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.

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

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?

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

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?

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.

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...

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.

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.

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.