What economic structures might help shift to sustainable living?
Posted on Mar 29th, 2008
by 
tinkonthebrink
tinkonthebrink
This is in Response to the Questions and Reflections for March 29, 2008:
I don't have any claim to great understanding of economics. I can read the news and understand the basics, but I don't watch the details of the structures as we build the house of cards higher or it crumbles and falls - I just don't have the patience for that, which is a little sad.
Sad because I think the entire course of our culture is reflected in our economy, in the big picture exchange of what we consider valuable. And for a long time now, what's been considered valuable is credit, endless comsumption, endless production and mining of resources, both material and human. If we are going to change course, this whole structure needs to change, which means it has to be replaced by something else and that something else has to be wholly different. And if continuing with the construct we have now doesn't kill us, the transition to a new one just might.
I can wish away WalMart forever, but if it disappeared tomorrow and people were sadly unable to buy a bunch of cut rate crap that no one really needs anyway and which they will discard in a few months at most, adding even more plastic and polyester to our landfills, what would happen?
In my area, most of the people who work in minimum wage-ish jobs come from families where two or three generations ago, there was a small family farm.
That option no longer exists. The farms are gone.
We built condos on the land, and strip malls where half the spaces are up for lease, and, well, WalMarts. Before that, we built small manufacturing plants, but those all closed.
The people living in the nice condos don't generally have jobs where they produce anything. They talk, they analyze, they push papers endlessly, they go to meetings, they have a nice glass of chardonnay at that cool little cafe and they figure out ways to keep their gig going. Sometimes their make-believe mortage falls out from under them and then the nice condo ant hills start to look a little like the strip malls.
It seems to me that a lot of the jobs that human beings currently are paid for are as empty as those strip malls, jobs that just prop up the house of cards, endless consumerism, endless raping of resources, the economy of make-believe. "The economy" has become a self-sustaining entity. I think the realization that endless consumption is not sustainable, a constant positive growth index is not desirable, the consumer price index should be looked at entirely in reverse (ie, buying more is bad, not good, for the world), would have to be a world wide epiphany, because otherwise so-called "third world" countries will always be saying, "wait, you had your chance to rape and pillage, now it's our turn" and pretty much everyone else will also be feeling that they're losing out and they'll be as resentful as, oh, folks paying $4 a gallon to burn an irreplaceable fossil fuel in their SUV.
I also think if this kind of sweeping economic change befell us, people around here would be barbequing their neighbors, except of course there would be a shortage of decent sauce, and very little reasonably priced chard to wash it down.
Sad because I think the entire course of our culture is reflected in our economy, in the big picture exchange of what we consider valuable. And for a long time now, what's been considered valuable is credit, endless comsumption, endless production and mining of resources, both material and human. If we are going to change course, this whole structure needs to change, which means it has to be replaced by something else and that something else has to be wholly different. And if continuing with the construct we have now doesn't kill us, the transition to a new one just might.
I can wish away WalMart forever, but if it disappeared tomorrow and people were sadly unable to buy a bunch of cut rate crap that no one really needs anyway and which they will discard in a few months at most, adding even more plastic and polyester to our landfills, what would happen?
In my area, most of the people who work in minimum wage-ish jobs come from families where two or three generations ago, there was a small family farm.
That option no longer exists. The farms are gone.
We built condos on the land, and strip malls where half the spaces are up for lease, and, well, WalMarts. Before that, we built small manufacturing plants, but those all closed.
The people living in the nice condos don't generally have jobs where they produce anything. They talk, they analyze, they push papers endlessly, they go to meetings, they have a nice glass of chardonnay at that cool little cafe and they figure out ways to keep their gig going. Sometimes their make-believe mortage falls out from under them and then the nice condo ant hills start to look a little like the strip malls.
It seems to me that a lot of the jobs that human beings currently are paid for are as empty as those strip malls, jobs that just prop up the house of cards, endless consumerism, endless raping of resources, the economy of make-believe. "The economy" has become a self-sustaining entity. I think the realization that endless consumption is not sustainable, a constant positive growth index is not desirable, the consumer price index should be looked at entirely in reverse (ie, buying more is bad, not good, for the world), would have to be a world wide epiphany, because otherwise so-called "third world" countries will always be saying, "wait, you had your chance to rape and pillage, now it's our turn" and pretty much everyone else will also be feeling that they're losing out and they'll be as resentful as, oh, folks paying $4 a gallon to burn an irreplaceable fossil fuel in their SUV.
I also think if this kind of sweeping economic change befell us, people around here would be barbequing their neighbors, except of course there would be a shortage of decent sauce, and very little reasonably priced chard to wash it down.
Access: PublicTagged with: QaR, economy, change, sustainability, values, money, world, life, house of cards, barbeque
barbeque
September 2008 
about the Wal-Mart thing …. it succeeds because people keep going there ! Everyone is fully aware now of the economic knock-on effects of their business practices, except evary day, people give them an implicit vote of confidence by spending their money there.
All businesses survive on an income stream. Dry that up, and band, no matter how much “stock value” they are worth, they will collapse overnight..
People vote the the businesses they want with their money.
——–
hey, and great point about the nature of modern work. It's done because someone says it should be done. :-)
Just a quick reminder too - Earth Hour, tonight, 8pm your local time, turn out the lights for one hour! It's play in the dark night, please celebrate if you are so inclined.
Wanderer, I know what you mean, and everytime I buy something I weigh what vote I'm casting with my money.
But the thing I'm trying to say is that we've built this monster structure, and even if everyone could be persauded tomorrow to stop shopping at big box stores and fast food restaurants and malls, the outcome would be more devastating than we want to think about: all those people who are barely existing on crappy minimum wage jobs, or who are trying to save money for college, or who need a second job to get by, all those people would have nowhere to go, because we've built an entire economic structure on excessive consumption, superfluous spending and offshoring any real production - even of food in many instances. I'm talking from the US perspective, but this same truth is pervasive worldwide, from one side or the other. We've built in a system where we are as desperate as the people we exploit, and because we've set this up with so many jobs here that actually accomplish nothing useful, there are going to be a lot of empty spaces left when it crashes.
And one way or another, there will have to be a big change. No matter how much we all make believe, limited resources will run dry if more and more and more comsumption is the goal.
Hi Rapunzel,
I am sooo grateful that someone has said all that (what you wrote). I mean, it is obvious where things are heading but it is very difficult to deal with in a compassionate, intelligent and humorous way.
I was mailing my mother yesterday. She is in England and was talking about the bleak outlook over there regarding the economy and the environment - largely a perspective peddled by the press. I don't even need to look in a paper - I can feel the vibe from S. America. There is this whole talk about recycling and cutting down our carbon footprint - which is not bad - but I can't help thinking that it misses the point.
It feels like the onset of cold turkey - it is beginning to sink in that the game is up, the fiesta is over and people are worrying about how to ration the beer, or stockpile it or whatever, instead of waking up to the fact that we could all be doing somthing far far more interesting - from the chardonay drinkers to the people who work on the WalMart checkout - all of us.
The consumerist bonanza we are living has its cost in material terms - the squandering of irreplaceable resources. It also has a terrible human and social cost. The competition breeds fear, mistrust and resentment. I think that people, certainly in the UK, have a secret longing to break out of this cycle. I met a family who had just arrived in the rural community where my family live. They were effectively refugees from S. Africa. I wondered how they had been received by what is in many ways a closed community - they said it had been amazing - the people were amazing - they just ransacked their wardrobes for clothes or whatever else was needed. People seemed so glad to be able to respond on a human level to a concrete need - to be part of a community.
Change is in the post and change will bring human suffering - physical hardship perhaps, mental anguish certainly. I think that a lot will depend on how we manage our fear. If we give in to it things will be bad. The historical bottom line is that shortage leads to war… or else we will reorganize ourselves in more meaningful and interesting ways. Perhaps history will look back on the last 50 years as the time when we in the West raided the pantry, partied it up and just about trashed the joint - all part of growing up!
So, once we get the place tidied up a bit I am very curious to see how we are going to spend the rest of our time. There is so much talent and energy here - I think that everyone would get a big kick to see it put to better use.
I know I for one am ACHING to do something REAL. I am aching to just step out of this “growth” paradigm and buy less and do something REAL. Even sending ambulances and fire trucks and cops to help maintain homeostasis in our community is not REAL to me.
Reading The Creation, An Appeal To Save Life On Earth by E.O. Wilson right now. Bought it yesterday with wages from a job that is not doing anything at all to save life on earth (well a few human lives, yes but not LIFE) at a bookstore whose existence is not doing anything concrete to save life on earth— though my heart might break if bookstores did not exist anymore– but no— as long as we could have libraries which are about sharing instead of buying and selling. I immediately wondered if a book about saving life on earth was printed on recycled paper. I can't find any evidence that this is so. :-( ditto for a book of photography about trees.
I checked out that Earth Hour link. Signed up to participate (though why I needed to sign up to turn out my lights for an hour is beyond my logic.) and noticed that they are selling T-Shirts, “Earth Hour” t shirts. The website says, “Show your support, Buy an Earth Hour TShirt”. Reading that made me FURIOUS! (there I go judging again Jeannie– thanks for giving me renewed confidence–haha!) So I immediately clicked on the “contact us” link and sent this:
Subject: Earth Hour T-Shirts
Are you kidding me? Selling Earth hour t-shirts? How much energy and resources are used to produce and sell a t-shirt and then ship it to me from wherever it was made. Do I NEED another T-shirt? NO! Should you be encouraging me to buy something I don't need in order to “show my support”. ARGGGHH!! This would make more sense to me if you were asking me NOT to buy a t-shirt, but instead to send $15 or however much I might spend on a t-shirt to some organization that is trying to buy land to create another nature preserve where no lights will ever be turned on and no resources will ever be mined, but where nature will be free to be. Thanks for listening.
===============================
Maybe all the minimum wage earners who would be put out of work by the demise of the likes of Walmart could be employed at something that might help the planet, save an endangered species—- a recycled paper industry, working in a organic gardening coop, deconstructing the empty strip malls and returning them to the natural state? That would take a lot of work, time, energy, money– but if we stopped spending that money on stupid t-shirts that we never wear again for every event or protest or race we've ever been in, we'd have plently of money for important things. hmmm… this gives me an idea.
well– for starters, I'm going to write a letter to all the environmental organizations that I know of and ask them to quit selling t-shirts right now and instead, at the events that they put on, they can have a little stand, where they used to sell t-shirts and they can instead ask people for the $15 dollars that they might have spent on a t-shirt or bumper sticker and it can go to a nature preserve fund. it could be used to buy cheap land with old almost empty strip malls on it and pay people to deconstruct those places and return them to their former environmental splendor. there's one thought.
could I spend $15 dollars on a t-shirt right now? sure. but why ask me to do that? how would that “show my support” for earth hour? wouldn't it just be better to turn out the lights and TALK to my friends and family and ask them to turn out their lights too? I'd send my $15 if it was going to go to some better thing. even if that t-shirt was going to get sent to some kid in an inner city somewhere who REALLY could use a new t-shirt to wear because all of this current ones have holes in them and who could use that t-shirt to start a dialogue with his friends about the planet or maybe if it was going to help him have some OPTIONS for REAL actions instead of just giving him one more thing to worry about that he can't actually DO something about.
ahhhh……………….
Oh, Dawn - I think I posted the wrong - or exactly the perfect - link.
I love you when you're judgmental! You're very sassy (and still kind!).
I sent the first link I hit because I had this marked on my calendar but not with a link, so I just googled and clicked…I love love love every single thing you said. (And I also love the idea of all of us shutting down for an hour. )
Someone I talked with about this said “Wait, do I have to do this every day at this time?” and that's funny, because of course, no, but also maybe that's the most brilliant idea of all.
Maybe the former tshirt stands could offer bumper stickers for free, just in case anyone had free bumper space, that said “stop buying this crap”?
“stop buying this crap” YES!!!
I have a former roommate that used to laugh her head off when I'd go into a dialogue about men– back in my single days. she used to say, you are so damn funny when you're mad.
I just asked adam who is looking at internet boat pornography right now– fantasizing about owning an oceangoing vessel (we live in COLORADO- hello?!), I just asked him, “hey do you want to turn off all the lights and have organic sex from 8 to 9pm?” he's game, but only if it'll help the environment and we don't have to buy a t-shirt. lol.
ummm– maybe that Earth Hour website should have a link to a family planning website. historically, there is a population boom after a power outage– we wouldn't want to see a population boom as an unintended result of turning out the lights would we?
:-)
i feel your concerns. economics is a complex beast. this reminds me of Catherine Austin Fitts, she compares the economy to a tapeworm. you might also want to check out this video.
keep it flowing.
~C
Dawn, I love your rant again! Oh it's on NPR the Earth Hour thing right now! Canada's energy wattage went down 5% during that time! One time Siona found this thought and passed it on in some context “Every act of consummerism is an act of violence against the earth” .
Now I want to go to Moab where there are no lights to turn off and learn every bird voice in my whole book. I'll come back next year and you can test me.
The tape worms in the natural world keep a balance where they don't kill the host they are part of a working cycle.
~C4, those links are really interesting - you're always such a great resource person! Thanks.
Oh Farland, we were typing at the same time!
I thought that same thing about tapeworms - I think cancer is a more accurate analogy.
Yes C4 me too appreciating the link. Just don't like to compare something that has lived in some balance for maybe millions of years with our economy which is self destructing in a matter of several hundred. Often I find scats that are pure clay/dirt. Animals clean out their systems of parasites this way. Maybe we should see how animals and the tape worms maintain their symbiosis and try that as an economic structure?
I was discussing this thread with my wife yesterday, who is Peruvian. Regarding the WalMart thing, her response was that if some large employer like WalMart folded then people would set up lots of small businesses. That is the reality down here - people set up a shop or a cafe in their garage and that is how they live. The thing works purely on cash - no tax etc. There is a kind of psychological resiliance that goes with this simple structure.
Now, that is obviously not the reality in N. America and Europe, and I am not suggesting that it is the model that we should persue, but it could be an interesting point of departure.
Whilst I think we are all looking for higher level emegent economic structures, it may also be relevant to look back at the simpler structures from our historical past.
It seems for example that land which has been so central to power and politics throughout history and over the last 50 has been largely irrelevant - well that could change. Cheap food based on petroleum based chemical and fertilizer may be a thing of the past. On top of which we may be looking to land to satisfy some of our energy requirements.
So what I am saying is that whilst we are looking to create higher order emegent economic structures it may be relevant at the same time to look back and reinforce some of the simpler models still in operation throughout much of the world.
Whilst the developing world, which lives from hand to mouth in any case, may be more resilliant in the face of an economic melt down, we should look to the developed world for the emergent structures. (And that is the opinion of a Peruvian!)
James— What you are saying here about setting up a bunch of smaller businesses instead of one large one is exactly like biodiversity. The most biodiverse ecosystems are the healthiest and most stable ones because if one subspecies dies out there are several others that fill that niche. So the most diverse markets, I would think, would be the most stable ones, because if one business folds, another, healthier one or several others can move in and fill that hole. Governments who subsidize certain businesses or bail them out when they are about to collapse are creating unnatural business ecosystems and unhealthy & unstable economies. If capitalism is to actually work it would have to be REAL free markets, not subsidized markets. I say– no more corporate welfare. It's the equivalent of feeding the wildlife– it makes the wildlife sick and bloated and lazy to subsidize their diets and it does the same for corporations. I think credit is probably a similar problem….. anyone with ideas about how to compare credit to a phenomenon in nature?
James, I don't know if you picked up on that link above from ~C4, but what you're talking about is a component of what she's saying too, as well as setting up systems locally where money that belongs in the community can be reclaimed from “lost” taxes and used to fund the local economy. It's really interesting.
And Dawn, I think you're right and also that we've made it more complicated by having the existing systems in place for so long. Like the analogy to biodiversity - it makes sense to foster the preservation and repopulation of species we've nearly wiped out with poor planning and disregard for the environment. So it seems to me like there might be something with more care necessary than the sink-or-swim economy. In a lot of communities the big box stores have come in and wiped out many of the smaller local businesses. It seems to me like not only should big business and corporation not be subsidized, but there needs to be some kind of incentive and subsidy for small, individually owned businesses and co-ops to hold their own and repopulate our economies.
But the first, middle and last step has to be what Wanderer said way up there at the beginning - we all have to choose to buy from real people, local business, local growers, artists, co-ops, etc, even if it's not as convenient, even if it costs a little more in the short term, even if it means that (horrors!) we have to choose to buy less stuff.
James, I love the idea of a cash or barter local economy. I'm sitting here trying to figure out how I could do that. I think it might be possible for at least part of my income…
and I can't think of a parallel to credit in nature - nature doesn't issue credit, does it? It's maybe a completely artificial phenomenon?
The veneer of civilization supported by both current and outmoded economic models is paper thin, a house of cards awaiting only the slightest disturbance to bring it down. New structures are called for.
But there is a problem. I Googled everything from 'new economic model' to 'sustainable economy' and came up with nothing more than warmed-over and reworded adaptations of existing structures. Scanning articles from The Economist doesn't help, and neither does thumbing through my daughter's economics textbooks. If what I read the last few hours is representative of current thinking, then I think we're in trouble. It seems to me that WalMartonomics is nothing more than a symptom of an underlying falsity, but also that hearkening back to an agrarian past is no more a salve than is proposing a revival of hunter-gatherer communities.
There are too many of us. Our distribution is not geographically aligned with the production of food, material goods, or contact services. Our love of consumption is aligned with every other facet of our culture - globally. On the other hand, I don't believe that a system constructed within the halls of academia will answer the need, an economic esperanto of good intentions but sterile implementation. So perhaps the answer is in the organic (no pun) growth of a new structure, one built on a foundation of fundamental change…in everything, perhaps the answer does, indeed, lie with me.
Thanks to all. I felt many of the same things myself three years ago. At that time, I attended a three day conference at Esalen with Brother David (See his gratitude website) on Spiritual Values in the Workplace. We were as a diverse economic group that one could imagine from organic farmers, to capitalists to social deconstructionists.
I left that conference with a desire for change. I read Bill McDonough's work on Cradle to Cradle design of products, Jeffrey Sachs on elimination of global poverty. I sought these people out for ideas and action steps. I made friends with Bob Reich and queried him on process and successful implementation of change.
I went to Louisiana and worked my tail off and made some change. We created a Media Lab for students from low income families so that these students can have skills that they can apply to their talent. The Media Lab was created out of donated equipment from entrepreneurs in California and Washington.
I returned to California and developed three funds: a Real Estate fund for Green Buildings in Cities, a Green Technologies Fund to apply these technologies into the mainstream for energy, sustainability and recovery, and a Media Fund to assist the students in Louisiana and other communities.
I found that there are others in the world that care and will work hard and smart to help others. We all have a path, we just have to find the right trail.
Don't get discouraged, like I did, get busy and the Universe will provide direction.
Certainly Albert, this is not a call back to the land. But I think that it is instructive to look back at simpler economies as a point of reference. What is sick about our present system will have to be dismantled before we can move ahead. So it might look like we are taking a step backwards before we can move forwards.
I did have a look at C4's link and while I didn't follow it all, she (the writer) seems to be saying that we are all floating on credit. Would it be fair to say that we are selling off our capital assets and chalking them up as income? (In the case of Iraq - they are other people's assets we are selling off.)
I definitely resonate with the biodiversity model for economics Dawn - that and more direct dealing (offering greater accountability) would be healthy.
If we have moved from an industrial to an information economy, some have called the next stage a “value” economy. Would that have something to do with capacity to connect, to relate, to form community and to weigh the information that is now freely available?
If we don't yet know what the economic answer is, it is interesting to ask “what kind of environment could lead to the emergence of such an answer?” For a start - one free of fear, where we rest in confidence in the basic goodness of the universe and, more concretely, in the goodness of our community. An environment where it is widely accepted that there are more interesting things to do than consuming.
www.ciat.cgiar.org/agroempresas/catie_ciat/documentos/globalisation_sustainability_development.pdf
Here is an interesting criticism of neoliberal economics, it makes the case for local production, and looks at economic structures which are not recognised by economists.
Understood James, and agreed. I was in a pessimistic mood I guess. Anyway, it seems that many of our ills are spawned by our vast remove from the land. It's easier to spoil the earth if my yard is chemically greened and I don't see what the runoff does, it's easier to eat bits of a steer if I don't actually have to kill it, it's easier to buy those sneakers if I don't have to deal with the slave laborer who manufactured it. Oops - sorry - the pessimism is still there. Gotta work on that.
I think a new economy will come from me, and you, and Jeannie and Dawn, and…. Just maybe we will do this thing, from the bottom up, driven by the choices we make. I hope…I act.
Albert, don't put the brakes on that thing you're calling “pessimism” - I'm not sure that's the right word though, for describing the awareness of the hidden implications of choices, not even if they are pretty grim implications. It's hard to make an informed choice without that awareness, right?
I don't think it's a call for return to the land either, but I do think that for material goods and immediate services, there's a clear benefit to supporting a local economy, the kind of economic diversity Dawn is talking about.
At the same time, obviously it's also so helpful to have an awareness beyond the ends of our noses, and it takes some real serious blinders now to be unaware of the rest of the globe. The information is literally at our fingertips.
One of the possibilities that comes out of that is what Ja is talking about, that we have the opportunity to see where the needs are globally and for people with resources and skills to focus help where it's most needed. So it's maybe a little more than Fuller's “Think global, act local” mandate. Global actions are important too, but there is something essential about consciously living in and supporting a local community.
I think people have to feel empowered to make those changes though, and the existing economic structure is daunting and so large that it's nearly invisible. Not everyone will have the opportunity to go to Esalen and get inspired, so this somehow has to be translated into exciting, immediate, real actions and ideas that inspire people to make changes in their own lives and the world around them. And I think just the word “economics” makes a lot of people go nearly comatose with enthusiasm.
I'm not really pessimistic or optimistic about this, just awed by the immensity of the whole issue.
James, thanks for that link, I'm working through it. For anyone who has trouble clicking on it, just cut and paste instead - it's a .pdf file and I get a Gaia error message if I try to link directly.
Yer, sorry I botched the link.
I think that is a very important point, Jeannie. Solutions come from leaning in to the discomfort. See Joanna Macy's despair work -
http://www.joannamacy.net/
See if that works any better.
Peace,
James.
I've been thinking similarly Rapunzel. This has made for an interesting, thought provoking dialogue, and the suggestions everyone gave were wonderful, so nothing for me to add really except for this, since you mentioned traM-laW: Walt got banned from Wal-Mart worldwide, and made the local news in Charleston, SC., for the same concerns, even protested with an interactive display. Sadly, no one commented on the article or website, and it was practically a solo protest. Would-be protesters were busy buying (many with their Wal-Mart paychecks) “cut rate crap that no one really needs anyway and which they will discard in a few months at most”, or were busy working at Wal-Mart (second largest employer in the country, second only to the US government, and makes more than Exxon). No love loss for me either, also a former employee. (: