Biological Model for Politics and Economics

Natural laws of chemistry and quantum mechanics govern the functioning of cells. Moral principles are the natural laws of social interaction. We must respect moral principle to have a healthy and sustainable civilization.

A truly democratic political system would provide ways for citizens to share their opinions (information) about what they feel are acceptable levels of pollution, rates of taking or depletion of resources, extent of paving or monoculture, etc. In a truly democratic society, this information would be conveyed to the economic actors who produce these kinds of effects on the Earth in a way so as to affect the behavior of these actors. If the people express the opinion that there is too much pollution or too rapid extraction of limited resources, industries would change the amount of pollution they produce or the rate at which they take resources. The expressed will of the people would be borne out in reality.

In an economic system, information is carried and value is represented by money. If the signal that the people want to send to industry is that we value clean air and water so much that we feel it is necessary for industries to try harder to avoid fouling the air and water, then the most efficient and fair way of communicating this information is to attach a fee to those actions that are causing the detrimental impact. Imposing a fee or raising the fee would give a signal to industry to try harder to reduce environmental impacts. Reducing or removing the fee would be the signal to indicate to industry that they can relax those efforts a bit, or a lot..

A fee is a straightforward way for a democratic society to manage pollution and the taking of scarce natural resources. The appropriate fees would make environmental impacts cost what society collectively decides they must cost in order to induce industry to put the necessary amount of effort into conservation and pollution prevention. 'Necessary effort' is the amount of effort required to bring overall impacts to levels that most people find acceptable. And in a society that respects public property rights, the people would receive a monetary payment equal to their share of the value of natural resources taken by corporate interests in pursuit of economic gain. Fee proceeds would go to all people, to each an equal amount.

Biomass is increasingly being used as fuel. Fuel prices will increase in the coming years, as fossil fuels become more scarce and as governments enact policies to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. There will be more pressure to convert meadows and forests (what is left of them) into cropland to produce biomass fuel to burn. Also, some farmers who now grow food will switch from food crops to fuel crops. This will put upward pressure on food prices.

A public property rights paradigm could mean less incentive for farmers to destroy meadows and forests. If most people polled in a random survey were to say that monoculture adversely impacts ecological health because it involves the destruction of other, more diverse ecosystems, then we could decide through such a random survey what limit on the overall extent of monoculture is most appropriate, i.e., acceptable to the largest number of people. We could charge a fee to landowners who convert rich biodiversity to monoculture cropland, as a damper on the economic incentive to disturb or destroy the larger community of life.

A public property rights paradigm would tend to decrease the social instability that comes with poverty and wealth disparity. Equal sharing of environmental impact fee proceeds (equal sharing of the value to human society of natural resource wealth) may be the best way to reduce the hardship caused by rising food prices. Increasing cost of food hurts the poor and dispossessed the most; but an equal payment to all people in the form of a natural resource wealth stipend helps the poor more than it helps the wealthy. This paradigm of commons or natural resource wealth being owned equally by all promotes justice by eliminating extreme poverty and reducing disparity of wealth. It also embodies within the economic structure the awareness that biodiversity is more valuable than biomass.

Within this paradigm, expressions of opinion by the people about appropriate limits on human transformation of the Earth would directly affect the things people do that impact the Earth and that affect the human community. Similarly, signals from neurons in biological brains affect the behavior of other neurons, and they affect conditions in the larger organism. A system of fees on those human activities that people feel are harmful or should be limited would function as an autonomic nervous system for Earth by helping to maintain a healthy ecological balance. The fees could also be seen as a sensory nervous system, reducing and preventing injury to the Earth. We become not a cancer on the Earth, fouling and depleting resources beyond what is sustainable for ourselves and for the larger community of life. Instead, we become like brain cells for a healthy planet, with an economy that functions within limits that the larger ecological system can support.


Natural law requires respect of PUBLIC property rights along with PRIVATE property rights