Subject: Re: [SANET-MG] Self-suffiency and Sustainability

From: John Lozier <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 27 Dec 2004 09:09:11 -0500

Steve:

Baloney.  The profession of Economics is a lap-dog.  The powers that
be, political and economic, have co-opted the economics profession,
which is entirely a captive of market fundamentalism.

Those brave economists who stray too far from fundamentalism are
ignored or worse.  I'm thinking of Nicolas Georgescu-Roegen, Herman
Daly, and maybe Kenneth Boulding, from earlier decades.  It is time for
economists to get serious and admit the limitations of the market
model.

Or, maybe something has changed that I don't know about in the ten
years I've been away.

My two cents.

John Lozier
~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~
West Virginia University Extension Service
PO Box 6108, Morgantown, WV 26506-6108
Telephone 304-293-6256
~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~

>>> [email-masked] 12/24/04 1:14:58 PM >>>

James,
I can't say what ecologists believe, but your generalization of
economists' beliefs is absolutely wrong.  Depletion of resources is of
great concern to economists and there is a huge field devoted to
proper
management of those resources and another to the measurement of their
value.  You can argue that the measurement of economic activity based
on
GDP ignores natural resource depletion, but there is an effort to
provide green accounting in that area, also.  As an aside, The
Economist
magazine this week had a piece on Bhutan and how it has been decreed
there to measure development with GDH (gross domestic happiness)
instead
of GDP.  Economists are well aware of the externalities of economic
activity, and the problems arising in non-market valuation of their
worth.

Steve Ford

-----Original Message-----
From: Sustainable Agriculture Network Discussion Group
[mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of James Kotcon
Sent: Friday, December 24, 2004 11:35 AM
To: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: [SANET-MG] Self-suffiency and Sustainability

         I think part of the issue is whether "new wealth" is in fact
being created.  Most economists will ignore depletion of renewable and
non-renewable resources and assume that "wealth" is being created
simply
because economic activity occurs.  Ecologists argue we should take a
more holistic approach. Economists reply that much of the ecosystem
services and resource depletion that ecologists worry about is not
quantifiable, and thus fall into the tap that the only thing that
counts
is what can easily be counted.

JBK

At 07:21 PM 12/23/2004 -0500, you wrote:
>
>No closed economy can survive.  Outside funds are essential to a
>healthy economy.  Unless new wealth is created as a regular part of
>business, the entire planet would sink into poverty and despair in a
>few weeks.  The same is true of a farm or a village.  Descending to
the

>level of hunter gathers is not high on my list of goals but that is
our

>fate if we don't pay attention to business.
>
>Neal Van Milligen
><http://www.kentuckyenrichment.com>www.kentuckyenrichment.com
><mailto:[email-masked]>[email-masked]
>
>
>
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*****
Jim Kotcon
304-293-3911 ext. 2230 (office)
304-293-2872 (fax)
304-594-3322 (home)
West Virginia University
Division of Plant and Soil Science
401 Brooks Hall, P. O. Box 6058
Morgantown, WV 26506

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---

From: Kate Halstead <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 28 Dec 2004 08:34:23 -0800

I must respectfully disagree with recent statements made regarding
economists and their presumed one-minded toadyism to the almighty dollar. I
know of at least one economist who understands the economics of
sustainability and small farms better than most, regardless of calling. He
is John E. Ikerd, PhD (Professor Emeritus of Agricultural Economics,
University of Missouri, Columbia; College of Agriculture, Food and Natural
Resources. You can find a wealth of his writings at this URL:
http://www.ssu.missouri.edu/faculty/jikerd/papers/default.htm

I had the privilege to hear him speak recently and found myself muttering
through the whole talk, "He gets it, he really gets it!"

Please take the time to read what he has to say about the concept of the
"triple bottom-line" and the "economics of sustainability". He is one
economist those who preach sustainability should not ignore. He is very
interested in discussing "How to keep more of the wealth we produce from the
sweat off our brows."

To make blatantly stereotypical statements such as, "They are a vampire
class whom has never served the lower part of the economic pyramid. They
have nothing to bring to this discussion other than pay attention to the
instructions they are to take back to their masters informing the master
race that the party is over" about any group whether one is referring to
economists or Muslims, lawyers or Jews, capitalists or African-Americans
smacks of nothing more than another form of blind racism. It adds nothing to
the discussion, and often detracts from any valid points the writer might be
trying to establish.

Until main-stream economists, traditional capitalists, and others of that
ilk see the light, so to speak, we are indeed condemned as a race to repeat
our past mistakes. And the most sure-fire way to ensure these folks never
take the sustainable argument seriously is to issue blanket statements of
contempt. None of us were born knowing everything--we all learn as we grow;
some faster, some slower--economists are no different.

Honey is still much better than vinegar for catching flies.

Kate Halstead
Sno-Valley Tilth

> What is
> the point?  This argument reminds me of the  bible worshipers who dote
> on the terms and miss the message.
>
> BTW, I find having an economist on the list to be refreshing.
> Much of  the
> political bent I have read about here ignores whether a project is
> possible economically and dwells on the cult aspects of it instead.

Economists are rooted in very specific schools of politics and are
inseparably bound to them. Both the politics and the economist school have
parameters which inform and blinder information processing.

The term "cult" is perjoritive, and tends to blinder data into misinforming
about concepts by labelling them "kooky" to be shunned rather than examining
their fundamental premises.

Not all activities are economic. Marriage, for example, tends to disrupt the
economic prospects of prostitution. Should marriage than be banned from
discussions because it doesn't have a clear monetary exchange unitary basis
for discussion and ONLY prostitution allowed to be discussed? Is the "cult"
of marriage to be outlawed from discussions because it has no clear
bean-counter transactions?

> No closed economy can survive.

Certainly it can. The earth is an example of closed economy, or the
earth-sun-moon system. For all practical purposes one can ignore other
galaxies or even most of the planets.

People on Hawaii had closed economies which survived indefinately for
generations immemorable. For most of the archeological history of the human
race, fragmented tribal groups, city-states, empires functioned as closed
societies for more time length than the USA has been in existence. It is
provincial to conclude falsely that the current paradigm is superior to all
known and all yet undiscovered paradigms. It is even false to conclude that
the current popular paradigm has much time left on its clock.

> Outside funds are essential to
> a  healthy
> economy.  Unless new wealth is created as a regular part of business,
> the entire planet would sink into poverty and despair in a few  weeks.

ALL WEALTH has risen out of the earth. There simply is nowhere else it could
have come from. The earth is hardly used up.

R. Buckminster "Bucky" Fuller expounded on wealth in numerous books and
lectures to highly educated global audiences. His paradigm is compelling.
E=MC^2 means that physical wealth never decreases, but the second form of
wealth (knowledge) continually increases. Wealth can be mammon, a false god,
an idol, distracting one from seeking and obtaining real wealth
(knowledge) how to organize bits of the earth (E=MC^2) into physical wealth.
Money is not always wealth, and is not often wealth. Only a small portion of
the time is money the same thing as wealth -- much more frequently it is the
slippery slope to hell.

> The same is true
> of a farm or a village.  Descending to the  level of hunter gathers is
> not high on my list of goals but that is our fate if  we don't pay
> attention to business.

So. Nobody is making you move to hunter-gathers. MY discussions have
consistently been about wealth of both kinds that Bucky
discussed: wise stewardship of physical wealth, and increasing knowledgebase
to do more with less.

Wealth may not be measured by how many acres one owns. One Amish was quoted
as refusing to enlarge his 80 acres by replying "I am not smart enough to
farm more, well". Wealth is not measured in how many machines one is paying
the bank for, but by how many dollars one has after taxes to spend. If no
machines, no payments to banks, produces more dollars after taxes of net
income, than that farmer is wealthier than the one who is carrying the bank
on his shoulder.

You have beeen 100% consistent in advocating solutions which require
involving bankers and absentee investors. They get wealthy, but you have not
demonstrated one case example where the farmer is better off by carrying a
heavy load of parasites where they couldn't have done any better without the
parasites.

A lot of discussions which you label "cult" are how to exclude the parasite
load for more personal income. Your mistaking high mortgages, high debt,
paper wealth, has consistently blindered you to examining values which have
no monetary transaction value.

You mistake enslavement to mammon as wealth, and you misperceive the just
responses you get as "weird" or perverse or leading you to poverty reduced
to hunter-gatherer.

I talk about ordinary people making solar cells, producing from the earth
and the sunlight a crop of high technology. You, by comparison talk about
contracts with parasites producing serfdom. So who is talking about progress
and economic freedom, and who is talking about medieval retrogression to
tenant-farmer share-cropper carrying an aristocracy on their backs?

You are not the bright shining light here in these forums. You know NOTHING
about freedom from parasites, but refuse to recognize that the totality of
low-input farming is to shed parasites with damaging technology chemistry.
One does not need nearly so many store-bought agricultural inputs -- the
knowledgebase wealth has expanded, a form of wealth you refuse to avail
yourself of. You know nothing much about recent decades of research progress
which provides a confident basis for rejecting lower productivity
chem-farming technologies.

I write about technologies so new that the world is not yet widely familiar
with them, a new basis for modern industries which generate pinnacle of
civilization technologies. Nothing in my writings goes to reversion to
low-tech primative lifestyles.

Your mischaracterizations as "cult" and "hunter-gatherer" might be dismissed
as ignorance, but an analysis of the body of your writing shows it to be
mammon-worship, enslavement of the gullible to a parasitic aristocratic
class structure antithetical to freedom. A better writer than yourself might
be more qualified to pied-piper the folks to put the leashes around their
necks, but you have shown yourself not the one able to accomplish that in
this discussion group.

It's not working Neal. Give it up.

And economists have predicted nine of the past five recessions.
Just another part of the parasitical class structure. Yes, I understand that
economists want to eat without ever getting a callous on their hands or ever
getting dirt under their fingernails, but it is not my duty to feed their
fangs sunk in my neck. They are a vampire class whom has never served the
lower part of the economic pyramid. They have nothing to bring to this
discussion other than pay attention to the instructions they are to take
back to their masters informing the master race that the party is over.

We are getting teflon-coated kevlar neckguards to keep the vampires starving
to death. That's what these discussions are about. How to keep more of the
wealth we produce from the sweat off our brows. We are talking about honest
work, honest wages.
That's nothing any economist is interested in discussing.

=====
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Santa Rosa, California, USA
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