3. Plum Local

Plum Local
Bob Komives
  ::

I had my first course in economics in college. I forgot most of it, except for the fascinating way that banks create money as they lend out most of the money that we deposit with them, then receive most of it back again in new deposits, and then lend most of this magically expanding cash out again, and on, and on. We see that bad banks fail, and we know that even good banks make bad loans.

Why only blame
—if our banks create money—
why only blame our government for inflation?

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I turned my studies to art and architecture. Along the way I discovered a maverick named R. Buckminster Fuller. He stood among other heroes such as Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright in describing the unity of design and nature.

Can projects designed
following principles of our biosphere
ever be too ugly,
ever be too expensive?

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I got married, and we went to the Peace Corps near the Pacific Coast in Guatemala. I saw discrepancy between strategies for national economic development and realities of community development.

I had to ask
" Does it make sense
—for our poverty, our sickness, our exploitation—
that our cure
cannot come
with our economic development,
but only after?"

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We moved to Little Rock Arkansas where I tried my hand at city planning in the Model Cities program. This was 1969, a time of large investment in troubled cities. Our successes were real but modest.

Is it not strange?
Even during prosperous times
since our era of generosity,
they say,
we cannot afford to budget for success.

Since Our Era Of Generosity

I went back to school to get my professional planning degree. There I discovered economics, learning its many applications to local public policy. It was elegant; it was beautiful. The curves conveyed information to me in ways that no other medium ever had.

One weekend, I took a rest from my studies and read a book by R. Buckminster Fuller. I believe it was Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth. There, I encountered for the first time his elegant formulation of the fundamental law of economics:

Wealth is a function of energy and knowledge.

Absent was any mention of scarcity, supply, demand. This was the economics of abundance. Fuller's economics made every bit as much sense to me as the crisp logic of market economics.

Humankind developed
laws,
traditions,
and institutions
to deal with scarcity.
At any point
in time and space,
scarcity is specific.
It is real.

We live scarcity,
but we come to live
and to thrive
through abundance.

Please do not misunderstand me.
I believe in scarcity.
I have lived it and seen
both its pains
and its benefits.

Yet, abundance is as real as is scarcity
and is even more fundamental.

Without scarcity,
the economist cannot draw
supply curves
and demand curves.
But these curves cannot anticipate
mathematics,
art,
democracy,
communities,
back rubs,
interplanetary exploration,
civil rights,
the popsicle,
or the yo-yo.
Nor could they have anticipated
the brown trout,
the monarch butterfly,
or the horned toad.
Each is part of our biosphere.
Each is our wealth.
And wealth must be the stuff of economics.

Today,
if we choose to love our wealth and our biosphere
we seem unable to seek the best for one
without harming the other.
Today, also,
sages preach to us of the evils in our economy.
They tell us to be more moral,
to separate pretension from wealth.
Let us heed such sermons.

Yet, the moral sage does not free us
from the choice between two loves.
Neither sage nor economist can free us
unless we know
how wealth and biosphere are one—
how we live scarcity,
but come to live
and to thrive
through abundance.

We Come to Live and Thrive

I lay sandwiched between a straightforward explanation of supply-demand-utility and Fuller's statement that wealth is a function of knowledge and energy. I found myself in that muddled layer of confusion and witchcraft called macroeconomics —including gold flow, balance of payments, balance of trade, inflation, and the like. The economy uses the biosphere's model of abundance, while conventional economics uses a model of scarcity. Beneath scarcity lies a supportive abundance —a macro-abundance. Beneath microeconomics, which specializes in scarcity, should lie a supportive macroeconomics specializing in abundance.

Microeconomics covers those situations in which flow of wealth mimics a traditional marketplace. People buy; they sell; they trade. The demand for a product in relation to its supply sets the price. Economists do not. Buyers and sellers do so, acting upon their needs and desires. One day, two chickens are worth two yards of cloth. The next day, they may be worth three yards in the morning but only one after lunch. Marketplace economics explains well the dynamics in this true marketplace and in myriad public and private markets in which goods and services are bought and sold. It can explain how the price for cloth changes as well as how the weaver decides how much to produce. It cannot, however, go on to explain how cloth came into existence nor how chickens were domesticated.

From graduate school I launched my planning career. I went to the island of Martha's Vineyard where I worked for five years to protect its resources and foster sensitive development. I moved as a consultant to Colorado, worked for a while in the analysis of socioeconomic impact from energy development. I went on to typical land-use planning. The gulf between my professional work and my struggle with the theories of economics seemed unnecessary, but enormous.

The economics of abundance remained a closet hobby until 1980 when I pulled together some of my notes in a hand-printed, ten-page document called Plum Local. It began with my apology: "Pardon my boldness ." I wrote, "The valid world economics will show the tie between genetic and economic evolution," and "Taxes, Bah!! Let's phase them out Let's balance our budget by investing communally (politically) in the growth of knowledge for mankind." I sent one copy to R. Buckminster Fuller. When I received his encouraging one-sentence response I felt some comfort.

The four-page 2nd Plum Local of 1981 took my ideas further: "Taxation is role playing. Monetary return as we have in the national income tax system has no role to play. If there is a utopia it will be found in a humanistic management of instability."

Now, as then, I find it hard to put forth theories of economics that disagree with the teachings and preachings of intelligent people who are economists by profession. However, I would find it harder not to share ideas that help me find some sense and science among a potpourri of confusing theories and popular maxims.

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 3. Plum Local ::
With attribution these words may be freely shared, but permission
is required if quoted in an item for sale or rent

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5. Economics Should Be Life Science

Economics Should Be Life Science.
Bob Komives
::

In life there is everywhere synergism. Two or more organs, two or more organisms, act together to achieve what neither could achieve alone. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. R. Buckminster Fuller called it "synergy."

Scarcities are microeconomic parts
within macroeconomic abundance.
True to synergy,
we cannot divine the behavior of our abundance
if we study only our scarcities.

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Economists have failed to build a unified theory of abundance out of their keen understanding of scarcity. Why? It cannot be done. Many scientists work to overcome this problem under the general umbrella of the study of complexity. The Santa Fe Institute in Santa Fe, New Mexico is one focal point for their work. Such terms as artificial life, self-organizing economies, and increasing returns cover specific topics that draw away from the traditional static models of economics toward the dynamics that we see in nature --that we see in the economy but cannot explain using standard models. I feel confident that their work will deal with both abundance and scarcity and will eventually revolutionize economics --beyond even their expectations.

Economics must be a science
--a human science,
a life science.
Wealth is basic.
It cannot be the invention of humankind.
It must be traced to the bases of life.
It cannot reside mainly in banks and buildings,
moneys and stock.
Primitive people had wealth
but none of these.

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Science is a whole. It tries to encompass all that exists as well as all that may have existed and all that may come to exist. It attempts to describe the rules that govern the universe at all scales and make useful predictions based on these rules. The bodies of theory and information that we call the sciences are artificial, but convenient subdivisions of the whole, science. Physics cannot be separated from chemistry nor from sociology. At their frontiers, and even at their centers, there is overlap and synergy.

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 5. Economics Should Be a Life Science ::
With attribution these words may be freely shared, but permission
is required if quoted in an item for sale or rent

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10. Buckminster Fuller's Elegant Law

Buckminster Fuller's Elegant Law
Bob Komives
::

Growth studies are integral to physiology. Construction is integral to architecture. Economic development should be integral to economics. Yet, economic developers and economists share little common ground. At least one economist, Paul Romer, works to change that by convincing other economists that knowledge and technology are part of economic growth. This seems obvious to a person on the street but revolutionary to most macroeconomists.

Depending on where I run into it, economic development still seems to be more in the kit bag of real estate developers, promoters, and financiers, as well as thought provoking generalists. Confusion among economists makes me no more comfortable with the developers and promoters who play on a simpler stage:

" I create jobs.
You want jobs.
Jobs make community rich.
Give me break.
I will make money.
Then, I will make you
a nice, rich community."

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Pending some coherent understanding of economic development such a monologue plays well to many audiences.

I find more comfort with the generalist synthesizers who try to comprehend the complex world and take us along for the trial. They look beyond their narrow window on the universe to an ever-expansive view. This is not frivolous pursuit leading to nowhere. Some, such as da Vinci and Einstein left obvious legacies. Others do no less than help us think, create, and pursue our own synthesis. They are skilled people who are generalists and designers.

Generalists:
see pattern
where others see spots,
see hypothesis
where others struggle to see the experiment.
Designers:
see opportunities
where others see problems.

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One generalist designer got me onto this economic tangent. R. Buckminster Fuller formulated the fundamental law of macroeconomics. Wealth is a function of the knowledge and the energy in the universe.

wealth = function of (knowledge & energy)

The amount of energy in the universe is constant. The amount of that energy that we can call wealth, however, is not constant. It varies as the biosphere grows and changes. According to Fuller's Law, then, knowledge is the only component of wealth that can cause wealth to grow or shrink. This makes sense if we adopt a broad concept of knowledge.

We know something about
food, clothing, shelter,
art, and human rights.
They know some things about us.
Each and all is wealth.
Food is energy
made palatable.
Clothing and shelter are energy
reformed into protection and image.
Art controls and molds energy
to please our senses.
Human rights let us control our own energy
(including our own bodies).
Lacking such energy,
and the knowledge to use it,
we are poor.

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Buckminster Fuller's formulation for wealth lead him to make a simple prescription for economic development: Increase knowledge! Since the quantity of energy in the universe is fixed, we create wealth only by increasing knowledge. More important, when we increase our knowledge we cannot fail to increase our wealth.

My own formulation is incidentally different, but it leads to the same conclusions:

wealth = knowledge

On this alone I would like to rest my case. What else I have to say is not so clean and simple. I too need more designer synthesis. However, I believe I can argue well that economic development is inseparable from economics. I can lay down some of the bases for a conscious economic development strategy that equates with a sane use of the biosphere and discards the popular conception of a balanced national budget. The knowledge we need is within us, around us, and ahead of us.

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 10. Buckminster Fuller's Elegant Law ::
With attribution these words may be freely shared, but permission
is required if quoted in an item for sale or rent

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11. Classes of Knowledge, Uses of Wealth

Classes of Knowledge, Uses of Wealth
Bob Komives
::

Knowledge is just an abstract concept
until we tie it to the energy that it harnesses.

The wealth potential of the biosphere
is to have useful knowledge
of all the energy in the universe.

We have reached but the tiniest fraction of that potential,
but take note:

for billions of years the total was zero.

Once The Total Was Zero

This is an excellent place to watch and listen to

a July 2010 "TED" talk by Matt Ridley:

"Ideas Have Sex"

http://www.ted.com/talks/matt_ridley_when_ideas_have_sex.html

Knowledge makes wealth. Wealth is energy --that energy that is of value because we know how to use it to our benefit. Even when ignorant in our brains of value, something in our body, our society, or our environment knows how to harness the energy of wealth to our benefit. One can benefit from electricity knowing little of its physics and mechanics. Nor is it necessary to know how our immune systems work to benefit from their protection.

As our knowledge increases, our species' wealth increases. As long as our knowledge increases faster than our population, wealth per person increases. Buckminster Fuller saw that if we understand the principles of knowledge formation we understand the principles of economic development. With such understanding we might avoid extinction and continue to partake in evolution's gift of growing prosperity.

Fuller saw energy as physical, yet saw knowledge as metaphysical. Since knowledge is the only variable in his conception of wealth, if it is metaphysical it does not lend itself to measurement. (At least I do not know any metaphysical measurements to apply.) Convinced that Fuller's Law held much more promise than the collection of theories that were passing for macroeconomics, I looked for a way to reformulate the law so that we might test it alongside other physical laws that we reveal through science. There should be notation that can express Fuller's Law in physical terms. Knowledge could then be discussed as a quantity even if measurement were still impractical.

After an enjoyable, but long, struggle with this measurement problem I saw that it simplifies if we think of one instant in time and ignore any complications from the relativity of time across the vastness of the universe. At one instant as seen from one point in the universe, knowledge is not metaphysical. It acts upon discrete units of energy. At that instant all of the energy of the universe can be divided into three classes.

Class-w energy is the knowledge (wealth) of a particular species, ecosystem, community, or other subordinate part of the biosphere. Human wealth is class-whuman.

Class-W energy is biospheric knowledge. It includes all class-w energy.

Class-U energy is all the energy in the universe, including class-W.

Since knowledge and energy are inseparable at this instant, we can measure knowledge by measuring the energy to which it has attached. Our human wealth equation becomes a summation of this attached energy:

∑wealth = ∑knowledge = ∑class-whuman energy

When life appeared the amount of the energy in the universe devoted to life went from zero to a tiny amount. As life multiplies that amount stays tiny relative to the universe but steadily increases. Life's invasion of the inanimate universe has begun. Earth has become a biosphere. Life captures inanimate energy and organizes it into its systems. Some newly captured universal energy gets bound into living creatures. A larger amount --still inanimate-- serves as storehouse of energy for life support. Life exploits this storehouse as food and as supportive environment in which to survive and prosper. This captured, organized energy is life's wealth. It includes the growing amount of energy that actually knows how to live and the expanding reservoir of inanimate energy that life knows how to exploit. So it is for our species. Our class-whuman energy is the energy that knows how to be we, plus other biospheric energy that we know how to use to our benefit.

That part of Class-W biospheric energy that we cannot count in our class-whuman wealth is quite important. It measures our ignorance.

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 11. Classes of Knowledge, Uses of Wealth ::
With attribution these words may be freely shared, but permission
is required if quoted in an item for sale or rent

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14. Biosphere: A First-Class Wealth Organization

Biosphere: A First-Class Wealth Organization
Bob Komives
::

In setting forth his Critical Path for humankind R. Buckminster Fuller made a distinction between class-one and class-two evolution. Class-two evolution assumes humankind runs the universe. It includes the events that seem to us to come from human initiative and control. We like class-two evolution.

I planted a seed

here somewhere, where
today there should be
(by my rights)
a seedling-

here on time, when
the packet guaranteed
(to my sight)
a sprouting-

if not now, then
it had better be
(as I hope)
by morning-

here somewhere, where
it might have been seen
tomorrow
(by evening).

Seeds And Rights

Class-one evolution transcends our vision, and (as one finds out waiting for seeds to grow) it often voids our class-two-right to have things happen as we told ourselves they should. Class-one evolution came first and will leave last. It put humankind on Earth. It is typified by "ephemeralization," by which we do more and more with less and less, and by "acceleration," by which the time between changes gets less and less.

The biosphere and humankind continually organize and reorganize. Life grew in complexity and robustness by organizing itself. Simple forms of life organized themselves into cells. Some cells organized their reproduction so that instead of creating totally new and independent creatures they created specialized organs within a multiple cell creature. The invention of organs exemplifies ephemeralization, because cells working in a multi-cell and multi-organ individual can often do more with available resources than can the same number of single-celled creatures.

Since we need old fashioned cell-into-cell reproduction to make and sustain our organs, we multi-celled creatures need some enhancement to reproduce our entire organized selves. Class-one evolution gave some of us sex. Sex became an unwitting accelerator of evolution as we mix and re-mix the gene pool (inclined as we are to attract strange mates). New species and communities of species could now evolve faster. Evolution is subject to its own class-one evolution. It accelerates as the gene pool diversifies.

I wish to emphasize the obvious; the word, organization, comes from the root-word, organ. We say that people get organized (into committees and such) while their bodies have organs (heart, lung, foot, skin). It sounds fine to say that the human body is organized, and it sounds only a little strange to say that the police department is an organ of the city government. At the edges of evolution, then, organs and organizations form. Through class-one organization the biosphere develops, reproduces, modifies, and discards patterned interactions.

Class-one organization,
first-class organization,
is biospheric economic development.
Unwittingly,
we participate.
Wittingly,
but ignorantly,
our second class efforts
often retard or threaten our wealth,
our biosphere's wealth.
Our species is organ to the biosphere.
We are organs to our species.
Looking inward,
we see our organs
as their cells and genes organize them.
Looking outward,
we see ourselves
as parts in several organizations:
. family,
. neighborhood,
. team,
. school,
. country,
. ecosystem,
. bioregion,
. species,
. biosphere.
Organs work neither perfectly nor forever.
(Such is the trial-and-error of evolution.)
Organized, imperfect, timed interaction
among species,
between species and their environment;
call it ecosystem.
Around the planet
call it biosphere.
Across space,
someday call it bio-universe.

Biosphere sustains life and culture,
changes as inanimate environment changes,
changes as life alters itself.
Energy captured by biosphere,
organized into life,
organized to support life,
reorganized by life,
this energy is biospheric knowledge.
Biosphere knows
to preserve,
create,
re-create,
to continue a habit of change.
Without such knowing,
life
into lifeless ignorance,

will end.

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:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 14. Biosphere: A First Class Wealth Organization ::
With attribution these words may be freely shared, but permission
is required if quoted in an item for sale or rent

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