[p2p-research] if you have time ...

[Paul D. Fernhout]

Michel Bauwens wrote:
> it would be nice if you could discuss this,
> http://campfire.theoildrum.com/node/5473, for our blog
> 
> it has a neat list of job we should loose, vs. job we should gain ...
> 
> nice fodder for meditation,

That essay on voluntary simplicity,
   "A Message to the Nearly Converted",
  http://campfire.theoildrum.com/node/5473
while very interesting making lots of excellent points about modern society, 
has some of the same issues in its proposed solutions that the one on local 
agriculture has, or another one posted to the open manufacturing list about 
someone living in a cave that I commented on in this thread:
"True Post Scarcity Practitioner"
http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/browse_thread/thread/fc612c10352908ef/1121a6f118f1440b

First off, in this essay, there is some mention in passing about someone 
raising their own chickens and building a coop. We do that too. It takes a 
lot of materials to build a coop for a few chickens, and chickens can 
devastate a small yard pretty quickly. While chickens don't require much 
labor day-to-day, building a coop and fenced yard (to prevent predation) 
does take a lot of labor. And to periodically cleaning a coop takes some 
labor, and a bunch of wood chips from somewhere, and water. It is cheaper 
and easier to buy organic eggs in a store if this is not something that is 
fun for you otherwise (although, granted, if you treat the chickens well, 
they will likely have a better life at your home than in even organic 
farms). Anyway, I use that as one example of a throwaway item where the 
proposal is both using both more labor and more physical resources in an 
alternative lifestyle than using network resources. There may be good 
reasons to have your own chickens in some situations (including for eating 
slugs in your garden), but using less resources is unlikely to be one of 
them in most cases (unless you are content to let many die from predation 
and do not overwinter them as we do).

Anyway, as in the cave essay, the person pointing out problems with the 
mainstream lifestyle may be quite correct, like negative externalities of 
pollution. But, rather than reject all advanced technology, which seems 
implicit in part of the essay (but not all, as I mention later) an 
alternative strategy is just to improve our high tech processes. We can 
rethink how we make things so they are more recyclable, or we can improve 
our energy supply with more renewables like solar or wind so we have the 
energy to recycle even a mixed waste stream easily by a plasma separation 
process, or we can  improve robotics and automation so they can separate out 
a mixed waste stream to reduce energy consumption for recycling at lower 
temperatures. Anyway, there are essentially high-tech approaches that we 
know how to do (or could if we tried). The fact that we don't try much 
reflects a basic market failure based on not accounting for external costs. 
A few laws about accounting for such external costs might improve recyclable 
packaging, for example, and do more for the environment that buying in bulk 
in plastic tubs.

Here is a core part of that essay: "Let me give you an example of our old 
ways coming to an end. General Motors just went bankrupt. Residential 
developers of suburban sprawl and mega-malls are going bankrupt too. Why? 
Because our economy is part of the finite planet Earth and we have reached 
some hard limits. Oil production is in decline and this means GM can’t keep 
building Hummers that will fill garages in dwellings miles away from work 
and schools and basic goods and services. Ecological debt yields financial 
ruin. Ways of life fade away."

There is some truth there, including on changing ways of life, but overall 
it is wrong in some ways too. General Motors went bankrupt because of bad 
management, bad product design decisions, an inflexible infrastructure, the 
lack of a national health care system paid for by taxes, and a union 
philosophy that focused on jobs for union members as apposed to a basic 
income for all humans and actively resisting reducing working hours through 
innovation. There is a mention of peak oil theory and hard limits there, but 
the fact is, we have just as many iron molecules today as we did a hundred 
years ago (ignoring a few we sent to the moon). We are not running out of 
iron -- just perhaps the ores we are used to using to get it. If we can't 
bother to mine our landfills, that is just stupid. On energy, the stone age 
did not end because we ran out of stones, and the oil age will not end 
because we run out of oil. We could run big Hummers on synthetic fuels from 
coal (at an environmental cost and a health cost) or we could run them on 
green fuels from algae, or we could run them electrically from solar and 
wind power. We have lots of choices (even if Hummers are generally silly 
cars to own, dangers to themselves and other vehicles, promoted in part 
because of a silly tax policy allowing certain "trucks" to be expensed by 
businesses quickly but not cars).

While the essay is right that collectively we are trashing the planet, and 
that consuming less slows this, ultimately it is a failed philosophy, 
because slowing your descent into a volcano still leaves you falling into a 
volcano, just more slowly. If you consume at half the typical US standard, 
or even one tenth (and I'd expect that family is at half), that is still a 
slow motion disaster. I have little doubt the author would use advanced 
medical care in hospitals if the author's family needed it, or that the post 
was written using a computer and the internet, or that the essayist owns a 
car or truck, or that their house has synthetic materials in it, and so on. 
Until we have more comprehensive recycling and improved design, consuming 
less doesn't help in the end. It may even hurt in some ways, because people 
may think they have solved a problem when they haven't, and they may be 
disengaging from an economy they could help out in some other way (like 
demanding and choosing greener products or laws to regulate pollution and 
other external costs of manufacturing). And the general doom and gloom about 
peak oil and catastrophe just adds to that, when we already have solar and 
wind technologies that are claimed to be cheaper than coal.

Now, there are lots of ways that essayist is doing good stuff, or at least 
the soccer mom they cite who went greener. They feel better. Their kids are 
happier. They are likely eating better. They may have more personal 
security. And so on. And they are reducing the unaccounted for external 
costs of the mainstream US way of life. I don't want to discourage that kind 
of change. I applaud that, both for the personal happiness and for making a 
statement, same as I applaud the enlightened person experimenting with 
living in a cave.

But I'm suggesting it does not get at the core of fixing unsustainable 
aspects of our society the way that, say, solar energy research or wind farm 
installation does. But they do list related jobs in that list of jobs to 
gain, each of which is about improving our networked infrastructure, so 
obviously, they are promoting the bigger picture. I'm just suggesting there 
is some sort of disconnect between the voluntary simplicity movement (as 
good as that may be at reducing external costs) and the networked 
infrastructure transformation movement. There is an assumption they are 
connected, when actually, they may not be very connected, even if they may 
spring from the same consciousness. And, to the extent people won't, say, 
raise their own chickens, I can wonder if implying they should do so may 
undermine the larger infrastructure transformation needs, like instead 
making sure egg cartons are easily recyclable or the eggs are produced by 
happy local chickens by peers using organic feed?

Another point from the essay: "A special class of non-governmental 
organization is involved in paying back our ecological debt. These are the 
local environmental centers. I strongly encourage you to join with them on 
various projects that could make the difference between a healthy versus a 
dystopian future. The big question I have is this: How are we going to 
restore and manage local watersheds and ecosystems in this new economy? For 
example, will a switch to renewable energy mean greater use of wood, and 
will that decimate the forest or be done with ecological wisdom? Might the 
jobless hunt for meat and will cause the local extirpation of game or be a 
healthy, sustained harvest. And I wonder, as people can’t afford trash 
disposal services will they dump in creeks and at the edge of fields more 
and more? Who will watch and restore the creeks and clean up the mess others 
leave behind?"

In the "Planet Earth" video series, a point is made near the end that the 
remaining large wildlife can only be conserved by people local to it, and 
only if they are prosperous enough to be able to do it (rather than poach to 
feed their families). If people retreat from the mainstream economy to let 
it collapse, rather than transform it into something better, in practice, we 
may well see more destruction of the environment. I live in one of the most 
rural areas in the US North East (the Adirondack Park) and there are still 
people who dump trash in ravines to avoid paying a $5 annual fee at the 
recycling center (or maybe because it is more convenient as the recycling 
center has limited hours?). So, I can walk a few hundred yards to see the 
very problem that author speculates about. A wealthier local town just would 
have less of that, I suspect. So, things like a basic income (Social 
Security and Medicare for all in the USA, not just the elderly or disabled) 
may be a way to salvage aspects of a networked economy to bring general 
prosperity, which can then lead to more respect for values beyond immediate 
economic survival, stuff like aesthetics or stewardship. Such values may 
sometimes seem to be luxuries to people out of work by an industrial complex 
that does not need more workers as it continues to automate and become more 
efficient from better design. But, many people around me already live the 
way the author outlines out of necessity not virtue, and they do the 
dumping, so that route towards poverty has the very pitfalls the author 
worries about. The author does not address that core issue (like brought up 
in 1964 in the Triple Revolution memorandum about the breaking link between 
jobs and a right to consume). Abundance gives us a lot more options that 
poverty. Voluntary simplicity is not the same as involuntary simplicity. A 
well-designed elegant efficient sustainable infrastructure is not the same 
as no infrastructure (or a poor infrastructure). A right to a share of 
industry you can direct to make extremely green products is not the same as 
making less green products at home. Sure, if the infrastructure is broken, 
trying to use it less is virtuous, but ultimately, the infrastructure needs 
to be fixed to be greener and more equitable. The author admits to this, 
saying: "Making the necessary changes society-wide requires engagement 
beyond your home and neighborhood."

Anyway, to summarize, reducing consumption reduces negative external costs 
of production, but it does not eliminate them totally. Only a rethinking of 
our manufacturing infrastructure (and how the resulting wealth gets 
distributed) can fix that completely. This article seems to confuse the two, 
and that has been a long standing problem with the environmental movement.

--Paul Fernhout
http://www.pdfernhout.net/