Peter Hume,
Prefatory to answering it I’ll just say, I’m motivated to agitate in the way that I do not from some acetic penchant, but from the glaring reality that confronts us all—that we are living beyond our physical means, that we cannot sustain the Western lifestyle, that those less well off are necessarily precluded from attaining it, indeed that their very existence is threatened by it. Do you deny the truth of this?
You would probably like to counter with something such as that capitalism is lifting the impoverished ‘out’ of destitution. This is only a side effect of the expansion of markets, but do you agree that this ‘limited’ effect can never be consummated in western lifestyles for all these people? They will be raised up only to perish en masse. Do you refute this?
You surely don’t argue that the ‘pure’ capitalism you favour would be exempt from the same constraints imposed by our closed system?

I don’t want to give up my luxurious lifestyle, modest though it is. Yet I see all of the above as the brute facts we need to address. I say ‘we’ because I also recognise that altruistic individuals, even in large numbers, cannot have a positive impact while the rest take up the slack. Moreover such individuals would be demeaned and suffer great loss of self-esteem in a prevailing system where capital of one kind is the hallmarks of a successful life. In any event it would be surpassing altruism indeed to self-impose futile privations while the wealthy continue to enjoy the good life. No, the problem can, and should, only be addressed by the whole society.
As to your last mammoth question, of course I don’t have an answer off the top of my head, except to say that a planned deflationary process could only be successful if undertaken by a coalition of powerful nations. The working out of sustainable human societies should be a science in its own right, but based on principles of maximum fulfilment, husbandry and ethics.
Addressing the facts outlined above, what is ‘your’ alternative?

*So are you saying that people can't communicate opinions concerning the betterment of societal organisation without first attempting to live as if they had already taken place?*

Oh they certainly can Poirot, but of course actions speak louder
then words and some of us point out the hypocracy involved.

So we take it as little but a whole lot of pointless bleating.

So in other words - no, you’re not willing to do voluntarily what you urge everyone else be coerced into doing.

1. Alleged original problem.
Do you deny the truth of this [alleged unsustainability and injustice of current western lifestyles]?”

I wouldn’t deny it if you would first prove the truth of it. But you haven’t done so yet.

For example, how do you know that the population couldn’t increase by, say, 10 or 100 times, in a process that both provided a western-standard lifestyle for most or all, and gradually reduced over time?

You seem to think that there’s no need for you to prove it; that just assuming the Malthusian belief system is good enough. It’s not because, although apparently crushingly self-evident, it’s wrong for a number of reasons.

2. Supposed solution
But even if it were true, how do you know that collective coercive solutions would not be more disastrous and unjust and than the original problem?

I believe a more just collective coercive solution is not possible because the problem as originally conceived is basically to reduce waste, in other words, to allocate scarce resources to the most urgent and important wants. Agreed?

I believe it’s not possible because of the knowledge problem, and the economic calculation.

The knowledge problem is that central planners can only have the tiniest fraction of the knowledge available to society as a whole, and which they would need to have so as to produce a better result.

All governmental solutions necessarily displace calculation in terms of profit and loss (that’s what they’re intended to do). This would leave us with all the same original problems of scarcity, only it would take away the admittedly imperfect ability to calculate what is the more or less economical way of doing things in terms of money prices.

It would *exacerbate* the problems of
a) using scarce resources wastefully, ie for less rather than more important and urgent human wants, and
b) environmental destruction,
c) social injustice.

I have shown reason in this short article which no-one answered: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=3839

Perhaps you or Poirot will?

Sustainability is also a problematic term because, just because a particular resource is exhaustible, doesn’t mean living standards are unsustainable. The pre-1788 use of Australian caves as shelter was not sustainable for 22 million people. The 19th century use of whale oil to light our homes was not sustainable. Does that mean those limits prevent us sustaining our housing or lighting today? No.

Viewing the problem from the collective level – from a Gods-eye view as it were – imports serious errors of thinking, because a) you aren’t God, and b) the relevant decisions have never been, are not now, and can never be made at that level without making all the original problems worse.

China has vast mountains made of loess - soil that an Australian farmer would give his eye teeth for. Huge tracts of agricultural land could be made by spreading it out. But they don’t do so. Why not?

Because it’s a mistake to think of it at the collective level. People, in taking action, do so to satisfy particular wants with the least waste and failure of effort. Therefore they use – and deplete - resources in order of which is most economical first – the most marginal is left til last.

If we couldn’t deplete a resource because doing so would deprive future generations, then *any* use of it would similarly deprive them, therefore *no-one* could *ever* use it. The owner of a depletable resource, say a mine, decides whether to sell now or to capitalize the expected value of future use. He can’t be damned if he sells for profit now, and damned if he withholds in expectation of higher future profit. Once we understand that the problem is not the alleged sinfulness of consumption, but the problem of knowing the relative valuation placed on consuming now or later, there is no rational alternative than accepting the valuations of these relativities as best we can – by the calculating owner with a direct interest either way. It cannot be done more economically in the aggregate and abstract by disinterested bureaucrats.

Peter Hume,

apologies for not responding to your fallow thread; I honestly missed it as am often busy.

I can't help but say that on the face of it your responses look like pure sophistry; jargonesque denialism. Hopefully someone else shall relieve me of the burden, but if not I shall interrogate them more closely by and by.

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Dear Peter,

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Before commenting on your article "Ecological sustainability and economic calculation", I would like to make a remark on what you have written here about turning off the light.

Electricity production is the greatest source of carbon emissions in Australia:

http://earthtrends.wri.org/pdf_library/country_profiles/cli_cou_036.pdf

I can turn off the light whenever I choose but I could not lift trade restrictions nor prevent "aid" interventions even if I tried.

However, I am more than willing to join forces with you to canvass for your suggestions to be implemented if you wish to take that further.

In the meantime, the least we can both do is turn off the light.

Turning now to your interesting article on "Ecological sustainability and economic calculation", a somewhat foreboding phrase from the bible comes to my mind:

"For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath" (Matthew 13:12, King James translation).

That was written nearly two thousand years ago and seems to annonce democratic government and capitalism as we know it today. As you rightly point out: " ... if you are hungry, you can figure out whether you’d prefer $4 or a sandwich. But you can’t value the niceness of your mother in money terms, or the beauty of a sunset, because these are end values in themselves".

I guess a hungry person would jump on the $4 or the sandwich. He would trade a smile from his mother or a sunset to get either, even though he may get short-changed.

Not all capital is productive. It may be purely speculaive. That does not prevent it from generating profit.

Also, according to the physicists, matter and energy can be transformed but not created nor destroyed. What we mean by "ecological sustainability" is avoiding them being transformed in such a way that they no longer sustain human developpement. This is different from capital which can be both created and destroyed.

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