Privileged Goods

Commoditization and Its Impact on Environment and Society

Jack P. Manno

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9781000611014
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Management
• Index: Biological Sciences

What are the obstacles in the way of effectively solving the environmental crises of our time? What can we do to overcome them? These may be two of the most important questions heading into the 21st century. Organized human societies have the ability to completely change the world. While we have excelled at building, destroying and rebuilding, we h

chapter one

Introduction

This book addresses two questions: What are the most difficult obstacles in the way of effectively solving the environmental crises of our time? What can we do to overcome those obstacles? The answers I present here are a portion of a far more complicated story that will only be told in retrospect after we or our descendants have finally learned how to live lightly and well on the Earth.

Human attention is among the most powerful natural forces in the universe. When an individual decides to turn his or her attention to understanding something, accomplishing something, changing something, the resources available to that individual are mobilized, and the world begins to change. When groups of individuals who are organized in societies turn their collective attention to shared goals, the potential results are even more dramatic. Organized human societies have completely transformed the world. In many ways this book is about how this resource, human attention, is allocated. Since economics is fundamentally about the allocation of limited resources among competing uses, this book is about an economics of attention.

Humans have been remarkably successful, spreading throughout the planet, altering and shaping landscapes to improve conditions for our comfort and safety. The curiosity and creativity inherent in human nature has been unleashed in the production of multitudes of products and services that enhance life. The pace of this inventiveness is astounding. Those of us privileged with purchasing power and ready access to consumer goods can interact with an amazing system of production and distribution that makes available to us a garden of earthly delights unimaginable to all but a tiny elite of our ancestors. The earthly goods that surround our lives keep getting better and better. Our cars improve in speed, quiet, and comfort. Our ability to talk with each other anywhere, anytime, grows simpler, and the sound is clearer. The pharmacy shelves expand with new treatments for new ailments every day. The toothpaste dispenser gets better and easier to use. Music reproduction continues to improve in fidelity, as does ease of playback. Food arrives from all over the world, spicier and more interesting than ever. For every human need and desire there is a packaged, well-designed “something” to be purchased that will satisfy it. The global machine that produces the commodities that make our lives richer, safer, and more comfortable is an amazing success, and many people everywhere in the world are understandably eager to join in the shopping spree. The basic political and economic objective of most modern nation-states has been to achieve increased prosperity for its people through economic growth, which in turn is pursued through improvements in economic efficiency (more output per dollar invested), technology, and trade.

What we have accomplished in the way of prosperity on Earth — and we have accomplished a great deal through this organized effort to promote economic growth — has required immense resources of human creativity, insight, and organizational capacity. We have had to discover the sources and invent the means for drawing from the natural world the energy and materials we need to produce our goods and services. Economic policy and practice and individual ambitions have been and are understandably coordinated toward this aim. The perspective of this book is that it is possible to achieve balanced, equitable, healthy, sustainable development, not only in the economy of commodities but also in the economy of care and connection in all areas of human life. For all the success of economic development, huge portions of human potential are left deliberately underdeveloped as a result of a distorted allocation principle guiding the allocation of human attention. We need to begin to address this imbalance of development, because in this imbalance lies the source of many of the crises that now threaten the health of the planet.

Human beings live in groups.¹ We cooperate with each other to enhance our ability to achieve individual material well-being and solve the four basic challenges of economic development: obtaining raw materials, transforming those raw materials into things we can use, sharing the efforts and distributing the products in a way that keeps the community together, and storing (or insuring) what we need for later periods of scarcity. These challenges have been met in countless diverse ways by the multitude of cultures that have existed on Earth. To be sustainable, a society must not only solve these basic challenges but must do so in an ever-changing environment. These changes include the way the environment is affected by human activities. In order to thrive, human communities must be flexible and creative. Information about the world has to feed back into the development process and adjustments then have to be made.

While we have been very good at building, destroying, and building anew, we have been very bad at conserving, preserving, and sustaining. The great challenge of our times is to overcome this imbalance. In the future, if we are to have a future worth looking forward to, we will have to become as good at protection as we are at innovation, as good at conservation as we are at transformation, as good at preservation as we are at creation, and as good at sustaining as we are at altering. “May you live in interesting times!” So goes the saying, thought to be ancient and Chinese, which may be a blessing or a curse depending on one’s perspective. We who are alive, reading and writing at the beginning of the twenty-first century certainly live in interesting and challenging times.

The fascinating and tragic dilemma now challenging us is the fact that, while the amazing abundance of people and goods is being produced, the ecological health, stability, and integrity of the Earth itself are being threatened by the byproducts and side effects of the very patterns of economic behavior that have created this abundance. The economy that has been so good for many is now threatening to become very destructive for all. According to the United Nations Human Development Report 1998:

Runaway growth in consumption in the past 50 years is putting strains on the environment never before seen.

• The burning of fossil fuels has almost quintupled since 1950.

• The consumption of fresh water has almost doubled since 1960.

• The marine catch has increased fourfold.

• Wood consumption, both for industry and for household fuel, is now 40% higher than it was 25 years ago.²

These figures must be considered in light of who is doing the consuming. Consider the following facts, also from the UN’s Human Development Report:

Inequalities in consumption are stark. Globally, the 20% of the world’s people in the highest-income countries account for 86% of total private consumption expenditures — the poorest 20% a miniscule 1.3%. More specifically, the richest fifth:

• Consume 45% of all meat and fish, the poorest fifth 5%.

• Consume 58% of total energy, the poorest fifth less than 4%.

• Have 74% of all telephone lines, the poorest fifth 1.5%

• Consume 84% of all paper, the poorest fifth 1.1%.

• Own 87% of the world’s vehicle fleet, the poorest fifth less than 1%.³

Given a choice, the poorest fifth of world’s population would probably like to live like the wealthiest fifth. The impact of that level of consumption on the Earth’s environment and resources would be staggering. But such levels of inequality — and they are growing — are not politically sustainable forever. Either consumption will increase dramatically among the presently poor, or the world will descend into bitter conflict over the distribution of wealth and resources, or we will advance to a new economy of equity and sustainability. The next great stage of human history will be dominated by our struggle to resolve the tragic dilemma of the modern economy. Can we figure out how to build communities and individual lives that thrive and prosper without damaging the ecological life support systems upon which all health and prosperity ultimately depends? Is it possible for large numbers of human beings, perhaps all human beings, to live prosperous lives without destroying the Earth? Can we design and carry out such an economy? Understandably, we want more than simply to survive, we want to prosper. By prosperity I mean having the material well-being to meet basic human needs and rational aspirations for comfort and security. Moreover, prosperity should not be a privilege for the lucky or powerful few but a reasonable goal for vast numbers of people worldwide, ideally for all.

The most critical threat to continued human development and improvement is the fact that the scale of human use and waste of material and energy resources is threatening to disrupt the earth’s life support systems, making the natural environment more unstable and less hospitable to the forms of life, including human, that have developed under the Earth’s present conditions.⁴ Mathis Wackernagel and William Rees have developed a measure of the amount of land space required to support a given level of resource use, the so-called “ecological footprint.” Wackernagel has observed that to support the world’s population at the standard of living enjoyed by the industrialized wealthy nations of the North would require a land base equivalent to three additional Earths.⁵ If we continue down this path, life is bound to get harder for many, if not most, of the world’s people, and for far too many of them life is already barely endurable. Even if we learn to adapt to decreases in the per capita availability of productive agricultural lands, ocean fisheries, clean water and air, and other resources on which our lives depend, the pressures on many, perhaps most, of the Earth’s creatures may well prove to be too much for them to survive. We have a moral obligation not to let that happen. What is obvious to most anyone who takes the time to really look at the environmental trends at the beginning of the twenty-first century is this: if we don’t change direction we’ll soon end up where we’re heading. It’s not a pretty picture.

What we must do now seems obvious: do more with less. In every sector of the economy we have to dramatically reduce the amount of energy and material we use to satisfy human needs and wants. We must first redefine what we mean by efficiency, by changing it from its present meaning of maximum output per dollar invested, to something like maximum service per unit of energy and material produced and consumed. We must then set all our scientific creativity and intelligence to the task of making our patterns of production and consumption increasingly efficient in this way. This is a great undertaking that could and should occupy all people. There are many ways to accomplish this type of efficiency. It could be a renaissance of huge proportions as we make all aspects of life more efficient in these terms. There would be a revival of skills and knowledge as we grow more food with less fuel, work with rather than against nature’s cycles and flows, use less energy for everything, repair more than we replace, share more than we consume, rely on each other more, and use more creativity and less material and energy. In order to accomplish this we need to change how we allocate our attention. Instead of focusing on goods and services (commercial commodities) as ends in themselves, we must focus on the service such goods and services are meant to provide. There may be countless ways to satisfy any given need or solve any problem. Some of them may be commercially viable solutions and others may not be. Some of the options that may best solve any problem may be more environmentally benign or more socially beneficial than others. When we allocate our attention predominantly toward commercially viable options we abandon our ability to allocate our attention according to other goals. We must change the primary allocation principles for human attention so that reducing human impact on the planet and building communities that thrive are the primary goals.

This is a technological, social, and political challenge that can and should engage and excite everyone. It is not just an engineering and scientific problem, but one which will call upon the creative intelligence of community activists, educators, gardeners, launderers, cooks, childcare providers, everyone to be solved. As a result of this creative response to the challenge of thrift, life will be better in many ways. Such a vision is the next stage of economic development. The path to it has been laid out by countless ecologically inspired optimists working at transforming every aspect of life — transportation, housing, neighborhoods, agriculture, health care, education, and on and on. Some have called it Sustainable Development, to contrast it with the patterns of development currently dominant in most of the world, and rapidly spreading, which continue to use and waste greater and greater quantities of energy and materials and which are clearly unsustainable as a result.

So why, when we understand some of the consequences of reckless economic development and the need to be careful about our impacts on the natural world, and having understood this for decades and perhaps for thousands of years, is it so profoundly difficult for us to do it? Why, when it is so clearly rational and correct to do so, can’t we put at least as much attention and resources toward conserving energy and materials as we do toward mining and harvesting more and more? Why can’t we put as much attention and resources on developing good public transportation as we do on more muscle-bound jeeps? Why don’t we reduce waste generation before we reuse, and reuse before we recycle, and recycle before we burn or landfill? Why not do as much research into organic agriculture as the fertilizer and pesticide industries do on their R&D? Why not spend as much on disease prevention as we do on pharmaceuticals and high-tech treatments? Why not spend more on energy conservation than oil exploration? Given the threats to the habitability of our planet and the mess we may be leaving to our children and grandchildren, the choices are logical and obvious. And yet, there is little sign that in transportation, land use, agriculture, health care, or even environmental protection we will soon fund the development of ecologically preferable options anywhere near as generously as we have ecologically destructive ones. If anything, the opposite is true; ecologically destructive ways of living are continually spreading into societies and cultures that once managed to live more frugally and in balance with nature. Why?

The first step is to get clearer about what the problem is and what it is not. There are many suggestions as to the root cause of unsustainability: human greed,⁶ ignorance,⁷ spiritual detachment and/or malaise,⁸ addictions,⁹ the flawed logic and practice of contemporary economics,¹⁰ the ideology of competitive growth under capitalism,¹¹ or simply the inevitable consequence of human activity.¹² This book presents the case that the problem is not simply about individual human greed and fear of scarcity, but also about the systems of rewards in place that reinforce greed and cater to fear. It is not only about ignorance of ecology or the problems of environmental degradation, but also about self-reinforcing processes that reward environmentally destructive choices. It is not just about spiritual malaise or addictions to material goods, but about political decisions that make self-reliance and mutual aid increasingly difficult to choose. Unsustainability is, in the end, the inevitable consequence of particular dynamics in the modern political economy that systematically favor exactly those forms of goods and services that have the greatest environmental impact.

If we can identify the most significant obstacles to building ecologically informed, sustainable societies, then we can also determine how to overcome those obstacles. Although many can be identified — lack of ecological knowledge and understanding, lack of political will, a mindset locked into the ideology of perpetual growth, extreme individualism, a spirituality devoid of ecological consciousness, severe population pressures, the desire of the poor to live like the rich, lack of resources, inertia, and many others — the most important by far are the incentives and disincentives that lie at the core of modern economies.

The danger of any criticism — certainly this book criticizes the patterns of modern economic development and their effects on the Earth’s health and ecological integrity — is to cast the subject into contrasting sides of good and bad. Throughout this book I will remind the reader that the problem of unsustainable forms of economic development is not inherent in markets or economics per se, but is rather the distortions in economic and social development that can occur when either self-regulating market systems or self-enriching state power predominate in the choices made about the allocation of human attention and other resources. The problem is not the wealth-producing economy, but the distorted ways wealth is distributed. The problem is not technology, but the distortions caused when most technology is directed toward further development of a narrow range of particular kinds of products. The problem stems from the ways human attention, creativity, and intelligence are harnessed, like our technology, toward a narrow range of human possibilities. Despite the prob...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Chapter 1 Introduction
• Chapter 2 The privileged qualities of commodities
• Chapter 3 Evolution, systems, and commoditization
• Chapter 4 Commoditization and the distortions of development
• Chapter 5 Systematic oppression
• Chapter 6 The institutional development of the commoditized economy
• Chapter 7 Ecology and commoditization
• Chapter 8 Toward a coordinated decommoditization strategy
• References
• Index