Is civilization a success or a failure, or is it too soon to tell?

As long as there is grinding poverty on the same planet that supports extravagant luxury and opulence, we cannot say we have a just society. 

As long as we are consuming natural resources at profligate, unsustainable rates, civilization will be subject to collapse. If we have a large fraction of human beings living in dire poverty and natural resources are being depleted at truly astounding rates—in short, if our civilization is unjust and not sustainable—we cannot call it a success.

When we study history, we can see that civilizations thrive and collapse. But there has never been a collapse of a global civilization. Whether there will be such a collapse will depend on what we do. A key question will be whether we respect basic moral principles and remember the golden rule when voting.

Since we have no authority as individuals to initiate use of force against peaceful people, we can have no authority as citizens to delegate that power to government. We must not give political power (our vote) to politicians, to lawmakers, who would use government as an instrument of force or violence against a peaceful person. No first-use of force by government. No regulation of private behavior by government. When we recognize this limit on our freedom of action in the voting booth and exercise appropriate self-restraint in our voting choices, we will free up attention and resources of government to address the more urgent problems of the day.

Can we create a world where the people could express their opinion about what are the most appropriate rates of use and taking of natural resources (publicly-owned resources)? Can we design our public policy so that the people's expressed preferences are taken into account in a way that makes a real difference? Then only the environmental impacts that most people say are appropriate and acceptable would be manifest in reality. We would base our collective opinion on what citizens see in their environment and what they learn from other citizens like themselves (or from citizens somewhat like themselves, but with different experiences, education and character types).

A democratic political system that respects public property rights would provide mechanisms whereby information (opinions) from citizens about acceptable levels of pollution, rates of taking or depletion of resources, extent of paving or monoculture, etc., could be conveyed to the people (including 'legal persons'...corporations) who actually produce these kinds of effects. And the citizens--each person (each natural person)--ought to receive a monetary payment equal to their share of the value of natural resource wealth taken by corporate interests for the purpose of economic gain.

In an economic system, information is conveyed and value is represented by money. If the signal that the people want to send to industry is that they value clean air and water so much that they 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 would be to charge a fee against those actions that are causing the harmful impact on the environment that the people want to limit. A free market auction of a limited number of natural resource user-permits would cause those resources that the people wish to conserve to cost more, to cost what society collectively decides they must cost in order to cause industry to put the necessary amount of effort into conservation and pollution prevention.

When a random survey shows that a particular kind of environmental impact is neither excessive nor is it too severely limited -- when most people say that that kind of environmental impact is about right (whether it be the extent of paving on the Earth, intensity of light pollution, rate of emission of carbon dioxide or methane, or some other impact to be duly limited), then we will know that the appropriate amount of effort is being put into controlling that kind of impact. We will know that the fee is set at the correct amount.

Within a public property rights paradigm, expressions of opinion by the people about what are the most appropriate limits on human transformation of the Earth would directly affect the actions that humans perform (in their roles as 'consumers' and agents of corporations) that impact the Earth and that affect the human community. Similarly, signals from neurons affect the state or behavior of other neurons, and they affect conditions in the larger organism. A system of fees on those activities that the 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.

When we define appropriate limits to government power by ending the practice of using coercive force to regulate private behavior, we bring our society more into accord with our basic moral principles. When we free up attention and resources of government that have, up to this point, been devoted to regulating private behavior, those resources and that mental effort can be directed toward the task of regulating those things that people do that adversely impact the natural and social environments.

Moral principles require that we respect privacy. Moral principles require that we respect public property rights and share natural wealth equitably. Moral principles and human rights (including property rights) are a kind of natural law. If we respect basic laws of nature (moral principles are natural law that governs social interaction) we can produce a sustainable and more just civilization.

Natural law requires equal ownership of natural resources

Human society as neural network

@TallPhilosopher

This post moved to my personal blog

Neurons in Networks Follow the Golden Rule

We can understand the functioning of neural networks best when we see them as communities of neurons. Like communities or societies in the more conventional sense, their members behave in ways that reflect concern for the well-being of their neighbors.

Recalling Marshall McLuhan, we are able to do only what some portion of our body specializes in doing. Our various organs have cells that specialize in doing the work of that organ. We can be members of communities concerned about one another perhaps only because we have brain cells that try to help their neighbors.

Neural networks within organisms emerge when entities (cells) within the organism develop the ability to read or discern the state of other entities like themselves which they are in contact with, in communication with, with the "intention" or aim of helping their neighbors approach their more ideal state.

Neural networks function most effectively to the extent that each neuron, each member of the community of neurons, is "trying" to bring itself toward its more ideal state (that is, either a state of being active at a steady pace, OR a state of rest); while at the same time "trying" to help bring its neighbors toward their more ideal state (of steady activity OR rest).

For neurons that are molecular machines within biological organisms, the question of whether a neuron is at or near its ideal state depends on the levels of activity and patterns of connections among the various members of the community. These patterns of connection are exceedingly variable, since each synapse tip can grow or shrink slightly to form or break a connection with a neighbor. Each neuron has about 10,000 synapses. Ten thousand neighbors that it chooses to be or to not be in communication with.

Particular patterns of connectedness can result in a particular neuron community's having most of its members settled firmly into either a resting or a steadily active state (the ideal); or, conversely, with a different pattern of connectedness, most of the members of a community could be in an in-between, somewhat active state (a less-efficient state).

When in the less-efficient state, each member will try to adjust its connections with its neighbors so that moderately active elements will become fully active, while moderately quiet members will become more completely quiet. They do this by forming connections with some neighbors while breaking connections with others.

Each member of the community seeks to adjust its connections with its neighbors so as to approach a state of steady activity, OR (if it is near a resting state) to approach a state of being fully at rest. But it makes these adjustments while also "discerning" and responding to what changes would most aid its neighbors in their movement toward either a state of activity or rest.

The golden rule among members of a neuron community is to increase signaling to neighbors that appear to be tending toward more activity, while decreasing signaling to those who are inclined to become more quiet. In other words, the golden rule is to help your neighbors reach their more ideal state.

Without this concern for the 'other', any adjustments that a neuron might make in seeking a pattern of connectedness that results in a more nearly ideal state for itself would very likely frustrate the attempts of neighboring neurons to reach their more ideal state.

(Within each neuron there are countless microtubules that are able to affect one another's states, which are defined by how many electrons or ions are trapped in them, if any. When these microtubules lengthen or shorten or bend slightly, they change which of their neighbors they are able to communicate with.)

If we think of a society of human beings as a neural network, then we will see that we are more likely to bring ourselves AND the larger community (one another) toward our ideal state when we are trying to help others and respect the golden rule while also trying to take care of ourselves.




Natural Law Requires Respect of Public Property Rights, Too


Biodiversityt as a public good

A sustainable and just civilization requires that we exercise our moral sense

Indeed, to be complete human beings, we must exercise our moral sense. Primarily, this means that we must respect the golden rule. In our political life, we have thus far failed to abide by this fundamental moral obligation. This failure produces serious flaws in our systems of government and economics. Social instability and injustice follow from this failure.

A sincere and thorough commitment to the golden rule implies a strong respect for human rights, which can be understood (and which are understood by many) to include rights to property. But we are neglecting some basic questions that should emerge from a strong respect for property rights. We are neglecting questions that could help us manage, in a sustainable and fair way, the natural resource wealth of the planet. We are not addressing questions related to public property rights.

When the people are recognized as the rightful owners of the air and water and other natural resources, we will have the industries that pollute the air and water and take natural resource wealth in pursuit of profit paying a fee to the people at large, as compensation for damage done or value taken. The fee charged for using that which belongs to everyone could (and by rights should) increase when demands on natural resources exceed what most people polled in a random survey say is acceptable. Fee proceeds would constitute a monetary representation of the value of commons resources. Sharing of this wealth among the entire human population would mean an end to abject poverty throughout the world.

Does reality match what the people believe is most desirable, in terms of our use of the resources that we all own in common? In terms of the extent of paving or intensity of light pollution? Are the rates of taking of natural resources and rates of emitting pollution into the air and water acceptable, or are current limits too strict, or too lenient? These are questions that a democratic society asks its citizens, when public property rights are respected.

When industries are made to pay an appropriate fee or rent to the people for using resources that belong to all of us, then capital markets, investors and business planners will have the information and incentives that they need to produce the reality that the people consent to in terms of acceptable environmental impacts. With the right fees, industries will put the right amount of effort into preventing adverse impacts on the environment. The fee is an instrument, a kind of lever, that the people can use to ensure that we will have the kind of world that we want to live in.

When prices reflect the value of natural resources used in production, our economy will respond in the most efficient way possible to the urgent need for significant reductions in humans' environmental impacts, including reductions in carbon emissions. Carbon dioxide and methane emissions are but two examples of the kinds of environmental impacts that are fraught with contentious rancor between competing political factions that should be decided in accord with the will of the people at large.

We inherit our shared legacy of natural resource wealth as a birthright. Our charge is to manage this inheritance wisely and bequeath to future generations, and to share equitably for the benefit of our fellow inhabitants of the planet. A strong respect for public property rights would mean that we would each receive part of our income from earnings from work and / or investments, and part of our income from our shared legacy of natural wealth. No one would ever lose all income because they lack gainful employment.

(A random survey of citizens could reveal at what age a person should begin to receive their natural wealth stipend. We could decide to put the money that is the fair share of the youngest members of society toward support of public programs and services, such as education, libraries, parks, museums, public health, etc., where there is broad agreement that those programs will promote the health, stability or vitality of civilization in years to come. Random surveys could even be used to decide generally what proportion of public spending should go to which programs and services. Those programs that enjoy the support of the people will receive funding. Those programs for which public confidence is lacking will see their funding dry up.)

The key to a sustainable and just civilization is to follow moral principle in all action. We need to pay special attention to actions that exert and amplify power or influence over distance. For human beings, normal inter-personal communication includes myriad non-verbal cues that we use automatically and subconsciously to let one another know when a standard of acceptable behavior has been violated. When we participate in the modern economy by spending money, we influence people at a great distance, but without the benefit of the rich communications channels that include our tone and body language. But when environmental impacts are reflected in prices, our natural tendency to avoid higher prices will help to ensure that we will not give incentive to do the wrong thing as we take part in the economic system.

The golden rule implies libertarian principles and green policy choices. We could say this alternative paradigm follows a 'left-libertarian' path. A thorough commitment to the golden rule would mean no use of government to initiate force or violence against a peaceful person, In the political sphere, government power needs to be limited to the public realm, with private action being privately regulated.

We have applied the principles of agriculture, economics, politics and, indeed, all of the various fields of knowledge, to produce an impressive civilization. But real success over the long term requires sustainability. Long-term success requires an end to environmental degradation and grinding poverty. Real success requires that we pay attention to moral principle and embody basic precepts in practice.


A Capitalism-Communism Synthesis

Minimum Wage vs. Minimum Income

Dear Secretary Rice,

Disparity of wealth and abject poverty in the world today fuel anger and desperation in the dispossessed, and in those who identify with them. This anger and desperation can be exploited by those with an extremist agenda who would use violence to further their aims. To allow grinding poverty to presist, then, threatens our safety. We could change our social system, to reduce disparity, and to ensure that those on the low end of the income-distribution spectrum are assured a significant minimum. By promoting the material security of those who are least secure, we would be promoting the security of all.

We need not violate any of our principles to bring about this change. Indeed, we need only live by our principles more faithfully. Almost everyone believes that the air and water and other natural resources belong to all. We could require that a fee be paid by anyone who takes or degrades the quality of natural resources. The proceeds of the pollution fees and natural resource user-fees would constitute a monetary representation of the value of Earth's natural resources, (including air and water), and could rightly be shared among all people equally. The value of these resources has been estimated at $33 trillion per year.

We should pay more attention to how natural resource wealth is managed and apportioned. We allow those in pursuit of profit to take or degrade natural resources, but do not require any compensation be paid to the owners of the resources, the people at large. If we address this inconsistency in our own behavior in relation to our principles, we will solve many social and environmental ills.

Equal sharing of the wealth of the commons would mean about twenty dollars per day for every person on the planet--perhaps enough to make everyone feel that they have a stake in the system and should work to build and improve it, rather than destroy it. Even those who would not do evil may sit by quietly when they know another is bent on destruction, if they feel that the current system is unjust and offers no prospect for meaningful change. We must win the hearts and minds of the world's people if we want them to help build and defend a civilization, a free and democratic global society.

We must empower the dispossessed. Would they choose a world that impoverishes them? Within a free and democratic society, what kind of world would they make? What kind of world would we make? Every one of us should have opportunities to express our opinion in meaningful ways, (ways that make a difference), regarding how much pollution, paving, noise, monoculture, or extraction of limited resources is just too much. Agreement, (or lack of agreement), between people's expressed will on these issues on the one hand and the actual reality on the other could serve as an objective measure of democracy.

This change would bring our society more into accord with our own principles regarding commons property ownership; and with principles regarding responsibility for compensating owners when damage is done or value taken. Economic power based on a shared ownership of natural resource wealth belongs to all of us. Our political and economic systems should reflect this fact.

John Champagne


Systemic flaws are not reported

The Gaia Brain Paradigm

Pollution fees: Part of the Gaia Brain

(An earlier version of this article was offered as a response to a Call for Papers put out by the Interdisciplinary Environmental Association that sought "ideas from different disciplines brought to bear on solving environmental problems". It resulted in an invitation to attend a conference and present a longer paper, which, the conference organizers said, would be considered for publication in the Conference Proceedings.)

We have a problem with pollution. Our economy treats the Earth as a free dumping ground for wastes. The ecosystems of Earth provide valuable services. We benefit greatly from natural resources. We enjoy natural opportunities to share in the use and enjoyment of natural wealth as an existential fact common to all lifeforms; but our economy harbors a fundamental flaw because we allow economic actors to avail themselves of these natural services essentially for free, or at unrealistically low rates of payment. These rates of payment should reflect the value of these services to humanity; and they should reflect, as well, the urgent need to tie economic costs to actions that harm the environment. Tying economic costs to environmental damage will encourage efforts to reduce environmental impacts.

Industries generally make no payment to the owners of natural resources, the people at large, as compensation for the fact that, when they take these resources in pursuit of profit, they reduce the value of the resource base. To the extent that resources are limited, taking by some actors necessarily reduces the opportunities that others will have to enjoy the use of these same resources.

Like anything that is free or almost free, these natural resources and services that the Earth provides to us are subject to overuse. The Tragedy of the Commons is what happens when shared resources degrade in value because resource users have incentive to continue to take more and more from the resource base beyond what is sustainable or optimum, to the detriment of all.

We treat these natural resources and services as free goods (or nearly so) because, until recently, there were not such great demands placed on them--we could use them as though they were free without destroying them from overuse; and, we lacked the tools to measure and allocate them. (Before technology, humans' impacts were kept in check by natural phenomena and limits.) Now, the demands placed on the Earth's air and water and ecosystems by our practice of putting industrial and agricultural wastes in them are exceeding their capacity to absorb and clean. Also, rates of resource extraction have exceeded sustainable levels. So the problem is: How to allocate limited natural resources in an efficient and fair way?

If the Earth's waste removal services were treated as the valuable resources that they are, and if our industries were required to pay a fee (or buy permits at auction) according to how much they use these services, then the problem of overuse due to zero cost would be eliminated. A pollution fee would require the measurement of emissions and would cause a reduction in the emissions. This is akin to how a sensory nervous system operates: information about injury to the organism is transmitted by sense nerves into the neural network (the brain) and the neural network changes in a way that causes a reduction in the injury. In this analogy, pollution, or stress to ecosystems, represents injury to the organism, the Earth. Information about the environmental impact of industry and agriculture enters society (the neural net) through the price of goods and services in the marketplace. Cleaner products then cost less, while those with higher ecological costs would have correspondingly higher prices attached. Individuals would have appropriate economic incentives to change habits and lifestyles toward sustainability. Similarly, sustainable business models would be favored by industry.

Another way to think of this phenomenon is as an autonomic nervous system for Earth: The pollution fee is information about stresses or demands on ecosystems that would tend to move the Earth organism out of homeostasis; and it is an economic incentive or pressure to maintain a homeostasis or healthy ecologic balance.

The fee system also functions as a mechanism whereby the information about the extent to which people want to reduce rates of depletion of mineral resources (so that future generations are afforded more time to learn to adapt to scarcity) can be effectively processed by the larger society, by impacting behaviors through the price structure of the economic system.

We must decide what the Earth and its ecosystems can sustainably absorb from us in the form of wastes. But we do not know the answer to this question. No one does. So we begin by recognizing that we cannot be certain of the numbers. Let us resolve, then, to err on the side of caution; that is, let us be conservative in our estimates and err on the side of preserving and restoring ecosystems for the benefit of our grandchildren, future generations and other lifeforms on the planet.

We could issue permits for various pollutants according to how much of each pollutant we will allow, as determined by a random survey, and auction these permits in the free market. Industries that adapt processes to reduce or eliminate waste emissions will have an advantage in the market, while those industries which continue to emit large amounts of waste will have to include a monetary representation of the environmental costs in the price of their products.

Because just about everyone will have a different opinion regarding the levels of pollutants, extent of paving, rates of taking of resources, etc., that would be safe and acceptable, the actual amount that we decide on will be a summary or average of the opinions of all the world's people (or more practically, an average of opinions of random samples of the world's people). And, because many of us are not able to make an informed decision about appropriate levels of some or all pollutants, we may choose to delegate our vote to someone whose opinion we respect. For example, if I believe that it is safe to release 100 million tons of fossil fuel carbon dioxide into the environment each year, and that no level of CFC or chlorinated hydrocarbon (e.g.: Heptachlor, DDT emissions) can be called safe or sustainable, but I have no opinion or knowledge about safe levels of other pollutants, then I might refer to lists of people who share my views on CO2 and chlorinated hydrocarbons. I could learn what their opinions are regarding other pollutants--either to inform my own opinion, or to find a knowledgeable and responsible person (or group) to whom I could delegate my 'emissions allowance' vote.

This concept of assigning fees to the use of Earth's waste removal services can be applied to other areas. Pollution fees are actually a subset of green taxes. Green taxes are a way to manage scarce natural resources, such as forests, fisheries and grazing land, that would otherwise be subject to overuse and depletion.

This idea of paying compensation for harm caused to the environment could readily be applied to the management of the use of non-human animals by human beings, where actual bodily harm and psychological stress occurs. Someday, perhaps soon, we may completely eliminate the systematic enslavement and exploitation of non-human animals in industry and agriculture. But until that time, we may wish to create a system whereby industry and agriculture are subject to economic costs in some proportion to how much suffering and severe discomfort they inflict on the animals they use. This will give them an incentive to reduce both the numbers of animals they use and the amount of suffering inflicted on each one. The prevalence of the practice of holding members of other species captive in pursuit of profit can be kept within limits that do not offend the conscience of most people.

Some people believe that the proliferation of outdoor lighting for advertising, car dealers' lots, and other commercial activity is too disruptive of our view of the stars in the night sky. If a random-sample survey of the population shows that most people would like to see less light pollution, we could apply this paradigm as a way to bring about an overall reduction of light pollution; and/or, as a way to institute occasional "lights out nights", so that we can sometimes experience the beauty and wonder of a starry night sky, meteor shower or passing comet.

The Gaia brain/pollution fee system will so transform the global economy and society, we probably ought to think in terms of an elimination of government as we know it. With the introduction of significant pollution fees, conventional taxes not only would be difficult to support financially, they might also appear to lack a philosophical foundation: We may see that a fee according to our use of the Earth's natural resources is well founded on philosophical principles of fairness, while taxes on income or sales do not seem on the face to be eminently fair.

The proceeds of the pollution fees and green fees would be a monetary representation of the value of Earth's air and water and living systems. As these resources can be thought of as belonging to all, the proceeds of these fees probably ought to be shared equally among all the people of the Earth. This could be the basis of a guaranteed minimum income. Perhaps we could each contribute half of our share to financially transparent providers of social services or other community needs, according to our own sense of priorities but in accord with what most members of the community agree are important public concerns (those functions currently served by government), and we could spend the other half toward more personal needs. If everyone had access to such an account, no one would live in abject poverty and low-income people would have essential social services available.

The pollution fee/gaia brain concept applies ancient principles to today's challenges: We must live in accord with nature; We must give something back in proportion to what we take; We are the stewards of this planet. The greatest challenges that life presents are those which must be met to ensure the very survival of the organism. The difficult but life-sustaining task before us is to transform ourselves from cancer cells of Earth to brain cells of Earth--to make a healthy, properly functioning world brain; to create/re-make our global society.


A longer version of this essay: Biological Model for Politics and Economics

Equal sharing of Natural Resources promotes Justice and Sustainability

From Cancer Cells of Earth to Brain Cells of Earth: A Synthesis of Human Society and the Biosphere

Gaia Brain: Policies aimed at managing natural resource wealth that are rational and just produce something like a nervous system for the planet.

When political and economic systems reflect an equal ownership of natural wealth, we will have a civilization that is more just and also more likely to be sustainable.

The History of Life
Development of Societies
Language Allows Elaboration of Mental Models and Social Structure
Development of Culture Allows Living Beyond Means
A Biological Model for Politics and Economics
Introducing Mechanisms for Taking Account of Environmental Impacts
Ecology and Economy Integrated: A Sensory Nervous System for Earth
Implementation Strategies Invite Democratization in Economics and Politics
Gaia Brain Provides Tools for Sculpting Society
Impact of Paradigm Shift on Institutions and Society
References


The History of Life

A noticeable trend throughout the history of life on Earth is the nearly continual, albeit unsteady, progression from simpler, small-scale organization to more complex and large-scale organization. Simple entities elaborate themselves into more complex forms in response to changes in the environment; changes that are often brought about by the very life processes of those simpler entities. [Alberts, et al]

Mitochondria were once free-living cells in symbiotic relationship with one another (much as animals and plants are in symbiosis). Over time, these bacterial cells developed such intimate connections with one another that the relationship evolved from that of separate, interdependent organisms to that of interdependent entities within a larger organism. This transition appears to have been triggered by the accumulation of oxygen in the atmosphere. Oxygen is a highly reactive gas, and would have been poisonous to most of the early life on the planet. This accumulation was caused by living things. They changed their environment, by releasing oxygen into it, and so were compelled to change themselves, or die. [Ibid] What were at one time separate organisms have integrated to form the eukaryotic cell. This transformation represents an early example of a meta-system transition wherein interacting systems or entities become subordinate to and come under the control of a larger scale emergent system. [Turchin]

Multi-cellular organisms, or meta-organisms, continue the progression toward higher levels of complexity by extending and distributing the various internal processes of a prototypical eukaryotic cell (e.g.: protozoa) to a community of cells in communication with and cooperation with one another. Each cell in the community specializes and concentrates on performing one function, or a narrow range of functions. Every member of the community receives products and benefits from its neighbors; and every member returns some benefits or provides some service to its neighbors.

Development of Societies

Members of societies also share resources. They share information about their environment and about their own actions or state of being with one another. Through this sharing they are able to act as an integrated entity, cooperating in the exploitation of their environment, as if the society itself were a single organism. The social insects (ants, termites, bees) are a classic example of this phenomenon. Howler monkeys (and other primates) also illustrate this point: A call from a single individual can cause the whole troupe to move in a particular direction, either toward food or away from danger. Habitual howling or singing (of primates or birds) conveys information about the distribution on the landscape of various members of the group and about the relative state of health of members. (The 'group' may simply be the other individuals of the same species, even if they do not otherwise act in ways that we would recognize as social.)

Development of Language and Culture Allows Elaboration of Mental Models and Social Structure

Human society and culture present yet another level of this phenomenon of entities organizing themselves into communities to form entities of a higher order. Culture is the product of humans' language, artistic, and tool-making abilities. It represents a quantum leap in the ability of hominid society to share information among its members, and to transmit that information across space and time. Culture greatly expands humans' ability to organize as a single entity and exploit the environment. With the advent of human language, the Tribe became the newest form of the meta-organism.

Language allows naming things; and it allows elaborate mental models of the environment and of social relations to develop. Bringing information about an environment into an entity (in the form of learning for a human being; in the form of social structure and cooperative process for human society) is a step toward integrating that environment with that entity. Integration of interacting systems always involves the transfer of information between those systems. [Turchin]

Living Beyond Means

Culture and technology have enabled human society to expand into virtually every ecosystem on the planet. As we expand into an environment and change it by interacting with it, we adapt our methods, so that our ability to extract wealth persists, even as we degrade the resource base and exceed the carrying capacity of the environment.

Increasingly intense extraction methods in the context of a dwindling resource base will result in catastrophic collapse. This tendency of humans to live beyond what is sustainable, with innovations in culture and technology driven by the challenge of adapting to a degrading environment, even as our numbers continue to increase, points to the need for new feedback mechanisms that will enable the human society supra-organism and its members to exist within the limits of the biosphere at large. In the absence of culturally-based (rule-based) limits to our own potentially self-destructive behavior, the physical limits that manifest on the lower levels of organization (soil, air, water and food supply) will become evident. We will face resource depletion and famine--the biological limits to survival.

A Biological Model for Politics and Economics

An ancient city can be seen as a multi-organism organism: City walls are the skin; the grain stores are the stomach; the systems of commerce, roads and sewers are the circulatory, digestive and excretory systems; soldiers are like the fists and claws and immune system; and the protocols of behavior that mediate interactions among the various citizens--the records of grain ownership and tax liability, laws, mythology, the beliefs about the intentions of the gods and what the citizens ought to do, people's sense of possibilities--make up the hormonal and nervous systems.

Civilizations rise and fall because they lack the feedback mechanisms that would enable them to moderate their growth and achieve a dynamic equilibrium with their environment. The supra-organism consumes its resource base and then must either find a new resource base to exploit in another location, apply technical innovation to intensify and diversify resource extraction, or die. Neither of the first two options are sustainable long-term on a finite planet. Of course, death of a civilization is the end-point of unsustainability. This is our choice: Death or transformation. We must transform society to create effective feedback mechanisms.

Our challenge is to build a sustainable society. In order to avoid the death of civilization that we find at the end of the unsustainable path, we are faced with an apparent need to not merely moderate growth, but to define certain absolute limits to how much of this and that natural resource we will take. We must define absolute and sufficiently conservative limits to what and how much we take from, and what and how much we put into, our environment.

The most complex entity that has yet to arise on the planet--our modern global civilization--is utterly transforming the environment that has thus far sustained it. There is now an urgent need to integrate the entity with the environment, the economy with the ecology--to prevent the one from destroying the other. We need to learn how to live with, how to interact with, our environment in a way that promotes our well-being while also preserving the health of the larger living community. The health of the ecosystem, economic health and personal health are all inextricably linked.

Money (along with agriculture, pottery, road systems, writing, etc.) makes cities possible. When combined with certain bookkeeping tools and economic and governmental institutions, money makes capitalism possible. And money makes it possible for economic actors to exert pressures that may harm the environment. Such pressures can now be felt even half way around the world. When people buy hamburgers, for example, they exert economic pressure that induces ranchers to cut forests. Soil erodes and biodiversity is lost forever. We now have a world full of people who are spending money in ways that are exerting unsustainable pressures on the natural systems that are the very basis of our survival [Brown]; but there is no mechanism whereby economic actors can get information--relevant feedback--at the time of purchase about the ecological consequences of their actions. We cannot tell by looking at a price tag how much ecological damage was caused in the production of an item. A system of feedback that provides such information at the moment of decision and in a form that all will pay heed to would be most effective.

Introducing Mechanisms for Taking Account of Environmental Impacts

The challenge that we are facing may be the greatest challenge that human beings have faced since the forests receded and we learned to stand up and walk and talk, and carry things and use tools. We must reconcile our ability to extend ourselves into the environment -- with ever increasing impact on that environment -- with the inherent limits of that environment to withstand such impact. We must learn to interact with our environment without destroying its capacity to sustain our lives.

We face a choice either to allow our actions to continue to produce ecologically destructive pressures across the globe, to the point of catastrophic collapse of our civilization, or to remedy this problem with our economic system. We can solve this problem by incorporating a measure of the ecological pressures of human activities into the price of those activities, with the aim of discouraging the harmful impacts, to reduce them to acceptable levels.

Ecology and Economy are Integrated: Creating a Sensory Nervous System for the Earth

We can cause ecological costs to be reflected in the price of goods and services by attaching fees to the use or degradation of natural resources. This would cause the price of things to reflect the ecological pressures or cost associated with their production. We would be deterred from doing certain things that are harmful to the biosphere by the fact that the price that we would have to pay to do these things would be higher, to more fully reflect the true costs.

The historian, Frederick Jackson Turner, writing more than a hundred years ago, described the movement of civilization across the continent as a nervous system in the process of growth and development. If we follow this analogy, we see that Turner's nervous system is a nervous system of the Earth. As of yet, this nervous system lacks an essential element of a nervous system in a healthy organism: An autonomic feedback system. The proposed fees on resource use and pollution would correct this defect by causing information about injury to Earth, or stress to the biosphere, to be conveyed to economic actors through the prices of goods and services in the marketplace. Thus, the resource fees would function as an autonomic or sensory nervous system for the Earth, conveying information about injury or imbalance in the Earth organism to society (the neural network) and causing a change in society and in the behavior of individuals that would tend to reduce the injury and restore balance.

Any commercial or corporate entity or industrial operation can be seen as subordinate to the larger planet organism, just as mitochondria are subordinate to the cell. Part of the function of a healthy cell is to monitor the productions of its mitochondria, and ration resources according to the needs of the larger organism for those products. From the perspective of the cell, or the larger Earth, what goes into and what comes out of the subordinate entity must be controlled or regulated, while what actually goes on within the sub-entity is of lessor concern. If we follow this analogy, we might expect governments (the larger community) to take note of what resources are used by an industry, and what pollutants are emitted, but we could decide that the question of what production methods to adopt and what contracts that entity ought to enter into with employees (assuming no coercion) would be outside the purview of government.

Implementation Strategies Invite Democratization in Economics and Politics

We must decide how much the Earth's ecosystems can sustainably take from us in the form of wastes, and what they can provide to us as resource. But we do not know with certainty and precision the answer to this question. No one does. So we begin by recognizing that we cannot be sure of the numbers. If we choose to err on the side of caution, we will be conservative and err on the side of preserving and restoring ecosystems and reducing natural resource consumption, for the benefit of future generations and the larger community of life.

We could take random-sample surveys to discern what overall impacts on the environment are acceptable according to the average opinion of the people. (What impacts are consistent with democratic principles?) We could issue permits for various pollutants, according to how much of each pollutant the people would allow, and auction them in the free market. Likewise for the taking of valuable resources. Thus, those industries which are most successful at conserving resources and cleaning up manufacturing processes will have an advantage in the market, while those industries that continue to emit large amounts of waste and/or extract large amounts of natural resources will have to include these high costs to ecosystems and adverse impact on resource availability in the price of their products. When taking surveys, we should allow time for research of a question, if a citizen wants to learn more on a topic before offering a response. Citizens may make a habit of informally reviewing the opinions of experts in the field that they are researching, to guide their own thinking. In effect, decisions about most appropriate limits to various kinds of impacts would be 'delegated' to those who hold the confidence of the people as credible experts in their respective fields.[Sharp, et al]

Because nearly everyone will have a different opinion regarding what levels of pollutants should be considered safe and sustainable, and because we are committed to democratic principles that call for all voices to be heard, the actual amount that we decide on ideally would be a summary of the opinions of all the world's people, but more practically would be a summary of a random sample of people. And, because many of us are not able to make an informed decision about appropriate levels of some or all pollutants, we may choose to delegate our vote to someone whose opinion we respect. For example, if a person believed that it is safe to release 100 million tons of fossil fuel carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year, and that no level of chlorinated hydrocarbon emissions (e.g.: CFC's, Heptachlor, DDT) can be called safe or sustainable, but this person had no opinion or knowledge about safe levels of other pollutants, then they might refer to lists of people who share their views on CO₂ or chlorinated hydrocarbons to see what opinions those people hold regarding other pollutants--either to inform their own opinion, or to find a knowledgeable and responsible person to whom they could delegate their 'emissions allowance' vote. If our hypothetical survey respondent were convinced that the level of emissions that they regard as sustainable could not be achieved immediately, they may want to structure their vote in the form of a percent reduction per year, toward a specified target.

Gaia Brain Provides the Tools for Sculpting Society

With the caveat that control of any particular kind of environmental impact would depend on most people agreeing that such impact ought to be subject to control, we could imagine that, over the decades and beyond, virtually everything we do that impacts the Commons, every way that we apply technology to exploit our environment with potentially negative impact, may need to be measured and rationed, according to the method outlined above or some other method. Through our normal participation in the marketplace (which would no longer be hiding environmental impacts as externalities), human behaviors and lifestyles would have associated economic costs which would reliably reflect the perceived environmental costs of those behaviors. Economic forces, which all people respond to, will induce us to make changes in habits and lifestyle (and, at the corporate level, changes in production processes and business models) that actually promote the interests of the larger living community and the interests of future generations of human beings.

What is true for individuals is true for groups, too. Corporations will increase profits by striving to reduce environmental impacts. What is good for the corporation is good for the larger community of life and for future generations. Profit-seeking behavior by corporations, then, will not so much resemble sociopathic behaviors often associated with corporations.

We could attach or increase a fee on anything that we would like to see less of in the world. If polled in a random survey, we could say: "Less asphalt"; "Less advertising billboards"; "Less outdoor lighting, less interference with our view of the stars in the night sky". Fees would increase and money would flow away from those whose actions or decisions tend to take us in the direction opposite of the people's expressed will. Then we could contribute an agreed-upon portion of our share of the proceeds of natural resource fees toward those things that we would like to see increased. We could say: "More city parks"; "More libraries"; "More schools", and a portion of our share of the fee proceeds could go to those who provide those valued and preferred public services. The economic incentives that would accompany our expressed wishes would result in real change, so that our wishes would be born out in reality. Alienation, in the Marxist sense of living in and creating through our actions and interactions a society that cuts us off from that which sustains us, which has no meaning for us, and which we would not choose, would be eliminated, or at least dramatically reduced, as society evolved to reflect our expressed will.

Impact of Paradigm Shift on Institutions and Society

This concept of assigning fees to the use of Earth's natural resources and waste removal services can be applied to other areas. For example, we could apply gaia brain methods (a fee mechanism applied according to a public survey) to regulate the use of non-human animals by human beings. Currently, property rights are recognized by society as justification for holding animals captive in pursuit of profit, but these are not absolute rights. Limits to the severity of confinement conditions are subject to the will and judgement of the people. Such limits cannot be decided by those who seek to profit from the confinement and commodification of animals, because of the inherent bias or conflict of interests.

Someday, we may completely eliminate the systematic enslavement and exploitation of non-human animals in industry and agriculture [Singer], but until that time, we may wish to create a system whereby industry and agriculture are subject to economic costs in proportion to how much suffering they inflict on the animals they use. This will give them an incentive to reduce both the numbers of animals they use and the amount of suffering inflicted on each one. When neither the numbers of animals held nor the conditions of their captivity offend the sensibilities or conscience of most people, we will know that the fees are set at a level consistent with the principles of a democratic society. (It may be that most people feel that the numbers of animals kept captive in pursuit of profit and the conditions of their captivity do not offend the conscience, in which case no fee need be applied. There is an underlying assumption here that conditions of confinement shall be made completely transparent.)

This model of human society as meta-organism and as nervous system of the gaia organism would transform the educational process, if for no other reason than that a citizen veto on spending public funds would likely mean that money would not flow to institutions that fail to follow 'best practices'. Beyond that transformative influence of a system-wide incentive toward excellence, the educational experience will change because children can understand the concepts of 'organism' and 'interaction with environment'. They themselves are organisms. They eat and breathe. They can observe protozoa. This gaia brain model would invite early introduction of ideas about social interaction, and would invite the active involvement of children in the collection of opinions among community members about appropriate levels of pollution and rates of use of natural resources, and about perceived community needs. This model would invite their involvement in the assessment of actual conditions.

A question is a linguistic device for directing one's attention onto a topic [Minsky]. Therefore, just the act of posing questions about pollution, natural resource use and community needs will cause us to think about these things more. The fact that the questions might be put by young people would help to remind all concerned who it is that will be most affected by the answers: the children who will have to live with the consequences of these decisions (about how much to conserve resources or how to use public funds) for many years to come.

Students could map their neighborhood and larger community. As assessors of actual conditions and of the accuracy of reports issued by industry (they could take air and water samples in their community and map the occurrence of various kinds of impacts on the landscape), they would be involved in the protection of resources that will sustain them in the future, and they would gain valuable knowledge and insight into the workings of society in the process.

Students might cast their own mock votes about what kind of world they would want to live in and what human impacts on the Earth ought to be deemed permissible. If they did this with a clear explanation of why they voted as they did, then adults in the community may want to honor their careful research and serious consideration by copying the students' votes--in effect, delegating their own votes to those outstanding students.

This new paradigm will so transform the global economy and society, we probably ought to think in terms of an elimination of government as we know it. With the introduction of significant pollution fees, etc., conventional taxes would be difficult to support financially. And we may decide that such taxes lack philosophical foundation: We may see that a fee according to our use of the Earth's natural resources is well founded on philosophical principles of fairness, while taxes on income or sales do not seem on the face to be eminently fair.
The proceeds of the pollution fees and green fees would be a monetary representation of the value of Earth's air and water, minerals and biota. As these resources can reasonably be said to belong to all, the proceeds of these fees probably ought to be shared equally among all the people of the Earth. This could be the basis of a guaranteed minimum income. Perhaps we could put half of our share toward programs that address perceived community needs and put the other half toward meeting our own personal needs. Community programs would be funded according to the priorities of the people, and no one would live in abject poverty.

This new source of economic security would cause the psychological rewards of work to become more prominent as an issue of concern, while job security and pay would become somewhat less important. This would give both employers and employees more freedom to end relationships that they find unsatisfactory; which, in turn, would give them more freedom to enter into relationships that look promising. There would not be any need for the burdensome legal obligations that often accompany the decision to hire, (although binding contracts would remain an option). A more fluid job market will make it easier for both employers and employees to find what they are looking for. This direct democracy, capitalism-communism synthesis that is gaia brain theory would make it easier for all people to follow their bliss.

The pollution fee/gaia brain concept applies ancient principles to today's challenges. All things are connected. We must live in accord with nature. We must give something back in proportion to what we take. We are the stewards of this planet.

The greatest challenges that life presents are those which must be met to ensure the very survival of the organism. The difficult but life-sustaining task before us is to transform ourselves from cancer cells of Earth to brain cells of Earth--to make a healthy, properly functioning world brain; to create anew our global society.

John Champagne

References:

Molecular Biology of the Cell, Second Edition; 1989; Bruce Alberts,
Dennis Bray, Julian Lewis, Martin Raff, Keith Roberts,
James D. Watson; Garland Publishing, Inc., New York

Turchin, V.; The Phenomenon of Science;
Columbia University Press, (1977)

Lester Brown; Vital Signs;
WorldWatch Institute, (1996)

Turner, Frederick Jackson;
The Significance of the Frontier in American History;
Paper presented at the American Historical Association meeting, 1893;
Reprented in 'Milestones of Thought', Harold P. Simonson, Ed.; Frederick
Ungar Publishing Co., New York

Sharp, Ansel M., Richard H. Leftwich, Charles A. Register;

Economics of Social Issues, Tenth Ed.; Richard D Erwin, Inc.;
Homewood, Illinois, (1992)

Peter Singer;
Animal Liberation; Oxford University Press, (1973)

Marvin Minsky; The Society of Mind; Simon and
Schuster, New York (1985)


Further Reading:

Costanza, Robert, et al; Science News and Nature

Amit, D. J.; Modeling Brain Function: The World of Attractor Neural Networks; Cambridge University Press, (1989)

Lovelock, James; Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth; Oxford University Press, (1979)

Formulas for Fairness: Applying the math of cake cutting to
conflict resolution; Science News, vol. 149, May 4, 1996

The Human Numbers Crunch: The next half century promises
unprecedented challenges; Science News, vol. 149, June 22, 1996

Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, by Marshall McLuhan,
McGraw-Hill, 1964

Gaia Critique and Response

A Capitalism-Communism Synthesis