Hello Readers,
If Government, as described in the previous post Democratic Necessity, is the most obvious and concerted effort by human society to fulfill its Institutional needs, perhaps the Economy is the most subtle and accidental Institution. In this post in the Global Sustainability series, I will discuss the Economic Disconnect. That is, the way in which the Economy disconnects the intentions and consequences of human actions.
In some views, capitalism or economics may be seen as the most ideal manner in which to settle conflicts, and in many cases it works extremely well as an Institution to address issues of societal survival at a global scale. The Economy - through the use of money - allows people to join together to support a common cause or goal without necessarily having a common ancestry, religion, country, or even language. However, while eliminating the need for a common background (a potential sources of conflict), the Economy can also decouple (or at least appear to decouple) actions from results or consequences. But how?
Money (the typical end-goal of labor, employment, or an investment) can be spent on a good or service completely unrelated to the manner in which it was earned. Thus, instead of the end-goal of any particular labor being the result or benefit of that work, the completion of work has relatively little bearing on the worker's goals.
To illustrate this, let us consider a worker in a smaller, less-complex society, which does not rely on money as a means of unification and conflict resolution. In this non-monetary (pre-Economy) society, if a person (or small group of people) decide to build a canoe, it is very likely that the intention of the person is to use the canoe and receive the secondary benefits of canoe ownership such as easier transportation or fishing in the center of a lake. This means that when the worker's need for a canoe is satisfied, the worker will probably stop the canoe-building endeavor to take up other pursuits.
In contrast, let us now consider a person in an Economic society who works in a modern day canoe factory. The worker's goal is not the use of the resulting canoe, nor the secondary benefits of canoe ownership... even if the worker happens to use one of the canoes built in the factory or really enjoys canoeing. In this case, the worker has an end-goal unrelated to the use of the canoe. The end-goal is to earn a paycheck and make use of the resulting money to receive the benefit of other goods and services. Thus, so long as the worker continues to receive a paycheck for canoe-building, the worker is likely to continue building canoes regardless of the actual need for canoes.
Of course, when this principle is applied to people building canoes, the effect does not appear to have significant consequences for societal survival or global sustainability. However, the way the Economy works to support canoe building could be similarly applied to objects that are obviously linked to violence such as guns, bombs, or biological weapons. Furthermore, thanks to the modern scheme of investment practices in our corporate version of the Economy, the concept that is applied to a worker can easily be extrapolated to include corporations.
Yet, in the extrapolation from an ancient person that builds a canoe to a modern corporation that manufactures biological weapons, it is fairly easy to shake your head and say, "Well, no, I don't like that!" and "War is bad, and biological weapons are not a 'good' thing to manufacture just to earn a profit." (Even if you agree with the Cold War era notions that an arms race to build up of WMDs to a level that assures mutual destruction in the event of a conflict is an effective deterrent, you must admit that the potential results of the use of biological weapons or other so-called WMDs would have a detrimental impact on society as a whole.)
However, I am not here to examine the obvious 'bad things'. What about all of the cases where the cause for concern is not even the product itself - when it is instead the waste or side effects of the good or service that is problematic? What happens when the negative effects are just as real as malevolent products like biological weapons, but the connection between the worker's work and the negative impact is especially obscure or even contrary to the purpose of the work being performed?
Just to name a couple examples, the intention of commercial agriculture is to feed a growing population, but some of the side effects include massive soil erosion, depletion of aquifers, and the polluting of waterways with pesticides and animal excrement. The intention of coal mining is to provide power (in the form of electricity and heat) to allow society to work and enjoy modern technological comforts; however, the resulting side effects include everything from acid mine drainage in rivers to runaway climate change.
Clearly, these are cases where the goals of the worker (to earn a paycheck) and the corporations (to earn a profit) have been disconnected from not only the purpose of the labor (e.g. providing food and power) but also from all of the negative consequences and side effects. For a wide range of examples where this is the case, I recommend reading Cradle to Cradle by William McDonough & Michael Braungart, which discusses ways in which the design of products could be re-imagined to be good for society and the environment rather than just less bad for it.
In the next (and final) post, I will draw some (in)conclusions about the role that our hodgepodge of Institutions have to play in society as its population continues to merge into a global society that requires an Institution of Global Sustainability in order to survive and succeed.
Cheers,
Sean
Table of Contents for the Global Sustainability series:
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