From IkerdJ@missouri.edu Wed Jul 7 22:05:51 1999 Date: Wed, 7 Jul 1999 15:57:19 -0500 From: "Ikerd, John E." To: sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu Subject: Social and Political Aspects [ The following text is in the "iso-8859-1" character set. ] [ Your display is set for the "US-ASCII" character set. ] [ Some characters may be displayed incorrectly. ] Sanet; I think this has been an excellent exchange of viewpoints on economics, politics, society, and sustainable agriculture. I doubt that I have much to add. But, at the risk of putting words to someone else's thoughts, it seems to me that most (not all) of the apparent conflicts in views arise from a felt need to set specific standards by which to measure success, progress, or sustainability. Some would measure success in terms of dollars and cents, and would try to put dollar and cent values on all ecological and social costs and benefits so they could be brought into the market place for allocation. Others would prefer to measure all costs and benefits in terms of their impacts on the lives of people and would prefer to convert dollars and cents, or even environmental impacts, into their value to society and would attempt to allocate resources through the political process. Still others, although not mentioned in the most recent exchange, see the natural ecosystem as the ultimate arbitrator of all values, including economic and social values, which can be addressed only through an expression of ethical or spiritual values. Each approach seem more logical than simply dealing with one dimension - be it economic, social, or ecological - and ignoring the others or assuming them away. But, I contend that no single scale of value - economic, social, or ecological - is adequate to measure true success, progress, or sustainability. We cannot ignore economic efficiency - the pursuit of short run self-interest - but neither can we allow self-interest to dominate the broader interest of society nor to degrade our basic ethical or spiritual values. We should pursue our collective interest as communities of people, but we can't allow our individual human rights or the natural environment to be degraded by our collectivism. Certainly we should live ethical, moral, spiritual lives; but we cannot possibly do so without concern for our legitimate individual self-interests and concern for others, both of the present and future. True quality of life is a product of all three - self-interest, shared-interest, and altruistic-interests. We are just kidding ourselves if we think we can live a life of quality without some reasonable balance among all three. The three dimensions of sustainability - economic, social, and ecological - reflect these same three dimensions of quality of life. All three are inherently interrelated -- are but parts of the same whole -- but are fundamentally different. Markets may be efficient allocators of private goods and services - those things which fall in the realm of self-interests. Political processes can be efficient allocators of public goods - those things which fall in the realm of shared-interests. An ethical or moral consensus is the only logical means I can see for allocating ecologically goods and services, because they reflect our responsibilities as stewards of the earth. They do not belong to us, neither individually nor collectively, nor do our dollars or our votes change our ethical and moral responsibilities. No one measure is adequate for all three. And, we cannot allow any one measure to be used as a single yardstick of success, progress, or sustainability. Perhaps pursuit of pure economic self-interest would dictate that still more farmers go out of business. But on the other hand, perhaps putting more farmers out of business is socially and ethically wrong. If so, we might strengthen our economy only to discover that we have severely weakening the social and moral fabric of our society. We seem to assume that allowing all of the other family business to fail has been good for society, so now we should allow family farms to fail as well. Perhaps allowing individual enterprises to be replaced by large-scale, corporate entities has strengthened the economy, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it has been good for our society -- or for humanity. A "strong economy" in socially and moral bankrupt society is but an illusion of strength. It is not sustainable. It's not necessarily immoral to allow someone to fail at farming, or at other type of endeavor. But, we should always be willing to ask if we have fulfilled our social and moral responsibilities to provide them with opportunities to succeed, or have we allowed their opportunities to be suppressed by the pursuit of greed. It seems to me that attempts to build strong collective societies have failed because they put too much emphasis on society, shared interests, and too little emphasis on individuality and spirituality. It seems that religious societies are inherently weak because they put too much emphasis on spirituality, altruistic interests, and give too little attention to social and individual values. It seems obvious to me that what we, in the so-called developed societies, are seriously at risk because we are putting far too much emphasis the individual, on short-run self-interests, and are giving too little concern to our common good and to our ethical and moral responsibilities. It is quite easy for me to believe that in most instances, we are putting too much emphasis on economics and too little on just about everything else. A sustainable society requires balance and harmony not dominance and suppression. In the days of Adam Smith, our "founding fathers" assumed that they didn't have to worry about balancing self-interest with social and ethical values. Smith and others assured them that the pursuit of self-interest was consistent with the greatest social good - and that quite likely was true in those days. Most economic enterprises were farms and other small, family operations, and ethics and morality were the dominant forces in an economically depraved society. They didn't see a need for an economic bill of rights to ensure equity of economic opportunity or to protect individuals and society from economic tyranny. They didn't see a need for an ecological bill of rights to protect the environment from human ignorance and greed. But we live in a different world today. Practically none of the assumptions required for Adam Smith's invisible hand to change "greed to good" hold true in today's economy. If the founding fathers were drafting a new constitution today, they undoubtedly would seek to ensure the protection of individuals, society, and the environment from the tyranny of economic greed. Smith and Jefferson both foresaw the day when further "enlightenment, new discoveries, new truths, and changes in circumstances" would warrant changes in the constitution. If we are to ensure sustainability, I believe that day has come. But, that's a whole-other paper. (Any who are interested may check it out at http://www.ssu.missouri.edu/faculty/jikerd/papers/billorri.htm ) John Ikerd To Unsubscribe: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg". If you receive the digest format, use the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg-digest". 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