A message to the Churches:

Ancient texts tell us that truth is important.

Economists tell us that, when prices do not show true costs (because some costs are externalized, are not included on the profit and loss statement, due to the absence of any monetary cost incurred related to, for example, amount of pollution emitted), economic activity is skewed toward creation of more of that for which costs were externalized. More pollution is created because we do not charge appropriate fees to polluting industries.

We get more pollution and faster depletion of resources when prices do not show us the cost of harmful impacts on the environment.

Is truth important enough that we should insist on an economic system that tells us the truth about costs, including costs to the environment? If yes, who will say so? Who will say so in a public forum?

Who will ask economists what are the most efficient and fair proposals for taking account of economic externalities? (And what economist will answer?)

If we correct this defect in our economy that makes pollution and depletion of resources appear profitable to industry, we will promote sustainability. Profits of industry will align with societal interests and environmental health. Within the current (dishonest) system, pursuit of profit is at cross-purposes with pursuit of environmental health and the long-term stability of civilization.

If we charge fees proportional to how much pollution is put or natural resources are taken by industry in pursuit of profit, then share the proceeds of the fees to all people, we will have addressed the challenge of honest pricing AND we will be sharing (a monetary representation of) natural wealth to all people. No more poverty. Disparity of wealth will be a much smaller problem. We will have a more just society.

If we know that making an honest economy and sharing natural wealth would end poverty and promote sustainability, do we have a moral duty to do these things? 

Natural Law requires respect of PUBLIC property rights, too

To Journalists:

If truth is important, then prices that do not honestly represent costs are a problem. When industries put pollution or deplete natural resources, they often do so without incurring any legal obligation to pay a substantial fee proportional to the degradation of environmental quality or depletion of natural wealth. This means that they feel no strong incentive to try to reduce harmful impacts on the environment.

Economists call the shifting of costs (such as environmental costs) off of the Profit and Loss balance sheet "negative externalities". These are the harmful effects on the environment or society that do not show in prices.

When corporations do not face substantial environmental impact fees, business planners adopt business models and manufacturing processes that are more harmful to the environment.

Because prices do not show true costs, consumers do the wrong thing. We buy more of those things that harm the environment than what we would do if prices were honest.

Dishonest prices harm the interests of future generations and the larger community of life. They make unsustainable business models appear as the more profitable option.

If we account for externalities by charging appropriate fees, industries will try to reduce harmful impacts. Pursuit of profit will be synonymous with pursuit of sustainable business models. Corporate interests and societal interests will be aligned rather than at cross-purposes.

If journalists report environmental problems, climate instability or pollution disasters, they should report an efficient policy for resolving those problems (charge a fee proportional to emissions or resource depletion).

If fairness is important, then we should expect that industries will compensate the people when pollution is emitted or natural resources are depleted. Proceeds from pollution fees and from natural resource extraction fees should be shared to all the world's people. Sharing (a monetary representation of) natural wealth would end poverty throughout the world.

If reporters tell us about poverty, social instability or disparity of wealth, they should mention a fair policy of sharing proceeds from environmental impact fees. We should understand that extreme poverty persists alongside opulence only because we fail to share natural wealth equally.

If environmental challenges and economic justice issues can both be resolved with one policy, then the issues are related. It doesn't serve the public interest to continue to report these as entirely separate issues.

A commitment to the moral values of honesty and fairness can resolve environmental challenges and economic justice challenges together. News reports should tell us so.

John Champagne

Systemic immorality - Are journalists culpable?

@TallPhilosopher

Moral principle applied to politics and economics will create a sustainable and just civilization

Will we learn to make a civilization that will last? Or will we once again apply more varied and more intensive means of extracting resources, over-exploit our resource base and expand our population beyond what is sustainable--to the point of catastrophic collapse?

The defects that have caused civilizations to collapse in centuries past are still with us. The difference between then and now is that, when civilizations collapsed in the past, there was always an 'elsewhere' to flee to when things started to fall apart. There were other civilizations in other places functioning relatively well. Now there is no 'elsewhere' to go to, and national economies are more thoroughly connected to one another. When the system descends into chaos, it will be a global failure. We need to make our civilization a sustainable phenomenon, to avoid disaster.

We need to limit the taking and degradation of natural resource wealth so that our impacts on the environment will be sustainable long-term. If we continue to despoil the planet and degrade the capacity of the environment to sustain us and the larger community of life, and if we allow abject poverty to persist, some people may perpetrate violent and destructive acts with the aim of eliminating what they see as an evil, oppressive and hopeless system.

In the distant past, an impulse to destroy was part of a natural phenomenon wherein unhealthy societies disintegrate and more healthy neighboring societies take their place.

Destructive impulses of disaffected youth may have served a purpose when societies were small-scale phenomena and neighboring tribes offered examples of better ways for how to live on the Earth. These impulses never brought the risk of global collapse when the tools at hand were all powered by human muscles. Now the destructive power that one person or a small group can wield is enormous. Now all the neighboring societies are part of one large, intertwined global system. No healthy nearby society is going to come to supplant this dysfunctional system when (if) it fails. Neighboring societies suffer the same systemic problems of poverty, disparity and profligate use of scarce resources that we can all see closer to home.

An impulse to destruction was not such a dangerous thing in small-scale, primitive societies. There were always neighboring societies that could move into the landscape occupied by a society in decline. In that context, acts of destruction could serve to hasten the transition from an unsustainable, dysfunctional system to a sustainable one. But within the context of a global civilization, catastrophic collapse would mean widespread famine and ecological disaster. For the sake of our offspring and the larger community of life, we must correct systemic defects without allowing complete collapse of our institutions and descent into chaos.

Extremists (and demagogues) can and will exploit discontent to further their agenda. We can enhance prospects for a peaceful, harmonious community not so much through combating and apprehending people who would do harm but rather by making a healthy, sustainable and more just society that the vast majority of people will want to be a part of and that very few people will want to subvert.

When we take part in political and economic systems, we must bring a respect for basic principles regarding political rights and rights to property. As a matter of policy, we must NOT allow levels of pollution to exceed what most people believe is acceptable. We must NOT allow the rate at which we deplete limited natural resources to exceed what most people would say is appropriate.

If we were to truly respect property rights, polluting industries would be paying money to the people when they put their unwanted materials into our air and water. Natural wealth can be thought of as belonging to all. Natural resource wealth is the Commons. It should be recognized as belonging to all, to the extent that it can be said to belong to anyone. The most efficient way to manage the taking of Commons resources, to keep within sustainable limits, is to charge a fee in proportion to value taken or damage done. Respecting public as well as private property rights would mean that industries pay the people when they take or degrade that which is the common inheritance of all humanity (and the heritage, too, of our fellow inhabitants of Earth who are members of other species).

We could end abject poverty AND reduce the harmful impacts on the environment of our economic system (and achieve a truly democratic society) by recognizing the people at large as the owners of Earth's natural resource wealth and as the ultimate authority in defining limits to environmental impacts.

Attaching fees to actions that foul the Earth, deplete limited resources or push ecosystems out of balance and destroy wildlife habitat would produce a kind of a sensory or autonomic nervous system for Earth. Injury or harm to ecosystems would be reduced. Ecological health and balance could be maintained. We would transform ourselves from something resembling cancer cells to something more like brain cells of Earth--if we bring our economics and politics into accord with basic principles. Respect property rights--fully.

This proposal is consistent with a marriage of libertarian and green political philosophies. It is a synthesis of capitalist and communist economic paradigms. It offers a biological model and ethical foundation for political and economic systems.

Is there any more direct path to a secure and sustainable society? Let's go! Let's build a better civilization. It can be our gift to the younger generation. Why shouldn't we do this? Of course we should.

Please share rebuttal or critique in a comment or through Twitter. (@TallPhilosopher)

Or comment here. (Click here: Moral principle applied to Politics and Economics, if you don't see the comments line below.)

@TallPhilosopher John Champagne

Natural Law requires respect of PUBLIC property rights, too 

Respect of Natural Law brings a remedy for what ails civilization.

When we understand human rights as reflecting basic laws of social interaction, we may notice that these fundamental rights can help us solve our most serious problems. We might come to recognize that respecting basic rights is necessary for the healthy functioning of society. 

If human rights are a kind of natural law, then moral claims that citizens might make (such as a claim of a right to share in deciding limits to pollution and limits to rates of taking of natural resources) can be seen as manifestations of a natural phenomenon. We might recognize that, to ensure the healthy functioning of society, citizens must assert their claims to natural rights, and must act in a way so as to create systems of government that assure these rights are respected in practice.

Presently, our system of government does not embody all natural rights in its functioning. The idea that natural wealth (what we might call commons or public property) ought to be shared equally is reflected in the writings of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, John Stuart Mill, Thomas Paine, Adam Smith and others. Yet our society does not manifest this idea in practice. Natural wealth (or a monetary representation of that wealth) is not shared. Rates of putting pollution and depleting resources are not being held to limits acceptable to most people. We lack even a formal process for discerning what most people would find acceptable regarding various kinds of impact on the environment.

This systemic flaw, this failure to embody a basic moral precept in practice, means that harm is done to the environment by industries without a direct and proportional economic cost being incurred. A consequence of this moral defect is that prices of things do not reflect environmental impacts such as pollution, resource depletion and habitat destruction. Prices lie to us about true costs, so we make bad decisions directly related to what kind of harmful impact is being hidden.

A visceral example of harm related to this lack of transparency is the intense crowding of animals in what has been called the 'animal exploitation industry': By crowding animals together more and by feeding antibiotics to them, expenses can be reduced and profits increased, but at potentially very high cost. More crowding means more stress and suffering of animals held captive; Routine use of antibiotics means more rapid loss of effectiveness of antibiotics for fighting disease in human beings (as pathogenic bacteria are given ample opportunity to develop resistance).

Animals are more stressed, the environment is more polluted and antibiotic resistance develops faster because industries are allowed to externalize their costs. These adverse impacts--the costs imposed on society and on animal captives--are not reflected in prices.

Living systems, including human society, are delicate, intricate phenomena. The fact that it is always easier to tear down and destroy something than it is to build and create reflects the nature of the underlying enabling conditions that make complex and intricate systems possible: Enabling conditions must be stable over time. Stability is necessary in order for any creative or developmental process to unfold. 

The conditions necessary for maintenance of a healthy society require order and structure rather than chaos or randomness. Order and structure are necessary whether we are talking about making a tower of blocks, a work of art or a civilization. Civilization will be stronger and more resilient when most everyone believes that we will all benefit by working to improve on what we have made. We cannot have many people wanting to destroy this nascent global civilization to see what else might take its place. For our own sake, and for the sake of those who will follow after us, there must be very few of us who believe that the world we have created is ugly or hurtful or evil. We need a society that all can believe in and feel glad to be a part of.

The rules we live by must be seen as fair. We must make a system that recognizes the people as the rightful owners of natural resource wealth, so that the world we create together will not be a world that has more paving or pollution or noise or extraction of limited resources than what most people would say is acceptable. Then we will have a true democracy.

If we limit or discourage excessive taking of resources... or putting of pollution... or destruction of wildlife habitat... or degradation of our view of the stars from outdoor lighting... if we limit harmful impacts on the environment by charging a fee to offending industries, then the fee proceeds (a monetary representation of what we all own in common) could be shared equally among all the world's people. (A system of random polls can show us when we have reached a point where impacts that had been excessive will have been brought into line with what most people think is acceptable. At that point, the associated fees will be set at the right amount.) We will have a more equitable society. No one will live in abject poverty.

Equal sharing of natural wealth promotes justice and sustainability

@TallPhilosopher

We need to make a healthy society

Moral principles now neglected must be embodied in practice to create a healthy (sustainable and just) civilization.

Human beings have a shared right to benefit from natural wealth. We have a shared right to decide limits to putting pollution and depleting resources. If these basic moral precepts are manifest in reality, there will not be more rapid depletion of resources or putting of pollution than what most people think is acceptable. There will not be people across the world chronically stressed by economic insecurity or oppressed by extreme poverty.

If we recognize that air and water and other natural resources belong to all people, then we should expect that industries will pay fees when they put pollution or deplete resources, and the fee proceeds should go to all people, to each an equal amount.

If we want to limit humans' impacts on the environment, so that they do not exceed what most people think is acceptable, then we should take a random poll (really a series of random polls) to discover whether actual conditions are in line with what average opinion says is best. If poll results show that most people want more strict (or relaxed) limits on impacts of a particular kind, then the associated fee can be increased (or reduced) accordingly.

Demagogues rise to power by exploiting feelings of insecurity, hatred and fear. When people experience economic stability and security because they receive their share of (a monetary representation of) natural wealth, feelings of economic insecurity that might be triggered by technological change or immigration will be alleviated.

When people see that society is sustainable and they have a reason to expect a brighter future (because industries shift to sustainable business models to promote profits in an economy that takes full account of external costs, including costs to the environment), fear of what the future might bring fades. A demagogue will find no traction in a society that embodies in practice the idea that natural wealth belongs to all.

Societies cannot flourish in the context of chronic neglect of moral principles. Systemic flaws today cause extreme poverty and disparity of wealth. These same flaws thwart the healthy functioning of the economy by making ecologically-destructive business models appear profitable to industry. A policy of charging fees for pollution and resource depletion, with proceeds shared to all, would address both problems at a systemic level. Moral precepts will be embodied in practice. Our civilization can be made sustainable and more just by respecting basic moral principles.

We need to deny traction for demagogues. We need to make a sustainable and just civilization.

John Champagne        @TallPhilosopher


Equal sharing of natural wealth promotes justice and sustainability

Systemic immorality - Are Journalists Culpable?

Even if we watch the news closely, we never see reports that go to the heart of our problems. Reporting focuses on symptoms of systemic defects while ignoring underlying causes. If we have a right to set limits to rates of putting pollution and depleting resources, we should expect conditions in the world to match what most people think is acceptable. If conditions do not match what a random poll would show as average opinion about what is acceptable, then our shared right to set limits to environmental impacts is not manifest in reality. (We can't match rates of emission of pollutants, extent of paving, etc., to what every person thinks is best, but matching to average opinion brings reality close to what the largest possible number of people think is most acceptable.)

If industries do not face a requirement to pay fees in proportion to pollution put, natural resources taken, or habitat disturbed or destroyed, then prices will not honestly reflect true costs, including the cost of lost opportunities associated with environmental harms. Ancient sacred texts tell us that truth is important. Truth is important everywhere, at all times. Even truth in pricing is important. If we persist in allowing society to function without embodying truth, we will create a more harsh reality for the younger generation.

A society that fails to embody a basic right in practice manifests moral failure. It cannot be successful in the long run. Our global civilization is not sustainable because prices are lying to us about true costs.

Ancient texts tell us that it is the younger generation that suffers for the sins (the irresponsibility; the immoral acts) of the older generation. If we allow environmental degradation to remain profitable to industry (because there is no requirement to pay compensation for environmental damage or degradation), then degradation will continue. Squandering of limited resources will continue. That spells disaster because a society cannot be sustainable when causing degradation of environmental quality is profitable. Collapse is inevitable. We cannot expect good results from continued dishonesty in pricing any more than we can expect good to come from other forms of persistent dishonesty.

Extreme poverty, economic disparity and perceived injustice cause social unrest and erode social cohesion. Economic stress draws people's attention away from a focus on maintaining healthy personal relationships and civic institutions, and can put both at risk. If proceeds from environmental impact fees were shared to all people equally, poverty would be eliminated and disparity would become a much smaller concern--no longer an existential threat to social stability.

Who will call for efficient and fair accounting of economic externalities? Who will demand shared ownership of natural resource wealth?


Equal Sharing of Natural Wealth Promotes Justice and Sustainability

Letter to the Editor

@TallPhilosopher

Do we have a moral duty?

Do we have a duty to end poverty and bring various human impacts on the environment into line with what is deemed acceptable by most people when we learn that we can do so?

We can charge fees to industries that put pollution (or require them to purchase a permit at auction), and we can share proceeds from these environmental impact fees to all people equally. We can raise fees gradually (or shrink the number of permits issued), until a system of random surveys shows that impacts of various kinds are within limits that average opinion says is OK.

If we have a right to define limits to various kinds of pollution (because we have a right to breathe, etc.), this right, when joined with basic precepts of a democratic society, implies a duty to create civic institutions that ensure that the economy functions in a way that produces only the amount of human impact on the environment that the largest possible number of people think is acceptable.

If we take a random survey, we might expect to see roughly equal numbers of people who will say limits are too strict as those who would say they are too lenient. This will correspond to a situation where the number of people in the middle who say things are about right re overall impacts of various kinds would be at or close to the highest possible number.

We have a moral duty to engage in the civic and political life. (Respond to surveys, when this paradigm is manifest. We have a responsibility to assert that limiting impacts is a basic function of government, and to insist that this function be carried out; and insist that natural wealth be shared, in a world where these precepts are yet to be embodied in practice.) We have a duty to engage in the civic life to the extent necessary to produce structures of government that manifest basic human rights in reality. We have a duty to limit humans' impacts on the environment because we have a right to do so--and that right is not manifest if we do not do what is necessary to make it manifest. Rights and duties are inextricably linked.

Before this alternative paradigm will be embodied in practice, we must say, repeatedly, persistently, in public spaces and forums, that natural wealth should be shared. A pre-condition for making the ideas manifest in reality is to make them widely known.

With natural wealth shared, we will understand that the decision for how fast to put pollution or deplete various resources should be a decision shared, in principle, by everyone. For practical reasons, we might take a number of random surveys to find what the average opinion says on various issues (various kinds of environmental impacts). Because people's time is limited, we cannot ask each person to decide appropriate limits for every kind of environmental impact.

We have the ability to end poverty by charging pollution fees, etc., as a way to moderate impacts on the environment, then giving fee proceeds to all people, to each an equal amount. As citizens who have a right to share in the benefits of ownership, we have a corresponding right to receive compensation when that which we own is damaged or degraded.

We have a responsibility to end poverty because we know that no one person has any greater claim to a right to benefit from (a monetary representation of) natural wealth than does any other person. If we see a persuasive argument for why some should benefit from natural wealth more than others, we can reconsider, but absent that, our responsibility is clear: Share natural wealth.

If the answer is "No", someone can say why...

"We don't have a right/responsibility to limit humans' impacts and end poverty because....? _______________________________________________________________________________________"

How shall we produce a concerted effort to turn government toward embodiment of basic moral precepts? Share your thoughts in the comments section below. 

John Champagne 


Share natural wealth to embody basic moral precepts in reality