economic crisis & paradigm conflict green economy review culture and economic development power...
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Economic Crisis & Paradigm Conflict
• Green Economy review• culture and economic development• power relationships and economic design• scarcity, class & crisis
– waste & debt
• Post-Fordism & the Global Casino• Postindustrial alternatives: creativity, community & abundance
Redefining Wealth
Quantitative: Money & Material
Accumulation
Qualitative: Well-being
Regeneration
Principles of a Green Economy1. The Primacy of Human Need, Service, Use-value,
Intrinsic Value & Quality 2. Following Natural Flows 3. Waste Equals Food4. Elegance and Multifunctionality5. Appropriate Scale / Linked Scale6. Diversity7. Self-Reliance, Self-Organization, Self-Design8. Participation & Direct Democracy9. Human Creativity and Development 10. The Strategic role of the Built-environment, the
Landscape & Spatial Design
A Green Economy-1
1. The Service Economy“Hot Showers and Cold Beer”
Nutrition, Illumination, Entertainment, Access, Shelter, Community, etc. “People production”
2. The “Lake Economy”Flowing with nature, Every output an input,
Closed-loop organization, Let nature do the work. “Biomimicry”: integrate with and imitate
natural systems.
Human Development in the Green Economy
• Production: human creativity the key
• Consumption: “end-use” Direct targeting of human need = massive resource savings
• Regulation: participation at all levels.
The Economy in Loops
A Green Economy-2
• Substitutes human creativity for resources & energy: shift in labour/resources balance.– Human development should be the primary
strategy for sustainability
• Eco-production: high “eyes to acres” ratio. Efficiency depends on participation.
Labour & Resource Relationship
• Industrial economy: resource-intensive. labour productivity: Substitutes resources for labour.
• Green Economy: people-intensive / resource-saving. Substitutes human creativity for resources
A Green Economy-3
The 3 D’s– Dematerialization
• doing more with less
– Detoxification• benign materials
– Decentralization• human & ecosystem scale
The Industrial Definition of Wealth
Money
Material
N.B.: Perpetuation of the System demands the perpetuation of this definition
Industrialism: Accumulation
• Production-for-production’s-sake• Invisibility of key factors• Centralization of production, massive
upfront investment • Focus on labour productivity : resources
substitute for human energy• Cog-labour: humans as component parts• Regulation: controls as limits• Scarcity-based: role of waste since WWII• Globalization: free trade & intellectual
property
Postindustrialism: Regeneration• New relationship of culture to economics: centrality of
human development• Substitution of human creativity for resources• Direct targeting of human need: conscious consumption• Human-scale technologies: production ‘distributed’ over
the landscape ; Integration: ALL places are places of production
• Qualitative Wealth is PLACE-BASED• Distributed regulation: incentives for positive action
throughout economy.• Self-reliance / interdependence:
“Trade recipes, not cookies”
Industrialism: The Divided Economy
Invisible Visible Use-value Exchange-value “Consumption” “Production” People Things Unpaid Paid Women Men Informal Formal Private Public
Invisible Economy (1) Total Productive System of an Industrial
Society(layer cake with icing)
GNP-Monetized
½ of CakeTop two layers
Non-Monetized
Productive ½ of Cake
Lower two layers
GNP “Private” SectorRests on
GNP “Public” SectorRests on
Social Cooperative
Love EconomyRests on
Nature’s Layer
“Private” Sector
“Public”Sector
“underground economy
“Love Economy”
Mother Nature
All rights reserved. Copyright© 1982 Hazel Henderson
2
Invisible Economy (2)
Scarcity & Class
... inequality & relative scarcity:
1. control of scarce resources & ...
2. monopoly of high culture
...by a minority.
Markets and MaterialConnection between needs,
wealth & markets.
the Invisible Hand: worked...
1. for an economy focused on meeting primary needs—simplicity.
2. in a situation of relative scarcity
3. in the absence of sophisticated information technology
The Threat of Abundance
• Productivity boom of the Roaring Twenties– output outdistances worker wages
• Crisis of effective demand & structural overproduction: Great Depression as a reaction to potential abundance.
• White-collar work, universal education: the threat to cultural monopoly.– increasingly social character of production; rise of
industrial unionism
The Post WW II Waste Economy
Permanent War Economy
The Suburb Economy: Oil / Autos /
SubdivisionsNote gender and racial subtext of sprawl
“The greatest misallocation of resources in human history.”
…James Howard Kunstler
Keynesianism & the Crisis of Effective Demand
• Baran & Sweezy: crisis of profitable investment outlets for capitalism.
• Money: a tool of national economic planning. Strong domestic multipliers.
• The Paper Economy: growing disjunction between the real & financial economies
• Planned Inflation & Purchasing Power• re-redistribution of income: offsetting wage hikes in the
unionized sectors• Debt & the Economic Treadmill: Work-and-spend
Fordism & the Reinforcement of Industrial Wealth
Matter
Waste
Fordism
Suburbanization/ Consumer Economy
War Industry
Money
Debt
Keynesianism
Paper Economy
Planned Inflation
New forms of credit-money
1970s: End of the Line for the Fordist Waste Solution
• saturation of markets
• social & environmental costs coming due: fiscal crisis of the state
• limits to inflationary strategy
• Vietnam war, decline of the dollar, German/Japanese competition
• OPEC & the energy crisis– Petrodollars & Currency Crisis
Post-Fordist Casino Economy• floating exchange rates: “interest rate standard”
– Eurodollars & Petrodollars
• new technologies & Megabyte Money• financial sector: 30-50 times (?) larger than the
material economy• Speculation: Stomp the weak / Get rich quick• Empty wealth creation: de facto redistribution of
wealth.• The End of Mass Consumption & rise of new
“producer services”: new forms of ‘effective demand’.
• Polarization of work and society– end of social contracts: attack on Welfare State– the growing gap between rich and poor
Debt & Forced Economic Growth
1. Competition for money
2. Lack of purchasing power
3. Wage dependency
equals
Export warfare
“The main point that needs to be understood is that in order for money to come into circulation, someone must go into debt to a bank. If there were no bank debt, there would be virtually no money—it’s as simple as that. Since banks charge interest on all this debt, and since the money to pay the interest can come only from further debt, debt grows like a cancer within the global economic ‘body.’ This debt imperative creates a growth imperative that is forcing us to destroy the life-support systems of the planet.”
– Thomas Greco
Debt in the US Economy
• 1970s: debt 1½ the size of GDP
• 1985: twice the size of GDP
• 2005: 3½ times the size of GDP
Source: Magdoff , 2008: calculated from tables L.1 and L.2; Flow of Funds Accounts of the US; and table B-78 from the 2006 Economic Report of the President
The Global Casino: Hijacking the Information Revolution
• expansion of employment in speculative industry– Wall St.: more advanced technologically
than the military.
• Bubble Economies: last ‘frontiers’ for capitalist growth.
-stock crash of 1987
-tech stock bubble of late 90s
-housing bubble of 2001-07
• Housing speculation: most destructive & exploitative of the poor & average people.
Decommodifying Money • diversification of forms of everyday
exchange– supporting the informational character of
currencies.– undercutting the scarcity-power of money.
• financial industry restructured as public utility and/or service industry.
– money directed to priority areas of green development
– transition: green Tobin tax
• new forms of remuneration– direct consumption; basic incomes; account-
money; free food, health care & housing
• gradually enlarging the sphere of gift relationships
– consistent with new productive forces based in mass collaboration
...or turns them into service workers
Living in De-Material World
Redesign not controlsDirect focus on human (& environmental) need
The Service Economy:Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR)
encouraging provision of services not stuff.
Servicizing (voluntary EPR).
The “Lake Economy”: economic biomimicry:sectoral orientation: regenerative food, energy,
manufacturing, c ommunications.
New forms of economic security
Conscious support of the Commons
Disarming the autonomous power of money
Building a community/ecosystem base: localization.
Security in Gift Economies
"In that way, the giving of surplus to friends and neighbours is not very far from the giving of surplus to the cashier in a bank. The quality of integrated society, like the legal rules of banking, guaranteed that the gift would not be forgotten and a future claim ignored.”
--Hugh Brodie on Irish rural life