the key to sustainability?

[rc white]

It seems to me that a major factor that mitigates against sustainability is the bunch of economic theories that dominate us.
If we go back to an early definition of money as, "a token for goods and services", we realize that the planet can only sustainably supply a finite amount of goods and services per unit of time, then it follows that if there is no inflation, only a finite amount of money per unit time can be used.

Financial institutions make money simply by writing credit, what this means is that they create tokens for goods and services that don't, and can't exist, this based upon the assumption that the supply of goods and services is infinite and all that is required for a viable economic system is to control the money to pay for them.

I would submit that any viable sustainable economic system will have the following principle at its base, that, the only money that can be hoarded is that that is not used in consuming the sustainable supply of goods and services available.

This essentially establishes the principle that goods and services are finite and only a upper maximum can be supplied per unit of time, whereas money is an abstract concept that can take on any value we choose, and if we create excess amounts of it we can just cross it out and renormalize our accounts, the exact reverse of the current situation.

[matthewtrigg]

The perception that growth is without limitation is one of the most danergous in modern society. Most people will not realise that this is not the case until it is too late.

We are fortunate enough to still be in a situation where we can recognise this and make changes to avoid what is otherwise inevitable. Many people who are a part of this forum and/or work directly in sustainability (such as myself) face significant opposition from societies that are comfortable with the current situation.

achieving a sustainable future will happen regardless of what we do today, the only thing we control is how bad it will get before we reach that goal.

[rc white]

I agree the in the end we are probably faced with a damage limitation exercise and all we can really do is to try and limit the overall amount of suffering involved.
Having said this we still need some basis for an ambition towards sustainability and the major obstacle I can see is the belief that economics somehow exists outside the physical realities of the planet, and the so called "economic realities" take precedence, even though the physical reality is that something can't be done.

This was brought home to me some years ago when the CSIRO in Australia published a study about the ecology and carrying capacity of the country.
A television program about this featured economists and politicians who almost withought exception said that whilst the science was very good the report did not take into account the economic realities there fore must be disregarded.

This left me ranting at the television words to the effect that economic reality must be based upon physical reality to be viable in any ultimate sense.
It seems that as long as politicians play slavish regard to the utterance's of economists, and as long as economists think that their "dismal science" somehow is outside of and can disregard physical reality, then it will be business as usual, what can be done if they ever wake up to the fact that you really can't get a quart out of a pint pot, is as far as I can see the major issue.
rcw

[matthewtrigg]

rc,

Out of curiosity where are you based?

[Corey]

RC: Nice to see that someone else other than myself does not have their head in the sand. regarding the economic reality vs the artificial economics we live by today.
:peace:

[rc white]

I live in Lane Cove, a leafey harbouside suburb on the North shore of Sydney.
rcw

[matthewtrigg]

Lane Cove, a lovely suburb complete with major freeway tunnel exhaust stacks.

I previously lived in Potts Point, but am now located in Melbourne.

It is good to see some more Aussies on this forum. I think with the change of government last year and the gradual momentum for change that has been developing over the past few years we can expect some great leaps and bounds in Australian sustainability over the next year or so.

Perhaps not so much is Victoria at the moment with our somewhat controversial bay dredging project.

[rc white]

After lobbying for many years for the tunnel, (which is still as far as I know loosing money), the local action groups have been after a scrubber system in the tunnel exhaust stack for quite a while, no luck so far.

Our local federal member is Joe Hockey and until the election he was accompanied by John Howard in the adjacent seat.
The state member and local council are also coalition and withought the ex prime minister in the adjacent seat to wield the financial stick, and Hockey somewhat of a pariah, I doubt whether Lane Cove will receive any goodies from any government in the near future, (there are those who swear the airliner traffic over Lane Cove has also increased since the election, our skies used to be notably quite, I have noticed it also).

All of this of course has nothing to do with the issue, but then again maybe it does.
In the sustainability debate the left is generally seen to be on the side of the angels.
In the capitalist vs. socialist debate I have often pointed out that an original definition of socialism is the belief in "redistributing wealth by the action of government", and by this definition most politicians, (even George W.), is a socialist, it is just that they believe in redistributing wealth in the direction of those that vote for and support them.
This puts the erstwhile socialists in a bit of a bind since if they do redistribute wealth toward their supposed constituency, corporate interests who own the media make sure they don't get elected; or perhaps I am just being overly cynical....
rcw

[isenhand]

Originally Posted by rc white

I would submit that any viable sustainable economic system will have the following principle at its base, that, the only money that can be hoarded is that that is not used in consuming the sustainable supply of goods and services available.

Almost agree. Yes, the money system we use has a major problem and is at odds with a sustainable society. However, I think a sustainable society is one without any money at all!

If we look at this from an engineering point of view what we have in an economy is a system that allocates resources. We just use money as a means to do that allocation but it’s not the only means to do that. We can do the allocation other ways. One way I see we could do this is to look at our production capacity and give everyone equal access to that production capacity. Then let them decide what gets produced by allocating their share of production to the production of goods.


.ui

[isenhand]

Originally Posted by rc white

Having said this we still need some basis for an ambition towards sustainability

Yes, we're working on it!

Originally Posted by rc white

and the major obstacle I can see is the belief that economics somehow exists outside the physical realities of the planet, and the so called "economic realities" take precedence, even though the physical reality is that something can't be done.

...

It seems that as long as politicians play slavish regard to the utterance's of economists, and as long as economists think that their "dismal science" somehow is outside of and can disregard physical reality, then it will be business as usual, what can be done if they ever wake up to the fact that you really can't get a quart out of a pint pot, is as far as I can see the major issue.
rcw

:agree:

.ui