The Way It Could Be.
Part 7 of 12.
Day 2: Afternoon
As they started to ride Pete
explained, “We want to take you to the fridge factory, because we mustn’t leave
you with the impression that our economy has no normal modern firms. So far we’ve focused you on the most
important parts of our economy, the household, the commons and working bees,
the free goods and the mutual aid and surpluses given away, and the little
family firms and co-ops operating mostly at the craft level. All that’s around the neighbourhood level and except for the little
firms it’s almost entirely outside the market sphere. Those enterprises can
actually supply most of the things we need, but there are other things we all
need like radio sets, shoes,
fridges, stoves, bikes, wheelbarrows, tools, nails and bolts, sewing machines,
water tanks, butter, cloth. These
are produced by a few small to medium factories of the kind you’d regard as
quite normal. They use modern
technology, electric machinery and computers, their staffs include engineers
and accountants, and they’re paid wages, and they deliver by road and rail.”
“So you’re not Luddites?”
“Actually I’d say we
are. As I understand it Ned Ludd
was not in principle against new technologies but he was and we are if they’re
introduced to benefit a few while destroying the livelihoods of many. Obviously the welfare of people should
be the main determinant, not whether some machine saves some monetary cost. We’re quite happy to use computers and
other high tech things, but sophisticated technology just isn’t important. We can produce almost all we need with
very low technologies, like hand tools and crafts.”
“But why would you do that
if its much more efficient to produce pottery in computerised factories?”
“Well firstly the factory
would be in China, producing at a high energy cost, so the jobs would be there,
and then we’re dependent on the global economy, and, most important, Janine and
Trevor and Mavis and Paul would not have a livelihood would they? And I wouldn’t have their potteries
enriching my landscape. Those are
the important considerations, not whether the damn mugs cost less.”
“But don’t we need more high
tech to solve the world’s problems, like feeding the hungry millions?”
“No! Look, again, much high tech is quite
OK. There are people all over The Glen dabbling in electronics or bio-science,
and we have institutes researching new ways, but we don’t need any of that to
solve our most urgent problems, because the problems are due to stupid and
rotten systems and values. Hunger
for instance is not something you will eliminate by producing more food. It’s due to the lousy economic systems
that refuse to let the hungry 800 million get a fair share of the available
food.”
As Mike expected by now,
almost as soon as they left the house the path had been new to him, but as rich
and varied and gardened as the others.
He got Pete to stop at a fence where little pigs ran to greet him. “Can’t imagine eating bacon when it’s
in that form can you?”
“No. When you live close to animals the
vegetarians recruit well. But some
people here do eat meat. Pigs are
extremely efficient recycling machines.
They eat a wide range of scraps and make it into food, and manure. And they’re the best clearing
contractors. See over there, Alf’s
got a stack of moveable fence sections.
Now if you have a patch of nasty weeds you want out, you just put some
of those hurdles around it, peg them down well, and let the pigs dig it all
out, and cultivate and fertilise the ground. Goats are good for that too. By the way notice how the hurdles are made from thin bush
poles and sticks. That’s one of the forester’s crafts. If we have time we must drop in on the
Thompsons. They harvest from the
coppices in the area and do bush carpentry -- rails, hurdles, handles, gates,
stakes, lattices, furniture. They
often bind the joins with green wattle bark. It strips off like cord and it’s very flexible and you can
wrap it tight like a tape, but when it dries and shrinks it’s like steel
wire. Did you notice our table
mats. Dot Thompson wove those from
wattle bark strips. They also make
shingles. Know what they are?”
“Roofing I think.”
“That’s right, just like
very short fence palings, split from Forest Oak or Tallowwood. Not difficult to do but you should see
Vic in action with his froe, the splitting tool. Belts a billet of wood into a nice stack of shingles in no
time.”
“But how long would they
last?”
“Maybe 25 years. You wouldn’t get that long out of
corrugated iron if it wasn’t painted in this region. Takes no energy to make a shingle roof but it takes a lot to
make an iron one. By the way
there’s a natural roofing material that will last much longer than shingles or
iron.”
“What is it? Tiles?”
“Oh, yes, but I didn’t mean
that; I mean something living, like wood.”
“What?”
”I’ll show you, just down here.”
The path curved down a
gentle slope between fenced fields.
Ahead Mike could see it cross a shallow gully and rise the other
side. Pete stopped on the little
wooden bridge. “There,” he said,
“Grade one roofing material.”
Mike looked where Pete was
pointing but could see nothing apart from a small swampy pond where the gully
had been impounded by the road embankment.
“The reeds. Phragmites. Good for thatching.
A well made thatch roof can last seventy years, even in Europe where
it’s wet much of the time. Of
course it is more problematic in Australia because of bushfire, but it is
useful for many things, like animal sheds to be warm in winter.”
“Any thatchers left; thought
they would all have died out by now.”
“Ah many people around here
are very interested in old crafts.
We keep them alive. Think
what a shame it would be if humans forgot how to do things like make a beautiful
150 litre water tank using only some planks and iron strip. I’ve done it, but I’m not an expert
like Fritz. He’s a cooper; makes
barrels, by hand. I’ll make a bet with you. When you go home visit your closest university library and
look for technical books on making and maintaining steam engines. I’ll bet you can’t find any. I know a technical university that
threw out its entire collection, just to make more shelf space! Steam is fabulous. It’s not very energy efficient but
that’s not so important if you have plenty of wood as we have, and if you don’t
need much energy. Some of the
electricity supply in this region comes from wood-fired generators. Several of our homesteaders and
factories use steam engines.
They’re simple so they’ll run for ever with little maintenance. So we’re secure and independent. We can run our saws and generators even
if you run out of coal or petrol.”
Before long they came into a
small settlement. Near its center
was a group of larger buildings and sheds. “We call it the fridge factory but it produces many other things,”
said Pete, “…such as sinks, gas appliances, heaters and washing machines. They design their own models. And you
can get any of their products repaired here. They build things to last and to
be easily maintained. No nuts you
can’t get a spanner on easily. No
weird thread sizes. No components
that have to be thrown away rather than repaired or imported from China. Let’s find Cedric. He knows we’re coming.”
Cedric turned out to be a
cheerful, somewhat rotund older man, eager to show Mike and Pete around. “First the office area. Mike this is not going to be very
interesting but we must make sure you understand that this region doesn’t use
only Medieval craft production.
We have many factories like this, rather small but technically much the
same as you have.”
They went up some stairs from the front desk area to an open
space with three people at desks, mostly working at computer screens. He introduced Mike to the two closest
people. Deirdre doubled as
financial and computer brains and Tim handled orders in and out, the former
being for materials and components.
Soon Cedric said, “Boring
boring. Jjust a normal
office. Come down to where the
real action is.”
“Cedric’s an engineer;
doesn’t take too kindly to driving a desk up here.”
“That’s right, mostly I’d
rather be down with Charlie and Ben and the boys and girls in the workshop,
especially at the faults bench.
That’s where we diagnose problems and breakdowns in items coming in for
repair, and work out design improvements.”
He led them through the
repair and recycling area, past many old appliances in various stages of
assembly. “All these will be fixed
up and used, one way or another, many as spares though. Over there’s machinery used to smarten
up worn parts or make new one-offs that might get an appliance going
again. Nothing goes out to a
tip. The irredeemably broken bits
go the foundry. Of course our
designs reduce as much as possible the use of things like plastics that can’t
be recycled. We don’t import many components ready-made. We make most of them ourselves, from
basic materials like steel that’s imported from outside the region.”
“What powers the machinery?”
”Ordinary 240 volt electricity, but its mostly generated in the region. Some solar PV, some windmills, but
mostly wood fired steam generators. Wood comes from our plantations. Occasionally we have to draw on the
national grid. We only use
electricity for lights, radios and computers, some pumping, the occasional
drill. And TV in some houses. Of course we never heat with it.“
“Isn’t electricity is a
problem for alternative technology, I mean getting it in large quantity when
you want it, like at night.”
“Sure is, but in this region
we use very little, so we can meet the need. Where you come from the average
household electricity use is about 40 times as great as ours. It’s almost as
bad for water. Where you come from
the average household is using about 300 litres a day, in the house not
including the garden. That’s
incredible. We average about 50
litres. And we get that from the roof, and we recycle it! So our overall drain
on national supply systems is even less than for electricity.”
Cedric took them quickly
through two other big sheds, one of them the foundry where they passed shelves
holding many moulds and dies for all manner of things, down to buckles and
buttons. There were a number of
small furnaces but no pouring was close to happening. Mike noticed that some of the workers in overalls and heavy
gloves were female. Cedric pointed
one out at some distance, hunched over a roaring grindstone emitting bursts of
white sparks now and then. “That’s
Adele, one of our blacksmiths. She cajoles the men into doing the heavy work,
while she watches the colour in the steel and makes the decisions.”
Further down the shed, past
crates, racks and drums, “This is fridge assembly area. We only turn out about ten a week,
mostly as orders come in from the region.
It’s nothing like an assembly line. The people working here will make each whole fridge or other
appliance as a team. Any one of
them could do it all on their own, so they vary what they’re doing all the
time, and they’re all doing other things at the same time as odd jobs and
repairs come in or someone needs a hand somewhere else in the factory. So their work is extremely varied, and
up to them to organise. No one’s
in charge. They all know what has
to be done.”
“Are there any qualified
engineers, I mean apart from you?”
“Oh yes, of course, but
they’ll be down here with dirty hands most of the time, especially checking out
things that have come in for repairs.
It’s a bit noisy here; come out to the lunch area. Joey has a kettle on.”
They sat in a quiet leafy
spot with tables and chairs just outside a small kitchen. “There you are,” said Cedric, “Boringly
normal small factory. We don’t do
everything in this region by adze, scythe and sickle you know.”
“But while its technically
like the factories where you come from, economically and socially it’s very
different,” said Pete.
“How?”
“To start with, although
it’s privately owned it’s a kind of cooperative. Cedric is the main shareholder but all of the workers have
shares. Some of the other firms
are owned by Community Development Cooperatives or growers or millers
cooperatives, and a few are normal private firms wholly owned by an individual
or group. However every firm is run by a board of stakeholders.”
“Stakeholders? Don’t you
mean shareholders?”
“No. There’s a huge
difference. Who has a stake in
this factory, an interest in how well it functions?”
“Well the owners, the
shareholders.”
“Anyone else? What about the people who buy the
fridges? They want to be sure
they’re safe and will function well, and are a cheap as possible.”
“And the workers in any
factory that isn’t a co-op have an
interest in how it’s run, especially if it want’s to cut labour or wages,” said
Cedric.
“And what about the
community. They might get impacted
by fumes or noise or wastes. All
these groups have a stake, an interest, in the factory. So the governing board has
representatives of all these stakeholders. That makes our firms quite different to yours, which give
all power only to the shareholders.”
“Another distinctive thing
about our firms is that we see them as serving the community. They’re not here to make fat profits to
enrich the few who invested the capital.
Their function is to provide us with good fridges and to provide people
with jobs and livelihoods. And if we suspect they’re not shaping up we quickly do
something about it.”
“So,” said Mike, “This fridge factory runs more or lessthe
way the state runs the railways?”
“Yes, you could say
that. Everyone gets a reasonable
wage, maybe different for different skills or responsibilities, and little or
no profit’s made, because the outfit’s here to provide a service to the
community. Remember there isn’t
much incentive in this region for any private owners to make fat profits,
because they don’t need them…they can live very well here without much money. Cedric works hard, but not for
money. He just likes running this
factory well, and being appreciated for this. It takes skills I don’t have.”
“But where I come from none
of this would work. Owners of
corporations wouldn’t accept anyone else having any control over heir
factories. People would only buy
from the cheapest firms. Owners would insist on maximising profits as the only
consideration, and they wouldn’t allow anyone but shareholders on their
boards.”
“Yes, and of course if they
behaved like that around here they’d go broke, because we’d refuse to buy from
them!”
“So you’re quite right,”
said Pete. ”Our’s is a totally
different economy. And it can’t
work without a totally different mentality. The economy and the culture of a society are closely
connected. Our economy can’t work
without very good sensible citizens, people who don’t just buy what’s
cheapest. Citizens think about
what’s good for their locality.
Where you come from people don’t, so they wouldn’t sustain firms like
ours.”
“But how do you know the
factory’s efficient, if its not competing against others for sales? In the
mainstream economy the market makes sure firms are efficient or dead. Savage but effective. This is the core problem with socialism
of course, there’s no effective way to keep firms efficient. Bureaucracies can’t do it, even if they
don’t become corrupt.”
“Ah, good point. It is a crucial issue. Well we watch all the time, politely,
through a variety of devices.
Firstly we can compare the firm’s performance with others in the
region. We have teams of experienced
and expert citizens who assess our firms, and committees and systems to do
things like that, for example they check out enterprises doing similar things
in other areas from time to time, like public inspectors. Their main concern is not to criticise
or trap, but to see if things here are going well and if they can suggest ways
of improving operations? They
report to the town committees and to the Regional Economic Committee. Their overriding concern is how to
organise or change things to maximise the welfare of all, so a problematic
enterprise will be assisted and no one will be thrown into unemployment. After all the goal is to make sure we
all benefit from good firms. That doesn’t mean a firm won’t be closed down if
necessary. It just means we’d do
it rationally and nicely and make sure everyone was relocated.”
Mike said, ”That sounds like
big brother. Nanny state. If competition in the market doesn’t
regulate things then some bureacracy has to do it and sooner or later that
leads to inefficiency and corruption.
The regulators won’t sack their friends, or they get bribed not to chase
up slackers, and they can’t be bothered checking properly, and they become
arrogant and secretive. That’s
socialism. What’s the guarantee
against all that happening?”
“Absolutely none at all,
except our vigilence and conscientiousness. If it did happen it would be our fault for letting it
happen, for not setting up good regulatory procedures. But those don’t have to be run by the
state and they don’t have to be bureaucratic. In this town the citizens do the regulating, with no
bureaurcrats. We do it via town
meetings, monitoring committees, public feedback and sensible discussion.”
”Remember Mike our economy
is very small so there isn’t so much to administer, and people can see what’s
happening. When you get gigantic
things like states and corporations it’s impossible to avoid authoritarian,
bureaucratic rule, which no one wants.
So don’t have them! Anyway,
no centralised state could run all small towns like this one. They can’t grasp what the local
conditions are, how often we get frost, which old people don’t like things
painted yellow, what strawberries people here like best, what people here won’t
accept.”
“OK, officialdom couldn’t
understand the dynamics around lots of little towns like this.”
“And if our firms don’t
perform well we suffer, we get crook fridges that cost more than they
should. So there’s a major
guarantee that firms will shape up, because if they don’t their customers will
very quickly be onto them. See how
that mechanism is powerful in a small local economy, but much less so in a mass
economy, because the factory’s fridges are not in local use.”
“Who purchases your
fridges? Do you export them?”
“The main purpose of
factories like this is to serve their region. That’s probably ten kilometres across, sometimes much more
sometimes less. Our landscape has
about one village each two kilometres, so there’d be about 20 to 50 towns in a
region, maybe up to 50,000 people.
So most of our products only travel about 10 kilometres, but a few will
go further. We maximise local
self-sufficiency as much as is reasonable. Just about all food can come from within a few hundred
metres of where you live. But
neighbourhoods don’t make their own fridges. Maybe one in the region will suffice, or maybe several
regions will share the one fridge factory, electronics works, foundry and
vehicle repair works. More
specialised and high tech things might have to come from much further away.”
“Think of self-sufficiency
in terms of concentric circles going out from your house,” Pete said. “The further out the zone is the fewer
things come from it.”
“What about exports to other
countries?”
Cedric shook his head
vigorously. “There can’t be much international trade in a sustainable
world. There won’t be the energy
for that. Only a few important
things you can’t produce very well should be moved across national borders,
like maybe high-tech medical or IT gear.”
“So the idea is to export
only the few things you can easily produce but don’t need, in order to import
the few things you need but can’t produce.”
“Excellently put! Hey, you
might get a job as an economist around here. Most of the exporting going on the world is idiotic. Ships taking cars to Europe from the US
passing ships taking cars to the US from Europe. All that nonsense will come to a shuddering halt when the
oil starts getting scarce.”
“What about steel
production?”
“Oh yes, steel is one of
those few things that should be made in a fairly big centralised works and
moved by rail to regions.”
“But what about economies of
scale. It must be very inefficient
to do things in small enterprises in each little region.”
“Sometimes it is, but you’d
be surprised how often small plants can be highly efficient, even in narrow
dollar terms. You can easily
overlook the overhead costs we save. Maybe it costs us more to make a fridge
here in dollars, but then we eliminate the transport and packaging and
marketing costs.”
“…and the costs that result
when it’s a shoddy design, like having to repair it often. And of course we save maybe 10-15% of
income that goes to shareholders.”
“Mike another really
important factor to keep in mind here is that because we try to minimise
consumption the town and the region doesn’t need to export much to earn money
to pay for imports. Not much money
flows out of the town. Most of the
economic activity here is taking place within the town and most of it doesn’t
involve money. But in your society you all have to struggle desperately to find
something to export into the global market or you are in big trouble. You have to compete against everyone
else in the world to secure some export sales so that you can get the money to
import things from them, when your locality could be producing most of what it
needs for itself.”
“But not as cheaply. It pays to specialise in what you can
produce best.”
“If you are only concerned
with money costs that’s true.”
“By the way how do you market them? Do you advertise the fridges?”
“There’s no advertising at
all around here.”
“What?”
“Advertising is a terribly
silly mistake. An almost total
waste of resources! Do you know
the world spends $550 on marketing in the world every year.”
“But you can’t run an
economy without advertising!”
“Can’t run yours without
it. We run ours without it.”
“But how do people know
what’s available?”
“If they want a new fridge
they just look up the information on what’s available.”
---------------------
On the ride back Mike
suddenly said, “Got any lawyers around here?”
“Eh?”
“Lawyers. I just thought, are there any lawyers
in this town?”
“Pete paused, then said
slowly, “Lawyers? What are they?”
That ought to have been the
end of it but Mike pressed on.
“So no one ever needs legal
advice here, no disputes ever occur, no crime, no one sues?”
“More or less, almost,” said
Pete. “We do seem to get along
without much trouble.”
“Why do you think that is?”
“Firstly I guess people here
aren’t very sabre-toothed or competitive or greedy. Second our economy doesn’t pit people in zero-sum struggles
for scarce things, like development contracts and jobs. And that means no one is dumped into
poverty and has an incentive to steal, or hit out in anger, or mug someone to
pay for the drugs that relieve their boredom.”
“Yes, that makes sense. How much crime is there around here?”
“None. No one who has worthwhile work and is
valued and has a good supportive community to belong to has any interest in
stealing or being violent. When
will your people grasp that?”
“Never.”
‘And the third thing, our
situation requires cooperative effort to find and follow the ways that will be
best for the town. We know that if
individuals go for what advantages them at the expense of others, then the town
will die eventually. This
orientates people away from conflict.
And we have procedures for dealing with conflicts that do inevitably
arise occasionally, for example we have mediators. They’re village elders who’ll sit down with parties to a
disagreement and try to nut out what’s best for all. They’re trusted and respected people everyone knows are fair
and wise and skilled at mediating, and eager to solve town problems. There’s not much they can’t make
progress on.”
“Are they paid?”
“No, of course not. By the
way, I was only kidding when I made out I didn’t know what a lawyer is. In fact there is one in town, well a
very faded apology for one.”
“Oh really, I didn’t see an
office in town.”
“No, doesn’t practice
now. I fact I haven’t
practiced in fifteen years.”
“You?! A lawyer!”
“No, no. I’m not. Haven’t touched it in fifteen years
your honour.”
“Well, well. Noble Pete, one
of them. How the mighty fall. If you’d had better legal advice you
wouldn’t have revealed that.
“I thought you would have been
impressed.” Said Peter in mock indignation.
Mike thought for a
moment. “Now isn’t that
strange. You know when I arrived I
would have been. I’d have
grovelled. Mike, meer journalist,
meet Pete, lawyer, several notches superiorer. But I’ve seen this bloke in patched duds and I’ve seen his
toes through his slippers. I know
he talks to chickens and makes great ship models. He’s Pete, not a lawyer.” Jan would have been so proud of him.
Pete
smiled and said, ”I think you’d better leave town as soon as you can son. I fear you‘re starting to think like
the natives.”
When they reached the house Jan and Gran were
scurrying around the kitchen.
“We’re
having afternoon tea
in the GullyPergoda. It’s our
little neighbourhood tea house.
You can
usually be sure a
few people will be there at tea time, but today some more will come
along to meet you
and chat over some aspects of how The Glen works.”
“Is Amy coming?”
“She’ll be there
already I think. She’s not afraid
of aliens.”
Mike happened to glance at Jan. She was staring at him in a strange
way, as if in a trance, with a somewhat disturbed expression on her face. They locked eyes momentarily and then
Jan seemed to snap out of it, shook her heard a little, turned and busied
herself with packing afternoon tea things.
Their cups, thermos flasks,
bikkies and cutlery were carried in an array of scruffy baskets, some things
kept warm under tea towels
For some inexplicable reason Pete had tucked a small box of tools under
his arm. In less than two minutes they had threaded through sharp twists and
turns to drop down stone steps into a low shelter huddled in thick bush, with a
small open space on one side and a fern cluttered gully on the other. A fountain trickled water into a little
pond, among bamboos, papyrus and water lillies. The shelter was no bigger than a carport, but with oxide
coloured ornamental columns and cast iron brackets supporting a tiled roof over
a massive bench bolted together from rough-hewn logs. Amy was there, with
another little girl about the same age but taller, with straight black
hair. She was introduced as
Patsy. They were lighting some
aromatic candles.
“Like it?” asked Jan.
“Great spot.”
“It’s a mish-mash of styles, see a Greek pot there,
but it’s mostly Asian looking, so we call
it our Gully Pagoda.”
“But its not just for tea,
”said Pete. “Look, in the shelves there … art and craft things. If you’re sitting here and the
muse grabs you, you can sketch or
model some clay.”
Gran had already occupied one of the comfortable
lie-back chairs and was taking her
knitting from her shoulder bag. Jan began getting things out of the
baskets, but Pete was
rummaging in his tool box.
“What are you going to fix?” Mike asked.
“Oh I thought I’d just do a little more on my lantern,
see there. It’s a block of
sandstone I
found.
I’ve been chipping away at tea times here for about two years now.”
Mike leaned back in
his chair, lifted his gaze, and froze.
Just above him, coiled around
the rafters was an enormous goanna…made from paper
mache. Further along were other
animals, and elves
and fairies, including a family of owls fast asleep and leaning against
each other.
Mike was happy to
take a back seat, tuning in to different snippets of conversation, and
reflecting on the things that
preoccupied people.
“Has everyone seen
the Kingfisher near the waterwheel.
Penny says he’s been there for
three days now. Hope he stays.”
“Yes. We haven’t had them around for a long
time. Aren’t the colours vivid.”
“We told Amy they’re
related to Kookaburras; I mean Kookies are the largest members
of the kingfisher
family. So she thought it would be
big. She got a surprise they’re so
tiny.”
“How did the bamboo
planting go Ben?”
“Try this
Honey. It’s from a hive we put
down in the spotted gums this year.”
“Has Pip finished
her tapestry yet? Did she use the
wool the Anderson’s dyed?”
“Did you make the
candles Amy?”
“What are you
knitting now Gran?”
“Jumper for Pete,
from the wool Jan’s spinning. Pete
how long did the brown one last, I
forget.”
“About twenty years
I think, with my patching.”
After listening for some time Mike said to Pete,
“I’ve been thinking. What about
renewable
energy
sources. Surely all we have to do
to defuse most of the problems is to get off the
fossil fuels and start using sun and wind instead. Presto, no greenhouse problem.”
Helen, sitting next to Mike, immediately turned and
said, “No, we definitely don’t
think that’s possible.”
“Why not?
Plenty of sun and wind.”
“Yes but capturing their energy and making it
available as electricity when you want it, like
at night when there’s no wind blowing, is very very
difficulty and costly.”
“And loses a hell of a lot of energy, ”Pete added.
“Helen’s on energy committee. She
knows
the numbers.”
“We’ll have to almost
completely get off the fossil fuels, said Helen, “and you can’t meet the
present energy demand from renewables, let alone 8 times that demand if all the world’s people were to use
as much energy per capita as we do. The killer is liquid fuel. If all the
people on earth were to have Australia’s present per capita oil plus gas
consumption we’d need to harvest about 18 billion hectares of forest all the
time. Know how much productive
land there is on the planet?”
“Not really.“
“Less than eight billion
hectares! And only about 3.5
billion of forest.”
“And then there’s the idiocy
of growth,” said Harry. “At the
present rate Australian energy demand will be four times as great by 2050.”
“Well I don’t have the
numbers at hand to assess any of that.
Let me take up some other things else I’ve been thinking about.” Mike paused, thinking out how to put
it.
“Don’t you feel vulnerable here, being so cut off
from the global economy. It
supplies so
much.
Aren’t you frightened you won’t be able to get what you need from it?
“Don’t you
feel…alone…isolated … insecure. I
mean you are so dependent on yourselves, on what this region can produce for
you. Where I come from people would see that as an alarmingly insecure way to
be.”
It was as if he’d dropped a
tin of frogs into the punch bowl. Cries of “You’re kidding!”, “Never!” from
around the bench. Good natured
laughing and eye rolling.
Harry said,” Mike, look if
there’s one thing on which we beat you hands down its security. We are very
very economically secure. We can
provide all this for ourselves, no matter what happens to the global
economy. It doesn’t matter whether
there’s global recession or the stock market crashes, or the currency is
devalued or interest rates rise or the national debt blows out or some
transnational decides to close its branch plant. None of that can affect the fact that we can go on
getting perfect food from our gardens and farms, Tom can go on making great
toys and furniture from local timber.
Henry can go on repairing our boots. Harriet can go on baking beautiful cakes. But in your economy its totally
different. Your are utterly
dependent on what happens in the global economy.”
Someone else jumped in.
“Your capacity to live adequately depends on you being able to sell something
into the global economy, so you can get the money you need to buy necessities
from it. So you must constantly
fear that your access to necessities will be cut by something going wrong in
the big system that’s far beyond your control. Interest rates rise so you can no longer meet the repayments
and you lose your house. The
transnational decides it can make higher profits relocating its branch plant in
Thailand so bang goes your job.
But nothing like that can happen here. We are so secure.
We know that no matter what happens on the New York stock exchange
tomorrow we can go on providing for ourselves most of the things we need for a
high quality of life.”
Amanda pushed in, “And do
you see how this is about the general concept of development. Mainstream thinking about development
is catastrophically wrong. It accepts
that development is whatever those with capital want to do in order to make
more profit than they could doing anything else anywhere in the world. So they might develop more coffee
plantations in Colombia or a cosmetics factory in China.”
The irritation in her voice
rose a notch. “They never
develop what the people there most need to have developed. So you either end up like the
Philippines with huge export processing zones producing luxuries to export to
the rich countries at negligible benefit to the few who get low paid jobs, or
you end up like Tuvalu or Haiti, with no development because no corporation can
maximise its profits producing anything there. Development is in other words what ever will most benefit
the rich.”
Harry said, “Development is
also whatever will add most to GDP of course. If that’s your development goal then you should help
corporations do as much profitable business as possible regardless of the cost
to people or the environment.”
None of this was now being
addressed to Mike. It had taken
the form of a group talking to itself.
Amanda went on from Harry’s
point, “Yes, now contrast that with development in this region. We’ve developed the things that’ll be
best for the people and the ecosystems here, and we’ve been able to do this
precisely because we’ve prevented free enterprise and the market and the few with capital from deciding
what’ll be developed. Would he
have our community workshop and commons and jobs for all if we hadn’t done
that?”
Amanda was becoming even
more agitated as she turned back to Mike. “Can you see what all this means for
the Third World. Billions of
people have had to go without satisfactory development because the only
conception of development anyone understands is the capitalist one. Billions of people go on year after
year without the things they need simply because it is not in the interests of
anyone with capital to develop little factories and farms in which people can produce for
themselves basic things they
desperately need.”
Harry again; “That’s what we’ve done here. We’ve got together to develop our
region into a form that enables us to provide for ourselves what we need for a
good life, and we’ve shown that this can be done without much capital and
without sophisticated technology and without getting involved in the global
economy and without taking loans and trying to earn a lot exporting and
enticing in foreign investors.”
Amanda went on in her
agitated tone. “The capitalist
approach to development says you can’t develop without attracting foreign
investors and getting into debt and exporting furiously, and that’s precisely
what the rich want you to believe because then you have to deal with them on
their terms, accept their investments, their loans, and you have to sell your
exports cheaply. Sixty years of
that kind of development shows it’s fabulous for the rich, they get access to
your land and labour and forests and put them to work producing for the benefit
of rich consumers far away, but most of your people actually get poorer. Capitalist development has been a
catastrophe for most of the world’s people. It’s geared their productive capacity to the interests of
the rich. It is a form of
plunder.” Then as an after
thought, “Look Mike we are not attacking you here. It’s the way the global economy works that’s the
problem. The big problems like
Third World poverty can never be solved in that system. They can only be solved if the Third
World does what we have done, that is gear local resources and productive
capacity to meeting local needs.”
“But rich countries simply
will not tolerate that! If you
move in that direction the world Bank and the World Trade Organisation will cut
your access to credit, call in your debt, refuse to trade with you…”
“And if all that fails you
will probably be invaded by the US in order to restore order and proper
economic policies.”
Mike said, “OK, let me change tack again. You claim you have a steady-state or
zero-growth economy here, no increase in output or consumption from year to year,
right? Well no economist would say
that’s viable.”
More frogs in the Punch.
“Why on earth not!”
“Well, the more wealth
that’s generated the more for people, therefore the higher quality of life in
general. And without growth in
consumption unemployment rises.
And the more wealth created the more resources there are to spend on
fixing welfare problems and the environment.”
“Gawd! You don’t really believe all that do
you?” Where to begin?”
Harry pushed in, “Mike, what’s the
unemployment rate around here?”
“How would I know?
What is it?”
“About the same it’s been
for almost twenty years now.”
“Ah, there you are, making
no progress at all on the problem eh?” Mike played along.
“Well yes, you got me there
mate. The unemployment rate around
here is, zero, zilch, none.
Why? Because we have at
least that miniscule amount of sense necessary to totally eliminate the
problem. How do we do that? We just organize so that everyone who
wants some work can make a contribution to the work that needs doing to provide
well for all. That’s what tribal
societies do. There’s no excuse
for not doing it. Only primitive
and brutally barbaric societies have unemployment. If someone invents a labour-saving device around here,
yippee, the average amount of work everyone has to do is reduced a little. You don’t need economic growth to do
any of this, to cope with unemployment.
By the way how much unemployment where you come from?”
“I’m not sure, maybe…”
“Let me tell you. Officially around 30 million in rich
countries alone, which really means closer to 60 million, because governments
use viciously deceitful indices.
You can always double their figures. . Next do you
know the more the GDP grows in your society the more the quality of life
falls. It’s now well established
that it’s not increasing and if you take in all the things that matter, like
environmental quality, it’s surely going down, virtually everywhere. Don’t try to tell me that growth in
output is important because it makes everyone better off. It makes the richest 30% richer, while
the poor masses are probably getting poorer. The real take home pay of 80% of
American workers has fallen for twenty years. And what was the other screamingly funny thing you said, oh
yes, if we produce more we’ll have more wealth to devote to fixing the
environment, which by the way is being destroyed by all the producing you’re
doing. What would you say about
the state of the environment around here. Seen any erosion. Pesticides in the food? Car engines
belching CO2 into the atmosphere? Food transported 2000 km. Nutrients taken
from the soil and not returned? Mountains of garbage going into the local tip?
Monstrous houses gobbling energy? Tom’s factory devouring fossil fuel as he
works with hand tools? Our environmental impact is extremely low, and that’s
because we’ve dramatically reduced the volume of production for sale. There’s no other way you can save the
ecosystems of the planet than by reversing growth, reducing production and
consumption for a long time, and then having a stable economy.”
When Harry stopped for
breath Pete got another chance. “And when you let growth, the profit motive and
the market determine your economic fate, the main thing that inevitably results
is that the richest and most able and energetic few quickly take
everything. The US economy is now
effectively owned and controlled by 1% of people, the corporate super-rich and
they’re getting richer at an obscene rate while most people are actually taking
home less purchasing power…”
“…and they own the media,
which means there is no critical discussion of the situation.” Harry came back
in.
Mike had had enough. “But
your living standards here are so extremely low! It’s all so…primitive…medieval
and peasant-like at best. Sure
it’s quaint, cute, I genuinely mean attractive. But most of your economy is …subsistence. Growing your own food, making and
repairing things by hand. Not
earning much money and having no supermarkets to spend it in anyway. Your houses are tiny and made out of
mud. Few imported goods in the
shops, and bring your own containers.
Old furniture. Everything
needs a good coat of paint. Old
threadbare clothes. No cars. No
travel. No holidays away. Eleanor would say you are intolerably
austere, frugal…in fact deprived and impoverished.”
Harry’s turn. “Mike, what do
I go without that’s important? My
clothes are warm and functional.
My house is solid, big enough, sufficient, comfy. Do you think Pete’s rocking chair could
be improved? It cost nothing to
make. Would it have been a better
rocking chair if it had been bought for $300. In fact it would probably have been worse because it would
have been shoddy, imported from China, unrepairable, enengy-intensive…”
“Well maybe its not the
functional value that I’m getting at.
Its more…the standards.”
As he said it he knew what
the response would be, almost word for word. “What do you mean by
standards? My house is quite
good-enough. My clothes are too. There is no need for them to be any
‘better’. Did you see the handle
in Tom’s adze, made from a sapling.
It’s perfectly good enough.
You seem to be saying its inferior because its not turned and polished
with a label on it, and bought from a supermarket. This is one of the biggest differences between our society
and yours. You all want the best,
the highest standard, the most luxurious house or clothes or car. But we’re content with what’s
good-enough and usually something home made, rough and cheap is quite
good-enough.”
“Mike,” said Pete, “Very
often our home-made and hand-made things are actually superior to the shoddy
things you buy in your supermarket.
Your furniture is a good example; often it’s badly made, it won’t last
and it can’t be repaired. If Tom
makes you a chair or a cupboard it will last more than a lifetime.
“OK, I agree it’s about what
you accept. You don’t feel
deprived because you accept rough, cheap, old things. But Neanderthal man accepted living in a cave as normal. Eleanor would see your houses as
subnormal. OK you’ve come to accept
that standard, but…Eleanor would see it as quite inferior.”
“Doesn’t she just mean that
its not slick, or fashionable, or, and this is what it really comes down to, or
expensive.”
“But shouldn’t we always be
striving for the best, and not happy with what’s second rate?”
“In some things yes, like
medical technology, but not when it comes to what you call living standards,
because concepts like nice house and high living standards basically only mean
more resource expensive. Here the
general rule is be content with what is good enough and as resource-cheap as
possible, and usually there’s no difficulty in that, no deprivation or hardship.”
Amanda had been surprisingly
quiet for some time, as if forcing herself to cool down a little. Mike it’s not just a matter of going
without luxuries to save the planet.
Look on that rock face over there.
What’s carved into it? Can you see from there?”
Mike looked across to where
Pete was pointing. Cut deeply into
the sandstone rock wall were the words, “YOU CAN’T BE RICH UNLESS YOU ARE
POOR.”
Gran said, “I think that’s
one of the most important bits of wisdom we can offer you Michael. It took us a long time to understand
it.”
“Well it’s taking me some
time too”, said Mike, with a little irritation.
“While you are working on
it”, said Gran. “Heres a
corollary. You dear Michael, are so poor, all you have is wealth.”
Jan to the rescue; “Confucus
say, local gurus just too bloody inscrutable. Pete put the man out of his misery.”
Pete said,” Yeah, sounds screwy
doesn’t it, but Gran’s right.
Look, the things that really matter are not material are they? They’re things like having good
friends, having community, being valued for making a worthwhile contribution,
having purpose and things you like doing, peace of mind, having a beautiful
landscape to live in. Now the more
money you have the less likely you are to focus on such things, the more likely
you will be to buy expensive toys and thrills and status symbols. More importantly, if you’re rich you’re
not dependent on others, and you don’t have to garden or collect firewood or
get together with your comrades to fix the windmill. It’s only when you live without spending much money that you
get the satisfaction of growing and making and working with others to run your
community, making things last, running a good household economy, keeping those
old duds going. Again wealth
debauches. If you are a
billionaire you are not likely to develop an appreciation of all the little,
everyday, cheap things that enrich life for us.”
“And what do you mean by
saying I’m so poor all I have is wealth?”
Gran got in before Pete, “I
mean your society has taken from you all the sources of satisfaction we
have. You don’t have the time to
do anything but work. You don’t
have community. You don’t
have lots of artists around to learn from. You never experience the satisfaction of participating in
your own government. You can’t
look at a big Pecan in your town square and say I helped to plant him. You don’t see people enjoying the
things you produce. You don’t get
the satisfaction of designing and creating things. You don’t know how nice it is to work with comrades,
painting your own windmill. You
don’t know what its like to give a friend the lettuce you grew, or to be given
some beautiful tomatoes. You can’t feel good about the consumer lifestyle you
have because you know it’s causing huge problems. You are terribly poor,
deprived of all these enriching things.
Just about all you have left is monetary wealth, the capacity to
purchase things.
“The way I’d put it,” said
Harry, “Our poverty obliges us to get together to maintain the commons, to
produce concerts for each other, to provide things like the workshop. We couldn’t pay corporations to do all
those things for us could we? Now,
it’s because we have to get together that we have community, a climate of
mutual support, familiarity, trust, security, appreciation of each other’s
contributions.”
“So we see wealth as a
dangerous, socially corrosive thing.
If you are rich you tend to go your own independent way and you don’t
need to co-operate or contribute, and so you will not experience all the bonds
and experiences and helping and community-building that enriches our
lives. So we see material poverty
as a necessary condition for accessing, creating that spiritual wealth.”
Harry added, “And it’s
infinitely more valuable. If I
were a billionaire could I be in a better situation than I’m in living
here? I couldn’t get this from
money in the bank.”
Pete again. “Mike, even if it was irritating, or
inconvenient for Harry to wear those old patched duds, or even if his roof
leaked a bit, or if it was off-putting to have chipped coffee mugs, wouldn’t
that be an acceptable cost to defuse the global predicament?”
“That’s the guts of it
Mike. That’s what it all comes
down to. To get rid of the
terrible problems plaguing billions of people, and likely to destroy us too,
basically all we have to do is live more simply. Now wouldn’t that be a small price to pay even if it was a
nuisance. But we claim its not
only not a nuisance, it can liberate us and bring a far higher quality of life
than people in consumer society.”
“Mike when it comes to
quality of life we think it’s obvious that our way of life’s far superior to
where you come from. It would be a big mistake to judge this by the clothes we
wear and the fact that our houses are half of the size of yours. Our food is perfect, everyone has as
much work as they need, no one is dumped into poverty or loneliness. We have rich and supportive community,
we don’t go without anything we need, we have a beautiful and leisure rich
landscape, we have a rich cultural life, we have no crime, our kids are safe on
the streets. And we are very
secure -- we don’t have to worry about what the global economy does. And we have to work for money only two
days a week! Just about none of
that is true for you.”
“But you couldn’t do what
you do without access to the national and global economies. You need steel and electric motors.”
“Yes that’s right. We do need to import a bit from the
mainstream now, but things like that could mostly come from factories in
regions not far away, supplying wider areas, and with a very few items like
steel coming from one national steelworks via a good railway system. You have to remember that The Glen is
only a small region that’s pioneering The Simpler Way, and the eventual goal is
to have towns like this at say two kilometre distances apart, with occasional
big towns and a few small cities connected by rail. The cities could have museums, universities, theatres, big
libraries, and be accessed by almost anyone in say a couple of hours by rail.
Most people would not need to go to them often.”
“I just think it’s
unrealistic to think that all the things in my supermarket could come from my
region.”
“Of course! But that’s not what we’re saying. Most of those things are unnecessary
anyway. In our house we use only
one form of soap. A block goes in
a shaker for wash up purposes. It’s not packaged and it’s made within 200
metres of our house. Very little
needs to be imported into the country, maybe some high tech medical equipment
or computer components.”
Out of the blue Gran said,
“Michael, if you only had to work for money two days a week what would you do?”
“Sleep! …for the first five
years anyway.”
“No you wouldn’t.”
“Oh, then what would I do?”
“Art.”
“What?”
Pete took it away from Gran,
“Now think hard economist. This is
especially difficult for you. The
question is, what would life after economics be about? What would humans spend their time
doing if and when the problem of producing enough had been eliminated, which is
what we‘ve done? We produce all we
need quickly and easily, and mostly by doing things we love doing. So what do we do then?”
…
“We beautify!”
Mike’s visage showed that he
was not making much progress.
“The log seat Mike, the
shrines, the pictures handing in the workshop, the gardened landscape, Fran‘s
little cottage, the plays…”
Jan broke in, “Pete’s
windjammer models, the plays and the poetry readings and the plaques beside the
path…”
“The dinners,” Gran got in.
Pete ploughed on, “We devote
ourselves to what the good lord intended humans for, creating and enjoying
beautiful things, and that includes creating a beautiful society. A society where some are obscenely rich
and many are poor is ugly, repulsive in the extreme.”
Gran got back in, “Plato
realised there is some mysterious kind of connection between knowledge, beauty
and goodness. People who are
surrounded by beautiful things, to whom creating and enjoying beauty is a top
priority, also tend to be good people.
Beauty inspires, ennobles the spirit, makes you more concerned for the
welfare of other peopled and things.
If only your people realised what they’re missing. How sad. So wealthy but so impoverished.”
Again Mike thought they
might have sensed that a change of focus was overdue and the conversation moved
to other topics. Pete went over to his sandstone and began tapping away but
Gran soon called him over to check a sleave length. Amy and Patsy had brought out some clay and were making
stick-like figures. “That’s Harry
with his hands in his torn trousers, and that’s Pete with his chin in his hand,
and that angry–looking one there is Amanda.”
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