Last night at town hall Juliet Schor walked her audience through a short history of the economic convulsions that have brought us to this point of high unemployment, environmental degradation and market decisions made with indifference to both. This model she calls the business-as-usual economy. In her new book, Plenitude: The new economics of true wealth, she carefully details market assumptions that keep the consequences to natural resources out of the equation when assessing the cost of production and consumption.
This key flaw leaves the consumer in a state of ignorance.
“…it is important to recognize that consumers have been cut off from the material realities of production. Producers and retailers prefer that consumers not think about the damage their purchases are having on the earth, so information is not typically available, especially at the point of purchase.” p. 47
In order for us to rescale our consumption to appropriate levels she brought up the ideas of the honorable Frithjof Bergmann, whom I’ve mentioned in a previous post. I’ve often been intrigued by the idea that he calls “high-tech self-providing”. Ms. Schor takes this idea and gives examples of how some people are already taking advantage of their own capacity to create enterprises for “modern off-grid, resilient communities”. Other examples might be mushroom farming, beekeeping, raising chickens and many forms of urban agriculture. She also mentioned fab labs, or fabrication laboratories, which appear to be the holy grail of community-supported production means. Here is a description from MIT’s FAQ page:
“Projects being developed and produced in fab labs include solar and wind-powered turbines, thin-client computers and wireless data networks, analytical instrumentation for agriculture and healthcare, custom housing, and rapid-prototyping of rapid-prototyping machines.”
I left the lecture feeling upbeat about the future in a very unexpected way. After nearly a year of unemployment, the urge to become involved with a meaningful exchange of ideas overcame me with enthusiasm. The need for something to make sense at last fulfilled. Looking for work felt like complicity in a game I no longer wanted to play.
The MVO blog attempts to follow trends in emerging economic theory as they relate to jobs, creation of livelihood and our collective, general well-being.
I just read a short retrospective of the original Earth Day 40 years ago. I did not fully realize that it spurred on events that culminated in the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act. Fast forward to 2010, and a couple days ago the front page of the Seattle Times ran a story about a beached whale. The story reported what they found in the whale’s stomach: 20 plastic bags, a pair of sweat pants, etc. The writer said the whale took seriously the mantra to eat locally.
A whale is dead and someone is making a joke about it. That makes me sick.
‘Nuf said.
On MLK day this week, Raj Patel captivated the audience at town hall with a lecture from the content of his latest book, “The Value of Nothing”. The title comes from Oscar Wilde who described a cynic as a man who “knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing”.
He began by asking the simple question: How do we value the world? Then he proceeded to elaborate on how we do such a miserable job of it. For example, we are not in touch with understanding who owns the resources we use every day, such as water, oil and food production. If you take a common item such as a hamburger, and analyze the price to value, how do you reach a four dollar cost? You will need to consider the value of the land where the cows were raised. Was it once rainforest? Then include the labor. In Florida tomatoes are harvested by field workers making well below minimum wage. When you add what would be the real cost of labor and the land devoted to livestock you discover that hamburger may end up costing you $200.
The costs to us are not only in the production of food, but also in our poor food choices that result in increased disease rates. It is estimated that one in three kids will develop diabetes in their lifetimes, and that one in five healthcare dollars are spent on treating diabetes.
Currently, the only way we value things is to stick them in a market. Even Greenspan had to admit this ideology has flaws. But how do we react to what we see happening? Patel likened our reaction to the protagonist in Franz Kafka’s novel, “Metamorphosis”. He wakes up to find he has turned into a cockroach and he worries about his job.
So how do we value things without markets? Do we say: “If only we had more regulation…”? The problem is free markets are very bad at being able to value things. For example, capitalist markets externalize environmental costs of the production of their goods, and drive down the cost of labor.
Capitalism gives us liberty if you believe the following thought experiment. Imagine you live in a place where everyone is given tickets for all the things you can do: eat, travel, buy a home, and go to school. If you don’t have a ticket the police will come after you. Money is a generalized form of these tickets, and freedom is just another word for nothing you can afford. Having money is the right to have rights.
So what are the alternatives to a system that produces penury? There are other ways of governing our economies. In contrast to the assumption that people are selfish and greedy is the awareness that to survive as a species we’ve learned to cooperate and have robust ways to do this. There are ways to manage our resources in common. Patel cites La Via Campesina, a huge movement of landless workers reclaiming the right to have rights around food and farming.
In closing he urged the audience not to agonize, but organize, and reminded us democracy doesn’t trickle down, it bubbles up. We can’t sit back and wait. Obama was supposed to be our pizza delivery man of change, and deliver what we wanted all hot and steamy as we waited for arrival. Now we must relearn the art of citizenship so that we create an economy where everyone gets to eat.
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