Subject: Economic Repair Dear people, We need to find what kind of economy can provide people's needs without making too much pollution and without running out of resources rapidly. Our present consumer economy has many nice features, yet it is basically at odds with resource stewardship. Labor has been surplus relative to local natural resources for a long time. In today's crowded world migration can no longer provide an escape from depleted local resources, and imported resources are no longer abundant and cheap. Even though we face a growing shortage of resources we still pretend that labor shortage is limiting production. Our fear of labor shortage is obsolete. Since the dawn of the industrial age it has been necessary to constantly find ways to increase consumption in order maintain full employment. The left and the right agree that jobs are the only acceptable way to dole out money to the masses. Yet, when we create nearly full employment our powerful technology and out large supply of workers will always consume far too many resources for such hyper-activity to be sustainable. Only in our dreams is there no conflict between expanding the economy to make jobs and contracting the economy to conserve resources. Our present views rarely include any awareness that wealth comes from nature and inheritance more than from any work we do. To make our system work under present conditions we must admit that human labor is no longer scarce because machines with computer control can replace most paid labor, even in services. We should expect to shift our dependence from wages toward unearned income as automation replaces more human labor. Our system already has unearned income, but for now it is only for a few. Changing that is the key to becoming sustainable. Unearned income can end our dependence on jobs and growth. Whether our goal is to preserve the present pecking order or to help improve the lives of the poor, we must have a sustainable system for anything to really matter to anyone. Excess growth is the cause of our high consumption, and high consumption is the reason our economic system is not sustainable. Growth is the common problem of all classes! True conservation cuts consumption and that cuts production and that cuts real paying jobs and profits. No one supports a sustainable economy. Without true conservation we can continue to squander scarce resources to exercise all our surplus labor. Without conservation we can have our giant SUVs. That is our plan, left or right. There are four basic ways, I can think of, to conserve resources: increased efficiency, increased durability, recycling and by doing less. Durability allows doing less without having less. Efficiency allows using less in what we are doing. We can make deep cuts in consumption without sacrifice by designing new products to maximize their life time, efficiency and reparability. Durability will make it possible to stop the waste and pollution that are making our economy unsustainable. Because durability has been neglected we have a lot to gain when we starting using durability to conserve. Conservation of perishables using recycling and efficiency are already our goals, but the use of durability to conserve has had little notice. Yet, a stable population could use a general increase in durability to cut its resource consumption to very low levels while maintaining high living standards. If we could somehow accept unearned income for all classes then we could adjust the dole to stabilize wages. (No more tight money.) This will provide a mechanism allowing us to match the labor force to the real need for labor, instead of making jobs to match the labor force, regardless of the consequences. Barry Brooks [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ Crashlist resources: http://website.lineone.net/~resource_base To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/crashlist
