Designing the Green Economy: Beyond Scarcity, Toward

Abundance

Brian MilaniGreenEconomics.net

Liefhebber Consortium of Green Development and Bad Dutch Football

The Green Economy

• A Historical Transition: …from Quantity to Quality

• A Question of Potentials …not simply limits

• Key to Sustainability: Redefining Wealth

Redefining Wealth I

Quantitative: Money & Material

Accumulation

Qualitative: Well-being

Regeneration

Redefining Non-Material Wealth II: Phantom/Casino vs. Real

Economy

Casino (debt-based) economy

Eco-service economy

Design Dimensions

• Political / Financial: trade, money / currency, EPR / property /service

• Energy: soft energy path

• Technological: cradle-to-cradle, eco-industrialism, Carbo Economy, shearing layers, product design

• Spatial: urban design / green cities, localization

Principles of a Green Economy1. The Primacy of Human Need, Service, Use-value,

Intrinsic Value & Quality 2. Following Natural Flows 3. Waste Equals Food4. Elegance and Multifunctionality5. Appropriate Scale / Linked Scale6. Diversity7. Self-Reliance, Self-Organization, Self-Design8. Participation & Direct Democracy9. Human Creativity and Development 10. The Strategic role of the Built-environment, the

Landscape & Spatial Design

The Green Economy: Human & Eco Dimensions

1. “The Service Economy”

End-use: “Hot Showers and Cold Beer”

Nutrition, Illumination, Entertainment, Access, Shelter, Community, etc.

2. The Economy in Loops —

The “Lake Economy”Flowing with nature, Every output an input, Closed-loop

organization, Let nature do the work

Common Sense Economics

Herman Daly “Trade Recipes,

not Cookies.”

Increase restrictions on the flow of material goods and physical capital (to minimize transport costs, etc.)

Lessen restrictions on the flow of information and culture.

note:

Globalization does exactly the opposite: via free trade and intellectual property law.

Creativity: the key to Real development

• meet real needs:– Don’t use material consumption as a substitute for

qualitative fulfillment– Rifkin: The Empathic Civilization

• Greening: substitute human creativity for energy and resources.

--People-intensive development

--Resource productivity

Mass Collaboration

• beats competition every time

• wikinomics: based in abundance not scarcity

• undermines industrial markets

Labour & Resource Relationship

• Industrial economy: resource-intensive. labour productivity: Substitutes resources for labour.

• Green Economy: people-intensive / resource-saving. Substitutes human creativity for resources

Industrialism: The Divided Economy

Invisible Visible Use-value Exchange-value “Consumption” “Production” People Things Unpaid Paid Women Men Informal Formal Private Public

Invisible Economy (1) Total Productive System of an Industrial Society

(layer cake with icing)

GNP-Monetized

½ of CakeTop two layers

Non-Monetized

Productive ½ of Cake

Lower two layers

GNP “Private” SectorRests on

GNP “Public” SectorRests on

Social Cooperative

Love EconomyRests on

Nature’s Layer

“Private” Sector

“Public”Sector

“underground economy

“Love Economy”

Mother Nature

All rights reserved. Copyright© 1982 Hazel Henderson

2

Invisible Economy (2)

The Economy in Loops

The Old Order: Materialism and Industrialism

markets best suited to material stuff

steel & autos; not culture and quality of life

Crisis: overproduction and "effective demand"

“Invisible Hand" doesn't work so well in cultural production

post-Depression: Waste as economic driver.

Scarcity, Class Power & Waste

• War production, suburbanization and effective demand.

• Waste of resources

• Waste of human potential

The Post WW II Waste Economy

Permanent War Economy

The Suburb Economy:

Oil / Autos / Subdivisions

“The greatest misallocation of resources in human history.” …James Howard Kunstler

Fordism & the Reinforcement of Industrial Wealth

Matter

Waste

Fordism

Suburbanization/ Consumer Economy

War Industry

Money

Debt

Keynesianism

Paper Economy

Planned Inflation

New forms of credit-money

1970s: End of the Line for the Fordist Waste Solution

• saturation of markets• social & environmental costs coming due:

fiscal crisis of the state• limits to inflationary strategy• Vietnam war, decline of the dollar,

German/Japanese competition• OPEC & the energy crisis

– Petrodollars & Currency Crisis

Post-Fordist Casino Economy• cost of waste come due: need for new

sources of “effective demand”• new technologies & Megabyte Money:

money disconnected from Real economy• financial sector: 30-50 times (?) larger than

the material economy• Culture of Speculation: Stomp the weak /

Get rich quick• Empty wealth creation: de facto

redistribution of wealth.• Polarization of work and society

– end of social contracts: attack on Welfare State– the growing gap between rich and poor

The Global Casino: Hijacking the Information Revolution

• expansion of employment in speculative industry– Wall St.: more advanced technologically than

the military.

• Bubble Economies: last ‘frontiers’ for capitalist growth.

-stock crash of 1987

-tech stock bubble of late 90s

-housing bubble of 2001-07• Housing speculation: most destructive &

exploitative of the poor & average people.

Crisis, Waste & the Suppression of Human

Potential

Creating Scarcity since WWII:

• Waste production

• Debt & funny-money creation

• Austerity

The Economy & Culture of Fear

• Mainstream politics and media today are mobilized for the creation of fear, based in both scarcity and personal insecurity.

• Reality TV competitions, extreme fighting, Tea Parties, racist fundamentalism, cultural scapegoating, etc.

• Question: should we be careful of adding more fear, however justifiable? (climate change, etc.)

Strategies for Abundance• Invest in social and natural

regeneration infrastructure & public goods• Material Economic Security:

meet everyone’s needs

• Disable the Coercive power of Money

Community Currencies Basic Income guarantees• Free Culture: from ownership

to access; from belongings to belonging

Invest in Social and Natural Regeneration

(includes growing categories of “public goods” and social/eco infrastructure)

• increased role for government on all levels

• invest in community: the nexus for regenerative development

• eliminate externalities: make polluters, extractors, incarcerators pay

Property & Stewardship

• Ownership should be relative: designed to support stewardship and human development– property: good for earlier materialistic

development.• Centralized ownership: EPR• Small-holder stewardship: good for land

A New Paradigm of SecurityGeared as much to unleashing

individual and community creativity as protecting the vulnerable.

Eliminates fear on many levels. Deflates the coercive power of money—allows ethical values to factor into personal economic decisions.

Supports imagination & innovation that transforms other sectors: e.g. community business.

Meet everyone’s basic needs...or else!

Ending the Coercive Power of Money

Community Currencies• especially account-money

systems

Basic Income Guarantees• the more universal, the better

the appropriate goal:

Gift Circulation• Money as information &

energy• Brand: “Information wants to

be free.”• Requires social / eco value

to be embedded in everyday life : indicators

• Question: transitional mechanisms