The Anti-Economy: How the Pursuit of Private Fortunes is Destroying Community Wealth

Below the fold is a guest post from RogerK, a part time hardware engineer working in San Jose California who has spent a lot of time over the last four years thinking and writing about the finite world paradigms which are needed to replace the 'no limits' paradigm which has become the cultural norm of modern industrial society.

If you would like to submit a guest essay for the Wed pm or Sat pm TOD:Campfire slots, please email us at address on sidebar.

The Anti-Economy: How the Pursuit of Private Fortunes is Destroying Community Wealth

Ever since I became aware that oil depletion was a near term problem I have devoted a considerable amount time and intellectual energy thinking about possible ways to structure an economic system so that it does not require constant growth for 'healthy' functioning. If human beings are going to be around on this planet for the long term then growth in resource consumption must to come to an end. I know, of course, that many regular readers of TOD believe that economic growth and growth in resource consumption can be decoupled, if not completely so, then at least sufficiently so that we can comfortably get richer for many decades into the future without mussing the hair of the biosphere. Of course given the fact that a highly respected biologist like E. O. Wilson estimates that species extinction rates have probably already risen to 1000 times prehuman levels, one could argue that we have already gone beyond the 'mussing' stage to the 'falling out in chunks' stage with respect to the state of health of the global coiffure. However, it is not my intention in this essay to try to prove that these optimistic assessments about the extendability of the economic status quo are false. I am simply going assume that a complete decoupling of economic growth from resource consumption is impossible, so that, sooner or later we must stop expanding our total economic output.

Many people have claimed (I am one of them) that our current economic system requires constant growth for healthy functioning. This growth orientation of the economy is oftentimes blamed solely on our financial/monetary system. Granting unearned purchasing power to businesses and/or individuals in exchange for a larger amount of purchasing power in the future requires growth in the net production of use value. The excess purchasing power owed to the financier has to come from somewhere. Either purchasing power is taken away from someone else, or the net production of use value must increase. Since finance as means of robbery cannot be a politically stable institution, the desire for real growth in the production and sales of use value predominates.

Of course even in a declining economy investment in infrastructure may be a desirable thing in order to limit the extent to which the economy will decline. Thus investments in the energy efficiency of buildings, sustainable systems of food production, alternate energy systems, and public transportation could help to put a floor under economic descent. I personally do not see how investments which are intended to limit loss of wealth can be effectively made within the context of our current financial/monetary institutions, although I have occasionally run into people who claim the contrary. If anyone out there thinks that they can explain how investment as a competition to lose the least amount of purchasing power can be made to work effectively, fire away. Personally I think that we need to develop a system of public or community investment, the purpose of which is to insure that economic outputs vital to the community continue to be produced as needed, rather than trying to increase the purchasing power of private investors. I see no reason why such a system of community investment must imply state factories in the Soviet sense or must imply the complete death of private enterprise.

However, it is not my purpose in this essay to give a detailed proposal for financial reforms. Instead I wish to point out a structural feature of our current economic system which would strongly drive a growth orientation even if the financial system had the flexibility to deal with stagnant or declining production. This structural feature is the pursuit of future material security through the institution of private savings.

This claim might seem surprising to some people. What economic action could be more conservative, responsible and straightforward than saving for the future? The problem is that in modern monetary economies savings are really expenditures. If I were to retire when I am sixty-five (Don't I wish!) no physical cache of goods would exist corresponding to my retirement savings. No warehouses under lock and key filled with food, clothing, and fuel dedicated to my exclusive future use will exist. If I go on eating, wearing clothes, and staying warm at night after I retire, it will be because men and women get up out of their beds every morning and go to their jobs to produce economic output, part of which they give to me.

In modern monetary economies one person's savings is another person's consumption. Apart from some necessary amount of inventory, the only real savings is the built up infrastructure of society, in which category I include the knowledge and skill of the men and women who are the brains and hands of that society.

We build infrastructure to use it in the present. We do not build roads that we are going to use decades from now when our current roads have worn out. We do not build empty houses against the day when our current houses will have fallen into ruin. We do not build factories and fill them with machinery and then let them stand idle for decades. We build infrastructure for which we see an immediate use. Therefore our desire to store up value is really a desire to consume resources in the present. When consumer confidence is high and people are in the stores buying home theater systems, cell phones, MP3 players, and digital cameras, then our pension funds and 401K funds are happy.

I have used the example of stock funds because the insecurity of this method of 'saving' is currently painfully evident to many people. However, the same principle applies to more conservative versions of financial savings. For example the deposits in a local community bank cannot be large unless the economic activity of that community is large. Don't get me wrong. I am not arguing that all economic activity and all infrastructure building are bad things. Rather I am arguing that we need a socially agreed upon conception of sufficient economic activity and sufficient infrastructure rather than desiring the increase of these things without limit.

As long as individuals and families have a constant anxiety that they have not stored up enough value to secure their future, a desire for the expansion of current economic output will continue to exist. This fundamental contradiction lies at the heart of the problems faced by modern capitalism; Increasing consumption of resources in the present has been made to give the appearance of providing us with greater security for the future.

In a resource rich world with a smaller human population this appearance corresponded to reality to a substantial extent, as long as our time horizon was short enough. But we have now reached a stage in human history where it seems likely that we are impoverishing our own personal futures by building and maintaining unsustainable infrastructure in the present. As long as future security is pursued in terms of storing up value in an atomized fashion by individuals and families, tremendous pressure will continue to exist to expand total economic production. This desire for growth would continue to exist even if we succeeded in reforming the financial system so that the absence of growth did not automatically produce an economic upheaval in terms of unemployment and job security.

As I said earlier, I do not mean to imply that all infrastructure building is bad. For example, I would feel a lot happier about the future if we had a food production system which preserved top soil and recycled nutrients. This is a sort of infrastructure that I wish we had put into place long ago. The problem with modern capitalism is that it has a short time horizon with respect to the value of infrastructure. On the one hand any infrastructure investment which increases short term production and sales is viewed as a good thing, and on the other hand any infrastructure which puts a floor under our long term productivity, but harms our short term productivity is viewed as being 'unprofitable'.

So what are the alternatives to the pursuit of private fortunes as a means of gaining material security? A detailed practical program for social reforms which would end the destructive tendencies of the current economic system is beyond the scope of this essay and possibly beyond the scope of my unaided intelligence. Nevertheless the broad conceptual principles which could bring about such an economic system are not hard to understand: Voluntary simplicity and mutual support.

By voluntary simplicity I do not mean that we all should live like 18'th century rural small holders. I mean that we need to reach a socially agreed upon conception of 'enough' in the realm of material wealth. Individuals need to reach economic maturity in the same way that their bodies reach physical maturity. If the individual desires increasing wealth without boundary then so will the larger economy. No matter how creative and productive an individual may be their income should not exceed the socially agreed up definition of sufficiency.

I say 'socially agreed upon' because, in spite of libertarian delusions to the contrary, in complex economies with a high degree of specialization of labor, wealth is a social creation. If Isaac Newton and a mountain of gold bars were dumped onto a resource rich planet devoid of intelligent tool users, then he would be rich no more forever. Highly productive people will need some other goal and reward for the full exercise of their creative powers than the amassing of private material fortunes. If satisfactory alternative goals and rewards cannot be found, then any attempt to create a system of industrial production with long term stability is probably doomed.

Mutual support is the other foundation stone of an economy which is not rushing to destroy the commons in the name of private material security. I have already pointed out that real physical savings consist of the built up infrastructure of society, including the knowledge and skill of its constituent citizens. Since mutual support is an objective physical reality, why don't we stop seeking a delusory financial 'independence' and implement a system of universal social security? We need to create a social environment in which people who put their shoulder to the wheel and help to create and maintain the economic infrastructure of society, even in a humble capacity, can have confidence that that infrastructure will be used to support them in their years of declining productivity.

The question of how to implement such a system is complicated. If large scale monetary systems continue to function then one possible element of a system of mutual support is social security payments via a payroll tax as in the current U.S. system. I should point out, by the way that payroll taxies would not necessarily tie retirement security to the procrustean bed of a monolithic national retirement system. Irish economist Richard Douthwaite (among others) has suggested the utility of creating sub-national or regional currencies to complement national currencies. One could imagine similar social security systems associated with these regional currencies, so that people earning income in the regional currency would be building up retirement credits in the regional system. Someone who switched back and forth between jobs earning money in the two currencies during their working life would end up receiving multiple income streams when he or she retired. Therefore this idea does not necessarily preclude greater localization of economic production.

Of course national and regional currencies could also be supplemented by more local forms of currency such as LETS (Local Exchange Trading Systems). People who had formally retired from the larger scale economy might continue to earn income in these local systems on a part time or full time basis, so that they would not be entirely dependent on income from the larger scale economic systems. However, insofar as these large scale economic systems continue to exist and have not become entirely disfunctional, they should contribute to the support of people who have done their part in maintaining the wider economic order.

Many people will claim that all of this talk about mutual support and putting limits on private wealth accumulation is idealistic, utopian nonsense. This accusation of utopianism takes a strong form and a weak form. The strong form asserts that our greedy, acquisitive, competitive, hierarchy loving natures make such a form of social organization psychologically/physiologically impossible. No imaginable historical circumstances exist under which such a society could come into being. This claim of absolute impossibility can neither be proved nor disproved, though certainly lots of discouraging historical evidence can be cited in support of the negative assertion. I prefer to remain agnostic on this issue and to discuss physically possible solutions to our difficulties without reference to any preconceived ideas about the limits of human psychological and social adaptability.

The weak form of the claim of utopianism associated with these economic ideas does not assert absolute impossibility, but rather claims that under the current historical circumstances the likelihood of the adoption of such economic forms is extremely low. If our net productivity starts to decline due to some combination of resource depletion and the negative impact of human economic activity on the biosphere, then cultural inertia guarantees that the current power structure will flail about trying to preserve the status quo rather than attempting to serve the real needs of the majority of the population.

I have absolutely no doubt that, in the face of a productivity decline, real understanding of the nature of our situation and realistic proposals for alleviating the associated suffering will be hard to come by. However, if the unique and unvarying response to this situation, for all time to come, is a vain attempt to restore the 'normality' of exponential economic growth, then it is hard to see how the decline of industrial civilization can stop anywhere short of neolithic villages. I prefer to assume that the case is not so desperate and talk to other human beings about our common dilemma as if I thought that intelligent cooperation were possible.

WoW! Great post and one very close to my heart.

We in the US and much of the developed countries, have enjoyed living in a world of great SURPLUS.

This has allowed individuals to accumulate so called wealth, or future claims on things.

IMO there is no longer surplus, (for a multitude of reasons) and in fact their may not even be ENOUGH.

Yet the wealthy are still busy trying to make sure their future claims are good.

So it comes down to either we void all those future claims, they will complain that that is unfair wa-wa...

or get rid of enough "useless eaters" that we again have SURPLUS, which somehow doesn't seem fair either.

What will it be?

Cheers!

P.S. Benjamin Gisin of "Touch the Soil" has a new newsletter called "Peacefull Economics" which is packed with great thoughts and analyses of these issues and how they apply to AG and energy.

http://www.touchthesoil.com/about_us/about_us_people.html

...it will be because men and women get up out of their beds every morning and go to their jobs to produce economic output, part of which they give to me....

I used that same phrase in my animal farm story.

If I go on eating it is because boss coons and pigs and stoats get out every morning to work - part of which work they give to me.

cfm in Gray, ME

This claim of absolute impossibility can neither be proved nor disproved, though certainly lots of discouraging historical evidence can be cited in support of the negative assertion. I prefer to remain agnostic on this issue and to discuss physically possible solutions to our difficulties without reference to any preconceived ideas about the limits of human psychological and social adaptability.

Translation: This has been tried before many, many times in human history but always failed. I want to ignore reality and try again.

Count me out Nate; this is totalitarianism.

a) look closely, this is not my post. I am an editor of this site and posted Rogers essay. Roger is a wide boundary thinker - I have agreed with almost all of his comments here over the years and value his thinking. That doesn't mean I agree with everything he or anyone here writes.

b)Ironically, your criticism of this post is one where I would side (slightly) more with you than with Roger, because of my studying gene/culture co-evolution - I believe our genetic leash is neither long nor short, but intermediate, which means we have severe, but not unlimited biological imperatives as well as cognitive machinery that will get in the way of BTU plug-and-play solutions.

c)I don't advocate totalitarianism - my political view of the future is non-definable, because I haven't pieced it together yet. But if totalitarianism existed but people were fed, clothed, and happy, would it be better than something called a political name less pejorative where they are miserable and hungry? Totalitarianism is a name of the past - what is around the corner has no name.

p.s. hope you still don't own pacific ethanol.

Keithster100 -

Well yes, the making of any grand socioeconomic schema into a reality inherently implies a level of control that could easily be characterized as 'totalitarian'.

A key question is: What do you do with those people who are stubbornly 'not with the program'? For example, what if someone insists on spending his discretionary income on buying a 600 HP speedboat instead of a Toyota Prius? What do you with that person? Send that person to a 're-education center', confiscate that person's wealth so that he/she can no longer make the 'wrong' purchases, or pass laws that make it illegal to buy such wasteful items in the first place ?

Whichever, such decisions will always reside within the purview of those running the show, rather than the people who have voted in largely sham election. 'Freedom to chose' will soon become just a meaningless phrase.

Any formal desired outcome inherently requires more control, and more control inherently requires more power to be concentrated among a smaller group of people. More power concentrated among a smaller group of people is the pathway to totalitarianism. It doesn't take long. Before too long, no one (outside of a group of oligarchs) will be free to chose much of anything.

Totalitarianism may indeed become necessary, as it is on a lifeboat, where someone has to decide how much precious food and water is to be rationed.

So, I think it is highly doubtful that an open and free society can coexist with chronic resource shortages. The two are fundamentally contradictory.

Perceived advantage creates hierarchy; perceived disadvantage creates revolution

I've been pondering on that off and on for several years. The morality of Shootout at the OK Coral. I can't really find anything wrong with it. Why wouldn't it be the maximum expression of the human animal and spirit to level itself to the individual gunslinger. Even that implies opposing thumbs. We'd still be toast to any species with opposing thumbs and toes.

All conclusions suck.

cfm in Gray, ME

Nate -- I'm not sure if you included a reference to Sheldon Wolin in one of your articles here, but your comment sure reminds me of "Inverted Totalitarianism," which wolin writes about in this Nation article:

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20030519/wolin

The USA has been transformed into a de facto fascist state. We are totalitarian, but run with the promise that everyone will be better off as time goes by.

with resource shortages the promised return for compliance will be ever more limited: less payoff for the masses in exchange for greatly diminished rewards. Will people comply just to live another day or week? Some people will, no doubt.

The hierarchy of rewards will become more brutal than it is, but also the punishment for non-compliance will become very brutal.

Will this create mass compliance but also revolution -- both at the same time?

Nate, the term revolution has been bouncing around recent TOD articles. It seems to me that time for some kind of affirmative action in the required direction(s) is slipping away with each day. The percieved advantage of government seems to be waning before our very eyes with the removal of the concieted veils.

Right or wrong, perhaps what is needed is a revolution.

I think it is highly doubtful that an open and free society can coexist with chronic resource shortages

It is a mistake to assume major constraints require totalitarianism. For example I don't have exclusive use of a luxury yacht. This is not generally considered totalitarianism but economic reality. People generally respond better to economic reality than to Central Committee dictat, especially if adjustments to the economic levers are made with transparency and public support and the misery is shared.

If we need to control population, rather than enforcing a two-child law, we just say that only a woman's first two children are eligible for state benefits, eg free schooling and healthcare. Most other forms of unsustainable activity can be controlled with Pigovian taxes. In an era of economic collapse and ecological crisis it should be possible to get public support once the corporate growth "business as usual" message is discredited, so I do not see this as requiring dictatorial powers.

Rationing by price will only be seen as fair if wealth is evenly spread, so restricting capital accumulation by taxing excess assets to fund basic infrastructure is a precondition. To prevent starvation or a malnourished underclass developing, a basic allowance (free ration of food and water, or income) may also be needed. Perhaps we are just arguing terminology but I don't think this all adds up to totalitarianism.

The original article does not make the distinction between the consumption of resource flows (sustainable) and resource capital (unsustainable). Once Pigovian taxes restrict economic activity to using resource flows only, then "capitalism as we know it" can continue. Provided capital accumulation is restrained, then many causes of our current problems (huge inequality, political crises, control by the financier class, short-term profits uber alles) can be avoided.

Given the unimaginable atrocities committed by totalitarian regimes (Nazi and Communist) during the 20th century, it is understandable that most want to keep the Leviathan on a short leash.

However, much of this talk of totalitarianism is purely polemical. The bankers and industrialists tried to brand FDR a Communist, and they tried to do the same to the labor unions as well. The idea is to paint the enemy with the face of evil so as not to have to debate his actual arguments:

The American labor movement was almost completely bereft of the ideological weapons, which the rebellious industrial masses of Europe carried. In its inception it disavowed not only Marxist revolutionary formulas but every kind of political program. It was a pragmatic movement, born of the necessity of setting organized power against organized power in a technical society. Gradually it became conscious of the fact that economic power does try to bend government to its own ends. It has, therefore, decided to challenge a combination of political and economic power with a like combination of its own...

Naturally, the "semi-official" creed of a bourgeois community, as distinguished from the philosophy which informs our Constitution, was arrayed against this development. The right of collective bargaining was declared to be a violation of the rights of employers to hire or fire whom they would. Supreme Court decisions, directed against the labor movement, were informed by the generally accepted individualistic creed. But ultimately, in the words of "Mr. Dooley," the court decisions "followed the election returns."

Long before the "New Deal" radically changed the climate of American political life the sovereign power of government had been used to enforce taxation laws which embodied social policy as well as revenue necessities; great concentrations of power in industry were broken up by law; necessary monopolies in utilities were brought under political regulation; social welfare, security and health and other values which proved to be outside the operations of the free market were secured by political policy. More recently, housing, medicine and social security have become matters of public and political policy. All this has been accomplished on a purely pragmatic basis, without the ideological baggage which European labor carried.

--Reinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History

When a woman's first pregnancy results in triplets which of the three children would you deny health and education benefits?
What Rogers is describing is Scandanavian socialism which actually enables certain freedoms denied to Americans due to inability to pay. For instance fathers of newborns are paid to stay home and assist the mothers in caring for the infants. Things like universal health care and retirement support actually work to limit the number of pregnancies. In poor societies where everyone must rely on the extended family for health care and old age support then women are pressured to maximize the number of children born.

Toby Kelsey: If I could express the thoughts that are bouncing around in my brain, I would have written your post. I think you are right on the money.

Once Pigovian taxes restrict economic activity to using resource flows only, then "capitalism as we know it" can continue. Provided capital accumulation is restrained, then many causes of our current problems (huge inequality, political crises, control by the financier class, short-term profits uber alles) can be avoided.

This sounds great in theory but if Pigovian taxes restrict economic activity to flows only, there IS no economic system, at least for billions. Perhaps that was your unspoken intent. In a word, I think what you propose would work, but between here and there might be a revolution. Less than 10% of our energy is currently 'flow based', and none of it liquid fuels. There would need to be some sort of transition period. All the 'good answers' to current crisis require more pain for pretty much all sectors of OECD nations - accepting greater short term pain for long term benefit is not how we are wired so acknowledging this necessity by politicians has to happen before any of these neat theories can germinate.

Count me out Nate; this is totalitarianism.

Well yes, I guess living in an oligarchy does have a benefit - that of fooling most of the people all of the time.

Count me out Nate; this is totalitarianism.

What!!? What we have now is the totalitarianism of capital, of totally unrestrained profit seeking. Millions and millions are losing everything through no fault of their own. Capitalism is failing, failing big time, and failing globally. There has to be discussion of alternatives, and there has to be freedom for countries to pursue alternatives without getting bombed or blockaded.

In addition to capitalism collapsing, the world's ecosystem is also collapsing. So growth, which is so important to capitalism, will no longer provide a way out. One might regard these contraints as a manifestation of the "totalitarianism" of nature.

The time is past when questioning of the profit system can be silenced by imprecation.

The "totalitarianism" of Nature

Interesting phraseology.

I'm mad as hell about the Laws of Nature and I'm not going to take it anymore!

(LOL)

You got to get angry!!!

The correct way to think about it is that mankind will either adopt—or adapt to—a sustainable sociological system, or we will not. I also disagree that this has been tried once, let alone many times.

totalitarianism implies there is a structure or chain of command. Those who have been raised or have sought out the higher positions feel they are entitled to more than those less fortunate or who are more secure in their present position, have a greater faith, feel we are all equal, etc.

Whether we are all sitting around in a pre-historic setting of a cave communitee or trying to outdo the other guy at the country club, eventually someone will take a higher position and expect a greater reward for their risk.

...expect a greater reward for their risk.

I think therein lies the rub:

What is preferable when society and property have become established and the inequality of talents is revealed, is that ability should be rewarded for the advantage of the community. This stage, Rousseau says, is the happiest and most lasting in the history of mankind. But he says nothing about returning to it. He does say that when in time wealth and rank no longer correspond to merit, the disparity becomes an injustice and leads to instability.

--Jacques Barzun, From Dawn to Decadence

I think the conflation of risk-taking with merit is also a questionable proposition.

The idea that we might be able to rise above baser impulses is "totalitarianism"?

What a strange, misanthropic world you seem to occupy.

Doesn't the tribal lifestyle disprove absolute impossibility?

Just as our now complex multi-cellular bodies evolved from single-celled life, does this not mean a large scale sustainable social organization is possible?

But if what you're talking about is "free and open" ... only at a certain times do cells have a "choice" about wanting to be a muscle or skin cell. And thereafter, there is no freedom or openness.

But we have now reached a stage in human history where it seems likely that we are impoverishing our own personal futures by building and maintaining unsustainable infrastructure in the present.

The postmodern era is characterized by conflicts within belief systems, as each religion and ideology develops its schisms between its absolutists and its relativists. In a sense, each institutionalized belief system is having its own crisis of legitimized authority, as many of its members come to regard its truths as being socially constructed--by human beings, in response to specific historical conditions and sets of values--and so subject to being reconstructed, in the light of changed conditions and understandings.

--Walter Truett Anderson, "Postmodernism, Pluralism, and the Crisis of Legitimacy," Changing Maps: Governing in a World of Rapid Change

The strong form asserts that our greedy, acquisitive, competitive, hierarchy loving natures make such a form of social organization psychologically/physiologically impossible.

This is the fundamental assumption, the core tenet upon which all of classical and neoclassical theory rests. It is our cultural norm. It is drilled into our heads beginning at birth. But is it true? Or is it just bad science?

The idea of gain, the idea that each working person not only may, but should, constantly strive to better his or her material lot, is an idea that was quite foreign to the great lower and middle stata of Egyptian, Greek, Roman, and medieval cultures, only scattered throughout Renaissance and Reformation times; and largely absent in the majority of Eastern civilizations. As a ubiquitous characteristic of society, it is as modern as invention as printing...

[M]ost people--serfs, village craftsman, even the masters of the manufacturing guilds--wanted to be left alone to live as their fathers had lived and as their sons would live in turn.

--Robert Heilbroner, The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times and Ideas of the Great Economic Thinkers

The weak form of the claim of utopianism associated with these economic ideas does not assert absolute impossibility, but rather claims that under the current historical circumstances the likelihood of the adoption of such economic forms is extremely low...

I prefer to assume that the case is not so desperate and talk to other human beings about our common dilemma as if I thought that intelligent cooperation were possible.

One thing is for certain, and that is that defeatism and nihilism are self-fulfilling prophecies:

After 1903 Englishmen tended to divide into those who clung to laissez faire and refused to acknowledge any difficulties and those who blamed all their country's woes on foreigners. A smaller and more discreet group recognized the onset of relative decline but believed that nothing could be done to arrest its progress. The possibility that limited government action could have improved the nation's overall economic performance by promoting research and development, encouraging domestic intestment, and seeking better access to overseas markets was not given serious consideration.

--Aaron L. Friedberg, The Weary Titan: Britain and the Experience of Relative Decline

Excellent essay. I would suggest that Ecotopia offers a few ideas that might be germane.

I offered one idea of how such a society might work several tears ago. http://www.theoildrum.com/2598#comment-198259

Todd

Your typo, i'm guessing should read several "years" ago --- tears may be closer to home.

Zimbabwe: How the Pursuit of Private Fortunes is Destroying Community Wealth

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/africa/article5780433.ece
-------------------------
Amid the hunger, a feast for Mugabe
It’s spend, spend, spend on his 85th birthday

..So desperate is Zimbabwe’s food crisis that seven thieves were recently beaten to death for raiding neighbours’ vegetable patches, according to the state-run Herald newspaper. In the midst of a cholera epidemic that has killed about 4,000 people, the health system has collapsed.

..Mugabe’s daughter Bona, 20, is studying for her degree in Hong Kong where the Mugabes have a £4m house.
------------------------------------
Will America do any better as our downslope arrives?

It’s spend, spend, spend on his 85th birthday

Seven thieves in the midst of a cholera epidemic. Mark that. Mark today. See where the US ends up under the Cult of the Obambi. A cholera epidemic that's killed 4000? Are you joking? We in the US have a corporate epidemic that's killed orders of magnitude more. Obama is - SUPPOSEDLY - a constitutional lawyer. So yeah, ABOLISH the 14th amendment. A black man is a man. A corporation is not. Cut it, does it bleed? Obama won't go there. The most charitable assessment is he's afraid of his skin. A weasel in my chicken coop has more integrity.

Don't get me wrong. He's a house slave at best. Doesn't mean the rest of the lot running the show are much better. It's just that he's pretended better. That's a sin. I prefer the weasel.

Wake me up next time Mugabe puts his kids in traces to the tune of $10T or so.

Wow,I am breathless.

What a rant.

Kudos or bouquets your way.

Airdale-yup. I'll take the weasel too.

That was a great post, and complex enough that I have to limit my comments to a minor point, agreeing with weak utopianism, and proposing a way to start out towards the types of reform you propose.

The weak form of the claim of utopianism associated with these economic ideas does not assert absolute impossibility, but rather claims that under the current historical circumstances the likelihood of the adoption of such economic forms is extremely low.

Let's assume this is correct, and that the strong form of utopianism is too harsh. I think one method to implement steps towards improvement would be to take legislation and see where it stands on a scale from Tragedy-of-the-Commons (ToC) vs. Reciprocal Altruism (RA). The ideal would be to try to craft legislation catering to RA.

First an example of RA. As true altruism is pretty well impossible for beings like ourselves, reciprocal altruism would run along the following lines. Imagine an organ donor card, where you could select one of three options for donating your organs:
(a) Yes
(b) No
(c) Yes, but only to those who have also selected a 'yes' option for organ donation.

The option (c) represents reciprocal altruism, such that although individuals are free to donate their organs or not, they are encouraged to do the kind act of donation, by reciprocally benefiting from their act -- mutually helpful selfishness, if you will.

Now to apply these ideas: take climate change, specifically limiting carbon emissions. If a state signs an international treaty to limit emissions and abides by it, but other states violate the treaty, the violators are rewarded with economic advantage. Classic ToC. This, unfortunately, is the way the majority of human governments are headed.

If, however, a state agrees to benefit other states who sign memoranda of understanding to lower emissions through mechanisms such as reduced trade tariffs, preferential bidding on eco-friendly projects, and preferential treatment on technology swapping or resource-for-technology deals -- as long as the signatories abide by pre-set lower emissions guidelines, they derive the benefits. Other states that whine to the WTO about unfairness can feel free to lower their emissions as well if they want that preferential treatment.

This reciprocal altruism example has a downside that the organ donor example doesn't: the more nations that sign on, the less comparative benefit is derived by the early signers (except for getting first dibs on deals). Thus further deals would have to be struck, and this kind of legislation requires much more creativity than the business-as-usual ToC approach.

However, personal wealth accumulation is more of a social issue. Status and prestige can't just be legislated away.

Can anyone further refine reciprocal altruism as it applies to environmental legislation? Are there any ideas on how to crack the link between prestige and material accumulation so prevalent in Western society?

"As long as individuals and families have a constant anxiety that they have not stored up enough value to secure their future, a desire for the expansion of current economic output will continue to exist. This fundamental contradiction lies at the heart of the problems faced by modern capitalism; Increasing consumption of resources in the present has been made to give the appearance of providing us with greater security for the future."

The constant anxiety rumbling underneath all human psychic activity is the repression of the fear of death. Beyond the biological functions of the need to eat, breath, procreate etc man is the only animal cursed with a burden no other animal has to bear: he is conscious that his very existence will come to an end so he must assign meaning and purpose to his life with symbols. Everything cultural is fabricated and given meaning by the mind [symbol] that is not given in physical nature. What we have done is is shifted our fear of death onto cultural perpetuity. Modern industrial culture like all cultures is a collective immortality project complete with its own highly specialized rituals i.e. money. Man is a weak scared animal that cannot admit his own insignificance. It is not the pursuit of fortunes that is "destroying community wealth" it is the collective quest for immortality via cultural symbols allowing people to deny their own individual insignificance. Any attempt to replace the current symbols and rituals modern man is using to transcend his own death must be able to collectively fill mans ceaseless quest for immortality. Good luck...

==AC

Man, no matter under how primitive conditions never did live on a purely biological, that is, on a simple natural basis. The most primitive people known show strange and complicated modes of living which become intelligible only from their supernatural meaning. (p. 62)

[By “supernatural,”Rank was referring to “the really human element, in contradistinction to the biological life which is natural.]

This is “basically identical with what we call ‘culture” the world that human beings create in every civilization in order to sustain themselves spiritually. This world includes “not only all spiritual values of mankind, from the early soul belief to religion, philosophy and its latest offspring psychology, but also social institutions. These too were originally built up to maintain man’s supernatural plan of living, that is, were meant to guarantee his self perpetuation as a social type”(p. 63).

Primitive culture. . . is based on a will to permanency as expressed in the seasonal rituals which have to be performed exactly in the traditional manner handed down through generations. In liberating himself from this eternal cycle of seasonal revival, civilized man had to find another expression for his need of permanency, which is manifested in the different forms of creative achievement called culture. (p. 87)
~Otto Rank, Beyond Psychology

If you reveal the fictional nature of culture you deprive life of its heroic meaning because the only way one can function as a hero is within the symbolic fiction. If you strip away the fiction man is reduced to his basic physical existence - he becomes an animal like any other animal. And this is a regression that is no longer possible for him. The tragic bind that man is peculiarly in - the basic paradox of his existence - is that unlike other animals he has an awareness of himself as a unique individual on the one hand; and on the other he is the only animal in nature who knows he will die. As Laura Perls so vividly put it man is suspended between these two poles: one pole gives him a feeling of overwhelming importance and the other gives him a feeling of fear and frustration.”

Man must live the acuteness of the contradiction: he is an emergent life that does not seem to have any more meaning than a non-emergent life – in fact, that seems all the more senseless to have emerged at all, since it is equally mortal. And so the despair and the death of meaning are carried by man in the basic condition of his humanity.
~ Ernest Becker, Birth and Death of Meaning

I agree and disagree. I agree that humans seek immortality. However, the "this worldly" emphasis on the accumulation of goods and wealth in the here and now, and the belief that this endless accumulation is virtuous, is a trait unique to the Enlightenment, to modernism, and most of all to the classical economic paradigm. Note these do not preclude one from believing she/he can live on through their children and grandchildren, through their group or nation, or through humanity as a whole. This is why the conceptualizations of Darwin have acquired such overwhelming importance. This contrasts to the pre-modern era, where the accumulation of worldly capital was eschewed in favor of the accumulation of spiritual capital, and where people believed that they would achieve immortality by metaphysical means, living forever in other-wordly places like Heaven or Hell.

Here are a couple of competing world views:

The problem of the origin of the universe is a really trivial and simple and easy problem compared to the problem of the evolution of the entire biosphere or the origin of morality or the nature of romantic love. But I would argue that all of these...are things that could in principle...be understood as the working out of the laws of physics... The only interesting argument is could you think about everything that happens in the universe as simply materialistic particles obeying their equations of motion. And I strongly think the answer is yes... I think what happens is we look at problems that are really really difficult and we lose our nerve. We tend to blur the distinction between the infinite and the merely really big. The distinction between the impossible and the kind of difficult. Or the distinction between things that we see all around us happening all the time and things that are actually necessary and could not be otherwise. When we see that many people around think that child slavery is bad we begin to think that there is some intrinsic thing that needs a transcendental explanation for the fact that we have a universal morality that doesn’t believe that we should enlave children. Then again we have to admit that there were actually people out there who were enlaving children, so it’s not as universal as it could be...

So because we are faced with these problems that are hard but nevertheless we see specific examples of hard problems that get solutions, I would say that we should look at the problems of where does love come from, where does morality come from, how did the biosphere evolve and these are hard problems, let’s get to work.

--Sean Carrol
http://thesciencenetwork.org/programs/beyond-belief-enlightenment-2-0/se...

If we don’t know what’s gonna happen, we have to live our lives anyway. That means we live our lives forward partially or largely not knowing. That means that reason is an insufficient guide for living our lives. That means as all of you who are studying the complex relationships between moral reasoning and emotion and reason and so on are beginning to do, we have to reintegrate our entire humanity in a way that’s been lost roughly speaking since the metaphysical poets of the Elizabethan era who split reason off from the rest of human sensibilities...

The humanities deal with how we manage to live our lives forward not knowing as integrated human beings... Therefore the humanities are as legitimate a way of knowing how we live our lives in the world because science can’t know everything...

--Stuart Kauffman
http://thesciencenetwork.org/programs/beyond-belief-enlightenment-2-0/st...

I agree that human beings larger life purposes are largely governed by rationally unexamined symbolism. As Bertrand Russell wrote in his introduction to The Scientific Outlook:

As this illustration shows, the scientific attitude is in some degree unnatural to man; the majority of our opinions are wish-fulfilments, like dreams in the Freudian theory. The mind of the most rational among us may be compared to a stormy ocean of passionate convictions based upon desire, upon which float perilously a few tiny boats carrying a cargo of scientifically tested beliefs.

Clearly new symbols regarding our relation to the natural world and the idea of human 'progress' need to be developed, and such development may be far more important than the technical details of how economic systems really work. Nevertheless I think such details are worth thinking about and discussing because the level of understanding about these matters is very low. I have encountered many environmentalists who decry consumerism and indiscriminate growth who have no conception, from an economic systems perspective, what the end of these things would really imply. If the desire to create a real alternative to the current economic paradigm arises (In Bolivia it appears that such a desire has already arisen) we need to have some idea about how an alternative paradigm might function.

"Man's economy, as a rule, is submerged in his social relationships. He does not act so as to safeguard his individual interest in the possession of material goods; he acts so as to safeguard his social standing, his social claims, his social assets. He values material goods only in so far as they serve this end. Neither the process of production nor that of distribution is linked to specific economic interests attached to the possession of goods; but every single step in that process is geared to a number of social interests which eventually ensure that the required step be taken. these interests will be very different in a small hunting or fishing community from those in a vast despotic society, but in either case the economic system will be run on noneconomic motives."
~Karl Polyani

Our economic system is mostly based on noneconomic motives. Even gold and silver's value that we cling to today is based on a supernatural value:

"The magical properties, with which the Egyptian priestcraft anciently imbued the yellow metal, it has never altogether lost. ... Gold (was) originally stationed in heaven with his consort silver, as sun and moon."
~John Maynard Keynes

No matter how rational modern man believes he is he is just as superstitious as archaic man. He can use his latest tool of science to rationalize his irrational beliefs but he is still is spinning a web of illusions to protect himself from the unknown.

Mankind lives in a contradiction, he is life aware of itself. Man is an animal like all others but unlike the rest be he is aware that he will die. In order to endure the pain and suffering and the conscious of his existence man had to create illusions in order to remain "sane".

The question is is it possible to devise a system of belief that can fulfill man's desire for immortality and still not be founded on illusion ie perpetual growth [immortality]? Is there a way for man to shed the illusions he has erected as scarecrows to frighten away reality without being taken over by fear, isolation, and despair?

“…if one accepts an evolutionary concept and thus believes that man is constantly changing, what is left as a content for an alleged "nature" or "essence" of man? This dilemma is also not solved by such "definitions" of man as that he is a political animal (Aristotle), an animal that can promise (Nietzsche), or an animal that produces with foresight and imagination (Marx); these definitions express essential qualities of man, but they do not refer to the essence of man.

I believe that the dilemma can be solved by defining the essence of man not as a given quality or substance, but as a contradiction inherent in human existence. This contradiction is to be found in two sets of facts: (1) Man is an animal, yet his instinctual equipment, in comparison with that of all other animals, is incomplete and not sufficient to ensure his survival unless he produces the means to satisfy his material needs and develops speech and tools [science]. (2) Man has intelligence, like other animals, which permits him to use thought processes for the attainment of immediate, practical aims; but man has another mental quality which the animal lacks. He is aware of himself, of his past and of his future, which is death; of his smallness and powerlessness; he is aware of others as others-as friends, enemies, or as strangers. Man tran¬scends all other life because he is, for the first time, life aware of itself. Man is in nature, subject to its dictates and accidents, yet he transcends nature because he lacks the unawareness which makes the animal a part of nature-as one with it. Man is confronted with the frightening conflict of being the prisoner of nature, yet being free in his thoughts; being a part of nature, and yet to be as it were a freak of nature; being neither here nor there. Human self-awareness has made man a stranger in the world, separate, lonely, and frightened.”
~Eric Fromm, “The Heart of Man”

==AC

..man is the only animal cursed with a burden no other animal has to bear: he is conscious that his very existence will come to an end..

How do you know what nonhuman animals are conscious of? You don't even have any direct experience of the consciousness of other humans. Such adamant assertion about that which you don't and can't know is ridiculous.

..so he must assign meaning and purpose to his life with symbols.

You speak only for yourself. I don't assign any meaning or purpose to life whatsoever. Your assertion that I MUST do so is a lie. How is it that I MUST if I DON'T?

I don't fear death, per se, either. I fear pain and since dying may be painful I may fear dying but I do not fear BEING dead. As the dead feel nothing nor are they aware of being dead, fear of the state of being dead is ridiculous. Your entire post is a ridiculous exercise in superstitious thinking and unsubstantiated assertion.

People who had formally retired from the larger scale economy might continue to earn income in these local systems on a part time or full time basis...

This is the first place I have come across this aspect of a local currency. It seems that those presently collecting SS checks in the US might prefer being paid in "local bucks" off the books so as not to impact their SS payments (it's my understanding that if you are collecting SS and decide to go back to work, your SS amount is reduced while you work). Has anyone else heard of this being put into practice?

Yes, it's quite common actually for people to accept payment outside the established system so as to avoid various kinds of government regulations. I believe the legal term for this is "fraud," or possibly "tax evasion."

Assuming the position of a pensioner/collector of SS: If I garden on my own land and eat the food raised, today or later via preservation, that "income" (food) is not taxed/reported/earned under any legal system today. If I do the same on someone else's land, presumably the same rules apply. What if I do it on someone else's land, but I specialize in potatoes, and grow a lot of potatoes, more than I need, and trade my surplus for tomatoes? Would that be taxed/reported? What if I trade my potatoes for firewood? What if I trade my potatoes for scrip with which I later trade for firewood? I guess it isn't clear to me that there is a bright line separating barter and self-production from "fraud and tax evasion".

This is why central governments don't like barter and local currencies. You're supposed to 'fess up to all this stuff on your taxes, but it's very hard to track. For instance, you trade what would be $100 worth of potatoes for what would be $100 worth of beef, did you come out even? Or do you pay taxes on $100 worth of income because you raised the potatoes? But wait, you had to put in fertilizer worth X, and time worth Y.... easy to make it come out so those potatoes cost you $100 anyway.

It could get interesting if there are a lot of us raising much of our own food and bartering and participating less in the money economy. Do we end up with gov't thugs just sweeping through and taking what they can?

Yes. Isn't this what Tom Daschle got in trouble for? It was not paying taxes on "in-kind" income. He didn't pay taxes on the use of a car. It doesn't matter if you get paid in money, if you receive any compensation for your efforts, the government wants a piece.

Back to the ancient traditional European hate of the "tax collector" or "exciseman". One thing I've noticed in my life has been the relentless increase in the monetization of what in simpler societies would not be transactions involving money. Order-out meals delivered, auto repairs, the list is endless. And I suspect, encouraged by governments to increase the tax ravenue. Though I don;t ascribe anything conspiratorial, simply following where incentives lead.

(it's my understanding that if you are collecting SS and decide to go back to work, your SS amount is reduced while you work). Has anyone else heard of this being put into practice?

I believe IIRC, that this applies to the early retirement period, for today's retirees roughly 62 through 66. After you hit the official retirement age (this gets a bit later for younger generations), you are free to get your full benefit, even if you are working. I think after some income threshold, that a portion of your SS income is treated as taxable income.

Either purchasing power is taken away from someone else, or the net production of use value must increase. Since finance as means of robbery cannot be a politically stable institution, the desire for real growth in the production and sales of use value predominates.

In other words, what you are describing as a politically unstable institution, is inflation. Inflation erodes everyones purchasing power and gives it to politicians and central bankers, for them to give to whomever they please.

He is not talking about inflation specifically. What I think he's getting at is the fact that if anyone loans money to anyone else, they must expect to get enough value for it back in the future that it will be worthwhile for people who observe this interaction to follow a similar course of action. Here is the way I see the logical breakdown of his argument:

1. Finance is partly fueled by more "net production of use value" (economic growth) and partly by robbery
2. Robbery is not politically sustainable (faulty assumption, but we'll roll with it)
3. People like economic growth (presumably because they like political stability)

While I would assume that inflation would fall under the "Robbery" dichotomy of finance, he is talking more broadly about erosion of financial assets over time, i.e., loan losses as a result of default.

LETS

http://www.gmlets.u-net.com/

You can set up your own right now.

Though the ideas of Silvio Gesell would be appropriate also.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silvio_Gesell

When real growth slowed, or seemed to be halted, or was under the threat of stopping altogether, the rich industrialized west invented globalization (outsourcing for cheap labor but also energy), humanitarian war, or neo-colonialism, for aims that are obvious to most readers; culturally, it espoused a laissez-faire economics (justification for ripping off some neighbor or coolie far away, a peculiar mix as we can see today of Friedman and Keynes), encouraged immigration, and gave up adherence to the rule of of law - very broadly defined-, for ex. the fact that the NNPT is a dead letter or a sham (see Pakistan, Israel, and so on), it is not a valid, respected, int’l agreement but some o’ the powerful pay lip service to it.

At the same time, man’s analysis of man’s fundamental nature had to change.

Individualism, the idea that one is not one’s brothers keeper, but the maker of one’s own destiny in competition with others, à la Ayn Rand, say, was touted left and right...Many did not take kindly to it, and don’t today - they prefer older models where duty, honour, trust, the commitment of promise or inherited obligation, even adherence to a moral code, a religion (not to mention daily cooperation, etc.) are overriding.

So, junk psychology, run exclusively by the West, with the US in first place - stressed greed, aggressive traits, one-up-manship, leadership, appearance, success, glitter, domination, as well as distractions, such differences between different identity groups (F/M, ‘races’, ‘personalities’, and so on) leading to a a new fundamentalism, kinda like ! It’s all in the genes...

David Sloan Wilson identifies Ayn Rand as the latest in a long line of prophets of “New Atheism,” a “stealth religion” that has been around for a good while. He dubs her a “religious zealot” and intones that “if you look at her creative objectivism you will find that it is like religous fundamentalism in every way.” Her take on natural selection is like “professional wrestling,” he says. “Great fun, but don’t mistake it for a real contest.”

My main complaint about the New Atheism is that it’s not offensive or any of that, it’s just bad science.

http://thesciencenetwork.org/programs/beyond-belief-enlightenment-2-0/da...

I disagree. I find it blatantly offensive intellectually, and nothing whatever to do with religion. (Atheist myself)

kinda like ! It's all in the genes...

It most certainly is not ALL in the genes. It is also in the environment. Every single social species is in constant struggle between cooperation and competition and humans are no different. Once cooperation evolved, kin selection was no longer explanatory for human social cooperation. However, despite a majority of cooperators, a small % of aggressive competitors can wreak havok on the rest of society - it's not like the US 'wanted' to be involved in WWI or WWII. Incidentally, watch any video footage of media coverage of those wars - war, violence, killing became socially acceptable because other tribes (nations) were made out to be bad guys. Those were our parents and grandparents generations. Cheap oil has suppressed violence and subsidized pacifism.

Please let us know if you feel the same way when the Swiss Franc collapses in next few years (or sooner) how the 'old fundamentalism' fares. Neither you nor I are that far removed from the hominids that overtook Eurasia a in past 2 millenia. Culture, I agree is key, which is why I told Nathan I would periodically write for this site. Shifting cultural mores and memes is difficult but can be done.

C

p.s. I recommend "The Neurobiology of Individuality" DVD by Stanford Neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky - available from the Teaching Company

The problem I have with all the socially-based proposals for replacing capitalism is that economic security rests entirely upon the good will and approval of some group of people. Anyone who's ever been the subject of a high-school rumor mill, profiling, having ears that are too big, or in some other way fails to conform to the group's perceived criteria of acceptance, knows that depending upon group dynamics for long-term survival is a very, very insecure system. I fail to see how mob rule, even at the tribal scale, is any different than the system already in place.

Anyone who's ever been the subject of a high-school rumor mill, profiling, having ears that are too big, or in some other way fails to conform to the group's perceived criteria of acceptance, knows that depending upon group dynamics for long-term survival is a very, very insecure system.

Secure or insecure what other choice do we have? Your life is dependent on group dynamics today whether you like it or not. If the global economy goes into a long term contraction because of fossil fuel depletion a whole lot of people who regarded their futures as relatively 'secure' are going to be rudely surprised. Since getting on a rocket ship and going to live on a habitable planet by yourself is not an option, the only real choice is to create some kind of new group dynamic which allows us to adapt to the new situation.

I am personally not a very social person, I hate bureacracy, and I can spend lots of time alone and be perfectly happy. Nevertheless I recognize that rejecting social solutions is pure craziness. It's like coming home from a hard day's work with your knees hurting and wishing that the the law of gravity could be abolished. Without gravity your knees would not hurt, but neither the sun, nor the earth, nor you would exist. We have to coexist with gravity and we have to coexist with other people. Get used to it.

"Secure or insecure what other choice do we have? Your life is dependent on group dynamics today whether you like it or not."

Yes, that's my point exactly. How is intensification of the same a solution?

Exactly how do you propose to reduce your dependence on other people?

The only way that I can see to acomplish this is by living more simply, which in fact is an important part of what I proposed in my essay. However, claiming that any sort of dependence on others is an evil you would like to avoid is like claiming that you are upset about being dependent on the health of your heart, liver, and kidneys for your continued existence. You might as well put a bullet in your brain and end your misery now.

RabbitMountain's original point was about dependence on "the good will or approval of some group" rather than about dependence in general.
In his reply above, he quoted you on "group dynamics"... which is not quite the same thing as any sort of dependence.
I think you've got a strawman. Still, I agree with the general drift of what you're saying.

This talk of "capitalism" and "dependence" is too vague to be productive IMHO. You risk talking past one another, assuming that your everyone understands your definitions. But these are abstract ideas... poll a bunch folks and you're likely to get as much definitions (that or blank stares).

2/21/2009 -In Dublin, a crowd estimated by police to be between 85,000 and 100,000 people, accused the government of leaving teachers, nurses, civil servants and construction workers with the bill for Ireland's economic woes and letting banks and property developers off the hook.

link

I think the best way to work this problem is to work it in reverse. If everyone "owned" 100 acres of prime farmland/forest along with some mineral rights then one could easily argue that everyone is wealthy and that their resource usage could readily be made sustainable.

I don't think it matters if this land bank if you will is owned privately or managed as a common asset the key is that each individual is allocated a renewable resource in significant excess to what they could use during a lifetime. The only requirement would be that this resource bank if you will is fairly allocated.

From here one need only work back to what it takes to reach this level of natural wealth. I think its obvious that the real answer is that the population needs to decline dramatically from its current level before we have a sustainable lifestyle much less one with real aggregate wealth.

Although I think this is and excellent article I wish it had addressed the population issue.

"I wish it had addressed the population issue."

Exactly.

Either the existing population accepts living with less...

Or less population living with more.

No creative financial engineering can change that equation.

If you want the population of the world to start addressing fairness in the distribution of resources and building community wealth you could not do better than implementing co-operative business models or mutually owned businesses.

I believe that the worlds largest co-op is Cooperative Group in the UK.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Co-operative_Group

This even campaigns on ethical matters and this month is working with WWF-UK on Toxic Fuels, eg Canadian Tar Sands, and so tens of thousands have become aware of the ecological problem with this fuel source. In the past it has worked with and funded many charities and campaigns such as anti-slavery, amnesty international etc.

There are other models such as mutual building societies and not for profit companies such as Dwr Cymru/Welsh Water. Dear Margaret privatised the water companies to equity owned companies but a welshman in the model of Robert Owen managed to get it back as a Welsh owned company.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Owen
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_Water

Such models can meet our day to day living needs and lower the burner on growth but perhaps more radically we need, as Memmel suggests, to tackle land ownership and recognise that we all own the land,not individuals.

A pretty interesting discussion. I had originally decided to skip this one, thinking it was just ill thought out utopian rubbish. Wish I had read it earlier. What the author describes seems possible in a country with the culural experience and social cohesion of say Sweden. I can't imagine the US adopting such a system. We have too many cherished meme's that reject this sort of thing. I think the most implacable opposition would come from the Christian "go forth and multiply" and related beliefs. Most of these religions assume a finite (and not particularly long) period of time before god takes back his realm, and awards the worthy. So issues of longterm sustainability, are considered moot. Then you add in the cult of the individual, our propensity for labeling any sort of social control as communism (meaning Stalinist totalitarianism), the fact that we love to be entertained by stories about prinesses, and ultra wealth movie stars etc. It is too big of a cultural leap for my country to contemplate.

This is a very thoughtful set of observations.

I have frequently thought about possible ways out of the resource consumption box we humans have entered. The best approach appears to be for our society to realize that we have to reduce, or eliminate, the consumption of depleting resources. This means that existing supplies must be recycled to the maximum extent possible. The electronics industry over the years has partially shown a key part of the answer in its drive towards miniaturization, which consumes less resources. The key is to utilize resources far more efficiently. Carried to its ultimate end, this leads to a steady state economy in terms of overall resource consumption, but with economic growth caused by innovation. Remember, increases in productivity can take many forms -- some of which are compatible with depleting resources.

I see the keys are: preserving the technological legacy of the 19th throught 21 centuries, while becoming more localized. while maximizng the use of renewable resources such as wind and solar power, while pushing overall conservation as much as possible to minimize the gap that has to be filled by the continued use of depleting resources. I have read of major break throughs in the nanotechnology area that have the potential to greatly increase the efficency of solar cells. Supposedly, one design allows the conversion of visible and ultraviolet light to electricity, which greatly increases cell efficiency.

Keep the educational system, research results, electrical system (The key to successfully doing this is to push greater efficiency, is to keep as much of the educational, technological infrastructure, and communications systems intact as possible. Obviously the agricultural system needs to continue on a less resource intensive basis (far less petroleum inputs).

In the past, resource wars have started over less, but in the current state of things, that would lead to a kind of perverse Bleak House scenario in which the wars would consume the very resources the fighting is about, thus depleting them even faster (a variation on the Mad Max scenario). Are the world leaders sufficient bumblers to walk into such a trap? I do not really know, but the record of how World War I started, for example, does not inspire confidence.

The question of whether the acquisitive aspect of human nature can be limited under an ethos of consuming up to a yet to be defined level of sufficiency for comfort, and not beyond is an open question. In many smaller, tribal societies this condition has been achieved in the past. Can it be scaled to a larger, far more complex society in which most people are strangers -- such as the contemporary United States? At present, this question cannot be answered. But I suspect that the answer is probably no because the larger society is too disconnected.

I will say this from the historical perspective, if regional currencies arise in the US, it will most likely have happened because the current national government will have failed; for by then the coutry will most likely have fractured, and the regions will have arisen to fill the void as best they are able. For 210 years under the US Constitution (Art 1, sect. 10), each state has been authorized to issue silver and gold coins as legal tender, but no state has ever chosen to do so.

Multiple resource depletions are likely to force the issue eventually. Economists generally say that as a resource becomes scarce, a substitute will be found. Historically, this has generally been so, but only if there is enough time to develop something else, and materials exist with the necessary properties. This has always been a key technological problem. The quest over the centuries has been for better materials that are lighter, less expensive, more available, and easier to process. The technological limits have always been defined by the availability of materials with the right properties.

NABE forecasters now expect the economy to slide backward at a staggering pace of 5 percent in the current January-March quarter

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090223/ap_on_bi_ge/troubled_economy

This is a broadening post, giving me lots to think about. Particularly the idea of savings as 'current consumption' instead of 'investment.' To accept that notion is very nearly a paradigm shift. A story linked on this site suggests that Japanese consumers are saving to an extent that puts real pressure on economic growth.

My admittedly glib answer is that we need to replace the economic growth paradigm with an 'ecological complexity' paradigm. Whenever that theoretical sufficiency is reached, the surplus goes to an 'infrastructure' of ecological complexity. The difficulties we experience today indicate that the money economy and systems to regulate it are too rigid (and too subject to manipulation) to bring this about.

Some of these ideas are quite old. Back in the day, people used to argue that this excess of private saving and this lack of social support for individuals lacking income and wealth caused imperialism and wars.

It seems obvious to me that the only scalable sustainable alternative to large, strong families and/or organized crime is some socialist sharing scheme similar to social security, unemployment benefits and such. Retirements schemes based on investment do indeed require growth (or a whole lot premature deaths to balance the investment losses).

I would however caution against using payroll taxes for such a scheme... in many countries, the amount of wealth relative to wages is so high that it would be foolish not to require the wealthy to share.
It should also be noted that taxes are not the only way to provide people with some kind of social security. Rationing and regulations on ownership have long been used to keep basic goods and assets such as food and farmland affordable. Such measures would make it easier to deal with resource constraints. Relying solely on taxes to keep inflation under control might require taxes crippling enough to cause societal breakdown.

RogerK, your main argument:

1. There is a finite amount of resources
2. People consume exponentially more resources out of a desire to increase their wealth
3. People will soon run out of new resources to exploit if nothing is done to change their desire for infinite wealth

This is a valid argument, with the likes of which I would usually tend to agree; however, you are asking people to go against their nature by demanding that they curtail their wealth voluntarily. This is not a trivial problem. In game theory, when there is a finite amount of resources, there exists a zero sum condition where people see their own wealth as diminished when others' wealth increases. Zero sum means that players do not cooperate. The Development that the world economy has experienced since the second World War, for instance, has relied on cooperation and not accepting the zero sum conditions. In order to combat the zero sum mentality, economic growth must be held out as a viable alternative.

Just realize that when you start talking about finite resources, you are talking about life and death competition. While cooperation on various levels (social security, your regional currencies, development aid etc.) helps alleviate the condition of competition, it also encourages shirking. I am not saying that such cooperation is bad, but rather that it doesn't work on a grand scale, as you are proposing. You would need "wealth patrols," or something similar, making sure people don't make too much money. Besides being economically inefficient, such measures are too far out of what the world elite consider the mainstream.

For God's sake, man, the way your ideas become least viable in the current world order is by asking the establishment to kindly change its ways for the sake of us all! Your ideas cannot peacefully ascend the political hierarchy by seeking to destroy its basic functions! Gah.

Just realize that when you start talking about finite resources, you are talking about life and death competition.

Humvees, jet skis, thirty room starter castles, sixty-inch plasma screen telvisions, jet airplane tourism, etc. are not about 'life and death'. We can consume a lot less resources and still attain to physical and psychological well being.

Of course, you may be correct that no one will be willing to give up any wealth, so that we may indeed fight each other in a war to the death in order to hang on to our position of relative priviledge. If you believe this to be the case then there is no point in discussing human adaptation to ecological and resource limits. Just pray that growth continues in your time, and if it does not expect to witness the apocalypse.

No, you won't see the wealthy fighting for anything. What they do is convince the poor to do their fighting for therm. Watch for that.

Humvees, jet skis, thirty room starter castles, sixty-inch plasma screen telvisions, jet airplane tourism, etc. are not about 'life and death'.

Unless you can cogently argue that none of these things are are symptomatic of an immensely ostentatious and ecologically unsustainable system, then I would say that they are indeed, about life and death. Which, by the way, is what you seem to be implying in your follow up statement. I'm a bit confused by the apparent contradiction. Forgive my quibble.

Those things are symptomatic of an immensely ostentatious and ecologically unsustainable system,
yes, AND they are not about life and death; i.e. none of those things are essential
to life. Obviously. What are you saying?

That's right... which is why such ideas have always been pushed by people who wanted to take the "life and death competition" to the establishment.
I think everyone understands that proposals which threaten the top dogs' positions will never get anywhere without a struggle. It doesn't have to be "life and death" though: the top dogs have a lot more to lose than their lives.

It's inefficient to "patrol" the poor too but our taxes are paying for that anyway so let's drop the talk of efficiency in this context.
It's not about the amount of money people "make" but rather about what the money buys them by the way.