PCDForum Column #60, Release Date Septemer 1, 1993
by Mike Nickerson
Economics has become a state religion based on the faith that growth,
efficiency and competition will for ever improve the human condition. This faith
was appropriate in days gone by when industrial humanity was young and had lots
of room for growing. Now that room has been filled. The healthy human adolescent
reaches full physical growth and turns to the social, intellectual, and
spiritual growth that define adult maturity. Having reached its environmental
limits, it is now time for humanity to take the step beyond physical growth to
maturity. This step calls for a new faith in which sustainability, quality of
life, and cooperation replace growth, efficiency and competition as defining
values.
I have found the following insights useful in envisioning a new faith.
Our relationship with the Earth has changed.
Point #1: The current economic order is incompatible with sustainability. It
is now widely accepted that the three R’s Reduce, Reuse and Recycle are
essential steps toward sustainability. Practice of these principles should be
good for everyone. Right? Not necessarily.
Reducing and Reusing imply buying less, resulting in less paid work for
other people. In the current economic order this means unemployment and hard
times. The fact that the current economic order is unable to deal with reduced
consumption means it is inadequate to meet the environmental challenge. It must
be replaced by a system based on the principle that as long as there are people
in need, or life processes in danger, there will be work to do. When there is no
work to do, it will be time to celebrate.
Point #2: Growth is driven more by the demand of the rich for a return on
capital than by a desire to eliminate poverty. Since charging interest became
socially acceptable some where between 1000 and 1200 AD, it has been assumed
that money saved/invested should earn interest, i.e., grow at an exponential
rate. Since money itself has no intrinsic value, labor and natural wealth had to
be converted into products with an ever larger market value to "back"
the ever increasing money supply.
The forests, fields and fisheries that traditionally yielded much of the
annual increase can no longer sustain this growth. To make up for the short
fall, free trade agreements and structural adjustment programs now induce whole
populations into working to create the wealth needed so that those with money
can continue to collect interest. Nations are cutting back on education, health
care and even the provision of food to honor the social convention that money
must constantly grow.
Point #3: We have been playing Global Monopoly. In the board game of
Monopoly when one player gains the advantage it is the nature of the game that
their advantage increases. According to the rules, the game is not over until
everyone but the winner is bankrupt. In reality most people concede the game
when the final outcome is obvious. On the global scale there are big
disadvantages to playing until everyone is bankrupt or starving. It is time to
identify the winners, congratulate them, pass out some prizes, pack up the board
and play a different game. How about one called Sustainability where the
objective is to make the world work for 100 percent of humanity?
Point #4: Money is only an accounting tool by which people track their
mutual obligations. There is a community in Canada where the people decided they
didn’t want to trade the forest cover of their valley for money. Without the
input of dollars this sale would have provided, they were without cash to pass
back and forth in exchange for their labors. Unemployment became a problem. Then
someone asked: Why do we need money from elsewhere in order to work for one
another? We have the skills and the need. So they created their own currency
based on their mutual pledge to honor obligations to one another. People started
working again.
From our earliest experience, getting bigger was important to us. For the
first tens of thousands of years of our collective existence, we needed to get
bigger as communities through population growth to secure our place on the
planet. We then grounded our economic system in the belief that money must grow.
If we accept the responsibilities of adulthood by embracing a moral discipline
of sharing and cooperation, we will realize that while children still need to
grow, money and population do not.
Mike Nickerson coordinates Guideposts for a Sustainable Future, P.O. Box
374, Merrickville, Ontario K0G 1N0, Canada preparing educational materials on
sustainability for popular use. This column was prepared and distributed by the
PCDForum based on materials provided by the author. His new book Planning for
Seven Generations, is available from Guideposts for $4.95.