make a living, whether through a job, or self-employment, while those who are unable to, or cannot find, work (whether temporarily or permanently) are decently supported. Questions abound: How can we have enough economic activity to provide this comfortable living, without getting caught in the current mad rush again? What shall we consume, and how much, and in what manner shall we consume it, and how shall we take care of our wastes?
The answers to these questions depend upon our values and principles. For a sustainable economy a fundamental principle is that the purpose of the economy is to serve human needs, short and long term, and not, as now, that people should serve the needs of the economy. Other principles are: That work has intrinsic value, whether paid or not; that beauty is an essential component of a sustainable society; that the economy is organic and cyclical in nature; and that everything connects.
Purpose of a Sustainable Economy
The first principle of a sustainable economy is that its purpose is to serve people’s needs, both individual and collective, short- and long-term. This may seem self-evident until one remembers how often the safety and livelihoods of workers, and the health, financial and otherwise, of consumers or communities have been sacrificed on the altar of 'maximizing profits' and 'increasing shareholder value'. In a civilized, sustainable society, these would no longer be moral goals. Profit would still have a role to play, but not maximizing it at the expense of all else, and the success of the economy, instead of being measured solely by criteria such as the Gross Domestic Product, or the strength of the dollar, would be assessed primarily in terms of the well-being of all within society, with the criteria including a slower pace of life, and the health of our environment (as measured by the Genuine Progress Index, for example).
Instead of guiding our economic activities by such limited values as profits, costs, and market share, we should give preference to those human values which underlie all civilized behaviour--personal values of honesty, patience, compassion, and good humour; aesthetic values of perspective, proportion and harmony; social values of health, education, and community; and political values of equality and democracy. The standard of economic success should be, not how much money we make, but how well we make it.
Work
A second principle is that work is an essential element not only of a sustainable economy, but of a fulfilled life. Not work in the abstract sense of labour, regarded as an unfortunate necessity and a cost of production, but work as an activity with intrinsic value for the worker. The distinction is between a job--any activity undertaken solely for money--and work, which is done as much for its own sake as for the money it earns. In a sustainable economy there would be much more work, and many fewer jobs, than now.
Assembly lines and sweatshops provide a lavish supply of products--weapons, washing machines, TVs, designer jeans--a supply so lavish we are in danger of asphyxiating, or poisoning, or blowing ourselves up in our excessive technological exuberance. We are a greedy society because too many of us have jobs which numb the mind and sour the spirit, and too few have work which challenges and fulfills us. We try to ease our craving for creative endeavour by buying more food, clothing, gadgets, travel, and entertainment than we really need, pleasures as fleet as candy on the tongue, leaving us perpetually dissatisfied, and perpetually consuming. Advertising, of course, is aimed precisely at this sore point, continually irritating it. To free ourselves, we need to become more like artists and scientists in how we make our living, not necessarily by becoming poets or biologists (although that, too), but by earning our living doing something that calls forth the best we have to offer, and brings us joy.
Beauty
The third principle is that beauty, of both the natural and the built world, is an integral part of a sustainable society and a healthy environment. Of course, beauty lies in the eye of the beholder, and the ideal is not that there should be a single standard of 'artistic excellence' as determined by academic or other arbitrary criteria; the ideal is that we care about beauty; that we ensure it is incorporated into public spaces and public life as well as into our own lives; that we respect the work of artists because we know something about it; and that we can create beauty ourselves. Achieving these goals entails taking the arts seriously, educating ourselves about them from an early age, both as participants and audience, and respecting artisanship of all kinds as valid career choices. All too often, artists, especially the avant garde, are appreciated more at a distance than in the bosom of the family.
Organic Nature of the Economy
A fourth principle is that the economy is an organic, not a mechanical, system. The relevant economic model is not the present one of foisting unwanted by-products onto society at large by dumping them into our air, water, or land, but instead, in addition to creating less waste from less consumption, to incorporate our wastes into further useful roles in the economy, just as forests, fields, oceans and rivers recycle their components--atoms of nitrogen, carbon, potassium, potash, oxygen, and other elements combining into plants and animals, breaking down through digestion, death, and decay, re-combining in new plants and animals, or becoming part of the cycles of water and air.
A sustainable economy requires both holistic and linear thinking, simultaneously. Thinking holistically means to see one action or set of actions in relation to and with other actions and reactions; thinking linearly means to follow the trail of consequences, external and internal, intended and unintended, wanted and unwanted, from production through use, and re-use, to breakdown and re-production. Taken together, we will be better able to minimize the downside of any policy or action (there always is one, however minor; it's part of the balance of the universe, as the yin/yang symbol illustrates), and to improve the up-side (without trying to maximize it). Good intentions (a worthy goal) are not enough; bad means (and good means carried too far), corrupt good intentions and worthy goals.
In a sustainable, recycling economy, manufacturers of products would be responsible for their entire life cycle--production, breakdown, and recombination. That is, products would be designed to be deconstructed when their original useful life is over, and their components either rebuilt into new copies of the same item, incorporated into the manufacture of some other item, or further broken down, or composted. Naturally, costs would be incurred, but, rather than being deterrents to establishing a recycling economy these costs indicate the amount of useful work/jobs being generated.
All costs are someone else's prices. Business people want their prices to go up, and their costs to go down, but since, in the aggregate, they are opposite sides of the same coin, prices and costs necessarily rise and fall together, although their impact differs, as different people are involved on each side of the exchange. From a sustainable society's point of view, both costs and prices should be respected, but should not be the dominant consideration in the political decisions required to establish a sustainable, recycling economy. A fully recyclable computer might cost more than a current model (or not) but in either case, we would be buying a greener way of living as well, making it a better bargain over the long run.
Everything Connects
The final principle is that everything connects, everything influences everything else, for good or ill, and benign as well as vicious circles can be established. For example, part of lowering health care costs lies in cleaning up the air, thereby reducing the incidence and severity of asthma and other respiratory diseases. Cleaning up the air requires cutting back on our use of private vehicles, which also lowers the incidence of expensive accidents and injuries. Changing our driving habits in turn depends on providing an attractive public transit system, and support for other alternatives, such as walking and biking. The use of these alternatives would increase if we evolved a more leisurely way of living and working. A more leisurely life-style would in turn reduce stress, and the illnesses which it causes or exacerbates, bringing us back once more to lower health care costs.
Conclusion
In order to deal effectively with global warming and other environmental ills, we must evolve a new economy, one that is not dependent on the cancerous spread of transnational corporations. It's time to start breaking up international conglomerates into smaller businesses so that a true free market (which, as originally described by Adam Smith, consisted of many small firms, none of which could control their prices) can exist. At present, too few companies dominate too many economic sectors. They may trumpet the virtues of the free market, while doing everything they can to maintain and extend their oligopolistic control.
Any market, when driven by the cancerous, greedy philosophy of never-ending growth, and without proper government oversight and regulation, inevitably becomes an oligopoly (if not a monopoly), in which the few large companies left don't have to engage in overt collusion to set prices.
Take gas prices, for example. The managements of the few big oil companies all observe the same markets, think the same way, have the same goals, and adjust their prices accordingly. Gas prices at different stations go up and down more or less together because (in addition to simply checking each other’s posted prices), oil industry executives all have the same mind-set; they don’t have to risk expressly agreeing to set prices at the same level; they act alike because they think alike.
There are some who say that there can be no compromise with capitalism, without saying what they would put in its place. But we only have two real choices--violent revolution (which is immoral, and usually futile ( 'revolution' generally means nothing more than replacing one political gang with another); or a slower, evolutionary process which begins with where we are now, and learns as it goes along how to apply the values needed to guide us in a more planet-friendly direction--a sustainable, recycling economy focused on the well-being of all of us (human and non-human, including plants) in all our communities.
Addendum
While researching for this opinion piece, I came across a most educational article at http://www.pcdf.org/corprule/assault.htm, called “The Betrayal of Adam Smith”, which is an excerpt from When Corporations Rule the World, 2nd Edition, by David C. Korten.
Statements such as:
"It is ironic that corporate libertarians regularly pay homage to Adam Smith as their intellectual patron saint, since it is obvious to even the most casual reader of his epic work The Wealth of Nations that Smith would have vigorously opposed most of their claims and policy positions";
"The theory of market economics, in contrast to free-market ideology, specifies a number of basic conditions needed for a market to set prices efficiently in the public interest. The greater the deviation from these conditions, the less socially efficient the market system becomes"; and
"Market theory also specifies that for a market to allocate efficiently, the full costs of each product must be born by the producer and be included in the selling price. Economists call it cost internalization. Externalizing some part of a product's cost to others not a party to
the transaction is a form of subsidy that encourages excessive production and use of the product at the expense of others."
indicate why I think this article, and others on the site are well worth reading.
Most important is the distinction Korten makes between 'market theory', which calls for, ". . . an end to corporate welfare, the breakup of corporate monopolies, the equitable distribution of property ownership, the internalization of social and environmental costs, local ownership, a living wage for working people, rooted capital, and a progressive tax system", and 'free market ideology', which abuses the concepts of Adam Smith to support positions that would be anathema to Smith himself.
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