(continuation from part 1)
Apparently, the trend now-a-days is to look at things from the perspective of the “whole” , and the representative mantra of this wisdom seems to be “The whole is more than sum of the parts”.
So why not we look at economic systems from this point of view ?
The message of this diagram is quite simple. The individual is part of a larger whole — a social community and a wider natural environment. Both are important realities. The whole cannot exist without a collection of individuals. The individual cannot survive when the whole is chronically unhealthy. A healthy economic system is one that recognizes and nurtures both the part and the whole.
So how do the popular economic systems fare in this aspect ? The communists ignored individual freedoms and rights, and were too tilted towards the “community” aspect. It was due to over-zealous altruism and in most cases, it was really for dictatorial control over economies, under the guise of altruism. Individuals had very limited property rights. Decision making was all centralized. It was a deadly combination — individual freedom and creativity were not nurtured and at the same time community sense was forced involuntarily onto the people. Under the weight of this serious mistake, economic communism collapsed.
On the other side of the spectrum, we have capitalism where individual rights are sacrosanct and any community wellbeing is an after-thought. Infact, it is based on an express principle that when individual rights are perfectly taken care of, community automatically gets all-right. Take care of the part, and whole will be all-right. It has proven to be only partly right. The economic pie definitely got bigger, but how is that pie shared within the social community ? There is certainly some trickle-down of wealth, but there is much stronger force of trickle-up that naturally seems to operate in a capitalist economy. This is evident from the frequent news bits we see about “top-x percent of people having y percent of wealth”. ‘x’ generally being much less than ‘y’. Thats the social aspect. On the environmental community aspect, capitalism as-we-practice today has been disastrous. The chief reason being that we simply failed to recognize and assign an intrinsic value to the natural environments. When little or no value is assigned, our economies simply converted the natural capital into goods that are valued. Conversion of natural capital to consumer goods and man-made capital. (I’ve discussed this aspect more here).
Anyway, coming back to our point, a healthy economic system is one which nurtures both the individual and community aspects .. because one could not survive without the other. Communism failed because it failed to recognize the individual and forced community responsibility onto the people. Capitalism does recognize individual rights, but has failed to formally recognize the community responsibility .. and so the social community is weak with massive inequities and environmental community is extremely unhealthy.
The whole problem with capitalism as-we-practice today is that it doesn’t directly address glaring economic inequities and is also leading to a serious deficit of natural capital. My solution is pretty simple. Lets preserve capitalism with its protection of individual rights, but let there be a voluntary trickle-down of capital into building social and environmental capital. As i’ve discussed in part-1, this would be achieved by cutting unnecessary personal consumption, and consciously investing in programs which build social and environmental capital. Ala, sage of Omaha Warren Buffet, who donated significant wealth to charity. Buffet says he was “wired at birth to allocate capital”. Precisely what we need. Voluntary reallocation of capital. I just gave the most glaring example, but as i said in part-1, this principle applies to everyone of us and not just Buffet’s of the world.
I must admit that all the fifteen hundred word discourse above is a fancy way of saying that people should spend wise and give more 
. All this is fairly obvious and makes sense without invoking any mysticism and philosophy. But whenever there is talk about individual vs universal, i can’t resist putting up a plug from Yoga. So, here’s a relevant and weighty quote from Sri Aurobindo’s work “Synthesis of Yoga”:
“The acceptance of the law of sacrifice is a practical recognition by the ego that it is neither alone in the world nor chief in the world. It is its admission that, even in this much fragmented existence, there is beyond itself and behind that which is not its own egoistic person, something greater and completer, a diviner All which demands from it subordination and service. Indeed, sacrifice is imposed and, where need be, compelled by the universal World-Force; it takes it even from those who do not consciously recognize the law, — inevitably, because this is the intrinsic nature of things. Our ignorance or our false egoistic view of life can make no difference to this eternal bedrock truth of Nature. For this is the truth in Nature, that this ego which thinks itself a seperate independent being and claims to live for itself, is not and cannot be independent nor separate, nor can it live to itself even if it would, but rather all are linked together by a secret Oneness. Each existence is continually giving out perforce from its stock; out of its mental receipts from Nature or its vital and physical assets and acquisitions and belongings, a stream goes to all that is around it. And always again it receives something from its environment gratis or in return for its voluntary or involuntary tribute. For it is only by this giving and receiving that it can effect its own growth while at the same time it helps the sum of things”.
Pretty strong words from the sage of Bengal. To my mind, the massive reallocation of capital away from needless consumption, into social programs and towards environmental sustainability, may be considered as an aspect of Yoga itself. Whether individually and societally we engage in this Yoga, is going to be important in the next few decades, as scientists warn us that we are fast approaching limits to mindless consumption.
Your argument is so beautifully constructed that I almost fell for it. My heart loves it and hopes that more and more ppl adopt this. But it will remain a hope. Expecting each individual to adopt the role of a moral police for the self is not happening. Humans respond to fear, greed and logic. This list may not be exhaustive. Meaningful transformation will happen when a critical mass of people are convinced at a very deep level about the need to conserve the environment,realize that the threat is real and realize that every drop counts. These are some of the preconditions for change.
Now you say, needless consumption. needless by what standard ? living alone in a 2-bed room apt in a city where 1000s cannot even afford 2 square meals and basic clothing is needless by some people’s standards. Using an iMac is needless by many. Stashing away money is FDs, CDs is needless by some. so where do we draw the line.
by paying 1000s of $s for a painting is seen as needless by some but it is also an acknowledgment of virtuosity of the artist. if everything is done on a need bases, art and artist cannot survive and they have an important role to play. Painting for instance is an expression of life and is not an urgent need. wanting to see snow flurries is an expression of life, being able to experience the Himalayas at home. They will bring some kind of joy to someone and joy is about being Human. Expressions of life do not have logic. Some can afford those joys and many cannot. For all that you know, it is quite likely that the Ambanis have donated 10 times the amount they are spending on their “homes” to charity in one way or the other.
practical steps could be advocacy and educating the society about the dangers we are getting into, environmentally, ecologically, humanly, socially, biologically. I know a lot of time and money has been spent in advocacy. Do the results correspond to the investment ? I say they do. so it is time to come up with up practical, doable plans and start executing them in the capacity each of us can. design and define interventions that can tilt the balance in favor of the principle you are advocating. get real my friend and come down to the earth. no point sitting in ivory towers and proposing idealistic solutions.
Comment by Ravi — May 31, 2008 @ 8:21 am |
Friend,
practical steps .. advocacy .. and education, are all certainly necessary. But this post is not to present or discuss them. The intent is simply to present some concepts that have helped me to *visualize* the social and environmental issues in different way, in terms of individual & societal spending habits, and capital trickle-down / reallocation.
I’ll summarize the ideas again below. Some of your comments are addressed in-between.
(1) The core of part-1 is that every individual has the power to make a difference, through his spending choices. It may even be spending ten rupees. The choice you make sends signals to all the right places. What could be more down to earth than that ? It says one need not wait for all kinds of grand ideas and movements to play out, not wait for world governments to negotiate on some pact, but through simple act of spending one can make her voice heard.
(2) The next obvious question is what is “right” spending and Who should have the ultimate dictate on how to spend one’s money. This addresses your question “what is needless / excessive consumption”. In middle of part-2, I said i would leave that judgment call to the individual based on (a) whether he needs the product (b) his awareness of the impact of consuming the product on the environment (c) his knowledge of opportunity cost. Very subjective calls. Is it possible to have an “objective” assessment of what right level of consumption is ? And what can we do with such objective information ? These are interesting questions that came up while posting this comment. I’ll do a separate post on that soon.
(3) If some people or as a society we choose to spend wisely, is there a way to visualize this process ? I felt it is useful to visualize the whole thing as a trickle-down / reallocation of capital to social and environmental programs. This reallocation can be done at the individual-level OR societal-level. *How* this reallocation is achieved on societal-level is not the subject of the post. (I think the last paragraph of your comment is asking about *how-to* steps. I know .. important stuff). I just presented one obvious and easiest way is for an individual to cut unnecessary consumption and directly/indirectly channelize capital to more useful efforts. Iam *not* suggesting though, that we completely rely on individual philanthropy and wash hands about other steps needed.
Other steps are certainly needed for societal level capital reallocation. It could be through all kinds of advocacy programs, education, sustainability summits, conferences, efficiency solutions, conservation programs, tax shift from income taxes to consumption tax, carbon trading etc .. and above all, as mind is the master-key, a shift in attitude towards more responsibility. They are all certainly needed. More power to people who are trying to make it happen !
Comment by Chaitanya Pullela — June 2, 2008 @ 4:23 pm |