We cannot embark on a project that attempts to stifle innovation and end change, that is not sustainable either. At a local level, life itself involves the destruction and consumption of some resources so that others may live. A rainforest may appear stable from a satellite, but the view from a particular tree is dynamic and dramatic.
The Shire of the Hobbits may seem idyllic in its pastoral simplicity but it is not only vulnerable to the marauding evil that stalks the globe, it is dependent on any number of larger systems in which it exists.
We aim to build an economy, then, that is dynamic and evolving, but which is not harmful or wasteful and assumes a finite set of resources that must be recycled.
The question then becomes, “Where do we find the solutions that will allow us to build a sustainable economy?”
There might be here
I first heard the saying “The future is already here, it is just not evenly distributed,” from Bob Metcalfe, the inventor of the Ethernet, which forms the back bone of many computer networks. He had worked at the Hewlett Packard Palo Alto Research Centre (PARC), where the mouse and icon based computer screen that we all use now, was invented. He watched the personal computer and the internet roll out into society with interest, because he and his colleagues had invented it ten years earlier and had learned to use it as it was being created. The rest of society came to terms with it as a complete entity and undertook a completely different journey.
I like the saying because it reminds me that the gadgets, fashions and cults that will take off and take over tomorrow are already in operation somewhere in the world today. If we want to understand the future, we need to cast our net widely and look at the widest possible range of activities currently taking place to identify those things that will survive and dominate.
The elements of a sustainable economy, then, are already in position somewhere.
Amish farmers, for example, have never used fossil fuels, pesticides or fertilisers. Their farms are about half as productive as their neighbours but twice as profitable. They are immune to fluctuations in interest rates, energy prices or the global economy because they are almost self sufficient. There is an example of a sustainable community that has stood the test of time.
Other intentional communities have been established on different principles. They too have developed many of the elements that will become mainstream as we pass through peak oil, peak water and peak food. Some of them have gone beyond self sufficiency and are dedicated to the important project of building the necessary infrastructure to preserve the knowledge built up over millennia that could disappear if we allow civilisation to collapse untidily.
These sustainable communities, though, are the obvious places to look. One challenge that they all face is that they deliberately set out to offer an alternative to the attractions of the big city, the cult of greed and laziness. They require a commitment to leave behind the desire for more while doing less that has been perfected by humans but ultimately drives all life and is inbuilt into the law of thermodynamics.
The future economy may need that commitment built into it, but if we are to develop that without the harsh lessons of repeated Dark Ages then we will need it to come bubbling out of the effervescence of modern youth not from the ponderings of our elders.
Lessons from the iCult
One extraordinary development in recent times has been the social, cultural and economic impact of the internet. It has undermined many existing business models and is reshaping human communication in a very fundamental way. One of the key changes has been in the role of publishers, those capital intensive corporations that controlled the manufacture and distribution of films, music, literature and games. Fifteen years ago almost all these publishers dismissed the Internet as a toy that was peripheral to the “real” economy. With the collapse of the dot com bubble in 2000, those corporations claimed the high ground and went on with using the clout of their capital to lobby governments for legislation to protect their interests.
A decade later, though, and the cracks are opening up. Newspapers collapse, independent bands film-makers and gamesters flourish and the twittersphere and blogsphere challenge the media as the gravitational centre of mass communication.
The shift from large, centralised, capital-intensive publishers to self forming networks of peer to peer operators characterises both the underpinning nature of the Internet and the future requirements of a sustainable economy.
Perhaps most significant in this broad movement is the rise of Open Source. The term describes the software free of copyright restrictions, where anyone can contribute to the source code that makes the software work and no-one “owns” the intellectual property that is the software itself. It increasingly applies to other intellectual endeavours, though, where people contribute to libraries of images, written work or research data for the greater good.
Most significantly, this is not naked altruism performed by charitable individuals working because of an earnest commitment to the greater good, it is a new economic model that pays people’s rent. This is so important it is worth teasing out a little.
The altruistic drive to share code is classic Darwinian altruism as a means to protect oneself by protecting the community in which one shelters. Accordingly, the Open Source community is dedicated to the philosophical model of the Bazaar as opposed to the Cathedral. That means it can build software that allows its members computers to work properly without being controlled by a corporation that acts in the interests of its shareholders rather than its customers.
Even that self centred version of altruism does not fully explain the power of the Open Source model as a basis for a new economy. The fact is that most participants in Open Source projects make their living from working with the Open Source software they produce. The community as a whole sells its services to technology consumers and lives from the fees paid for the services they provide.
The fundamental between this open market of small businesses (the bazaar) as opposed to the corporate publisher (the cathedral) is that no-one owns the core code which drives the whole community. The distributed ownership of the code means that there is no need for capital to drive these projects, so there is no need for growth to maintain them. It is an example of an economy that is unplugged from the financial markets.
This is largely an accident that has emerged from the peer to peer nature of the Internet. Ironically, that feature of the internet was developed as a military guard against a nuclear attack on a central computer. By distributing the capacity of the network around the edges, the military created a self regulating, self healing system that does not require central control. What is centralised are the regulations that underpin the cooperative nature of the project, the protocols that allow the computers to find each other, talk to each other and ensure that the communications are secure.
Practice makes perfect
The evolution of a new economy is not going to come fully formed from the pen of one thinker. It is not going to arrive suddenly at the recognition that the old economy is bankrupt.
Just as the farmers and small businesses of India have had to march on their parliaments to get regulations to protect them from the ravages of Monsanto and Walmart and are still fighting a public relations battle on behalf of the world’s organic farmers, so every stand against vested interests will be tough.
Just as the Open Source movement has taken twenty years to get to a point where business owners are prepared to put their mission critical applications onto Open Source software, so will this change come about gradually. And just has Microsoft has actively moved to undermine Open Source by planting code into Windows that inserts flaws into Open Source applications so will those vested interests move to shore up the existing economy.
The good news is that the power of the economy ultimately lies with the consumer. Without customers there are no retailers. Without retailers there are no wholesalers, manufacturers, steel manufacturers, miners, ports or fossil fuel companies.
We can effect this change in our own lives immediately by unplugging from the economy that is destroying us. We can grow food in our communities, we can car pool, buy a bike, walk more, stay at home. We can share washing machines, lawnmowers and entertainment devices. We can switch off the television and reclaim our leisure time. We can avoid packaged food by baking our own, growing what we can and by sharing generously.
Sharing generously is the key to the entire project. As every community attempt to institute bartering systems knows, in the end, all you do is recreate money. As you do, governments get interested and all the overheads associated with accounting re-emerge.
One of the key lessons to learn from the Open Source community is that by giving freely of your time you build a community that is unassailable because it has nothing to lose. One of the key lessons to learn from ecommerce generally is that, in the end, we are only worth the value we add.
As you disconnect from the debt-fuelled, energy-intensive lifestyle that global capital and its enslaved governments demand you live, you will find that you have more time to give and less need for the money that drove you to work every day. You will begin to create the sustainable economy straight away without having to lobby, or vote for, a single politician.
Enjoy.