How would you re-design a more sustainable economic system?
Short answer: I would design it with others, sharing resources and perspectives in open collaboration, and leaving room for constant evolution of the system. In fact, the very fact that you are on this site proves that the re-design process has started among the people of the Earth, in a very unique fashion: from the ground up instead of top-down.
Professor Tim Jackson says “Sustainability is the art of living well within ecological limits” where “living well” implies both ethical behavior and comfort. Thus, a more just and sustainable system is found in the crossroads of efficiency, environment, equity and ethics.
The basic requirements of a sustainable economic system are that it is able to:
meet basic human needs of the whole global population,
take the carrying capacity of the Earth into account,
allow the diversity of life to flourish now and in the future, and
ensure both human and societal development
The basic components of an economic system are:
Need clarification,
Resource extraction,
Production,
Distribution,
Use of the produce, and
Re-use of resources
Needs
Market equilibrium, i.e. balance between supply and demand, has not been reached in top-down approaches. Capitalism is producer-driven guesswork vulnerable to formation of monopolies and distorted by profit-motive driven creation of artificial needs. On the other hand, the central-planning of socialism and communism cannot answer to rapid changes of people’s real needs and preferences.
In a moneyless society the basic needs for survival are quite easy to fulfill because we all need nutritious food, warm clothes, comfortable shelter, clean water, functioning sanitation and all that. The human needs that guide the basic production are somewhat unchanged and predictable.
However, there are more advanced needs that derive from individual preferences, interpersonal relationships and from ideas for societal development. An individual might want to create a piece of art that requires equipment, two people in different geographic locations might want to meet each other out of a whim and a research team might realize that a bridge needs to be built to link two cities together.
In order to enable all this, people need to have an easy means to express their changing needs so that required products and services can be delivered. We do this already: we order stuff from Amazon, we book trips over internet and we create wikis and documents together with our peers and professional colleagues to plan larger projects. All we need to do is to link the information systems we already have, open them up to public scrutiny and make these massive amounts of data accessible in a common database that can guide production decisions.
If it seems that we cannot possibly fulfill everyone’s needs without exceeding the carrying capacity of the Earth (not enough resources to make everything happen at once), we can then assign numerical values for resources, e.g. time and amount needed for a final product. And then we can utilize various mobile and internet technologies to design tools that allow people to “vote” on a daily basis to inform production of their needs, i.e. use direct democracy to guide the production decisions.
Material and energy extraction
The sporadic, short-sighted and predatory resource extraction of today cannot continue much longer. The same goes for fossil-fuel based and highly centralized energy production and distribution.
In a moneyless society all energy comes directly or indirectly from the sun (including geothermal, wave, tidal, and wind energy). Jeremy Rifkin talks about the “Inter-grid” – the internet of energy – where all of us are both consumers and producers of energy. It is possible to set up with current day technology, today, if we want it to happen.
For the material extraction to be sustainable we need to understand where, how much and what kind of resources we have. This applies both to untapped sources and products that can be re-used.
Manufacturing process
In our current system there is a whole lot of overlap in production: competing organizations create similar products and services with lowest possible cost – often leading to poor quality products – and they all try to sell their stuff to the consumers with whatever the means, creating a lot of artificial needs and desires in the process of doing so.
In a sane sustainable system we would produce exactly what is needed, as locally as possible, to as many as possible, with as little waste as possible.
The shifting needs “from bombs to food” would take us little by little towards abundance. Automation would no longer be viewed as the evil machines that take people’s jobs but as a means to set people free from the drudgery of manual labor, bearing in mind that nothing would stop you from growing your own carrots or knitting your woolen socks.
Distribution
Nowadays we ship stuff all over the world without much thinking of the consequences. Raw materials are shipped to where it’s cheapest to produce something out of them. Then this produce is shipped to be processed where it’s cheapest to do. The cargo then moves through various assembly points to the wholesaler, to the retail store and finally consumers pick it up and ship it to their homes. They use it, trash it and the junk is shipped to the other side of the world. Rational? No. Cheap? Hell yeah!
Distribution in a moneyless society should minimize the distance (i.e. energy use) and maximize the ease and access of use. Most of the food would probably be wisest to deliver to large restaurants or community kitchens in large quantities. Consumer goods such as toiletries could have filling stations where anyone could fill up their soap bottle near where they live. Durable goods, such as furniture, could be ordered directly to your home from the manufacturer. The latest consumer electronics, appliances and tools could be borrowed from a local “library”.
If it would seem that transferring some of the products to another side of the world is not sustainable then distribution would also guide production decisions, and alternatives would be found. We might come into conclusions such as using the common sea-buckthorn for pepping up people in the Northern hemisphere and leaving the luxury of sipping coffee for those living in areas where it’s viable to produce locally. Please note that hard-core coffee addicts would always be welcome to relocate to South America if that is what they value in life.
We would supplement, and over-time probably replace, the current marine, air, train and road cargo services with new more efficient technologies such as Evacuated Tube Transport.
Use
Currently many people buy stuff to feel happy. People want to own a sleek car to show off their prosperity. This ego-driven material happiness doesn’t last long, however. Little by little people are waking up to feel the void within. To fill that void they need love and better relationships, education, culture and arts, time for reflection and experiences in nature. And yes, most people on this planet need to eat.
More important than ownership is access to goods and services that fulfill our real needs. In a moneyless society people would use the products and services that they need to live a good life. You’d be surprised how this might actually be much less – not more – than what an average person owns nowadays. And through sharing durable goods many more people could have access to what they need. The same goes for services: it’s much wiser to use highly effective and comfortable public transportation that always takes you to your destination, rather than worry about fixing and maintaining your car that sits on the parking lot for 95% of the time. Hoarding junk just doesn’t make sense, especially if everything is freely available.
Re-use
Today we live in the culture of disposability and most of the stuff we use ends up in landfills. Even fast moving consumer goods such as oil and jelly is packed in plastic or glass containers that are not going to decompose any time soon. As for the durable goods, just by sharing efficiently what we already have we could for instance have free clothes for the next 10 years.
Re-use has to be designed into the whole process so that each product has gone through a proper cradle-to-crave assessment. If we take this seriously we can soon imitate nature where everything that is disposed of becomes quickly used again in another part of the process we call life.