Economic 'Realists' vs Economic 'Idealists'

Economic 'Realists' vs Economic 'Idealists'

Any rational response to resource depletion must include jettisoning the equation: manufacturing and selling more stuff = economic health. While it seems obvious that excessive consumption is counterproductive in a world running up against resource limitations, the social and political implications of attempting to abandon the 'sell more stuff' mantra are enormous. Voluntary simplicity (No, I do not mean living like 18'th century rural small holders) and mutual support must be the organizing principles of an economy which seeks to maintain wealth rather than to constantly increase it. However, the minute these words have left your mouth the cries of "Get real", "It ain't gonna happen", "It's against human nature", etc. rain down on your head in an unending storm of protest. Of course, the claim that a large majority of people will refuse to accept these kinds of solutions in the near term may well be true, but the claim that people who propose actions that are in accord with the majority perception of acceptable, 'normal' standards of living are practical 'realists' while the people who propose actions that are in accord with physical reality are impractical 'idealists' misses the central point of the debate.

Let me offer the following metaphor to show how I view the nature of this debate. Suppose that we are traveling on a huge luxury ocean liner which is found to be taking on water. For the moment the ship's pumps are capable of keeping ahead of the influx of water. However, people in the know inspect the ship's hull, and they find that age and rust have made it structurally unsound. They know that the hour is coming when the leakage rate will exceed the capacity of the ships pumps, so that it is only a matter of time until the ship sinks. The structural decay is so widespread that a complete repair is not practical. However, the option exists of transferring all of the ship's passengers to a smaller, seaworthy vessel. The conditions on this vessel will be more crowded. The first class passengers will not be able to live in spacious private suites. Entertainment and recreational facilities will be greatly reduced. The meals will be less lavish. And so forth. Nevertheless the whole population of the luxury liner can be accommodated on the new ship. Therefore a proposal is made to abandon the luxury liner and to transfer to the smaller ship. When this proposal is put the captain and crew of the luxury liner their response is: "Get real. It ain't gonna happen. It's against human nature. You cannot expect the passenger's of a luxury liner like this to give up the comforts to which they have grown accustomed. It's not politically possible to implement such a policy. All we can do is to man the pumps, make whatever repairs are possible in the short term, and hope that we will eventually find a way to make the vessel seaworthy for the long term". The 'get real' crowd may be correct in their evaluation of what changes the passengers will or will not accept, but that does not mean that their proposed actions are going to prevent eventual disaster.

Of course this metaphor is far from perfect. For one thing the question of whether or not a ship is seaworthy is a much narrower technical question that how large a population can be sustained at a particular standard of living on a place as large as the earth, so that relatively little room would be left for doubt with respect to the conclusions of the experts. Also, a ship is only a temporary place of abode. The rich passengers might be unhappy about conditions on the smaller ship, but once they reached shore they could resume their rich lifestyles. In this respect one could make the metaphor more accurate by supposing the passengers are going to spend their whole of their live's at sea. In this case the reluctance to give up their relatively luxurious home and the desire to believe that it could eventually be repaired would be greatly strengthened. However, make no mistake about it: In the real world of economic production we really do need to create a seaworthy vessel out of the resources that are available to us. We cannot accomplish this feat at all if we believe that our private quarters aboard the ship have to get larger and more luxurious forever, and our probability of success will be small if our design is based on some notion of 'necessary' luxury conceived of in a world with a smaller population and a larger resource base.

July 31, 2008