{"id":1880,"date":"2012-06-09T17:22:42","date_gmt":"2012-06-09T21:22:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.synapse9.com\/signals\/?p=1880"},"modified":"2013-09-11T09:46:55","modified_gmt":"2013-09-11T14:46:55","slug":"what-sustainability-degrowth-tend-to-skip","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/what-sustainability-degrowth-tend-to-skip\/","title":{"rendered":"What sustainability & degrowth plans tend to skip…!"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been working for 30+ years actually, on the mysteriously omitted features of sustainability and “no-growth” economic models. \u00a0It’s remarkably easy to demonstrate that the way markets work, multiplying money involves about equally expanding all the economy’s physical impacts on the earth. <\/em><\/p>\n

So one is the perennial great omissions from the discussion has been how to end the endless “making of money” and so make investment growth responsive to natural finite limits. \u00a0 Another is to deal with the\u00a0problem\u00a0misbehaving free markets, which just record popular choices, is direct evidence of popular misconceptions… \u00a0These are two very serious cognitive gaps in nearly all the “advanced” plans being discussed in Rio, is the problem.<\/em><\/p>\n

I propose corrections for these <\/em>in my two RioDialogues.org proposals<\/em>, doing necessities first as a strategy, to avoid omitting them as the expedient popular plans keep doing:<\/em><\/p>\n

1)\u00a0http:\/\/www.synapse9.com\/signals\/2012\/06\/02\/the-next-big-challenge-a-biomimicry-for-a-self-regulating-commons\/<\/a> and [https:\/\/www.riodialogues.org\/node\/245656<\/a>]<\/p>\n

2)\u00a0http:\/\/www.synapse9.com\/signals\/2012\/06\/05\/budgeting-the-commons-needs-business-ecobalance-sheets\/<\/a> and\u00a0[https:\/\/www.riodialogues.org\/node\/247876<\/a>]<\/p>\n

They propose new institutions for adopting “commons based economic models” to make creating an sustainable world commons rather than development to solve the of world economic\u00a0crisis,\u00a0as proposed by Helene Finidori<\/p>\n

3)\u00a0http:\/\/globalcommons.posterous.com\/sustainable-development-requires-new-institut<\/a> and\u00a0https:\/\/www.riodialogues.org\/node\/240649<\/a><\/p>\n

—-<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

1. – Actual\u00a0sustainable\u00a0business wouldn’t survive in the free market<\/h3>\n

Most approaches are to create a new category of businesses, “sustainable businesses”.\u00a0 My approach follows the observation that the “non-sustainable businesses”, managed to grow faster than all others as their business model, will surely take over and dominate all sustainable business models, as the very natural and normal course of things, as whatever grows faster does take over.<\/p>\n

So, my observation is, OK, so we actually can’t have real “sustainable businesses” without all businesses fitting the model.\u00a0 So what I think we really need is a transparent means for transforming *ALL* businesses into sustainable businesses.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I think the best approach is to start at the top, and acknowledge that in practice, it would require business investors to stop using their profits for just pumping up ever growing profits for themselves, till all their profitable businesses collapse their environments…<\/p>\n

I\u2019m open to suggestion, but think the one most clear way is for the individual humans who own the financial assets of the world to change the management rule for their own investment funds, from self-inflation to serving as pure endowments. That would retain free markets and end their driven growth, providing a “peace dividend” diversion of profits to better purposes.<\/p>\n

In practice that means carefully studying the details of the financial rules, and how that change would need others to be made. \u00a0The aim is to\u00a0 create a financially steered free market economy, that also genuinely serves the interests of the commons.\u00a0 That’s what my two proposals to the RioDialogues together (1,2,), make a stab at.\u00a0\u00a0 In the discussions people from many different backgrounds would need to become clear about the moral, conceptual and practical differences, and their cultural effects.<\/p>\n

Most everyone on every side seems to already feel a revulsion for “the system” we find ourselves part of, but not so clear that it’s a system we in fact made for ourselves.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Most don’t even seem to realize that when free markets take horrible directions, the presumptive fault is the misguided popularity of the choices people are making. That’s what “free markets” mean, the freedom to steer the world with the popularity of choices.<\/p>\n

One of those still very widely popular but misguided choices, (even within the ethical investing wing of sustainability), is to manage the world to have ever multiplying financial returns, expecting to blame any problems on someone else.\u00a0\u00a0 That can’t really work, of course, but it seems to take unusual heart, courage and clarity for people\u00a0 to even admit it…<\/p>\n

____________<\/p>\n

2. – Circular economies are quite often “square”…<\/h3>\n

I note most sustainabilty models assume that to achieve a “circular economy” it’s good to promote “closed loop production systems”.\u00a0\u00a0 I wouldn’t want to discourage exploration of local solutions or biomimicry, of course, but the rub is closed loop business production models are often not really better, when you add everything up.<\/p>\n

The reason is that open loop systems (i.e. free market choices) are better than theory at identifying the real efficiencies of self-organization (their “invisible hand”).\u00a0 It may be either impossible or very complicated to analyze, though…\u00a0 So the safe bet seems to be to first assume real solutions need to be **both** economically and environmentally efficient.\u00a0 Economic inefficiency (i.e. high prices) is virtually a sure sign of hidden resource consumption pushing up the price somewhere in the supply chain.<\/p>\n

That’s one of the secondary implications of my Systems Energy Assessment\u00a0 (SEA) research paper.\u00a0 [ http:\/\/synapse9.com\/SEA<\/a> ]\u00a0 On average “high prices” end up as “paying for increased average consumption” is the basic principle.\u00a0 I could make some list of examples, but I think it better that people learn to be self-critical on this.\u00a0 It appears some “circular economy” concepts will be truly synergistic and some just theoretically so, but needlessly wasting resources on ceremony.<\/p>\n

It’s one of the subjects I’ve proven is relevant and written a good bit about, but have found better not to hurry the discussion of.\u00a0 Still… READ THIS AGAIN, seems to be appropriate, to push all to try to really understand, as it’s important that we use all the sound indicators for good choices available.<\/p>\n

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I’ve been working for 30+ years actually, on the mysteriously omitted features of sustainability and “no-growth” economic models. \u00a0It’s remarkably easy to demonstrate that the way markets work, multiplying money involves about equally expanding all the economy’s physical impacts on the earth. So one is the perennial great omissions from the discussion has been how … Continue reading What sustainability & degrowth plans tend to skip…!<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7,9,15,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-teaching","category-econn","category-policy","category-trans","category-whattodo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1880"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1880\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2443,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1880\/revisions\/2443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}