18. Exploitation's Deceitful Attraction

Exploitation's Deceitful Attraction
Bob Komives
::

We know from experience that, despite all the good it does for us, at times Adam Smith's "invisible hand" needs to be slapped. We rise again and again in fits of moral outrage to knock down those who sacrifice common good to disparity—promote our loss for their gain. Do we do so often enough? We discuss that question frequently. Here is another question that we should discuss: do such struggles and knock downs pit morality against economics? To this second question I answer, no. Morality need not fight economics unless you equate economics with pursuit of personal gain. You should not. I do see these struggles as contests between good and bad; but between (good) morality and bad economics, between common good and bad science. Great disparity is a great clot in the arteries of development.

Great disparity between us,
great impediment among us.
Moral justice asserts
that our wealthy must distribute wealth
onward to our poor.
Economic development just begs
that wealthy just act
knowing their dependence upon the poor
—and upon more.
More wealth distributed
brings back more wealth recirculated;
today distributed,
tomorrow shared.
In abstract we speak
of wealthy and poor.
In concrete we speak
of butcher, baker, banker,
slave, master,
pitcher, raker, candlestick maker.
We distribute,
recirculate,
compete,
cooperate,
evolve,
to survive
to prosper
together.

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Consider the economics of exploitation. Take an extreme example; consider the economics of
slavery. As species, as group, our wealth grows biologically with each birth; it decreases with each death—usually. Simply having more people may decrease our group wealth. Our increased population may overwhelm brain knowledge and artifactual knowledge that we use to harness resources. While this negative outcome may not be as likely as doomsayers often say, more people do not by their presence alone make the individuals in their group more wealthy. Yet, mistaken actions by fellow humans seem to stem from a belief that greater population brings wealth—if it is more of the right kind of population, the kind that makes us rich. When powerful individuals and groups enslave other people they increase the population that works at their service. A slaveholder feels wealthier holding more slaves.

We can exploit others in ways more subtle than slavery, but in all ways exploiters believe (if they are honest with themselves) that they become wealthier if they subjugate more people. Usually they do not try to increase overall population, just their controlled population. Unfortunately, history shows that from their narrow and short-sighted viewpoints they are usually right. Since we see our world having static resources, we find it selfishly attractive to exploit the minds and bodies of our brothers and sisters. These harnessed minds and bodies know how to gather wealth for us.
 
From the broad viewpoint of humankind exploitation is not attractive. It reduces opportunities for the exploited. That reduction inhibits the growth of brain knowledge and artifactual knowledge for our species, reducing species wealth and average per-person wealth. To the exploited it is painfully obvious that they suffer the burden of their exploiters. 

Unfortunately, exploiters are painfully ignorant that they suffer under the burden of their exploitation. This becomes tragically obvious when a lethal microbe flourishes in the impoverished ecology of the exploited and surges forth to kill exploited and exploiter alike. Yet the lesson is not learned. Here, economics has, first, much to learn and, second, much to teach.

Exploiter dreads that exploited would self-organize.
Old culture that slave might keep,
and new culture that slave might create,
destroyed, discouraged, undone.
Exploiter simplifies—
in
simple
organization
finds
control.
Biosphere complicates—
for in our complexity, it finds resilience;
for in its resilience, we find wealth.

||

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 18. Exploitation's Deceitful Attraction ::
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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34. Sell Fish on a Cherry Table.

Sell Fish on a Cherry Table.
Bob Komives
::

Robert Reich argued that, in order to arrive at a consensus for progress, we must acknowledge that the social and economic components of our national well-being are linked powerfully together. We must search for the right mixture of socialism and marketplace. This search is basic to resolving problems of food production and distribution. Frances Moore Lappe and Joseph Collins of the Institute for Food and Development Policy have done an excellent job of pointing this out. While small, individually owned and operated farms tend to be the most productive, nations increasingly look to large, corporate farms (or in the case of some communist countries, communal farms). In poor countries with little industry, governments promote agricultural exports in exchange for foreign goods and services. In the process, self-sufficient farmers become undernourished wards of the state. In U.S. America the family farm seems endangered as more farmers go bankrupt and corporate farming expands. These are complex issues from which I will draw only a couple of points.

The socialized ethic that says everyone should have enough to eat comes in a heritage older than our own species. In our enthusiasm for marketplace, we should never forget that only more recently in the biosphere's evolution did we socialize the market into our culture. It is no more inconsistent for a nation that values the dynamics of its marketplaces to make sure that every citizen has enough to eat, than it is for a family to feed all of its members -even if some produce nothing for the marketplace.

Similarly, a nation should never forget that if it fosters either corporation or commune it fosters delegated socialism. There is nothing especially natural or inevitable about either. They exist through communal law and policy.

Where individual families produce enough food
..... (for themselves and nation)
..... and have not wrought havoc with the landscape, why substitute larger,
..... less efficient,
..... private corporations and state communes?
Since corporations are socialized creations of government,
..... there would be nothing un-American
..... in keeping them out of farming in the USA.
Since families are communes,
..... there was nothing uncommunistic
..... in reverting to family farms
..... in countries leaving the Soviet.
Of course,
..... the complement too is true.
..... Corporate,
..... communal,
..... and cooperative farms may be useful
..... where family farms cannot achieve
..... marketplace, social, and environmental goals.
There is irony in U.S. America
..... (and nations that follow its example)
..... where, in the name of free enterprise,
..... the most free of enterprises
..... (the productive family)
..... gets displaced by less efficient groups
..... that socialize risk and profit.
Communist countries displayed similar irony
..... imposing communal structure
..... that more mimics impersonal corporation
..... than traditional communism of family.

||

We can see human culture as an arena of continuously overlapping organizations, ranging from small families up to associations among nations. Each organization is itself an organ of others. Each has a communal core where it determines how to distribute its wealth internally. Our arena can also be seen as an intricate web of edges through which organizations exchange wealth. At these edges, a marketplace can facilitate interchange. Core socialism and edge marketplace complement one another. The world and its nations need not choose between them. The world and its nations cannot choose between them. Rather, they can organize themselves so that both socialism and marketplace help to capture wealth nondestructively, distribute it fairly, and recirculate it repeatedly.

I sell fish.
You sell fish.
He sell fish.

We sell fish.
She sell fish.
They sell fish.

Upon a Cherry Table

Upon a Cherry Table

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 34. Sell Fish on a Cherry Table. ::
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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37. Organize For Economic Development.

Organize For Economic Development
Bob Komives
::

Economist, please try to define
why our wealth (1) can grow and (2) decline.

Please Try To Define

Life had to learn how to work for itself. It had to learn to sustain and expand itself in its home, the biosphere. It now knows how to organize itself to capture and expend energy with purpose, and to produce results that function. As life expands, it learns more ways to organize. Life's library of workable knowledge sustains it during tranquillity and changes it during crisis. The library grows larger and more diverse, even as it loses some works --species and ecosystems that have disappeared.

Knowledge is the wealth of the biosphere, the product of good work and good fortune. It organizes biospheric development, human development, human culture. Biological knowledge encoded in genetic libraries sustains the complex processes that mold inanimate energy into animate energy and animate energy into complex patterns. Brain knowledge adds real-time, real-life learning to the library. Artifacts, artifactual knowledge, organize and maintain energy in ways that genes and minds cannot.

In ancient Egypt, farmers who knew little of engineering drew upon the greater engineering knowledge stored in irrigation structures, systems, and administration to increase food and fiber production from their work. As they learned which plants did best, they stored their improving knowledge in each generation of seeds --selecting seed from superior plants. The improved varieties were their living artifacts, storing knowledge for children who used that knowledge without relearning it. They simply planted seeds of the improved varieties. Brain knowledge also passed from one generation to the next through written and spoken words and diagrams. And, of course, this knowledgeable culture could not have survived if men and women had not known to reproduce themselves and nurture their offspring into adulthood. Complex biological, brain, and artifactual knowledge were both essence and cause of a productive culture --not perfect knowledge, not perfect culture, but alive and long-lived.

Economics should explain how our species organizes itself for work that produces and sustains well-being. It should explain why "prosperity" is not "well-being" unless it works to promote likelihood of survival in our species and our biosphere. In short, the economist should describe the rules of organization for economic development.

Wealth is our preoccupation--
it is not our invention.

Economic development is an organized invasion--
life invades the universe.

Do not try to create economic development.
Be, instead, a knowledgeable partner.
Practice stewardship and equity.
Learn more.
Share knowledge.
Know to organize to foster the biosphere.

Know that wealth can disappear--
species, ecosystems, and cultures become extinct.
Guard against
the natural disaster,
nuclear war,
and revolution
that can destroy knowledge--
leaving machines that no one can use,
books no one can read,
science no one can remember.

Guard against the disappearance of life,
for the biosphere knows how to become wealthier.

Prevent the destruction of our species,
for we can learn to partake of that increasing wealth.

Stop exploiting one another,
for then we can partake of more wealth more quickly.

Bring our understanding of the world into harmony
with the knowledge embedded in the universe.

Thus,
we shall act as consistent development partners--
in our human sphere
in our biosphere.

A More Knowledgeable Partner

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 37. Organize For Economic Development. ::
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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89. Print Money and Invest Wisely

Print Money and Invest Wisely.
Bob Komives
::

Today, we print our money on valuable paper. Corporations print common stock on cheaper paper. Banks print unsecured loans on the most ordinary of paper. Stocks and loans are forms of private money. They become worthless more easily than their sibling, national currency. No one seems to complain that they are paper.

What works for banks and corporations works for our national governments. Our politicians can print money to pay for good projects. They should never print money —or tax it or borrow it— to pay for bad projects. The key does not lie in the printing but rather in the investment. A good project meets moral criteria, retains the value of the resources invested, complements the biosphere, and creates new wealth that equals or exceeds the face value of the money spent.

Projects that meet these criteria in an economic sense but fall somewhat short as measured in the marketplace may still be good projects. The low inflation that they cause has proven to be tolerable.

Politics can work for us. Our leaders can debate the investment potential of each law and expenditure. If we know how government economics really work, we may teach our officials to manage our future responsibly. We will debate as hotly as ever, but our disagreements can be more productive. No resources will be wasted on false taxes, false borrowing from citizens, or useless borrowing of foreign currency from foreign nations. We will debate projects and policies on their broadly defined economic value. Within the limits of our expanding knowledge of economics and our insight to the future we will fund projects on their merits. We will subsidize meritorious private efforts explicitly, not through loopholes hidden in a useless tax code.

Economic development strategies and our debates about these strategies will improve as economics integrates other life sciences. We will  reach out more to the energy of the sun and the solar system —to increase biospheric capture rather than destroy biospheric wealth. We will recirculate energy productively through natural and man-made systems. As we learn, we will do more and more with less and less and (if we wish) do it faster.

If we invest our money in complex and just distribution of wealth among people of varied skills and tastes, we will deepen our wealth, keeping captured energy at the service of our species for an ever increasing time. Our byproducts will be less waste and more product as we recirculate them back through our distribution system. Our wealth and the biosphere's wealth will grow.

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 89. Print Money and Invest Wisely  ::
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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