The Role of Government in a Sustainable Economy--Part 1

This is the first part of an article which was published in this month's The Lower Island News. It appeared as one piece in the paper, but for the blog I've divided it into two parts.

In these days of climate change (however caused), 'peak oil', world-wide pollution of air, water, and soil, and countless other environmental ills and hazards, the concepts of 'sustainable economy' or 'sustainability' have become popular among environmentalists and the public alike. There are a number of definitions of 'sustainable'. The Brundtland Report, published in 1987, recommended that sustainable development should ". . . meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." (Unfortunately, the Report focused on 'sustainable development' which accepted growth; rather than 'sustainable economy', which doesn't.)


Herbert Daly, author of Steady-State Economics, first published in 1977, has defined sustainable development as development that doesn't lead to growth beyond the environment's carrying capacity, with 'development' meaning qualitative improvement, while 'growth' means a quantitative increase. The definition that I find the most satisfying is that attributed to various aboriginal cultures, "We do not inherit the earth from our parents; we borrow it from our children".


The role of a democratic government in a sustainable economy is to serve the public good; serving the public good requires government to approach citizens and their concerns with a co-operative philosophy and attitude that centres its attention on the well-being of individuals and their families, viewing them, not in isolation, but as members of one or more communities which overlap to various degrees.



The citizenry, in our turn, needs to view government as a tool which enables us to provide ourselves with the means--education, transportation, medical care, a healthy environment, and so forth--which not only create opportunities for earning a reasonably comfortable living, but also lead to a higher quality of life--including, but not limited to, breathable air, drinkable water, wildlife and wilderness (which we may never see but which enrich our lives merely by existing); fewer material goodies, and more immaterial ones--time and leisure, more relaxed relationships, both professional and personal; altogether less stress, to name only a few examples of the improvements we could enjoy if the focus of the economy was taken off making money as an end in itself, and turned to satisfying our needs in the most environmentally-effective manner possible.

Government is an essential player in the complex interweaving of human, financial, physical, and political elements which result in the kind of economy and society we choose to live in. From the point of view of the individual, government, and business economic activities flow to and from each other. To be useful, money must be pooled--saved--in sufficient quantities to invest, when it flows out of one pool and into one or more other pools. But the economy doesn't care where the money comes from--public or private sources are all one to it; what matters is that the money keeps moving--pooling and flowing out, pooling and flowing out.


The capitalist economy that we operate in today is incapable of becoming a sustainable economy for three reasons. First, capitalists regard government as, at best, a necessary evil, to be minimized as much as possible. They ignore the fact that capitalists and their corporations depend on government for their very existence, from the laws creating limited liability, for example, to protection for intellectual property--copyrights, patents and trademarks--to the arbitration and enforcement mechanisms of the police and justice systems, and the negotiation of international trade treaties. Of lesser, but still considerable, value to business success are the benefits of various social programs, such as welfare (which helps support purchasing power), to a single payer health care system, (which minimizes a firm's health care costs for its workers).


Second, capitalism depends on ever-increasing growth to remain viable, and takes insufficient cognizance (to say the least) of the finite nature of the planet's resources, organic and non-organic, alike.



Third, capitalism cannot foster sustainability because it is focused--as business people never tire of telling us--entirely on making money, and increasing shareholder value, and nothing else. It is almost irrelevant to the true capitalist what product or service they invest in as long as they receive the expected return. As a corollary, capitalists regard making money as a sufficient excuse for foisting so-called 'externalities on the public--fish stocks depleted around the world by trawlers and other high-tech fishing boats; soil ruined and eroded through industrial farming; lakes destroyed to accommodate the toxic wastes of converting the tar sands into oil--are only a few examples of how capitalism encourages present generations to rob future ones of the planet's resources. But simply because we were born sooner does not give us the moral right to deplete the planet's wealth.


Unfortunately, far too many business people are proud of the fact that all they're interested in is making money, and non-business people have allowed themselves to be bamboozled into thinking this point of view is acceptable. It is not. Capitalism's buccaneering ways and Midas touch--which reduces all life to inedible gold--can no longer be tolerated in a sustainable society. If we are to evolve an economy which meets our real needs, other values must take precedence over mere money-making, which should be regarded as a means of achieving other ends, and not as a laudable end in itself.