ECONOMIC GROWTH ALONE

CANNOT SOLVE SOCIAL PROBLEMS

By Peter Ulrich



Ethos and Economy Our economy and its reputation are depressed. People lose their jobs; bosses are put more and more in the wrong light. Economic ethicist Peter Ulrich, professor at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland, answers burning economic and social questions and designs new models for a sound national economy.



der arbeitsmarkt: Daily we hear in the media about accounting frauds, insider trading, exorbitant wages and mammoth severance packages for managers. On the other side more and more people lose their jobs. What is the response of economic ethics?

Peter Ulrich: The present ethos in economic life goes back to Calvinism, as the sociologist Max Weber has shown in his famous study “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism”. That is the foundation for the fundamental belief in the market principle and the total deregulation of markets that more and more competition only bring good results. Today the shady sides multiply. The current phenomena of an uninhibited money fixation and market fundamentalism are expressions of a dubious economic ethos.

You fight a battle against windmills. How will you bring your economic ethos to the people?

Peter Ulrich: Our task does not consist simply in bringing ethics into economic life. Economic life ricochets off the ethos that already exists. Certain business practitioners or economists often react very negatively and dismissively to ideas of economic ethics. Market believers dream of a total market society instead of a market economy embedded in a rational social order. Profit maximization and economic growth are raised to supreme principles. We will criticize this absolutized economic thinking and relativize the dominant thought patterns.

Has anything upset you since the founding of your institute 16 years ago?

Peter Ulrich: Yes. We try to prevent economic malformations. Our goal is modest: to put a small lamp in the back of the heads of economics and business students who leave the University of St. Gallen after four years that flickers now and then and asks: Don’t other values count than the purely economic? Students should not only think in categories like efficiency, productivity and growth. Economics should be rationally adjusted in human, social and political contexts. The Economy is not an end in itself but only a means to a good quality of life.

What is uppermost for decision-makers in the economy, the top managers?

Peter Ulrich: We seek to address the experts even before the practitioners in economic life. A debate in economic ethics that started 20 years ago like a little brook has become a half Mississippi. Central questions of modern society are involved, the clash of powerful economic orientations and interests on one side and cultural and ethical-political ideas on the other side.

The economy worsens. Its reputation deteriorates. What is wrong?

Peter Ulrich: Perhaps I will surprise you but we shouldn’t act as though the constantly increasing unemployment were an unforeseeable and undesired side-effect. Realizing more and more output with fewer and fewer persons is the goal and economic success of this rationalization dynamic. I would be the last one to simply stop the productivity advances so jobs could be maintained. On the contrary, these advances have freed people from strenuous labor.

Base unemployment increases; the majority of the unemployed have no chance any more for re-integration. How can we counter the rising unemployment?

Peter Ulrich: The problem is that the social organization of our national economies lags behind the productivity level. Many parts of our life – purchasing power, social respect, social relations and personal developmental possibilities – depend on success or failure in competing for good jobs. This coupling must be undermined so the further rationalization of the economy is socially compatible. Otherwise a division of society threatens.

Some suffer under stress because they have too much work and others because they are jobless.

Peter Ulrich: An increasing output-concentration and frantic pace occur. The atmosphere is no longer pleasant even at a university like St. Gallen. The pressure to perform reaches the limits of what a person can handle psychologically. While the successful work themselves to death, society denies a job to the losers. The social gap widens. This is again not an unplanned or undesired secondary effect but the actual function of competition, namely to distinguish between the strong and the weak. Competition gives the red card to the weak: sorry, unproductive, useless. The more we rely on deregulation and intensified competition, the greater the share of the population that receives the red card from the labor market.

There are also striking differences in wages. The income of the working poor is not enough to secure their existence. In contrast, Daniel Vasella, CEO of Novartis, earns 20 million Swiss francs a year. Is that just?

Peter Ulrich: The distribution of wages is a direct reflection of the hierarchy of power. The exorbitant top sallies in the executive floors of large firms have nothing to do with performance. The income of the occupational group is the only standard.

How should the tasks be apportioned between the state and the economy?

Peter Ulrich: The conventional wisdom is that the economy increases efficiency according to its operational logic. The state should take over the follow-up social costs. And the causal agents of the costs bash the state for spending too much for social redistribution. This is a completely schizophrenic situation. Current social policy only combats the symptoms. Tackling the causes would be better, that is enabling as many citizens as possible to secure their existence under their own steam. In the OECD countries alone, 38 million persons willing to work are unemployed today. A billion persons worldwide are jobless. In the future everyone will no longer have the chance of gaining their income through paid work. As a result part of the gross domestic product will have to be distributed differently than through the labor market.

That sounds like communism. The state distributes income.

Peter Ulrich: That sounds disconcerting for many people who internalized our old Calvinist work ethos. A society of free and equal citizens has nothing to do with a social hammock or with communism. Rather what is central is the original ideal of civil society. As citizens we are all equal and proud of that. One of the central questions of this century is: How will we deal with the losers of this economic dynamic so that we don’t ignore their status as free citizens?

What are the social and economic prerequisites of a society of free citizens?

Peter Ulrich: A strict individual accounting of performance is impossible in a division of labor national economy. Since the hunters and gatherers, we know that cooperative life is based on solidarity. The men went on the hunt; the women planted vegetables and raised the children. Meat and vegetables were shared out of solidarity. Moreover, economic development requires that there are enough solvent consumers. No economic growth can occur in a third world country where in the extreme case 5 percent of the population has everything and 95 percent have nothing. Sooner or later a growing part of the population will be payed for consuming and not producing. The bottleneck or shortage is with demand, not with production.

Must not the economy grow so the future will be bright?

Peter Ulrich: No country has ever solved social problems by means of economic growth alone. The solution of the social question will only occur through political measures.

What would a good social policy look like?

Peter Ulrich: First of all, education is very important. People must become capable of the labor market or able to cover their needs independently. In addition basic rights must be given to people. Everyone must have the right of access to education, jobs and credits. Basic social rights are necessary that assure a dignified life even for the losers. Competition is risky; everyone cannot be successful. After the collapse of communism, the Chicago boys, the neoliberal hardliners, were sent to Russia. As a result, Russia experienced its most massive economic decline in the nineties; the gross domestic product fell almost in half because the cultural presuppositions and the legal institutions were lacking. The introduction of free enterprise competition must always be embedded in an appropriate social order.

How do you judge the increasing globalization?

Peter Ulrich: Globalization does not only refer to free competition. Globalization of an open-minded consciousness and education are vital. Reasonable world-political conditions of markets that include the social question must be created. The greatest economic boom of all time occurred in the middle of the 19th century. The social question emerged alongside the massive gain in prosperity. The working class movement began to resist the middle class that tried to secure its privileges with all its means. The consequence was the political radicalization that culminated in the two world wars in the 20th century. When one sees this epochal connection, it is alarming to observe forces again today that stubbornly oppose the creation of rational global economic conditions. If the so-called South, five billion people, would conclude that the rich OECD countries oppress them and will not longer tolerate this world regime, then very troubled times await us.

In your last book “The Demystified Market,” you speak of a “deeply spreading re-orientation in economic thinking.” What do you mean?

Peter Ulrich: We must bid farewell to the Cold War in the economy. Some are for more market across the board; others are for more state. The problems are shifted to and fro. Neither the market nor the state can solve everything. A third pole is necessary, the civil society. Citizens must assume a reasonable measure of personal responsibility for their actions. This is also true for businesses as “corporate citizens.” The more citizens and businesses are bound to principles of responsible conduct, the less state is needed. In the long-term, our social order must be reconsidered.

How would that appear concretely?

Peter Ulrich: Free citizens want to live in a society that guarantees the greatest possible real freedom and a dignified life to all its members. We either produce full employment again or if that does not succeed partly uncouple the distribution of purchasing power from success or failure on the labor market. I think of a guaranteed basic income. Whoever cries this is socialism is offered popular capitalism. Every come-of-age citizen receives financial assets with which he or she can build a reasonable existence. This would be consistent with capitalism. Our present affluence is inherited from past generations. No one has gained all this him or herself. A liberal society gives fair starting chances to members of every generation.

-----------------

Translated by Marc Batko, Portland, Oregon.

Slightly modified by the author. Original version in German: „Wirtschaftswachstum allein löst kein soziales Problem“, in: Der Arbeitsmarkt (ed. by the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs, Berne, Switzerland), Nr. 10, 2003, pp. 30-33);

http://www.der-arbeitsmarkt.ch/upload/archiv/Wirtschaftswachstum%20allein.pdf

Which can the Earth support more easily: 5 billion Buddhist monks who own nothing, eat little and destroy little - or 1 billion US citizens? Or, China's population growth or its economic growth?



We at Peasant Life Alliance want a meaningful discourse among civil society and academics of the options available and their costs. Though little contextual (structural) background on the authors assumptions is presented in the following debate, we present it in near its original formula in order to get the ball rolling and open our minds. We seek a correlation of forces economic, political and spiritual that can stop and reverse the US global domination and its imperialist wars. We question whether any of the debates or even the framework of the debates over global warming, Resistance or economics are meaningful – whether terms, goals or strategies are defined sufficiently or accurately in order to be of any value.

Are we organizing and operating within a giant lie?

An Eclectic Debate on Population vs. GNP Growth

By Dien Bien Phu (DBP) vs. Mike Pro High Value (Mike PHV)

**Italics are statements from Mike Pro High Value.

www.viacampesina.blogspot.com

DBP: The wealthier a capitalist society becomes the more waste it creates and the more people who work in useless jobs like advertising, lawyers and bureaucracies. http://www.gp.org/documents/globalgreenscharter01.html

The distribution of income has widespread and powerful impacts. If a large number of upper class people are allowed, then not only are many of society's productive assets devoted to producing luxury goods but also the general public – even the poor – learn to see these products as desirable and then strive to acquire these products or crude facsimiles.

The environmental Impact of a Society, equals: Population times the consumption per person, divided by the technology or mode of production. The mix of consumption types is not as important as the overall consumption as consumption comes from production. Nevertheless, higher income societies or those with extreme inequalities tend to pollute the most – especially since so much of their economies are oriented toward luxuries and middle class services. Someone pays the costs of this waste and it is usually the poor or the poor from another country that must pay.

A CALLTO FELLOW DEBATE Folks

What about trade?

I f you want to join this debate please describe your system's assumptions, are there high tariffs restricting trade? If so, many products will go up in price in the short to medium run and this will crowd out higher priced, luxury and even higher valued goods. Trade is the main cause of environmental destruction (invasive species – which is being accelerated by global warming. How do you factor this into your thinking?) What is the goal of your society, its values and priorities? Please flesh out your ideas and the system that they would be operating under. We need to offer each other and the interested readers some context.

For the Peasant Life viewpoint and program see: www.peasantlife.blog.com

Population growth a Small Problem compared to GNP Growth

Author: dien bien phu (DBP) e-mail: nuovotierra@yahoo.com

Think, Simplify Carefully, Connect, Find the Strategy and Tactics that make Sense

If you have practiced the endangered art of math (subtraction will do) it is not hard to prove that at least in the medium run (10 - 30) years, that population is a much less severe problem than the growth of GNP.

Which can the Earth support more easily:

5 billion Buddhist monks who own nothing, eat little and destroy little - or 1 billion US citizens?

Or think about China, it has 2 percent population growth and 12 percent income growth. 12 minus 2 is 10!

Or is there something other than consumption that people do not like about people.?

Seems to me that it is consumption - particularly unsustainable consumption that is the problem. And to carry it further, the wealthier a country the more harmful its consumption (electronics, chemicals, pharmaceutical drugs, satellites, nuclear power, no-fat frozen yogurt.... etc ad bulimiaism too... One problem with population growth is how it interacts with capitalism - the government has to grow the GNP faster than the rate of population growth or else people get poorer.

This dynamic would not be as chaotic or sever under socialism – even under a decentralized market socialism as Hugo Chavez advocates because, besides operating from a much lower level of individual consumption, under this type of system, investments are designed to last a long time and to accommodate new people, even as the need for many services will decline as self-government and education reduce the need for doctors, bureaucrats, and other higher level government functions. With few luxuries produced or traded (and eventually little trade) there will be adequate resources available for basic goods and the social needs of a growing population. Additionally we believe that this type of citizen empowering economic system will also lead to the quickest reductions in population growth! Debating population growth puts the horse in front of the cart, because if we have negative growth we can support more people and then it is not such a problem - or never was.

Poor people live simple. Rural poor people usually make good use of local resources and are not dependent on transportation - like urban people who must increasingly import their energy, food and water from far away.

In the long run, population growth can be a problem - but mostly this depends on consumption – well, and the mode of production too! SO, we have to fight consumerism, materialism, capitalism, private property rights and modernity. In that sense Pope John Paul was right to resist birth control because that is a band aid solution - we need good families, good morals and a sharing non-capitalist society if we are to survive.

The rich are fond of waving triumphantly their solution to all problems: more technology, and the way to get more technology is to have the GNP grow more so we can afford it - a never ending circle and one that the poor of the planet will suffer in their efforts to duplicate. People should help us to bring some focus and truth to these problems. The obvious solution is to all become cooperative non-hierarchal peasants - to want little and to only work enough to get what we need.

Mike "Pro High Value" (Mike PHV) Responds:

Well yes, if you swallow that assumption that only the next 10-30 years matter and after that you don't care..... The confusion here is between the highest priority eventually and the urgent. IN THE SHORT RUN (if that is ALL you care about [ Not what DBP said] ) improvement in returning to balance could best be done by reducing consumption. The problem is that in the long run it is useless. It is possible to quickly (over 10-30 years) reduce consumption from typical American levels to a small fraction of that because we are living far above bare survival levels. However it is NOT possible to reduce the population quickly unless you include among the acceptable methods killing people.

DBP RESPONSE:

You are fighting your own point unless you can prove that it is likely to be possible to slow down population growth. The only common methods of reducing population growth are: abortion, income growth, raising the status of women or a combination of these with large educational programs and social security programs. None of these programs look likely to receive even half the funding or priority that they need. Even worse in dealing with population is the demographics which have large percentages of young people as a percent of the total population: The Population Pyramid. Even major programs would not have much effect for decades. And by then consumption would be huge: 10 billion people with 4 billion middle class people, a global output of 50 trillion per year ? (100 trillion is possible?)

Mike PHV Response:

Let's assume that in order to return to some semblance of sustainable balance even at "subsistence" levels, the human population 100 years from now (all fossil fuel and water gone) could be no higher than a quarter of what it is currently. How hard would that be to accomplish? What does a rate of decrease of that order imply?We would be talking about something comparable to what Europe experienced in the latter half of the 14th century (the Y. pestis plague epidemic).

DBP Response: Well, first I doubt if we have more than 10 years to de-throne the US Imperialist waste and consumption machine. And the fixation on fossil fuels and fossil water is naive. There will always be plenty of water, it just may not be where people want to live or farm. And there are so many alternatives to petroleum for energy that all the talk of Peak Oil being significant is so strange – messianic I would say. To fully address the unrealistic assumptions based in this model of Mike’s we are working up some numbers to show more realistic scenarios. We believe that without any petroleum that we can grow enough food (grains and vegetables) to feed 5 billion people well.

Mike PHV: The reality is that YOU do not believe that there really is a problem. You think the coming ecological disaster is just an artifact of capitalism and excessive consumption and more important, that the consequences of the state that we are currently in would vanish if we eliminated those things. Tthat does NOT follow --- eliminating the bully who has been going around breaking arms does NOT straighten arms that have already been broken.

DBP Response: Is this really an analogy, the bully is capitalism but where do the broken arms come in ??? – the problem with a bully is that he controls people's options – without the bully anything is possible – with the bully nothing... ?

Mike PHV: I am trying to say is that we will need to reduce the population (probably to around what it was circa 1700 before fossil resources were used) and where consumption levels come in and fairness of distributions come in is by how much MORE we might have to reduce population to tolerate these things. In other words, these are not irrelevant to the discussion but in and of themselves insufficient for any solution. I would like to run the numbers, to compare the total consumption over time for two approaches. One approach is yours. Solve the consumption problem and inequitable distribution problem now over the next 30 years meanwhile allowing the population to continue to grow [ DBP: ah, but we think our way reduces population faster than yours too... or you have not said how you will do it. Static analysis is not very useful!] and only then begin the crash program to reduce population ,from this even higher level,, at say "one child per woman" - I can't picture any faster rate being acceptable - against the alternative of beginning the crash population program first and only when it was complete tackling the other. Which way do more people end up DYING because you failed to meet the sustainable limit requirement as resources dwindle to what can be annually produced?

DBP Response: An almost infinite number of assumptions are now built into his model – just like neo-con economics!!! He offers no way to reduce population or income growth and he calls me un-caring. The way things work is that first there are revolutions, then we build a peasant-agrarian-based economic system, and then when this is stabilized and people feel secure population growth will decline steadily to around 2 percent ( 10 to 20 years later).

To get down to your hypothetical 5 billon living as Buddhist monks takes two generations plus a human lifespan (say 120 years total). You think we have fossil fuel and fossil water left to 120 years?

DBP Response: This line of argument is not relevant, the whole hyped up messianic fear and hope of moderates, liberals and environmentalists over Peak Oil is ludicrous given the wide availability of cheap alternatives. The consequences of global warming are worth discussing, but few wish do this in an intelligent way. Originally we said 5 billon and Mike mis-read it as 1.5 billion – we think that in 40 years we could get down to 5 billion from the peak that will occur at 10 years from now of around 7 billion people on Earth.



Mike PHV Responds: Other ways of accounting needed.

Another important consideration when discussing these problems is that we need to forget about accounting as done for the current economic system and begin accounting (so we can make rational decisions) in environmental rather than monetary terms. [DBP: Sources, methodology for a new system – or how do we operate in a new system before it arrives – or before anyone even describes it??? ]

Mike PHV: The original article spoke in terms of rising GNP as if this were a meaningful measure of consumption when we are worried about the ecological crisis we face. It isn't. The monetary value of consumption is irrelevant. What matters is real things, things that have PHYSICAL reality. Their (environmental) cost is the real resources used to produce them. The contribution to the GNP is by the increase in "value" associated. The SAME amount of resources used might result in very different values.

Suppose X number of board feet of timber are used to produce fine furniture as master cabinetmakers can produce or instead used to produce bottom end "junk" thrown together and roughly finished. Or the same amount of canvas, wood stretchers, pigments, and vegetable oil used by a competent artist vs. used by one who is not. Or the same ton of steel being used to make an expensive top of the end car vs. a low priced model. We would have very different contributions to the GNP but the same consumption of resources.

DBP Response: Only if you do not count time, labor, education or better tools as resources! And again in order for people to pay the much higher cost of these items they have to sell, mine, destroy a lot of something. In Peasant Life, people build their own furniture. The local government through popular assemblies could decide to build a wood mill so that finished lumber is available. Art? Art for sale is a luxury that is only available in unequal societies. People can make their own art or give it as gifts. Why don't you give an example involving basic goods, since these are the only products that we hold as valid.

Mike PHV:

We need to also keep in mind that measured in REAL terms [ DBP: what re real terms??? If you are talking about negative externalities then you are wrong in most cases – trade, travel, exploitation – these all involve large externalities – things not accounted in the price.] , the consumption of the rich, while much greater than that of the poor, is not proportionate to the difference when measured by "price". A hundred dollar a bottle wine does NOT impose a 20 times environmental cost than a 5 dollar a bottle wine does. The reason it is important for us to understand this is so that we do not grossly overestimate the "bang for the buck" we can get by redistributing what there is fairly. Doing that may solve our social justice problems but will not help as much as people who are calculating in dollars think it will toward solving our environmental problems. As far as the environment is concerned, dollars don't matter, only real things do.



RESPONSE Dien Bien Phu (DBP) [Great Debate!]

THE BIGGEST FLAW I have found so far in Mike’s thinking is:

"A hundred dollar a bottle wine does NOT impose a 20 times environmental cost than a 5 dollar a bottle wine does. The reason it is important for us to understand this is so that we do not grossly overestimate the "bang for the buck" we can get by redistributing what there is fairly. Doing that may solve our social justice problems but will not help as much as people who are calculating in dollars think it will toward solving our environmental problems. As far as the environment is concerned, dollars don't matter, only real things do."

DBP: But you miss the point of thinking, perhaps because you are an economist. It is not the bottle of wine or its price that matter, it is the system that feeds on higher prices - that's how they create an upper class and that's what keeps the middle class striving so that they can have that 100$ bottle. If you are going to claim to be an ecologist, then you cannot pretend that expensive wines and other luxuries do not cause systemic problems – like driving resources away from social needs and instead encourage materialism and growth.

Just the IDEA of a $100 bottle of wine does 100 times the ecological damage than a 1$ bottle!

Also it is strange to hear someone complain from the other side of the GNP debate - ecologists always say that it is a poor measure of well being because it counts bad things as goods, here you are saying that higher GNP isn't necessarily bad. Of course you are using narrow and non-real world examples - let's talk about energy use, international trade or where the US makes most of its money: BANKING SERVICES. I guess since they only push "non-real" money around that they do not create any pollution - according to you - where as in fact they are pollution: the wealth generated by managing the profits of a polluting system. ]

BUT IT IS THE HIGHER VALUES THAT POWER THE SYSTEM and It is the SYSTEM THAT IS DOING THE HARM AND IT IS NOT JUST ENVIRONMENTAL COSTS THAT MATTER: SOCIAL COSTS, CULTURAL COSTS and INSTABILITY (War) COSTS ARE RELEVANT TOO. IT IS THIS SEPARATION OF THINGS THAT CREATES EVIL AND BAD THINKING .

Mike makes it sound like all that DBP proposes is to redistribute income – but we would redistribute power, wealth and land and constrain income growth by taxing luxuries and polluting or imported products and channeling these tax dollars back into sustainability and appropriate education, research and technology.

Mike PHV: An Economist?

You said: “It is not the bottle of wine or its price that matter, it is the system that feeds on higher prices.”

I've never grown grapes and turned them into wine. Its cane fruits here (ribus species). Are you arguing that when I turn my raspberries (or blackberries) into higher "value" (market price) preserves or wine that does more ECOLOGICAL damage than if sold fresh. And for fresh, since the "price" is different when sold already picked than on a "pick your own" basis that this increase in GNP contribution has ENVIRONMENTAL consequences? Or if I prefer to sell my garlic crop braided (well tied, I grow mainly "stiffneck" varieties that you tie rather than braid) this increase in price per pound degraded the environment?

Look my friend, you don't even believe that there is an ecological crisis looming. You think it's ALL a matter of distribution and that magically a socialist industrial civilization [DBP: No magic and not much industrialization – localization and wisdom] will not be subject to the same reality constraints that we have with this "non-socialist industrial civilization" and our massive population "bubble" built on the basis of mining the fossil resources of the past. You believe in mantras like "always enough for need, never enough for greed"[From Ghandi!] and that a few loaves and fishes can feed unlimited multitudes if only they are shared fairly [Exaggeration of Jesus] . Please understand, I can admire such "religious" faith, but that's what it is, even though the "religion" be a secular one.

WHERE in what I have said do you see anything to suggest that I do not consider eliminating social injustice important? [ DBP: Where does he mention social justice?? ] Bringing about justice between people, is NOT sufficient in and of itself to solve the deeper underlying problem of returning to sustainable balance with the environment. The latter isn't something we can choose to do or not to do. Willy nilly we will be forced into balance and the only choices we MAY have left are how.

DBP Response:

So then you don't believe in my argument or yours or resistance – or given your statement that we will be forced into "balance" why do you argue these things??? Why do you argue at all? Besides I did not say equality was sufficient, but I would argue it is necessary for reducing population growth and for sustainablity.

Mike PHV:

Go ahead and take what I said as a suggestion that ONE possible solution would involve a shift in preferences toward "luxury goods" --- not quite the way you meant that but a change in societal preferences for higher quality "things" even if that meant accepting a lower quantity of things. That could leave the GNP constant while decreasing the environmental load, yes?

DBP Response:

How do you get to "a lower quantity of things"? How would you restructure demand fort high quality products? As long as there is a market a variety of goods of varying quality will be offered. Actually, if income distribution were very equal it might be more likely that similar quality goods would be most in demand and then the government (the people) could work to eliminate the shoddy goods. Or are you arguing for a constant GNP? Is that sustainable? Are we going to let the rest of the world pollute their way up to $100 bottles of wine ?

MikePHV:

It's the sense in which I said that this was a wrong (invalid) measure. Its REAL consumption which we will have to reduce to what we can produce sustainably, not the "price" associated. Could you at least TRY to look at this from the other direction?

Assume that the problems of inequitable distribution have been solved. Estimate the total amount of sustainable production that will be possible once the fossil resources are gone. Decide on a few levels of per capita consumption (of real things) --- say level 1 at minimal bare survival, level 2 at a greater level considered "minimal acceptable", level 3, some desirable level and then divide. You come up with population 1, population 2, population 3 etc. Do you find ANY of these approaching even 6 billion? How about time? What do you estimate as the time remaining for the fossil resources.

DBP Response:

Why do you think fossil fuels are important ? Coal, biodiesel, alternative sources, hydro , etc... should be included in any long term discussion.

Mike PHV: I'm not interested in your "religious" pronouncements that if we share fairly all will be well. I want to see your numbers. We may disagree about the estimates but at least we will be talking about material reality, not spooks. It's overdone, but let's try a ship analogy. We're all on this damned ship and its sprung a leak. I'll even let you "have" that it's because of "capitalism" that the ship was shoddily constructed (hence leaking) and likewise because of capitalism overloaded with passengers, that these are divided into unfair classes, and corruption allowed the ship to sail without enough lifeboats.

What I am NOT willing to accept are your (to me) silly arguments along the lines........

1) If we eliminate the social injustice aboard this will stop the leak. (DBP: Cooperation might help!)

2) If we eliminate the social injustice aboard this will cause more lifeboats to miraculously appear.

DBP: But if we are not in Mike’s restrictive analogy – at sea – we could build more lifeboats or more sustainable subsistence outposts that could survive and teach others how to survive. Not possible on a significant scale under capitalism in most of the world.

Mike PHV: But I AM willing to entertain the ideas

3) Even if eliminating the social injustice aboard will not keep people from drowning it is a “good” worth pursuing on its own merits.

4) Making sure that lifeboat spaces are fairly allocated is a good worth pursuing.

Now since this is SLOW leak, perhaps before the ship goes down there will be time for the population to be decreased so that there WILL be enough lifeboat places (divided fairly) by the time the ship goes down.

DBP RESPONSE: Calmly We Might Learn Something

[You SAID:] " when I turn my raspberries (or blackberries) into higher "value" (market price) preserves or wine that does more ECOLOGICAL damage than if sold fresh ? ""

Well, yes it does more damage because you add sugar and time which means that you have less time to spend doing other things and that requires you to sell more stuff to make up for it. Also, there is a whole different way to look at this: DIY – Do It Yourself. When people do not have so many choices and so many pre-packaged or processed things they make them themselves. High value makes sense in a capitalist society full of cheap products that cause more waste because they are thrown away. But Mike’s ideas remind me of demand driven middle class “keeping Up With the Jones’s” trying to have the best wine, the coolest car….

Profound THOUGHT - As I was bike riding to pick my child up from school, I realized the dumbest part of Mike's argument - is that he separates production from consumption - or the consuming from the purchase. Where does the guy get the $100 to buy the expensive wine - or the expensive garlic?

It might help to imagine a barter economy which is what we should have - if we all grow corn and we trade some of the corn for wheat or flowers or seed or WINE - then obviously it causes 20 times as much enviro damage to "buy" 100 dollar wine (trading with 20 times as much corn) as it does to trade for $5 wine -- we are all so used to abstracting all of this that common sense is direly lacking. Do you Understand it (the world) better now - there is no free lunch. If a guy is a small sustainable farmer and he buys $5 dollar wine, and his neighbor is a logger, nuclear engineer or banker who buys $100 bottles of wine - the impact of the $100 bottle could be 1000's of times more than that of the 5 dollar bottle!

I like your effort and I like the challenge - it would be nice if you could see the light and then we could move on to intelligent and RELEVANT DISCUSSIONS...

Besides your argument is not very consequential to the original debate which was whether increased population or increased GNP cause more problems - lets say that only half of the growth in GNP is bad well then we have 6 percent growth minus 2 or 3 percent population growth - Vuella ! Growth of GNP looses again -

Lets decide what to debate and how to do it. I think this kind of talk is what is so sorely missing in society.

As to your other proclamations about me not caring about the environment - you would have quite a hard time proving that - given that I have a long record fighting for it: tree-sitting, road blockades, lobbying, working in South America and publishing articles on this subject. The difference between myself and most long term activists is that I have an open and questioning mind. I studied, practiced various strategies and tactics and then studied their effects on all things. I concluded that everything we had done was counter-productive. Now I argue that redistribution through revolution is the only way to help the environment - or fight the Imperialist oil junkies. To duel and learn or do nothing it is up to you. I would say the best thing to debate is how to help Hugo Chavez - but maybe the best peasant agrarian reform program is a better subject. Anyway I have many more arguments to show you how more details of your statements are wrong - or incomplete or have the strange reasoning that I attribute to economists and middle class US people.

Mike PHVC: I'll try just one last time

You are wedded to the system you wish to replace, so closely enmeshed that you cannot think outside its boxes. You do not have to "expropriate" the capitalist owner, just (collectively) cease to believe in his ownership. IF a befuddled street person who believes he is the CEO of a corporation tries to walk in and assume the position behind the desk he doesn't get very far. If the "real" (your understanding) CEO does so, he succeeds. You think that's because of "reality" but I'd put the cause of the difference in the beliefs of the security guard at the door, the other workers in the halls, etc.

DBP Response: Here he gets a little mystical on us, suggesting that people will soon suddenly get collectively inspired to pretend like the owners of corporation and their millions of hired security and angry employees don't exist!

Mike: If I take ten bushels of apples and convert them to cider, if I do this carelessly and without skill, I end up with stuff barely drinkable, vinegary taste. [ DBP: And even with the best care this sometimes happen – so we get waste – which is eco-destructive] If I make the cider with care and skill I have produced better cider, fine to drink. IF (big if) these are sold in the capitalist market, the former maybe $2/bottle and the latter say $10/bottle you suggest that means producing the drinkable stuff causes environmental damage.

DBP Response:

One example does not prove anything. Let’s get some examples of shoes, clothing, water, energy, tools or manufacturing tools. What about: Where does the money comes from to buy luxuries??? I think also that if you study luxury and even high value products you will often find that the negative externalities are higher – the things not counted because their production is complex and often involves trade and hidden energy uses

Mike PHV: LOOK at what you just said! What alchemy are you using in your reasoning. There's no difference to the environment in the PRODUCTION of the better quality cider. You are trapped into thinking of it in terms of damage caused as a trade good rather than inferior trade goods. ( ??? )

But what if we ALL were doing this, if ALL the goods produced were of this higher quality. If I trade my high quality cider for high quality cheese. The little bits of paper associated, the "price" (what ends up as GNP) are ARBITRARY, they are an artifact of the socio-economic system and have nothing to do with the reality of things.

DBP:

How do you imagine getting to such a system? Now you sound like Paul Hawken: All ideas and zero applications. Are you counting on voluntary changes (or religious conversion?) over 100 years while the planet and capitalist have a war party ??? Sometimes I think that Mike and I should be (are) debating politics not economics.

Mike PHV: I was saying two things... 1) We could have a higher, a lower, or the same "GNP" with less "things" involved. For a sustainable way of life we will have to be consuming fewer THINGS --- but that does NOT mean that they would have a lower net "value" as the capitalists reckon.

DBP Response:

This is rather bizarre – he needs to explain his economy more: are there cars, rapid transport systems, is there a market for energy, he seems to ignore heavy industry and the whole productive system and yet still imagines that the US will have a higher GNP but that it will have fewer things of higher value. I doubt that he understands all of the machines that work unseen to produce millions of parts all over the world to keep this system running and the millions of people who run these corporations.

Mike PHV: 2) The rich, unfortunately, do NOT currently consume "things" proportionately to the disparity of wealth and it is only your persistence in reckoning the capitalist way that binds you to this. I am not saying that it would not be just and desirable to dispossess them of their unfair share (to cease believing that it is theirs) -- just that it won't result in as much "things" to redistribute as you imagine. You can't eat those bits of paper.

DBP Response:

Again which rich? Where are his household surveys and manufacturing analysis? The Rich countries consume a much much higher percentage of luxury products and luxury services that require many products than do poor countries – Examples – perfumes, cars, mink coats, diamonds, veal, pets, therapy, high tech medicine, electronic goods... ad infinitum. True in some service sectors the "official accounting" numbers (GNP) may not use an equal amount of destructive resources they still use a great deal – he just doesn't see how driving to the doctor, who uses high tech machines that require research centers and multiple high tech industries to support them (linkages). We should also consider how an unequal distribution of income leads to creation of industries that take resources away from basic goods and create consumer tastes for things like golf courses, caviar, designer drugs and pornography.

Mike PHV

The Earth doesn't care what paper value we associate to this or that. All that really matters is how much of the Earth we consume, how much we leave for the rest of non-human life. The paper value we associate with "things" is entirely subjective, no material reality involved. If we choose, instead of valuing quantity as we now do we instead chose to more highly value "quality" (an abstract too) then the value we have to share out among us need not decrease.

DBP Response:

Where did he dream this viewpoint up? Has Mike ever heard anyone say the things that he does ! Where are his references or sources? Our Peasant Life position of the viability and low environmental impacts of simple living has more than 100 years of research to back it up. An it has living examples in the MST of Brazil and Bolivia (Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador, Chiapas and Cuba too!)

Mike PHV: Comment: the astrology of the 20th century link

You said: “If a guy is a small sustainable farmer and he buys $5 dollar wine, and his neighbor is a logger, nuclear engineer or banker who buys $100 bottles of wine - the impact of the $100 bottle could be 1000's of times more than that of the 5 dollar bottle!”

By this logic the impact of any transaction is the impact of all economic activity on the world. It's all connected. Duh. That doesn't mean it's all the same thing. You're missing the point. Environmentalists don't give a shit where the little pieces of paper come from or where they go.

DBP Response:

Actually they are the same depending on which end of the transaction you are on – so how can you dismiss half your argument or separate and abstract the discussion form such important factors???

You said: "They come from where they come from and they go where they go, and there will always be middlemen chasing them and economists making a living advising the middlemen about how to make the paper move faster and grab more of it. You're at least two levels of abstraction away from what's really important. Whether the bottle says "$5" or "$100" is definitely not important.

DBP Response: Have you ever studied public policy or political science – or do you really believe that these have no impact of production, consumption or distribution (or ecological problems – just say yes or no or explain realistically please – because that is the implication of your logic – to dismiss whatever challenges your argument!