Comments View as Flat

1. 

   David Roberts Posted 4:45 am
   05 Sep 2007

   Great post

   I suspect you're right that there's no institutional or technocratic silver bullet to managing commons well. There's no substitute for an active, engaged citizenry, holding its political institutions accountable.

   That's why we're screwed.

   grist.org

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2. 

   Jon Rynn Posted 5:15 am
   05 Sep 2007

   The Nature Conservancy...

   ...I suppose would be a good example of a "trust", and here I'm following E.O. Wilson's discussion of these in "The Future of Life", where big enviros are trying to buy land rights of whole ecosystems; although as he points out, the $28 billion or so needed to buy up all the hotspots is beyond the ability of private groups.

   I don't see Barnes' proposal as "Georgist", if I understand Henry George properly; Kunstler discusses George's ideas in one of his "Nowhere" books, pointing out that taxing land value as opposed to the created value would lead to a better use of city space.  But I think George had more of an idea of the community owning land as a whole, not individualizing it.

   One point of omission that I never understand with these kinds of discussions is one that is obvious to me: employee-ownership and control of firms.  That would be a truly, dare I say, revolutionary change in property relations, and would ameliorate many of the worst excesses of capitalism (my friend, the late Seymour Melman, wrote a book called "After Capitalism" on this subject).  However, such a system (based on the Mondragon system, for example) would basically eliminate the public stock exchanges that Barnes seems to be so enamored by.

   I know that there has been some experimentation with, for instance, giving fishermen property rights to lobster grounds, that have been successful.  But I'm afraid, as DR counsels, that an active citizenry that both pushes from the grassroots, a la Thoreau/Gandhi/King, and elects the "right" people, a la the Endangered Species Act, is the way to go.

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3. 

   Biodiversivist Posted 6:01 am
   05 Sep 2007

   I think NGOs

   may be a key. Keep the politicians from cutting up and doling out the planet to backers. It is also obvious to me that since India, China, and the former Soviet Union raped their ecosystems without the help of these greedy corporations, that many people are barking up the wrong tree when looking for solutions. Corporations are an extension and an embodiment of basic human nature.

   In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

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4. 

   Michael Tobis Posted 6:13 am
   05 Sep 2007

   Amen

   I have used this analogy of an OS upgrade myself. (I haven't read the book or heard of it until now.)

   Corporations (and to a lesser extent other economic actors) optimize the quantity we expect them to optimize: shareholder profit.

   Upgrading the operating system, to me, at least to some extent means adjusting the marketplace so that benign or neutral activities are favored and destructive behaviors are unprofitable.

   Only an involved and highly competent social democracy can achieve this. Most signs point to deteriorating competence of the democratic process; consider that in spite of everything that man was re-elected US president in 2004.

   There are crucial endemic miscommunications. The blogs are well aware of the failings of conventional journalism, so I won't dwell on those. Another lynchpin is economic theory, which from the point of view of policy makers has somehow ensconced itself as king of the sciences.

   I have been reaching toward something like economics that is not merely descriptive but is actually designed.

   http://initforthegold.blogspot.com/2007/05/economists-vs- ...

   The way I see it the world is a system and economics is the controller. You study a system and design a controller. Economists' common and yet bizarre pretense that they are doing science, describing pre-existing facts rather than describing a narrow set of social circumstances, hobbles us terribly. It's capitalist economic theory, not capitalism itself, that is the problem. Capitalism is a tool we cannot, in the dangerous centuries that face us, afford to do without, but we need to think about how to use the tool, not just turn it on, feed it fuel, and refuse to steer it.

   I tried to explain this to Paul Baer once and he summarized succinctly. Someone (Herman Daly perhaps?) once observed "You don't predict what you are going to have for breakfast. You decide what you are going to have for breakfast."

   mt

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5. 

   Biodiversivist Posted 6:26 am
   05 Sep 2007

   Nice one, Michael

   Give direction to the fist of the free market. Create a path for the elephant to follow.

   In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

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6. 

   David Roberts Posted 6:29 am
   05 Sep 2007

   Capitalism

   Design a market in which every actor pays all their own costs -- including externalities -- and receives no special favors, and we're good.

   In such a pure free market, good economic decisions are good ecological decisions. This is controversial, but to me it seems all but tautological.

   grist.org

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7. 

   Gar Lipow Posted 7:29 am
   05 Sep 2007

   Tautological

   If an argument is tautological, that itself is a strike against it -- it is untestable.

   Also some of the conditions you set our impossible. The other edge of externalities are public goods, which by nature are undervalued by markets, and thus have to be provided by non-market institution without having the "right price" or the "right quantity" of these goods available. Transportation is a public good. You don't get right of ways for auto roads or rail or bike paths, or even walking paths without the ability to publicly take them of people refuse to sell them. Alternatives to transportation such as telecommuting require wires or use of wireless electronic spectra - which are also involve public takings from a commons. So we end inevitably supporting one actor over another. In the U.S. the favored transport actors have been cars, trucks and airplanes. But favoring rail, and high density development, and telecommuting will also require favoring one actor over another. There is not magic crystal ball out there telling us what the "right" balance is. We have to decide.

   Further there will be real debates over managing commons. For example in water short areas you will have to debate the both empirical questions and questions of value. Empirical question: what is the maximum we can safely draw from a particular water table in year? How safe is "safe"? Value question: do we want to to draw that maximum (which in most water tables in probably significantly less than is currently being drawn)? Or do we want to lower our draw to the point that water tables that have been mined over the years, drawn way below their natural levels, are slowly recharged?

   Education is another example. How much funding for education do we provide? How much of that funding should come from the parents of kids being educated, how much from people whose kids are grown , or who don't have kids, but who were once publicly educated themselves? Again this is partially a matter of values: in what sense are all children your children?

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8. 

   SMLowry Posted 9:34 am
   05 Sep 2007

   Sorry . . .

   I have a real problem with this assumption Barnes makes: "[I]f there is only so much atmospheric space to go around, who does it belong to? He concluded that it belongs to the human race -- that each person should get an equal share of emissions." And it goes downhill from there.

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9. 

   Jason D Scorse Posted 10:20 am
   05 Sep 2007

   Wow David....

   you sound like an environmental economist. Good for you....and the environment.

   I teach environmental economics and blog at www.voicesofreason.info.

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10. 

    ndunne Posted 2:30 pm
    05 Sep 2007

    wow jason!

    So you're an environmental economist...that means you yabber on about the environment while still operating within the flawed rubric of classical economics...

    I don't see how that helps anything.

    Ecological economics...that's another story.

    NJD

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11. 

    Colin Wright Posted 5:30 pm
    05 Sep 2007

    Chomsky on environmental economics...

    Even with externalities accounted for, capitalism will lead to planetary destruction:

    "Take the Kyoto Protocol. Destruction of the environment is not only rational; it's exactly what you're taught to do in college. If you take an economics or a political science course, you're taught that humans are supposed to be rational wealth accumulators, each acting as an individual to maximize his own wealth in the market. The market is regarded as democratic because everybody has a vote. Of course, some have more votes than others because your votes depend on the number of dollars you have, but everybody participates and therefore it's called democratic. Well, suppose that we believe what we are taught. It follows that if there are dollars to be made, you destroy the environment. The reason is elementary. The people who are going to be harmed by this are your grandchildren, and they don't have any votes in the market. Their interests are worth zero. Anybody that pays attention to their grandchildren's interests is being irrational, because what you're supposed to do is maximize your own interests, measured by wealth, right now. Nothing else matters. So destroying the environment and militarizing outer space are rational policies, but within a framework of institutional lunacy. If you accept the institutional lunacy, then the policies are rational."

    
    

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12. 

    Jason D Scorse Posted 2:10 am
    06 Sep 2007

    Yeah, classical economics....

    with all that stuff like "analysis" and "rigor"- terrible stuff- the environmental movement sure needs less of that....

    I teach environmental economics and blog at www.voicesofreason.info.

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13. 

    Jon Rynn Posted 2:33 am
    06 Sep 2007

    Yes, Jason, and people like

    Herman Daly, John Kenneth Galbraith, James Galbraith...I'm sure you could add your own list of people who are very aware of the problems of mainstream economics and the apologetics used for the damage done to biosphere...I attempted to propose my own modest view of economics that is more in tune with the biosphere in an article I wrote, "The economy is an ecosystem", and I'd be happy to know about any work you know of that moves outside the boundaries of neoclassical economics to try to understand economies in a more sustainable manner.

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14. 

    odograph Posted 3:42 am
    06 Sep 2007

    post-capitalism

    Galbraith was also one who, long ago, started calling our economy "post-capitalist" (with a new set of concerns).

    IMO, "capitalist" like "free market" arguments are all about false dichotomies.

    We have a regulated market economy, with as Galbraith noted power resting more among "mangers" than "capitalists."

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15. 

    odograph Posted 3:46 am
    06 Sep 2007

    link

    James K Galbraith: The New Industrial State

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16. 

    GreenEngineer Posted 5:56 am
    06 Sep 2007

    other works

    I'd be happy to know about any work you know of that moves outside the boundaries of neoclassical economics to try to understand economies in a more sustainable manner.

    Natural Capitalism.  It's not strictly focused on economics, by any stretch, but there's alot of good stuff there.

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17. 

    Jon Rynn Posted 6:47 am
    06 Sep 2007

    Thanks,...

    sounds like a good idea for a list of books/articles.  By the way, Hawken's newest, "Blessed Unrest", is very powerful, if only tangentially related to economics.

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