[Marxism] Sustainable Economics

["Barry Brooks" <durable@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

http://home.earthlink.net/~durable/

Sustainable Economics 

The Fatal Flaws 

Our system is properly called the consumer economy. It 
has been popular, but it has fatal flaws. Our consumer 
economy is based on the bad assumptions that oil will 
never run low, and that our planet can absorb 
pollution without limit.

It is becoming apparent that trying to replace all the 
energy we get from oil is not practical. Alternative 
energy sources that can replace even a small part of 
our oil energy will not be cheap, and they will be too 
slow to prevent climate change.

These circumstances require that we change our 
economic system to one that doesn't need so much 
energy. Rather than just replacing oil, we need a 
system that stops wasting energy and wasting just 
about everything else too. Then we won't need so much 
oil or so much alternative energy. Cutting consumption 
is better that trying to replace all the energy we get 
from oil for two reasons. First, cutting consumption 
will delay the scarcity of oil. Second, cutting 
consumption will allow the rapid reduction of 
pollution we need to reduce climate change.

The Consumer Economy, Reconsidered

An efficient system can not make consumption its goal. 
Efficiency will be able to cut consumption by a large 
percentage if we use the kind of efficiency goes 
beyond auto mileage, building insulation, and 
energy-star appliances. The kind of efficiency that 
was once considered common sense, waste not: want not, 
would not support our consumer economy.

Efficiency must go beyond just energy efficiency by 
ending the greater inefficiencies, the throw away 
economy, unrepairable and shoddy goods, and the busy 
work of "created" jobs. Cutting the need to produce is 
the most efficient kind of efficiency.

After the industrial revolution, the old value of 
frugality combined with the automation of production 
to cut the need for human labor. One cure for that 
unemployment was to replace grandpa's frugality with 
consumer waste. Jobs are created when early 
consumption leads to quick replacement. We need growth 
in consumption to prevent automation from causing too 
much unemployment. Any kind of consumption, even war, 
is "good" for the economy when we want to create more 
jobs.

We have lost sight of the goal of economic activity. 
Our goal should be to provide goods and services. Any 
work that may be involved is just a means to an end. 
We have let the means become the end.

The growth we need to make jobs is not growth in 
wealth; it is growth in consumption. Increasing 
consumption can prevent unemployment due to 
automation. Growth in consumption is why machines have 
not caused vast unemployment.

The consumer economy is not designed to make people 
wealthy; it is designed to make people consume more. 
If consumption means "use-up" then we could say that 
our wealth is approximately all that we ever acquired 
minus all that we ever consumed.

A producer economy designed to provide just the goods 
and services that we require would allow a big 
reduction in oil consumption and CO2 emissions. If we 
could find a way to provide income for those workers 
replaced by machines we could cut our consumption to 
sustainable levels.

One of the greatest obstacles to building an efficient 
and durable world has been our failures to separate 
the economic and the social functions of work.

A loss of income is not the only problem that 
unemployment causes. For most workers "employment" is 
not just a matter of economics. It's a matter of being 
a member of society, of individual satisfaction and 
identity, of being human. We have made work so 
important that many people doubt that life has any 
purpose without work. We may give thanks to God for 
the gift of food, but we really believe that we earn 
our livings.

Without the use of demand stimulation, war, and other 
methods of increasing waste, there will be a shortage 
of paid work in any automated economy. But there will 
always be plenty of unpaid work, like motherhood, that 
could be done properly if people weren't too busy 
working for money. If human dignity hinges on work why 
not give unpaid work its due respect? Must money be 
involved for work to be good? If human dignity hinges 
on work why not give unpaid work its due respect?

The existence of unearned income is rarely discussed. 
It is not very odd that unearned income has so few 
public friends.

Merriam-Webster online defines 'earn' as, "to receive 
as return for effort and especially for work done or 
services rendered." Although some people worked hard 
for their 'unearned' income, most big fortunes have 
been inherited, not earned. Our capitalist system 
could be defined by its inclusion of unearned income.

Looking at the big picture, how can we ever feel that 
we deserve the many gifts we have received? We are 
all, rich and poor, parasites on natural systems, 
which are free to us. Natural wealth, the basis of all 
wealth, can not be earned. Unearned income is our most 
basic kind of income. Unearned income is legal, and 
there is nothing wrong with it.

Refining the Work Ethic 

Not going to work will save more oil than any other 
innovation. While oil is still abundant we can easily 
build systems that don't need high consumption to 
operate, and we can stop wasteful busy-work any time. 
Are we just going to fight for the dwindling space, 
water, air, and oil, while ignoring the possibility of 
painless conservation? It would be much better to 
address these issues now. Our fear of change can be 
overcome by our fear of not changing.

We don't need to change our basic values, or make new 
laws, to end the destructive growth in resource 
consumption. There's no law against planning for 
inheritance by keeping a stable family size, or 
against using durability as the basis for real 
conservation, but before people can adopt 
low-consumption lives of abundance, we must view 
unearned income as our right, rather than as a 
benefit. Otherwise the need to keep all human labor 
busy with paid work will make sustainable economics 
impossible. To become sustainable we need to reduce 
consumption, but full employment needs growth.

The pressure placed on workers to fill needed jobs 
does not require the threat that unemployment means 
zero income. People want to do the right thing. The 
desire for additional income and the desire to be a 
good person will still motivate workers who receive 
unearned income. The amount of unearned income can be 
varied to motivate just the right number of workers as 
indicated by rising or falling wages.

Labor alone will produce nothing at all so we have a 
duty to preserve some resources for the future, and 
all the other requirements we know about that future 
generation will need to prosper as we have. 
Overpopulation causes poverty because additional labor 
will not overcome a shortage of resources.

Future generations will need more than hard work to 
prosper. They will also need enough natural resources, 
low levels of pollution, and an economy that doesn't 
need resource consumption growth to function. That can 
be provided only by a producer economy, that is an 
economy designed to provide goods and services. Our 
consumer economy is designed to provide jobs and 
profits. Without the obsolete goal of full employment 
the economy will not need to growth or waste. A 
producer economy will be able to reduce consumption 
without a loss of luxury once the limits to growth and 
the impact of automation on labor become part of 
accepted reality.

We have already gone too far. Even if we stopped using 
fossil fuels today the climate will still change a 
lot, and the sea will rise for centuries, reaching at 
least one meter higher than today. We have already 
committed future generations to hardships we didn't 
have to face. 

Our biggest duty is to be good stewards of all the 
components of our wealth producing system. Our 
willingness to work long and hard is only part of that 
duty. We will always need plenty of unpaid work to be 
done, but paid work can not be the main source of 
income in an automated producer economy. We can make 
the large reduction in resource consumption we need to 
become sustainable if we update our economy so it uses 
only the right amount of labor. Wage dependence in an 
automated economy makes waste necessary and 
sustainability impossible.

Barry Brooks

http://home.earthlink.net/~durable/

 


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