James Greyson said:
Phil, Do you think it helps to distinguish between modest returns (which could be part of a flow of money) and big accumulations of wealth (which seem to take money out of circulation and to often redirect flows of money destructively)? I wonder whether a slight tweaking of the language here and there could make the writing more engaging and less bleak. For example the harvesting of renewable resources such as solar is low only because we don’t bother and it is maybe not limited to being steady if we expand nature? You must be thinking of ways forward, as well as how growth as usual is ending? Diminishing returns and complexity make an excellent introduction. Have you tried wiserearth as a community for posting and discussing ideas and solutions? I’ve been surprised at how well it functions and the sense of being among supporters. See for example the comments on the Dubai talk (linked below). Of course if you have criticisms please feel free to add those too!
Hang in there Best wishes, James
In response:
James, The difference is that allowing “modest” returns really needs to mean “responsive” instead, since returns are measured in %’s and even a 1% return if reinvested for continual growth is still exponential and will exceed any limit and be “immodest”. It’s not that 1% is “big”, it’s that the right thing to regulate is not growth rate but growth accumulation at whatever rate. So, the real issue is “when” to say a relative change in scale has become an absolute change in kind. Then the investor needs to be responsive to the environment’s need for adaptation. What that means in practice is that everyone needs to be able to trust that everyone else will be subject to fair limits on using their profits to multiply their profits. Sustainability demands that growth be responsive to approaching conflict, and not go over the line.
The solution I was thinking of recently was that everyone would have a basic allowance for using money to accumulate money, say equal to their savings from earned income, and then be allowed to accumulate more for some voter approved purpose or public approval for what they accumulate it for. Those societal purposes could be designed as shares of a total level of stimulus, regulated by quality of life and environmental health measures. That’s kind of whacky, but what do you think?
I’m not sure what you mean by saying our use of solar “is low only because we don’t bother”. I think that’s incorrect. We “don’t bother” mainly because solar is both inconvenient and has a lower physical return on investment than cheaper energy sources. I don’t say that because I wasn’t very motivated to become a solar systems designer and do years of research on it with my motivation as its own reward, but because I noticed that it demands more time, material and attention and still leaves many common needs unfulfilled. All of that I was happy to suffer but almost none of my potential clients were.
Your statement on WiserEarth sounds good, up to your unexplained “growth friendly” comment. Having been so explicit about the need for radical change, and then not explaining what “growth friendly” would mean seems to raise a red flag. There are such major misunderstandings about what growth is and how it works. If you agree that the natural purpose of growth is to create and complete the design of things within their limits, you could change the phrase to “natural growth friendly” as opposed to “compulsive growth necessary” as we presently have. The automatic reinvestment of ever multiplying investment earnings really make continual growth compulsory for economic stability, and people are just unaware that there is a comfortable and vitally healthy free market economic state without that.
The real problem is that almost everyone is confused entirely on the subject. Take the odd contradiction in the design of sustainability plans, the intent to reduce our impacts by reducing our waste. The contradiction is that reducing waste does not usually reduce impacts over time. Generally speaking it makes more resources available for growing impacts in fact. I think most people have cause and effect completely turned around on that, and it’s THE central plank of the “common plan” for how sustainability needs to be achieved! What do you think about that? I think it’s one of the main reasons our solutions have been multiplying our problems, and why we don’t see where they come from. We don’t look at the *impact of the waste being saved*, and don’t notice it is a major source of growth feedbacks. Whether you call it “using less to do more” or “doing more with less” it’s all just technology innovation to do more with more. Calling it ‘green design’ and attaching a lot of very high moral values to it, still just renames and provides an opening for the basic ‘business as usual’ model of endless development and multiplying impacts. We think if anything is “good” then “more good” is better, just never looking at the sharply diminishing returns of using things too much. With that confusion we keep wearing out our welcome on the planet.
I agree entirely with your sense that the usual proposal to use heavy constraints to end growth would be a waste in itself, and especially because you’d still have compulsively growing competition within the heavily constrained system. That would be fun!! ;o) What we actually need is a sufficiently effective means of relieving the compulsion from growth, now that nature is providing prohibitive constraints making our lives complicated and threatening collapse for things we cherish. That compulsion comes from the automatic feedback of growth earnings. Relieving the growth compulsion would mean using investment returns for something else, diverting them from their usual multiplying stimulus of competition by either taxing them or requiring people to find their own better way to spend them. That would relieve the growth compulsion as those resources are redirected to better purpose, as well as save the waste of resources consumed for all the internal duplication and conflict that compulsively growing competition stimulus produces. Then the kind of growth the system would still be friendly to is natural growth, building and completing systems to provide good service, responsive to the earth’s means to provide resources. Does that fit your picture of what “growth friendly” should really mean?
Best, Phil Henshaw ¸¸¸.·´ ¯ `·.¸¸¸
NY NY www.synapse9.com