Thomas L. Wayburn
What is to be done with that section of the possessors of specific talents whose talent is for moneymaking? History and daily experience teach us that if the world does not devise some plan of ruling them, they will rule the world. Now it is not desirable that they should rule the world; for the secret of moneymaking is to care for nothing else and to work at nothing else; and as the world’s welfare depends on operations by which no individual can make money, whilst its ruin ... is enormously profitable to moneymakers, the supremacy of the moneymaker is the destruction of the State. A society which depends on the incentive of private profit is doomed. – George Bernard Shaw, The Millionairess [1]
The Basis of Social Problems in the Violation of Morals
Tyranny, Falsity, and Geophagy
Materialism as a violation of freedom
Squandering the reservoirs of high-grade energy
The need for a planned economy to save the environment
More on the Moral Ramifications of Materialism
A Compact List of Social Evils
Materialism (M) As an Adequate Model and a Challenge to Other Models
Theoretical Aspects of Dematerialism
The Abstract Goals of Dematerialism
Intrinsic Motivation and Its Benefits
Why Christians Should Embrace This Theory
The Solution to the Problem of Natural Leaders
The Joys of Society without Materialism
A World without Leadership, i.e., without Tyranny
Summary of First Practical Steps toward a Solution
Equitable Housing as a Sufficient Goal in a Society without Paper Wealth
Economic Planning and the Emergency Economic Plan
A Specific Case: The Solution of the Health-Care Problem
People Need An Incentive To Be Productive and Creative.
The Tyranny of the Majority Will Prevail.
The Average Person Is Incompetent.
Human Nature Is Incompatible with this System.
Some Questions for Conservatives
The material in this essay is covered in a book, On the Preservation of Species [2], and numerous essays [3] including this one, which is really sort of promotional material for the book but, perhaps, too big to go into the book and not really necessary since most of this material is covered in greater detail in the book. If this essay results in someone reading the book, either because they like it or because they don’t like it, it will have served its purpose. Most of the claims made in this essay are proved in the book - at least as well as statements about human society are ever proved.
In Chapter 5 of the book [2], materialism (M) was defined to be “the belief, or any system based on the belief, that people should compete for material wealth or power and that material wealth or power may be used as a reward for achievement or good behavior or as a measure of success. Any system or belief that permits people to influence the amount of material wealth they themselves may consume or possess privately or power they may wield because of who they are (or who their parents are) or what they do or because of any aspect of their beings whatsoever must be classified as materialism even if competition is not involved. The term artificial economic contingency (AEC) is used to express the dependence of people’s economic well-being on factors other than the weather or so-called acts of God. We agreed that, since AEC and M are occurrence equivalent, i.e., they occur together or not at all, we may use either term. Elsewhere, we have used the initial M to stand for both.” [Note (11-9-97). Lately, I have reverted to the original term materialism and I have used the abbreviation M. Note (12-20-05). Earlier versions of this essay used the term competitionism (C) and decompetitionism instead of materialism (M) and dematerialism. The concept would be less obscure if all three terms (M, AEC, and C) could be used simultaneously in a new word, perhaps, such as “commatingency”.]
In private discussions with friends I have had a little difficulty getting people to understand what I mean by materialism and, especially, what a society would have to be like if it were to be free of materialism. Sometimes they think I want people to revert to barter, for example. The concept that you would not ask for anything in return for what you gave or did is really foreign to most people. Therefore, I have explained it in greater detail than I would have thought necessary. Lately (1994), I have struck upon the term artificial economic contingency to emphasize that in a natural economy, i.e., an economy without materialism and artificial economic contingency, wealth and power would be uncorrelated with anything to do with people. Thus, wealth and power would be equal – for all practical purposes. (For mathematicians, the derivative with respect to nearly everything would be zero. Of course, the derivative of wealth with respect to rainfall would not be zero, but rainfall is natural.) I hope I am not boring the reader, but this concept of economics is never taught in the schools or discussed in the media. It appears to be NEW – even though it is not. (I really think this is what the Jesus of the Gospels was trying to say, but he didn’t have the vocabulary and his audience would not have understood these words – in any language.)
Artificial economic contingency (AEC) and materialism (M) encourage people to try to make as much money as possible. This results in economic activity that consumes energy while providing a less and less satisfactory life for those who are not adept at or not interested in acquiring money. This has two undesirable effects that lead to all of the difficulties of society that are not inherent in AEC itself. The first undesirable effect is that our reserves of high-grade energy are being consumed at an alarming rate, which cannot continue indefinitely and which has attendant upon it the destruction of the environment roughly in proportion to the expenditure of energy. The second undesirable effect is that the processes by which money is accumulated create a larger and larger class of people for whom life is nearly unbearable. Some of these people will continue to perpetrate increasingly violent acts upon the segment of society that does not suffer from these circumstances and which they view as the cause of their problems and their enemy. Eventually, rich people will not be safe in their own beds.
In this essay, I will link the important problems in society to materialism, which is the cause of the violation of the moral axioms. This will provide a plausibility argument for the Fundamental Theorem, namely, that the abandonment of competition for wealth and power is a necessary and sufficient condition for sustainable human happiness. This essay might provide enough material for a short course.
I begin by summarizing briefly the basis of my philosophy. In my book [2] this is done more thoroughly and, in addition, most of my philosophical assumptions are listed. The theory of axiomatic morality laid out in the book is introduced next. We then see how a few of our problems can be traced to violations of our moral axioms. This might make more plausible the claim that all, or nearly all, of our problems are due to violations of the moral axioms. This material will be covered in greater depth in the book. In my essay “On the Work Ethic”, available in the companion volume to the book [3], a new theory of classes is introduced. We describe briefly in that essay how the work ethic effects the classes. It might be helpful to read “On the Work Ethic” at this point.
In the book, we find the author’s list of the defects of artificial economic contingency (AEC) or materialism (M). Immediately following, we read the objections of Marx and Engles [4] to Capitalism, as they predicted it would develop. The reader can compare Marx and Engels’ list to the author’s list now or whenever he wishes. (Capitalism embraces materialism. Actually, Soviet-style communism (state capitalism), while avoiding the most egregious excesses, encourages competition for wealth, power, and fame to nearly the same extent as does American capitalism.)
In this essay, we find a very useful short compact list of every social problem the author could think of at the time this was written. New entries are welcome. The plan is to catalog and classify these individual social evils in the book. In the companion volume [3] a number of complete essays on a few of societies greatest problems are presented. Most of these were written long ago. At the end of Part 1, I will argue that AEC (or C) is a good model of society and issue a challenge to competing models.
In Part 2 of this essay we discuss the general plan – to be implemented gradually – to solve society’s problems. A few specific examples are given concerning first steps. We shall have to watch very carefully for the “law of unintended effects”. If we try something on a limited basis, we must be prepared to retreat rapidly if it doesn’t work as intended. Regrettably, this will be a little like playing the futures market! In this essay, I list the problems that will have to be solved. In the book, I indicate how each problem might be solved. (The idea is to solve problems not ignore them!)
We wish to give our thesis a firm philosophical basis. We base our philosophy on our innate sense of aesthetics, our innate sense of reasonableness, and our acquired sense of utility. These are the basis for three moral axioms, one of which is respect for truth. Thus, we must define truth, which we do at length in the book but summarize briefly here as the congruence of (generalized) statements with events (defined relativistically). (In case you have forgotten, the other two moral axioms are respect for freedom and respect for the environment.)
Human rights are based on the three moral axioms and a number of derived morals. Justice is based on rights and morals. If the resulting derived theory satisfies the fundamental principles of aesthetics, reasonableness, and utility, we declare the theory consistent and stop there to avoid endless recursion. Additional philosophical assumptions are listed in the book and these too are tested according to the fundamental principles. It is hoped that the assumptions are acceptable to most people.
We borrow the theory of intrinsic motivation according to Deci and Ryan [5] to define happiness and to suggest that people will continue to do useful things without direct rewards due to the need to be effective. This is essential to prove the Fundamental Theorem. Also, the theory of emergy and transformity due to Howard T. Odum is employed in the proof of the Fundamental Theorem. This theory is discussed in some detail in “Thermodynamics, Emergy, And Economics”.
Since we believe that a component of human happiness is effective interaction with the environment, which might, in part, consist in developing a valid philosophy as determined by the tests of logic, aesthetics, and utility, this essay might be satisfying to read or write even if it has no chance to rescue the world from its slide into the abyss. Some people believe that success in life should be judged by the quality of one’s philosophy. (I believe that success in life should be judged by the quality of one’s philosophy and how little one consumes. That’s why ads that equate success with money and consumption are so infuriating or laughable – depending on my mood.)
In spite of all the terrible things that have been done in the name of morality, I still believe that we need a moral basis for society. But, in order for it to have a chance for wide acceptance and to accommodate a wide spectrum of behavioral choices, the basis should be minimal. This code of morals should not be concerned with what drugs one takes, with one’s sexual preferences, with what sort of underwear is acceptable, etc. I reject Bernard Shaw’s concern about drugs and debauchery. (Nor shall we be concerned about the demise of the State.)
In this essay, based on our a priori notions of reasonableness and aesthetics and our experiential knowledge of utility, we construct a system of morality based on only three axioms by means of which the correctness or incorrectness of any proposed action may be determined without the intervention of legislators, lawyers, ethicists, or ministers. We deduce a number of conclusions from these axioms and evaluate the success of our endeavors according to how well the deductions satisfy logic (cultivated from our sense of what is reasonable), aesthetics, and practicality. Thus, we establish the consistency of our system. Of course, if we can prove that alternatives to our philosophy are so impractical that they assure the end of human life or a life not worth living, we will have established much more than consistency.
We might be able to show that these three moral axioms are independent, consistent, and complete; i.e., we cannot derive one of them from the others, we cannot derive a contradiction from them, and we will not run into a moral problem that cannot be decided on the basis of these axioms or morals derived from them. If these three properties are proved and we all accept the axioms, we must accept whatever moral consequences are derived from them even if they do not appeal to our preconceived notions. A more detailed discussion of this moral system appears in Chapter 3 of the book.
Axiom 1 (the Freedom Axiom) is, roughly speaking, respect for the freedom of oneself and others; Axiom 2 (part of the Environmental Axiom) is respect for plants and animals; Axiom 3 (the Truth Axiom) is respect for truth. Although many statements referred to as truth are lies, we can discern objective truth on the basis of reproducibility and also derivability, provided we pay close attention to premises. Truth is defined rigorously in the chapter on philosophical assumptions in the book. We must examine our prejudices as well as our fundamental philosophical assumptions. All of us must become skilled in logic and in spotting fallacies and hidden assumptions. We damn well better be able to recognize a proof when we see one. Inner truth, with its concomitant respect for beauty (I don’t mean glamour), is attainable as well. Then, in the schools, we can begin to teach the truth instead of subservience to the economy. I don’t think the words morality and truth should be the exclusive property of bigots and liars.
One can derive an Environmental Axiom from Axiom 1; therefore, if we are willing to sacrifice the independence of the three axioms, we can make them more compelling by replacing Axiom 2 by respect for the environment – including plants and animals. (It is not at all clear that all of the axioms cannot be derived from a single principle, so I do not think I should be too fussy about the independence of the axioms.) In my view, moral assumptions should be judged on the basis of reasonableness, aesthetics, and utility. It might be interesting to show that reasonableness is equivalent to aesthetics or that they are dual to one another in a suitable sense, but this is not necessary for the discussion presented here. Also, it is not important whether we are born with these judgments or we acquire them at a very young age. Normally, they are available by the time we reach the age of reason – about seven or eight years old.
In this essay, we need to establish the causes of mankind’s unhappiness in the past, in the present, and the likely unhappiness in the future of the vast portion of mankind if the policies pursued by world leaders today continue to be pursued. Chief among the causes of human misery are (i) war, (ii) poverty with its attendant evils of famine, disease, and social disorder, e.g., crime (usually presaged by tyranny, universal corruption, and falsehood), and (iii) the destruction of the environment, including the improper appropriation of the reservoirs of high-grade energy bequeathed to all mankind and posterity in common. We must show that these are caused by violations of the three moral axioms, which, in turn, are caused by materialism, which is made possible by our unfortunate acceptance of artificial economic contingency. The destruction of the environment and the appropriation of natural resources are direct violations of a moral axiom, namely, the Environmental Axiom. In the book we do much more; we show that AEC, C, and the violations of three moral axioms are necessary and sufficient conditions for each other. (The violation of the Freedom Axiom is called Tyranny (T); the violation of the Truth Axiom is called Falsity (F); the violation of the Environmental Axiom is called Geophagy (G) – literally, earth eating, a psychiatric term. So, AEC = C ® T, F, and G. In the book, we try to establish arrows in the opposite direction too; i.e., we prove that AEC, C, T, F, and G are occurrence equivalent.)
The violation of the Freedom Axiom shall be termed Tyranny; Falsity is any violation of the Truth Axiom; and destruction of the environment can be denoted Geophagy, which is a real word meaning earth eating and generally refers to a form of madness unless the perpetrator be famished and attempting to extract nutrition from clay, for example. In the book [2] I shall try to establish the equivalence of AEC with tyranny, falsity, and geophagy after discussing these three basic evils at length – each in a separate chapter. At this time I shall say only a few words on each subject. Regrettably I am bound to repeat myself. But, that may not be altogether disadvantageous in case the chapters are published separately or the reader does not read the entire essay.
Thus we identify three principal problems of mankind as the legacy of AEC and C. These problems might appear to be independent and fundamental, therefore it is crucial to relate them to C and to each other. The first principal problem resulting from C is the tendency of mankind to accept falsehood in the face of conflicting evidence. This problem can be equivalenced or aliased to brainwashing and “doublethink”. The second problem is the tendency of some people to dominate other people, which might result eventually in a one-world totalitarian economic and political system with a handful of people, or even a single person, at the top. We might just as well call this totalitarianism, even in the incomplete form in which it exists today. The third principal problem is the destruction of the environment, composed of the biosphere, the earth, its oceans, and its atmosphere. This violation of the Environmental Axiom is the problem that accounts for the “sudden” urgency of the situation. After all, we have put up with liars and tyrants for millennia.
Perhaps man’s domination of man prohibits free thought; perhaps the paralysis of free thought permits man to dominate man. It is very difficult to determine whether brainwashing precedes totalitarianism or follows it. Apparently the two phenomena coincide because, as is often said, no one can rule without the consent of the governed. The destruction of the ecosphere seems to follow directly from C, moreover the combination of brainwashing and totalitarianism prevents the destruction from being stopped.
Without equality of wealth and power (at least for persons the same age) there is no hope for humanity. Equality is essential for the establishment of a moral basis for society We can show that tyranny in full bloom, falsity, and the complete destruction of the environment must follow if competition for wealth and power is not abandoned. We wish to discredit political policies currently in place or under consideration if they tolerate AEC. In particular, we wish to show how the world is tending toward a single Orwellian totalitarian state and how the environment is being irreversibly destroyed. We wish to discuss the repression of dissent and the disappearance of independent thought in today’s world with the corporate-controlled media, particularly television, playing the biggest role. In a society based on valid morals the church and the sovereign state with all their useless, irrational, irrelevant, stupid and harmful laws can be disqualified. Also, we can invalidate most of industry and all of business.
As I have written elsewhere, “the fundamental principle of morality, which allows one to be free to do anything one pleases so long as the freedom of others is not abridged, is the prehistoric basis for society, giving everyone his or her own share and space. I believe that I can prove that respect for the freedom of others implies equal distribution of material wealth, since excess wealth can be used to abridge the freedom of others, in one case by purchasing excess political power, in another by bidding up the price of land and acquiring unfair exclusive access to part of the earth’s surface, in another by holding a stronger negotiating position in an economic transaction, which might be the employment of one person by another, a practice that is revolting to many thoughtful people.” The remark by George Bernard Shaw points up the fact that the pursuit of wealth by some people necessarily constrains the activities of everyone else – in one way if they try to keep up, in another way if they don’t.
I have indicated why competition for wealth and power (and, for that matter, fame) is a violation of the Freedom Axiom, i.e., that it violates the freedom of others by its mere existence – without any other event having taken place. Competition for wealth and power easily can be shown to be equivalent in terms of incidence to differences in wealth and power; i.e., you can’t have one without the other. Thus, both competition for wealth and power and differences in wealth and power are intrinsically immoral. It is imperative to show that equality of wealth and power is an absolute moral necessity without which sustainable human happiness is impossible. It’s worth a lot of words to prove this because contemporary human society depends on it not being true. Nearly everyone who is likely to read this essay is depending on it not being true and, for many people, admitting it is true will invalidate their entire lives. Can you imagine how hard their capacities for self-delusion and denial will fight to prevent the triumph of reason in this particular case? (The use of the word denial does not constitute approval of the so-called mental health community, which will deny this logic as vigorously as anyone.)
Money permeates every aspect of our lives whether we are greedy or not. A wealthy person can do anything he (or she) wants to do to a poor person, who cannot afford legal counsel, provided he doesn’t brag about it in the “tabloids” or in a TV interview. If we have a job, we are automatically in the power of someone who is richer than we and may resort to authoritarianism any time he wishes. Thus, we are victims of tyranny at all times according to the principle that freedom that can be taken away is not freedom. Actually, a rich person can have us fired, sue us, have us thrown in jail, or even killed! Meanwhile, the rich are beginning more and more to fear the poor, who may riot or commit mayhem since they have almost nothing left to lose.
Because of the importance of money in our culture, practically every aspect of our society that could be arranged to facilitate freedom has been corrupted by coercion. Without coercion many would not work, pay taxes, or fight in a war. (The all-volunteer army didn’t bargain for combat.) People are going crazy at an alarming rate, as witnessed by the street people, random killers, and stressed-out wage earners. Nearly every person (at least every white person) begins life with high expectations, but almost everyone fails, as Kurt Vonnegut pointed out [6]. What is most discouraging is that, in order to be heard (in order to sound the alarm and offer solutions), success and fame are practically indispensable, but the proportion of people who enjoy materialistic success and fame is vanishingly small. (Of course, I am speaking of success in the sense that most people speak of it.)
Money itself (or, if you insist, the system that employs it) is a tyrant. I have no interest in filling out income tax forms, but I am forced to do it. I do not enjoy shopping for the most economical insurance, long-distance telephone service, airline fare, car rental fee, etc.; but, if I don’t engage in these dreary tasks, my family is placed at a disadvantage. In fact, wanton disregard for money could put us in the street. I don’t enjoy checking my phone bill, balancing my checkbook, or billing my client either, but money makes me do it. When I watch my wife clipping coupons or checking a grocery bill, I could weep.
Significantly, many of the defects in American society might just as well be invisible to people who are successful in acquiring money. The rich and famous, who don’t ride the bus or subway, don’t understand what’s really going on because they don’t experience it. They may have struggled once, but, for the most part, they have short memories or, perhaps, some things, mercifully, cannot be remembered, e.g., physical pain. Of course, many successful people have not suffered at all, except perhaps on the therapist’s couch, but they can’t make the connection between that suffering and the suffering of the masses.
Also, it will be difficult to convince the reader that the term leadership is, for the most part, an impostor term in the sense of Bentham [7], and that we need to abandon the institution of leadership (in the sense of one person enjoying more power than another) because it is intrinsically immoral and because it leads to impractical consequences, not the least of which is war! (Obviously, you are not free if someone else can tell you what to do; or, if to be the one who tells others what to do, you have to do things that lie outside your natural inclinations.) This is a difficult part of the essay because many readers already are or intend to become – leaders. Also, it is difficult to see how the changes in this essay will be implemented without leadership – and strong leadership at that. But it must be done, because equality of wealth implies a planned economy and, in a planned economy, it is essential that strong leaders do not arise. Power corrupts. I have devoted some space to discussing how society might change without strong leadership in the book, but I will need to employ a case history or thought experiment to convince the reader that positive social change might occur without a single leader. People will have to learn to be their own leaders. The other way is unacceptable morally. Also, it doesn’t seem to be working out in practice. (We couldn’t find good leaders even if we were willing to accept them.)
I have been discussing only the violation of the Freedom Axiom even though it leads to the violations of the other axioms as well. I shall present a long list of social evils below and in the book I shall show how each one of them comes directly from a violation of the moral axioms proposed in this essay. This is a very compelling argument as opposed to the argument of religionists who claim that the evil in the world comes from the violation of their (irrational) taboo morality, usually prohibiting some modes of sex and the best drugs while permitting the hoarding of wealth in obscene quantities, which is frequently excused as the benefit of pleasing some obscure god. While it is clear to me (and others) that religionists have things backwards, I shall have to prove to many readers that sexual and pharmaceutical (taboo) morals have a harmful effect on human happiness. On the other hand, the hoarding of wealth is the fountain of nearly all human misery – perhaps all human misery.
We need to understand the theory of emergy and transformity discovered by Howard Odum [8] to enable the reader to understand what is happening in the world economically. This is likely to entail a little special effort on the part of most readers who are not adept at mathematics and the physical sciences, particularly thermodynamics. Thermodynamics is normally considered difficult by students of physics, chemistry, and engineering and thermodynamics teachers are not always well-liked. I will do my best to make this part of our journey as painless as possible, but the best thing I can tell you is that the rewards are tremendous. So, even if you hate me while you’re reading “Thermodynamics, Emergy, and Economics”, I hope you will have forgiven me in the end. The emergy theory will permit the reader to understand why a planned economy is essential. It will show that business and government are absorbing too much of our supply of resources – in fact, more resources than we can supply on a sustainable basis. This is a big challenge – particularly in the wake of the failure of many planned economies lately. Nevertheless it is essential to create a society where wealth is shared equally, especially since we have squandered in a few generations our inheritance from Mother Nature – our precious inheritance of high-grade energy that took Mother Nature millions of years to accumulate. To hope for a technological rescue is like failing to quit smoking because science will have a cure for cancer by the time you get it. [Attribution: Bob Epperly] Remember, we are talking about drastic measures that will need to be taken in fewer than sixty years. (The world will not look like a Buck Rogers movie in sixty years!)
Currently, environmental destruction is approximately proportional to our expenditures of high-grade energy. It should be inversely proportional (or at least monotonically decreasing) as we consume a greater proportion of our energy budget to clean up our air, waste water, and sewage. The Environmental Axiom leads ineluctably to the need for the human population to abandon the urban centers and to establish small (500 - 10,000 people, say) eco-communities that are nearly independent economically with a few light links to other eco-communities to effect economies of scale. Nearly everyone needs to live within walking distance of every person or thing he needs. Everyone needs to live near a food supply and a supply of biomass for energy. I believe I can prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that mechanized transportation (with the possible exceptions of the bicycle and the sailboat – or paddled boats) is infeasible. If you are currently burning ten gallons a week of gasoline (that’s a 2.0 KW/capita expenditure), you are eating someone else’s lunch, even if you are not eating, heating or cooling your house, using the phone, using manufactured objects, etc. That’s right! If you use more than ten gallons of gasoline per week, you are responsible for someone else not getting enough to eat. I will prove it easily and quickly. We need to save some of our supplies of high-grade energy to effect the transformation to sustainable, decentralized eco-communities.
In 1993, the population of the world exceeds five billion people. The energy budget is approximately ten billion kilowatt-years per year. (Of course, the time units cancels and we could report ten billion kilowatts or ten terawatts, but energy experts like to report energy expenditures as I have done or similarly.) This easily computes to two kilowatts per person. A diet of 2064 calories (these are the big calories, i.e., kilocalories), with which some of us would lose weight, amounts to 0.1 kilowatts (this is probably on the low side as we radiate 0.1 kilowatts to the environment according to Ehrlich and Ehrlich [9]), but it takes between 0.35 and 0.7 kilowatts to supply that 0.1 kilowatts in the highly fossil-fuel subsidized American agricultural system. (It is not clear that we have enough farmland to feed even America without that huge fossil-fuel subsidy.) Here in Houston, we spent approximately 0.75 kilowatts per person to cool less than 1000 square feet of living space last June. We use about 7.5 gallons of gasoline per week, which, if assumed to have similar properties to octane as is often done in the automotive field, amounts to an expenditure of another 0.75 kilowatts per person since we have only one car. It might be interesting to compute rough estimates of how much energy we use cooking, communicating, computing, and to account for the depreciation of manufactured goods. For example., the energy cost of manufactured goods must exceed the heat of fusion of the materials from which they were made, which I might estimate. How much energy is expended on our health care? In any case, we exceed 2.2 kilowatts per person for food, comfort cooling, and transportation alone, and we are light users. This means that we are consuming the deficit in energy that accounts for famine in the poorest nations.
Americans use approximately 25% of the world’s exorbitant and unsustainable energy budget and amount to only about 5% of the population. In addition, we continue to pollute the air, water, and soil, which itself amounts to deficit energy expenditures that must be paid back someday. In “Thermodynamics, Emergy, and Economics”, I shall introduce the term nemergy to account for this type of expenditure. To enjoy our standard of living with no air and water pollution would approximately double the energy costs of manufactured products according to my best uncalculated, unscientific guess.
It has been estimated that the human population of the earth will exceed ten billion people between the years 2030 and 2050. By that time the relatively cheap and plentiful supplies of high-grade energy will be nearly gone, so it is difficult to see how technology will be able to supply ten terawatts, i.e., ten billion kilowatts, to society. Thus, the energy budget in 2050 is likely to be at most 1 kilowatt per person. This represents a dramatic shrinkage of the standard of living of even poor Americans. The “American Dream” might be pursued by a few but only at the expense of many who will starve to death. We will be exceeding our fair share of the world’s sustainable energy budget by a very large factor even if my guesses and calculations are way off. So, who is responsible for world famine? We are! By 2050, there will be nine billion starving people in the world – probably – unless, of course, something even worse happens. Can you imagine the political instability inherent in such a situation!
As strange as it may seem to many people, protection of the environment requires a planned economy because market economies have a tendency (perhaps a need) to expand and they require essentially an infinite supply of natural resources, which is inconsistent with permanence. The exigencies of competition conflict with respect for the environment. Economic growth, with its cars and planes, superhighways and shopping centers, feeds on and encourages population growth, with its concomitant conflicts in the use of land. Both together contribute to the irreversible destruction of the earth in strict accordance with the Second Law of Thermodynamics, to which no exception has ever been observed. We can show that economic growth is impossible without unacceptable environmental deterioration. We need economic shrinkage, which can be achieved by eliminating business and, as we shall show to the amazement of many, only by eliminating business. In “On Capitalism” [3], we show why we believe the frequently repeated claim that capitalism, in the strict sense and as the term as used nowadays, requires growth.
The environment is slowly being destroyed. But, so long as one can make more money by polluting than by not polluting, and thermodynamics assures us that this will always be the case (since the entropy of very dilute mixtures is high and those mixtures (which might be waste water or waste gases) can be purified only at the expense of increasing the entropy even more somewhere else in the universe), the polluter chased out of one neighborhood will simply move to another neighborhood or, more likely still, to another country. This will always be the case while the world is driven by competition for wealth.
Environmental destruction and population growth go hand in hand, although environmental destruction need not be proportional to population. However, as long as the wildernesses are razed to make room for more subdivisions, we are guaranteed to see more and more species of animals, and plants too, become extinct. This is the disappearance of bio-diversity about which so much discussion has been heard. The loss of bio-diversity presents two serious threats to mankind: (1) We do not know which species depend on which, therefore the extinction of species can snowball out of control rapidly. (2) Many organic compounds come from one and only one biological species. We can synthesize the compounds we know about, but these are a drop in the bucket compared to all of the compounds produced by plants and animals whose existence, even, is unknown to us. Some of these unknown compounds possess the potential to be important drugs and to benefit the human race immeasurably.
Population growth is favored by those who require a large readily available and cheap supply of labor to exploit in order to acquire fortunes. Thus, environmental destruction can be traced to both competition for wealth and population growth, and population growth can be traced to competition for wealth. Indeed, the prohibition of birth control by one of the leading absolutist religions could be ascribed to that religion’s desire, or perhaps need, to support competition for wealth, although religionists have reason enough to spread their faiths by procreation aside from their loyalty to business.
A colleague of mine, Prof. Jorge Gabitto, points out that national and provincial borders are drawn in precisely the wrong places. For example, the border between the U.S. and Mexico is the Rio Grande River, but rivers are the hearts of ecosystems that require coordinated management (no laissez faire is possible here) and the management of the Rio Grande is shared between two sovereign nations who may not always be inclined to cooperate. Similarly, the Ohio River separates Ohio and Kentucky. Normally, we draw our territorial boundaries along rivers because its easy on map makers, although it’s hell on ecologists. We should draw our territorial boundaries along the tops of mountains so that all of the drainage into each valley is managed by one sovereignty or the other. Someday, borders will not play the role they do now, but we shall always be faced with the necessity for intelligent cooperative management of our ecosystems, which are represented by the river valleys principally and are delineated by the tops of mountains and hills (principally).
Tell the truth to those who have a right to know it. – Hemingway, The Green Hills of Africa
Again, business and commerce are not compatible with respect for truth. Strictly speaking, nearly every ad on television contains a lie or a deceptive image and those that don’t are merely in bad taste, which is a different form of falsity. [Note in proof (8-23-04). Lately advertisers have begun bombarding us with bad philosophy (“life is a sport”) as well as junk music (played loudly and without warning).] Businesspeople lie to each other, to their employees, to their customers, and to government. I discuss this further in the book. For now, permit me to ask: What impression is made on young people when they perceive that every established institution in the world employs falsehood? Why do so many students copy homework and cheat on tests?
It is extremely easy to show that the Truth Axiom is everywhere violated by the American economic system. Advertisements on television are the most obvious examples. But, the Truth Axiom is about much more than telling the truth. One must allow everyone else to tell the truth, even if it means listening to a lot of people who tell lies. Should there be rules of discourse? If so, what should they be? In the first place, one must allow everyone who has not violated the rules to have access to the arenas of discourse, including television, newspapers, magazines, and books. One must not usurp more than one’s fair share of the media. (Of course, everyone, except for politicians and businessmen, tells the truth as he perceives it, however self-deluded he may be.) So, who is in violation of the rules of the arena of discourse? Why nearly everyone who has access to it, that’s who. People with unorthodox views are systematically excluded from the arenas of discourse. Of course that saves us from listening to a lot of silly people, but it prevents us from correcting our mistakes and making intellectual progress too. For all practical purposes, it prevents us from hearing the truth (or the closest thing to the truth that anyone has thought up so far). I, for my part, shall stick to facts that are agreed upon by nearly everyone (what I call macrofacts); I shall state my assumptions clearly and as fully as I am able; and I shall derive whatever I conclude as rigorously as I can, in which case I am certainly entitled to access to the arenas of public discourse. Of course, if we can’t express dissent, we can’t propose the correct solution; but these new computer bulletin boards, fax machines, alternative periodicals, desktop publishing operations, and camcorder networks might provide new opportunities for independent thinkers, most of whom nowadays won’t even help each other. Respect for truth implies free discourse, including free access to media and open forums for debate where anyone who wishes can propose or rebut.
What I am asking (nay, demanding) is to present my views in the national arena of free discourse so that I may convince people of the superiority of my views over other views in fair debate. I claim that the circumstances in the world today will lead to one of three outcomes: (i) the total destruction of the human race, (ii) a stable totalitarian world controlled by a handful of people, or (iii) an egalitarian world with shared wealth and power, intrinsic motivation, and a quasi-steady-state decentralized population and planned economy based on simple, fundamental morals, as opposed to complex, ad hoc laws. I am not trying to impose activities based upon my views on anyone. I just want a chance to present my views and the reasoning that supports them. If I am excluded from the schools and other venues for discourse, that would be truly politically incorrect.
Opinion plays a role in everything we do or say. Obviously, it is my opinion that writing this book is worth doing. On the basis of aesthetics, reasonableness, and utility, we can “show” that some opinions are better than other, but do we have a right to impose our beliefs on others? It depends on what we mean by “impose”. Nowadays, some “liberal” ideas, such as the equality of all people, are taken to be unassailable doctrine and, therefore, immune to attack under free speech. Conservatives are correct to deny this position, but they are not correct to assume that the dogmatism of so-called liberals makes their own doctrines somehow superior. What cannot be disputed under the ordinary rules of discourse is the right of the holder of any set of views whatever to enter the arena of discourse – unless he disqualifies himself as stated earlier ironically.
Obviously, I feel that both the “politically correct” and those who oppose them are dangerously wrong, but I shall be watching the debate with great interest. As far as the schools go, I have already supplied my answer to the question; namely, make the reforms suggested in the book [2] to eliminate unfair employment practices in the schools, make teaching in every school open in principle to anyone who wants to do it, retain teachers according to who performs satisfactorily in a fair competition – a proper game – a written test and a sample lecture judged by referees chosen at random, for example. Then, make employment permanent and let teachers teach whatever they please. (I claim that if in a class of 100 students 99 students evaluate the professor as the worst they have ever seen and one student evaluates the professor as “great”, the professor is great. Clearly, the lone dissenter has perceived something that the others have failed to perceive. The professor may be great even in the face of universal disparagement.)
[Note in proof (7-19-93). The revolt against “politically correct” has finally degenerated to the ridicule of silly terms to describe blind people, short men, etc. Although I prefer to use the term “philosophically valid” what is truly politically correct, from my viewpoint, remains, (i) equal distribution of wealth and income and, especially, consumption throughout the world, (ii) no one having power over anyone else, i.e., an end to bosses, employers, leaders, and tyrants, (iii) an end to environmental destruction and wasteful use of natural resources including top soil and reservoirs of high-grade energy, (iv) an end to laws based on taboo morality, (v) an end to lies and false propaganda, (vi) an end to crime and punishment, and (vii) access to the media by anyone who demands it. In short, this essay is politically correct. What else did you expect me to say?]
Logic shows the unreasonableness of the violations of the morals proposed in this essay; aesthetics shows the ugliness of the violations; and experience shows their impracticality. The solutions proposed in Part 2 are the basis of the arguments used in the book to show that the evil in society is unnecessary.
In this essay, we shall attempt to construct a model of society that identifies materialism (M) (and artificial economic contingency (AEC)), i.e., the belief (or systems based on the belief) that people may compete for material wealth or worldly power and that material wealth may be used as a reward for achievement or good behavior or as a measure of success, as the central cause of all of our social ills – poverty, crime, war, etc. We then need to show that C leads inevitably to the violation of the three moral axioms or, if we can prove only that it does so with a high probability, show that without M or AEC the three moral axioms would have a good chance to be accepted by mankind. As pointed out by Bertrand Russell [10], who presaged most of these ideas decades ago, we need a set of morals that people can actually follow in place of a set of morals that people believe in but no one can follow, which sad circumstance leads to a society of guilt-ridden, hypocritical busybodies. As Russell pointed out, “we have one set of morals in theory and another in practice. In practice, our effective morality is that of material success achieved by means of a struggle; and this applies to nations as well as individuals.” If the book is successful in its most ambitious program, we will be able to recognize gullibility and the inclination toward supporting conflicting beliefs, the will to power, repressed sexuality, guilt, greed, an exaggerated or misplaced sense of duty, inferiority complexes, unnatural and harmful inclinations, etc. as symptoms of AEC and M.
Some people use the stuff (money) that stands between life and death for most of us to keep score in a game! That can’t be right. AEC replaces volition by coercion. Most people don’t do what they want to do; they do what they must do. Market economies are intrinsically competitionistic. Each of the problems cited in the compact list of social problems given below can be linked to AEC and M. AEC gives rise to a ruling class (defined in the appendix of Chapter 1 of the book) that is a subset of a money, wealth, and power seeking class, i.e., the status-seeking class. My essay “A New Theory of Classes” introduces the theory of the four economic classes, including the status-seeking class. I have not seen this theory expounded elsewhere. The effect of materialism on the classes is discussed in that essay.
These are the social evils that are classified, categorized, and analyzed in the book [2]. I shall show (i) how each of these problems arises from materialism (M), (ii) what is the likely outcome if C is not eliminated (in some cases it is too obvious to mention), and (iii) why the problem will disappear when C is abandoned. For now, all I shall do is list the problems – just in case anyone thinks American society is perfect – or even acceptable. I realize in many cases, e.g., trade itself, it requires a proof to show that the item is indeed a problem, but many of readers will be able to link each problem to M or AEC without difficulty.
We have predatory multinational corporations, imperialism, colonialism, unfair trading practices, world trade without comparative advantage, trade wars, trade itself, which is a form of theft where no one knows who is the thief and who is the victim, commercialism, consumerism, consumer fraud, catastrophic economic cycles, terrorism, the constant threat of war, and war itself. We have unfair employment practices, unemployment, poverty, crime, class war, millions in prisons, capital punishment, hunger, starvation, epidemic disease, child labor, child abuse, infant mortality, rape, overpopulation, homelessness (fully employed people who can’t afford housing), helplessness, loneliness, sexual deprivation, wasted sexuality, unwanted pregnancies, frustration, and hopelessness. We have bureaucratic tyranny, political corruption, invasion of privacy by government, health-care crises, banking crises, the failure of the legal system, and institutionalized injustice. We have fads, fashions, conspicuous consumption, the dehumanization and debasement of culture, starving and frustrated artists, sold-out artists, and phony artists, conspiracies and dishonesty in business and even in science, corruption in academia, and the disappearance of ethics. (Nearly no one knows the difference between right and wrong.) We have racism, sexism, bigotry, intolerance, illiteracy, incompetence, ignorance, superstition, authoritarianism, totalitarianism, religionism, scientism, sexual and pharmacological prudery, phony morality, egotism, patriotism (jingoism), censorship, repression of dissent, and the disappearance of independent thought. We have the new American tribalism, whereby every group, be it women, gays, Blacks, the handicapped, retired persons, etc., looks at every problem exclusively from its own viewpoint and no other. We have vagrancy, migrancy, urbanization, urban decay, urban flight, and the pollution of the air, water, soil, and food. We have radiation, sound, thermal, motion, and space pollution, exhaustion of available energy sources, rape of the land, sea, and air, cruelty to animals, and the extinctions of entire species.
We have mental distress, chronic insobriety, divorce, suicide, polarized populations, caste systems, VIPs and Very Unimportant People, the cult of fame and the star system, elitist clubs, old-boy and new-girl networks, conspiracies, fraud, greed, lives wasted on antisocial schemes and meaningless jobs, long working hours, two-job families, bi-coastal marriages, two-job people, autocratic and sadistic bosses, litigiousness, poor access to the courts, excessive entrepreneurial risk, unfair remuneration, excessive salaries and profits, economic parasites and vampires, low animal cunning dominating intelligence, tempting payments for unreasonable bodily risk, a perverse interest and delight in scandal and the misery of others, exaltation of excess, espionage, trade deficits, budget deficits, cheating, lying, exorbitant promises, broken promises, lobbying, bribery, excessive military spending, the arms race, the disappearance of the wilderness, unfair procreation to spread religions and ideologies, decay of infrastructures, people imprisoned in their own homes, union busting, unsafe, unhealthy, and inhospitable workplaces, drudgery, deteriorating service, deteriorating quality, “brainwashing” in the schools, manipulative media, abuse of science, advertising (nearly all of it false, deceptive, irrelevant, or tasteless), outdoor signs, junk mail, telemarketing, disruption of utilities, unsafe dwellings, landfills, toxic waste dumps, industrial accidents, the spread of populations into flood planes and earthquake zones, etc., etc., etc. [In the book, we shall further classify these social evils, and, if possible, discuss them at length. Conceivably, though, I shall not find enough time in this life to say all I wish to say about these evils of society and others not mentioned here – evils that many people nowadays consider normal aspects of life and, in fact, legitimate social institutions, cf., foreign trade.]
If we allow these problems to fester, we shall have endless unnecessary suffering. Our species will continue to live on the brink of extinction or actually become extinct. Activists are not asking for nearly enough. Single-issue activism is inadequate because the problems are tightly coupled and very little improvement will be seen until we eliminate the fundamental causes of our problems, as discussed below and in the text. Common Cause, for example, is characterized by a complete misunderstanding of its own issue of campaign reform, as I have discovered by attending meetings for over a year.
There is a huge gap between what should be done and what can be done in the political climate of 1990. By explaining to our friends, our students, and our readers what will happen if what should be done is not done, we can narrow the gap between what should be done and what people will accept as a possibility. If we understand what should be done, we can evaluate events and propose future measures according to whether or not they make what should be done more likely to be done. Thus, futuristic ideas are useful now. As William Morris said, we must “preach and teach”, that is, educate – truly educate, not indoctrinate. It will not help to run for Congress, lobby for legislation, or even vote. Nothing can be done until sufficiently many people understand the problem. But, first, we must understand the problem ourselves!
If I can prove that the controversy about censorship at the National Endowment of the Arts (or censorship anywhere), or the dispute between creationists and evolutionists, or between pro-choice and pro-life is caused by C and that it will go away if C is abolished, one may feel that I have accomplished something but not enough to justify establishing a new social system. But, if I can show that every problem and conflict is caused by C and can be solved or resolved by abolishing C, it seems to me that the reader ought to sit up and take notice. This is not a coincidence. Apparently, I have the makings of a very good social theory to which no exceptions can be found. However, I do not make the claim that this model is the best one possible, since, under these circumstances, it is impossible to prove optimality.
A model of society based on identifying C as the primary problem can be an aid to analysis without being the only possible model. I believe that society actually exists in external reality rather than as a figment of my imagination, a philosophical assumption that I shall state with definiteness in the book, but I do not know if my model, which, after all, is a “figment” of my imagination, will account for every aspect of society. In particular, I cannot be certain that I am able to predict the future behavior of society even though the prediction of future behavior has been the accepted scientific criterion for a good model. Nevertheless, we can determine if my model can account for the observed past behavior of society; moreover, I have made very strong claims about the power of my model to predict, but only time will tell.
[Note in proof (10-5-94): So far, this model has predicted quite satisfactory, yet I suspect that this theory is not quite a genuine scientific theory, although it uses scientific methods to prove some of its points – particularly in “Thermodynamics, Emergy, and Economics”. Lately, people have tried to apply science inappropriately. Science is a powerful tool; but, despite the imaginings of some, it is not applicable to every task. Consider Popper’s “line of demarcation” discussed in Conjectures and Refutations [11]. My theory is not genuinely falsifiable; i.e., we cannot design an experiment that will tell us if the theory is wrong with definiteness. Perhaps society is an inappropriate subject for scientific research. (Scientism is, after all, one of the social evils I oppose.)]
Perhaps I cannot prove rigorously that our persistent belief in falsehood, our will to dominate one another, and our persistent destruction of our environment are caused by C, but I can prove it as rigorously as social theorems are ever proved. Moreover, I believe that I can show that abolishing C will remove all three social defects for all practical purposes, which, in turn, will allow us to save the earth. The notion that the insistence upon receiving a reward or compensation for a deed done or an object given is the source of all evil is no more outlandish than the notion that the desire to be able to distinguish good from evil is. Although biblical scholars may quibble with my interpretation of original sin, I believe my hypothesis is at least as good as theirs and, besides that, I make fewer claims for it.
I would like to show that C, in its technical sense, is a necessary and sufficient cause for the social ills discussed above. Clearly, if my argument is correct, C is a form of tyranny. C always results in falsity too because people need to lie to compete and those who have the most to gain from competition must prevent those who are against it from discrediting it, which itself is falsity. Finally, competition for wealth results in environmental destruction – except in the case of an Orwellian totalitarian world monopoly, which is not pleasant to contemplate. All the other problems that are not associated with C itself follow from these three evils. In the absence of C, most of the violations of the three moral axioms and the other social evils will not exist, except, perhaps, in an extremely mild form that we will be able to tolerate without undue inconvenience. An example of residual tyranny might be the tyranny of a young child over his parents and older siblings. This, however, has no important economic ramifications. Also, from time to time, a young man might lie to a woman about his intentions or a woman might flatter a man, but changes in our viewpoints toward morals might ameliorate these types of abuses, which, again, have no great social consequences. One can hope realistically that environmental destruction would become entirely pointless, unnecessary, and easy to avoid in a world where competition for wealth and power has been abandoned. Most other social problems of any consequence would disappear as well, but we should try to imagine what old evils might remain and what new evils might arise. This will be discussed at length in the book.
Sometime in 1991
Revised June 14, 1993
Revised August 3, 1993
Revised completely October 5, 1994
Many people believe that Communism is pure totalitarianism and Capitalism is pure freedom and that we must choose one or the other. The notion is sweeping the world that, since planned economies have failed, market economies represent the only hope and, indeed, the only possibility. These are very dangerous beliefs and they tend to put an end to all intelligent discourse.
If, following E. F. Schumacher [12], the famous economist, we make strict binary choices between (i) freedom and totalitarianism, (ii) market economy and planned economy, (iii) private ownership and collective or state ownership, we get, not two only, but 2 to the 3rd power or 8 pure political-economic systems. I reject totalitarianism on humanistic, utilitarian, and aesthetic grounds and I have already shown why I reject market economies. This leaves two pure systems: freedom-planning-private and freedom-planning-state.
Table 1. Schumacher’s Table |
|
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FREEDOM MARKET ECONOMY PRIVATE OWNERSHIP |
TOTALITARIANISM MARKET ECONOMY PRIVATE OWNERSHIP |
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FREEDOM PLANNING PRIVATE OWNERSHIP |
TOTALITARIANISM PLANNING PRIVATE OWNERSHIP |
|
FREEDOM MARKET ECONOMY STATE OWNERSHIP |
TOTALITARIANISM MARKET ECONOMY STATE OWNERSHIP |
|
FREEDOM PLANNING STATE OWNERSHIP |
TOTALITARIANISM PLANNING STATE OWNERSHIP |
I believe we are in a position, now, to reject state ownership because it leads to the concentration of power into the hands of a large, inefficient, corrupt, and tyrannical bureaucracy that appropriates an unfair portion of the wealth to itself, which, in turn, demoralizes everyone else. The last thing a bureaucracy has in mind is to “wither away”. I believe that the means of producing goods and providing services, including services we normally think of as government services, should be owned by the people as private individuals – but in the sense of custodianship. Workers would own the enterprises for which they work. One worker – one share; one share – one vote. This sort of combination of private and collective ownership differs from ordinary ownership in that it cannot be transferred by sale; moreover, it must be forfeited by individuals who voluntarily abandon the enterprise. Due to these and other complications we shall refer to capital as generalized private property. [Note in proof: As of October 3, 1993, it appears that Russia is headed toward totalitarianism, a market economy, and private ownership.]
The goals of dematerialism are freedom, equality, happiness, and permanence for all of human society and for animals as well insofar as that is possible. Freedom of the individual must be tempered by respect for freedom of others, therefore the freedom to reproduce without limitation must be discouraged. Also, the commonly accepted idea of freedom of commercial enterprise must be abandoned as that divides society into exploiters and exploited. Please note that I have used the term “abandoned” rather than “abolished”. We prefer volition to coercion. In fact, we insist upon it.
I have used the term “equality” as a temporary surrogate for the concept of noncomparability, a new term that expresses the conclusion of a chain of reasoning: It is no more possible to assert that two people are equal than it is to assert that one person is greater or lesser than another without narrowing the scope of comparison unacceptably. One may say that person A has more money than person B or that A scored higher on a standardized test than B, but one cannot claim that A is worth more, or is more deserving, than B. Human beings do not belong to what mathematicians call partially ordered sets (or lattices) wherein such relations as “greater than” or “equal to” make sense. Human beings cannot be parameterized with fewer than an uncountably infinite number of parameters, which makes the possibility of such judgments absurd.
Thus, we have established the noncomparability of human beings. But more is needed. We wish to characterize our conviction that they ought not be compared and that differences between them that permit comparisons, such as differences in wealth or measurements of intelligence, should be abandoned. Thus, the concept of noncomparability arises and, with it, the rejection of differences in wealth and the rejection of hierarchy, authority, and, indeed, the institution of leadership itself.
One exception is the distinction between adults and children. I do not see how we can avoid this distinction. We do not wish to encourage people to have as many children as possible so as to acquire the equal wealth to which the new human being is entitled. In fact, age is the one absolute metric that we may apply reasonably to aid us in making these distinctions. (We would not choose weight!)
By happiness we do not mean a continuous state of bliss. Nor do we mean total escape from disappointment, bereavement, and the multitude of sorrows to which our psyches are susceptible. We mean a general condition of happiness, or the conditions under which happiness can be nurtured and can flourish, in particular, freedom from the institutions and social conditions that guarantee unhappiness such as drudgery, crowding, unhealthy environments, restricted behavior, war, epidemic disease, and the countless other ills manifest in a materialistic, competitionist society. Happiness was defined in Chapter 2 of my book [2].
The professed purpose of the political system put forth in this essay is sustainable happiness for all of humanity. We have stated that happiness, in the sense meant here, consists of autonomy, effectiveness, and relatedness, provided, of course, that our tissue deficits are satisfied and that we are reasonably assured that they always will be and that the other conditions of our happiness are guaranteed in perpetuity (or until the sun burns out). Undoubtedly, we have much to learn about human happiness. We believe that it has been poorly understood by the theoreticians who have preceded us. Why should we imagine that we have finally gotten it right! It is, in fact, part of the goal of philosophical speculation and discovery to determine what human happiness really is, even though each of us has a reasonably accurate intuitive notion of what we mean by happiness – especially when we are happy. Perhaps human beings require a modicum of risk and danger in their lives to be truly happy, in which case we have left something out of account. We must pursue this idea further and see if it has merit and, if it does, determine how it might affect our theory. We have no objection to skiing, for example, so long as it does not imperil others.
By permanence, we mean a human society that does not come to an end other than for astronomical reasons. We believe this necessitates a quasi-steady-state environment, including essentially zero population growth, zero economic growth, etc. Of course, we recognize that for a long time to come we will need to see economic shrinkage in order to bring the environment, including the atmosphere and the oceans, into quasi-steady state. We defined quasi-steady state in both a weak sense and a strong sense in Chapter 2 of the book. To reiterate, this theory attempts to achieve freedom; equality, by which we mean noncomparability; happiness; and permanence. [These are not mutually exclusive; i.e., freedom implies equality and happiness implies freedom.]
The prevalent belief is that a society based upon materialism is necessary because human nature is flawed to the extent that most people will not perform in an economically useful way without what is euphemistically called – incentive, by which we mean greed or fear. While it is possible that we might be motivated – deeper down – by a desire to be loved or admired, it is clear that tasks are performed most satisfactorily when we are motivated by our love of the task. This is called intrinsic motivation. In this essay, we try to show that an economic system based on intrinsic motivation will lead to freedom, equality, happiness, permanence, and justice because the effort that is spent competing will be redirected toward useful ends and the incentives for antisocial behavior will be removed. No one will commit a crime, cheat in business, or lie in politics if everything people need to live is free (and no one has any more of it than anyone else – unless there is some compelling need recognized by everyone). Perhaps material goods will have to be rationed for awhile until people redirect their longings from materialistic pleasure toward spiritual pleasure. Business itself will disappear and all of the creative energy dissipated in business will be available to end deprivation. Perhaps this thesis does not constitute a prediction of the future of human society, perhaps it does not constitute a prediction of what will happen if these changes do not occur, but perhaps it does.
Laws will be replaced by rational morals; government will virtually disappear except for a few communicators who will be selected at random from the population at large and who will not move from position to position of increasing power; and people involved in productive enterprises will own the means of production in the sense of custodianship. Coercion will be replaced by volition and dissent will be treated with respect. Society will be constructed on a rational basis because no one will have anything to gain by lying to school children and controlling the minds of adults by means of inane political speeches and other media events. At last, we can have a quasi-steady-state world with a stable human population because no one will have anything to gain by encouraging people to procreate to provide cheap labor or to propagate their beliefs and parents will neither fear the deaths of their infants nor imagine a need to be supported by numerous children in their old age. Frivolous and destructive activity will cease and leisure will be given its rightful respect. This will facilitate the decentralization of the world, including the breakup of the environmentally undesirable giant metropolitan areas, which will no longer be needed for business, and, finally, will no longer be needed to accommodate the clustering of artists, who will now become numerous due to the increased leisure time. Less work to achieve adequate material comfort for all and diminished enthusiasm for frivolous luxuries will relax the stress on the environment by orders of magnitude.
Perhaps a hypothetical omniscient deity could identify a single event in the prehistory of humanity that was the initiator of sin and evil, but it is unlikely that the consequences of the event could be passed on genetically. Much more likely is the possibility that the unlucky event resulted in the perversion of an institution or the creation of a new institution through which evil, which may have started out as simply bad luck, is perpetuated. Indeed, we perpetuate the evils of society through our institutions, which, apparently, have been adapted to facilitate domination and depredation. These institutions are doomed, because they facilitate the worst in man. (If they are not replaced, all of human society is doomed.) What is suggested in this essay is that existing institutions be replaced by institutions that are impervious to evil. (Presumably, after some time the new institutions would themselves become corrupt and have to be replaced. Thus, nothing absolute or final is suggested.) To survive, man needn’t be perfect. Perhaps no one can avoid an occasional thoughtless or inconsiderate word or deed. But why must we institutionalize evil, i.e., in cold blood, create, in the face of obvious alternatives, social machinery that is guaranteed to result in unnecessary human suffering and environmental destruction! Man should be good enough, at least, to reject evil institutions and replace them with institutions that make allowances for the defects in his propensities, which have arisen because he was born and raised in a society whose institutions were developed to create and perpetuate evil. This can be done deliberately by planning. Nothing in the world or in our natures can stop us from doing it if we want to do it and we can agree among ourselves to do it.
The careful reader may have noticed a difficulty here – perhaps a contradiction. On the one hand, I have said that, in cold blood, we may replace our corrupt institutions with better ones. On the other hand, I advocate gradual change according to the “method of perturbations” so that we may retreat from any position if the law of unintended effects becomes operative and things begin to go badly. The idea is not to make too large a change so that even if it goes badly it will not do so catastrophically. We are trying to approach reversibility by making the changes small. (I am aware that some of the reforms I am advocating will have to be divided up into smaller changes to achieve this. Moreover, gradual change may not be feasible in some cases.)
Now, what is to stop us from reversing all of the changes made in cold blood later on – in hot blood? Suppose we make it illegal to buy or sell an entire corporation. What is to prevent an interested party from declaring this a calamity and, if he be powerful enough, repealing the law? These decisions must be under the purview of a large proportion of the community and it is not likely that everyone will lose his head on the same day. We must depend on a general consensus of reasonable people watching our progress carefully. One person who really needs to sell his company would not be able to overturn that consensus even if he has a buyer. This is an important point. We must construct some scenarios where reforms are endangered by premature fears of failure and imagine how we would handle ourselves in those situations.
The situation is analogous to a binge buyer who cuts up his credit cards in cold blood but can replace them in 24 hours by making a phone call when he finds out he doesn’t like not being able to buy whatever he wishes. He must put the machinery in place to prevent that from happening during the short period when he is in his right mind.
Like some religions, the social-economic-political system proposed in this essay is based on morals. Unlike most religions, it makes no absolute claims for itself. It encourages doubt in human institutions and faith in human nature, but it does not insist upon the existence of a deity. If, as Shaw may have believed, religion is necessary to create community, one can only hope that religion can be built on reasonableness, aesthetics, and utility. Curiously, the early doctrine of Jesus, according to Shaw [13], was comprised of the following tenets:
1. The kingdom of heaven is within you. You are the son of God; and God is the son of man. God is a spirit, to be worshipped in spirit and truth, and not an elderly gentleman to be bribed and begged from. We are members one of another; so that you cannot injure or help your neighbor without injuring or helping yourself. God is your father: you are here to do God’s work; and you and your father are one.
2. Get rid of property by throwing it into the common stock. Dissociate your work entirely from money payments. If you let a child starve you are letting God starve. Get rid of all anxiety about tomorrow’s dinner and clothes, because you cannot serve two masters: God and Mammon.
3. Get rid of judges and punishment and revenge. Love your neighbor as yourself, he being a part of yourself. And love your enemies: they are your neighbors.
4. Get rid of your family entanglements. Every mother you meet is as much your mother as the woman who bore you. Every man you meet is as much your brother as the man she bore after you. Dont waste your time at family funerals grieving for your relatives: attend to life, not to death: there are as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it, and better. In the kingdom of heaven, which, as aforesaid, is within you, there is no marriage or giving in marriage, because you cannot devote your life to two divinities: God and the person you are married to.
I can accept nearly all of this, except that I would avoid the use of the word God, since it has too many meanings. E.g., what sort of “spirit”? I never know what people are talking about when they use the word. (Although it might offend my atheist friends, I must admit that I use the word God when I talk to myself. As far as atheists are concerned, I wonder what it is that doesn’t exist.) Also, I have developed a particularly simple method for sharing property based on the notion of dissociating one’s work from money payments, in fact, abandoning money altogether. I believe this is superior to throwing one’s property into the common pool as it solves the problem of who will manage the common pool. Finally, I might address myself to women as much as to men.
I think the above interpretation of the philosophy of Jesus fits into my theory rather well and I think Jesus would agree that the interpretation is fair. Therefore, reasonable Christians should embrace these reforms. I have gone further and suggested that we should lead ourselves. I believe Jesus would interpret this as living by the word of God alone rather than by the word of a distinguished human leader. (Some Christians will probably wonder how I get the nerve to decide what Jesus would think. I read the Bible and think about it. Now, let me turn the question around.)
Schumacher does not address the problem of natural leaders, as discussed by Shaw in the Preface to The Millionairess [1]. Those of us who are not natural leaders may not wish to be dominated by those who are. I hope that no one believes that a rich and powerful leader does not impose upon the freedom of an ordinary person.
The history of society can be analyzed in terms of cycles of corruption and reform. People become powerful. Power corrupts. Forces for reform gather. The powerful are swept away and replaced by reformers. The reformers grow powerful. Power corrupts. ... It seems as though the cycles will never end. Permit me to suggest that the way to break the cycle is to get rid of the leaders. Leaders, after all, are characterized by a talent for becoming leaders and a preoccupation with retaining power. We don’t need anyone to boss us around. As William Morris observed, no one is good enough to be someone else’s master.
We trust a random process to select juries that determine whether a human being lives or dies. Rather, let us employ some sort of random or quasi-random process to select public representatives for our government and private representatives for private enterprises for terms of finite length. This will prevent the establishment of a governmental class or a manager class or a ruling class. The electoral process might be relegated to removing people from office. Descartes said, “Good sense is of all things in the world the most widely distributed, for everybody thinks he is so well-supplied with it that even those most difficult to please in all other matters never desire more of it than they already possess.” What makes this funny is that people believe they have good sense whether they do or not, but what I believe is that they usually do. Nearly anyone in possession of the best information, rather than state sponsored lies, is capable of making good decisions. Public servants selected randomly might not be worse than what we have now! If they were selected from a universally educated population, if they were not required to keep the people ignorant of their hidden agendas as servants of the rich and other special interests, and if the scope of their activities were properly limited, they would certainly do a better job.
Let’s imagine a world first without money then without leadership. Money is already nearly obsolete in a certain sense; i.e., we have nearly replaced it with plastic cards. In another sense, it is failing to serve its purpose as a measure of value as both prices and currencies themselves approach chaos through greater and greater instability. Perhaps the most conservative monetarists among us had better start thinking now about how society will survive a complete monetary and banking collapse.
We must begin by asking an extremely fundamental question: In a strong quasi-steady-state world, i.e., a world in which natural ecology is in equilibrium and in which the reserves of high-grade energy are being replaced as fast as they are being consumed (although the exact makeup of the inventory of stored high-grade energy might be changing), in short, a world in which the presence of man is not a burden upon our fellow creatures and upon our own posterity, would there be an abundance of material wealth or a scarcity of material wealth? And, if there were scarcity, would man be able to address it through the mortification of his own greed and to turn his acquisitiveness toward the domain of the spiritual? Suppose, for a moment, that either the answer to the first question were “abundance” or the answer to the second question were “yes”. Then let us contemplate the joys of living in a world without money.
I believe that it is a conservative estimate to suppose that in excess of 70% of human effort in the United States is directed toward the manipulation of money. (Elsewhere I have used the figure 90%; I don’t think the exact number affects my conclusions.) This effort might be abandoned with the time saved devoted to useful labor and to leisure, which might be less distinguishable from useful labor than it is currently – mostly because of the objectionable nature of most jobs. We might then abandon the dreary business of counting money. For starters, imagine, if you will, a supermarket without check-out lines, if supermarkets are indeed the best way to distribute food in a world where money is quite literally – no object. We may dispense with taxes, insurance, banking, accounting, sales, investing, brokers, auctions, advertisements, deal making, wages, prices, gambling, borrowing, lending, comparison shopping, haggling, and telling all the terrible lies that people tell to get money. Lately the “problem” of counterfeited money and other financial instruments has been exacerbated by the invention of color copiers and other high-tech equipment. This could be a blessing in disguise if we abandon the attempt to stay one step ahead of the “thieves” all the sooner. (In point of fact the robbers are always one step ahead of the cops. They devise a method to beat the system, after which the system tries to plug that loophole; but the robbers have by that time found a new one. Good for the “robbers”.)
We might stop prostituting ourselves and making all sorts of compromises for money. Look at the compact list of evils given above and ask yourself how many could persist in the absence of the institution of money. We could stop worrying about money, arguing about money, scheming, planning, and dreaming about money, carrying money, being cheated, robbed, and defrauded of money. The love of money can’t be the root of all evil, because, before the love of money, came money itself, which must logically precede the love of money and, therefore, must be closer to the root. I hope to convince the reader that the earth would continue “going ’round” without money, but the well known “old saw” goes to show the central role accorded money and corroborates my choice of money as the central feature in my model of human society.
I will devote an entire chapter to the defects in the concept of leadership. But, for a moment, imagine being financially independent and beholden to no one, i.e., no bosses and no clients – and, I almost forgot, no parents as providers. Perhaps one might be inclined toward frivolity for the space of a few days as one got one’s first taste of freedom. But sooner or later the serious sides of our natures would emerge and our natural inclinations would direct us toward useful activity. I find it amusing that the most religious among us exhibit, in many cases, the least faith with respect to this obvious quality of nearly every educated person with whom we have ever been acquainted. Some of us can hardly wait to get home on the weekend to begin building something, or fixing something, or engaging in some artistic pastime.
But will we manage to cooperate in the carrying out of tasks that require the participation of large numbers of workers? I believe that managers, as we presently encounter them, are an obstacle to the accomplishment of anything. “No one is good enough to be someone else’s master.” But, I have observed (in, of all places, a model-railroad club) free and equal individuals cooperating in the carrying out of a complicated project with ideas coming at one time or another from nearly everyone and the good ideas embraced, after a short discussion, by nearly everyone. Some people like to work alone. They know what needs to be done. They simply announce to the group what they are going to do, and, as there are no objections, they do it. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. If it works, nobody complains. Some people are good at making plans. The plans are circulated and, perhaps, amended. The person who produced the plan has made an important contribution, but he (or she) is not the boss. The implementation of the plan is crucial and the person who contributes the most good work may bask in the admiration of his fellow workers, but that doesn’t make him “better” than anyone else. Everyone is happy to acknowledge admirable effort because no one has anything to lose by it. The best workers don’t acquire power over anyone. People do what they do because they enjoy doing it and they are being rewarding by making their effort. If they don’t feel like doing much, that’s OK too. Maybe on the next project they’ll find something that “turns them on”. No one resents someone who doesn’t contribute; but, since they get their own rewards in the actual doing, they wish everyone could enjoy similar rewards.
It is obvious that equality of wealth will eliminate most social problems, in particular poverty and crime – crimes committed by poor people and crimes committed by rich people to become even richer. Also, equality of wealth will eliminate the overhead associated with dividing up the pie, which might be consuming nearly 90% of our production capacity. Finally, equality of wealth will eliminate fear and danger. But, how in the world can we get rid of this absurd economic system that no one understands and that controls our lives like a vicious tyrant?
The best way to eliminate gradients in wealth and, perforce, competition for wealth is to abandon the institutions of money and other fiduciary instruments capable of representing wealth stored symbolically or abstractly. We must show that people will produce wealth in order to be effective and hence happy. They will share this wealth equally and refuse compensation for it because that would create a contingency that would diminish their own personal freedom. This is a new way of looking at motivation. It requires a thorough discussion and more research.
When everyone has a house no bigger than what he or she can manage to take care of without hired help (as who would submit to such employment when everything is free), equality of wealth will essentially take care of itself. One can fill one’s house with TV sets if one wants to, but that would not leave too much space for anything else. Also, one’s neighbor might comment on the folly of so doing. The size of our houses will supply a natural limit on hoarding of wealth even for those who are not dedicated to consuming as little as possible in keeping with common sense. Of course, there are always precious jewels and objects of art for the incurably acquisitive. These belong in museums or could be loaned on a temporary basis. Let us defer the discussion of this minor problem. (The reader may wish to solve it as an exercise.)
In very small communities of fifty people, say, scientific planning is not required because people can make their needs known and it is obvious what their shares consist of, but in a larger community consisting of ten thousand (or, in the worst possible case, ten billion) advanced scientific planning would be necessary. We must try to keep the size of the community as small as possible, decouple the economic sectors as much as possible (make the separate economic sectors as independent from one another as possible), and, for the rest of it, show that advanced economic planning is possible without concentrating power. We can begin research in economic planning immediately. Actually, economic planning and research in economic planning go on all the time, some of it by the Department of Commerce.
We might suggest that the Department of Commerce develop an Emergency Economic Plan (EEP) in case of a complete collapse of the international monetary and banking system, which, by the way, is not all that unlikely. (A minor crisis occurred in Europe lately [1993].) People will be informed to go about their business as if nothing had happened. They will be permitted to charge purchases to their social security numbers on a more or less equal basis and dematerialism will have begun. This is completely appropriate in a situation where nothing has changed except that the currency has failed (unlike 1929 where crops had failed as well). Every quasi-capitalistic society should have an EEP. I hope to find some space to discuss the EEP in the book or in another essay.
As a step toward eliminating money (and other forms of paper wealth) by delegislation, I suggest that we immediately prohibit the selling of entire companies. The limit, for now, might be a cash amount or 10,000 shares or some other limit. The limit could be reduced gradually to 100 shares, say. Later still, stock might be sold legally only to a worker actively engaged in the enterprise represented by the stock. The value of the stock would go down, but the value of the company would go up, thus replacing money by value. This would not be harmful to old folks who are depending on dividends to support their old age. Eventually, the policy of one-shareholder-one-vote should be instituted (except that no one may vote who has a stake in a competitor). Imagine the volume of investment law, tax law, and corporate law with which we could dispense. This is a step toward equality of power as well as equality of wealth.
Before the legislation suggested in the next paragraph could be enacted, there is something that ordinary citizens could do without a change in laws and without relieving the rich of their money and power – although that must be done eventually, as the reader certainly understands by now. Suppose a group of us organized an enterprise wherein wages were distributed equally regardless of contribution. This might present overwhelming problems for ordinary Americans, but, for an exceptional group of dedicated people, it might teach the rest of the world a lesson in intrinsic motivation. The Ben and Jerry Ice Cream Company already has a plan that tends toward that direction. Nothing stops someone else from going further. But, I shall devote an entire chapter to possible paths toward a noncompetitive society in the book. (Suppose as a walking and talking real-life object a person refused remuneration in excess of that given the lowest paid worker in the enterprise. Suppose he refused any remuneration whatsoever. I admit that this might entail ethical conflicts in the old ethics. One might be accused of being a scab. Perhaps, for now, accepting no more than the lowest paid worker is best.)
Until a cashless society is achieved, we might do the following in accordance with our policy of delegislation, to be described below: we might establish a national salary ($1000/per year times one’s age in years, say) and place a limit on stored wealth ($10,000 times one’s age in years, say). This could be established by law until people abandoned hoarding wealth voluntarily and until they began to pride themselves on how little they consume. At last, people would no longer be required to labor under conditions that do not suit them. Employment would be replaced by involvement and people would not be able to become involuntarily uninvolved with an economic enterprise without being convicted in a trial, but this would amount to no more than being suspended with full pay. Workers would be free at last! Now “all” that remains is to convince everyone that this will work! One law would replace literally thousands of laws. That’s a step toward delegislation, i.e., eliminating all laws.
Currently (August 4, 1993), we are in the midst of a debate on deficit reduction. May I suggest the following solution. I think it’s a good solution and I don’t care how bad the people were who tried this solution in the past. I think that’s irrelevant. I suggest that we repudiate the national debt except that we make sure that retirees and poor widows who are depending on the interest from a small part of it do not suffer. This is a slight complication, but it can be worked out in a way that cannot be abused by the rich. This solution has the desirable feature that no one will lend us money anymore, so we are guaranteed to balance the budget in the future. Government workers who can no longer be paid will receive cards that entitle them to make purchases that are paid for by increasing the prices paid by the rest of us. We should cancel all foreign debt completely in such a way that schemes to transfer foreign debt to Americans fail. Let our foreign debt holders take care of the “poor widows” in their own countries. Since we are confiscating the fortunes of rich Americans anyway, nothing new occurs in their case. The government will seize the records of pension funds and mutual funds without warning so that only American’s who really need the money will be paid. They could be paid off immediately, in the first year, or over a few years. If your net worth exceeds $10,000 times your age in years, don’t expect a cent. Why should people who gained nothing from the government going into debt pay the debt? For all we know, without the extravagant expenses of the military-industrial complex, we might be enjoying the benefits of communism now. It would be a lot easier to reform that system than this one. But, frankly, I don’t believe the “defense” budget had any political effect whatsoever – except to make the rich richer.
People are afraid that no one would work without the incentive to amass wealth. I can give a dozen reasons why they would – why involvement will be more highly valued than employment ever was. I would work. You would work. Remember, without the money game, barely one-tenth of the work would remain to be done. Work would be at a premium because supplies of high-grade emergy must be conserved, but one area of human endeavor would still be attractive to labor intensive (unmechanized) activity, namely, the improvement of one’s own home!
An ideal solution to the health-care crisis is a case in point that could be implemented quite soon. We must decide, first, who belongs to the health-care sector: the doctors, nurses, hospitals, clinics, ambulances, and their drivers, of course, but also the manufacturers of medical equipment, even surgical steel, the producers of pharmaceuticals, the designers and constructors of their plants, and so on. I do not believe that the health-care sector should have its own electric power plants, water suppliers, or iron mines, therefore these facilities must supply the health-care sector at no charge and pass on the cost to the other sectors. Now, health care can be free (but rationed – we wouldn’t spend 10% of our budget on the last week of a doomed man’s life) and every member of the health-care sector may have his or her fair share of the production of the other sectors without paying. At first, it might be necessary for health-care workers to carry a national credit card to keep track of their expenditures in units of emergy, say. We might have to allot a little more for the highly skilled surgeons until everyone gets used to the idea of equality, after which people would be ashamed to consume more than the least they can get along with. The difficulties with this solution are tremendous and I don’t expect readers to accept it until they have read much more.
But, after all, who better than physicians and surgeons to take the first step toward renouncing wealth? Presumably, physicians are more intelligent and better educated than most of us and consequently they are (1) better qualified to understand the importance of giving up wealth, (2) more qualified to live life abundantly while minimizing consumption (it takes brains to live well without money; any idiot can live well if he is rich), and (3) physicians are better positioned to retain the respect of their worldly friends without wealth (I dare say someone would move to allow old Doc Feelgood to retain his membership in the River Oaks Country Club without paying dues just in case someone should fall ill). Moreover, they need to make a show of good faith in this national crisis to retain the respect of the general public, who are beginning to regard them as vultures and parasites. (Marian Hillar has pointed out that, nowadays, what passes for education rarely prepares one for the life of the contemplative person. The first reforms will take place where they are needed most, namely, in education.)
Eventually, this solution can be applied to every sector of the economy and we will have achieved the cashless economy we desire. When, in addition, it is no longer necessary to keep track of who consumes what, we will be able to escape from the tremendous burden of accounting under which we now suffer. (I would like to describe in detail the sequence of payments and trail of paperwork generated by one visit to a gastro-enterologist, but the reader can easily imagine such a nightmare. Now, for a moment, imagine medicine without the process of acquiring insurance, deciding among competing plans, paying for insurance, accounting for the payments to and from the insurance company, correcting the clerical errors, following follow-up letters with still more follow-up letters only to have a claim denied for no particular reason. I have seen my doctors’ medical files on me. They are about one-third as voluminous as my own files accounting for my payments. Money takes more paperwork than medicine?!)
As most of us realize by now, electoral politics is not a useful route to democracy; moreover, representative democracy is a contradiction in terms [14]. The transition to a small nearly nonexistent government with only a few spokespersons chosen randomly is discussed elsewhere. Eventually the notion of the sovereign state will disappear in favor of small eco-communities governed by consensus (if at all). This is discussed under Decentralization.
In the case of government, randomly selected representatives will interpret the will of all of the people, as expressed frequently by modem or phone, while respecting the rights of minorities. They will represent us in international relations and coordinate the relations between a very small nonintrusive government and the private institutions that compute various economic plans and perform other services formerly performed by bureaucrats. In private enterprise, the representatives will interpret the will of the workers. I am not too concerned about the details of the random or quasi-random process of selection. People should not be elected to a sequence of increasingly important offices. We are trying to prevent the rise of leaders. I give this an entire chapter in the book [2]. People could be removed from office before the end of their terms by referendum, which should be easy to initiate in case someone isn’t working out. In a changed world, this might not be as ugly as an impeachment. If our attitudes changed, it might be painless. Short terms of office might make the learning period seem disproportionately long and long terms might make it excessively difficult for representatives to return to “normal” life. In any case, no matter how popular or successful a spokesperson might be, after a fixed term expires he or she must return to “private” life. Perhaps institutions might afford a learning period before and a readjustment period after. Perhaps office holders might be selected from among people who had received a suitable education, but that could lead to abuses.
But, is there a practical first step that could be taken now by people who accept this theory? In a sense, steps have been taken already. Rural people in Massachusetts have begun issuing Farm Dollars, backed by the full faith and credit of farmers’ future crops, to cut the federal and local governments out of their lives [15]. (If they began to trust each other and had enough faith, they might someday stop counting even the Farm Dollars.) Also, Deli Dollars have been introduced elsewhere [15]. Clearly, government maintains its principal hold on us through taxation as the police and army cannot be everywhere. Nor, is it clear that the majority of American military personnel would allow themselves to be used against the American people. So, we could drop out.
Nowadays, accountability within industry is divided among the shareholders, the boards of directors, the managers, and the workers. This is a scenario ripe for abuse as each group can shift the blame to the others. The only group that is indispensable is the workers and that is the group we should retain and vest all responsibility and control in. Workers will own the means of production personally but in the sense of custodianship. This is not the sort of ownership that can be transferred. Workers might elect managers from among themselves or managers might be chosen by their performance on standardized fair tests. Someday every worker will be qualified to manage because of universal education and because people who cannot cope will no longer have to participate in economic enterprises as they must do now for economic (extrinsic) reasons, i.e., to make a living. When this new ideal is achieved, managers, who might by that time be mere spokespersons, should be chosen randomly to prevent injustice. We see how badly elections fail to assure democracy in our political system and that failing should be addressed too.
The compelling reason why this system might be instituted without the abuses we now observe is that enterprises including collective enterprises can be simplified tremendously in a decentralized society. Nowadays, the building of a bridge across a river in Vermont may involve the input of thousands of people directly – legislators, entrepreneurs, lawyers, activists, special interests, engineers, construction workers, judges, etc. – and millions of people indirectly – who might vote in a referendum. In a decentralized noncompetitionistic world those who want to use the bridge are free to build it. They would have no reason to ignore the advice of ecologists and other forecasters, which would be available freely and on a volunteer basis. Gone would be the adversary nature of such a simple enterprise. One merely arranges for the materials to be appropriated from the economy and delivered to the construction site and follows the plans provided by the engineers who, presumably, are interested parties and will play a direct role in performing the labor of building a bridge. No one may be compelled to build a bridge to feed her children. People who build bridges intend to use them. Thus, management is replaced by consensus and government is replaced by the advice of professionals. We really don’t need politics to build a bridge.
The measures taken by ordinary people discussed under Equality of Wealth could be employed to facilitate equality of power now. I would like to see at least one activist or so-called grassroots organization actually operate on an egalitarian basis as discussed above. In the Future Forum , here in Houston, we managed to employ random methods for the period of existence of the group. The purpose of the group, however, was merely discussion, therefore the experiment was not very important. (See “The Future Forum: A Final Report”.)
Clearly, it is harmful to have people migrating all over the globe for other than personal adventures that would return them to their places of origin, therefore I do not favor immigration. People emigrate (permanently) for a number of reasons including (i) chasing their money if they come from a country that has been victimized by U.S. imperialism, (ii) to escape political persecution, in which case they should be spending their time arranging the overthrow of the unjust government in their land of origin, to which they plan to return, (iii) to exploit the people of the country they are invading, and (iv) because they have been invited by people who hope to hold down the wages paid to natives doing the same work, especially science and engineering.
In view of (i) above, Americans must cease imperialist ventures at once. It should be illegal for Americans to do business in foreign counties (imperialism) and for foreigners to do business in America (colonization). Clearly, ownership of any kind constitutes doing business. American citizens doing business in person overseas should be refused re-entry into the United States and all of their domestic assets should be confiscated. All foreign assets in the U.S. should be confiscated and assigned to the workers if that makes sense or divided among American citizens if that does. (Constitutional quibbles about “due process of law” or “just compensation” can be managed appropriately.). Foreign trade must be banned as it is always unfair.
Clearly, trading one’s natural resources for currency is a bad deal, as the price never accounts for the work done by nature. The citizens of the selling nation could generate greater real wealth by processing the raw materials at home if they are not wise enough to conserve them. Trade of manufactured objects is unfair to both buyer and seller. Why should Indonesians make shirts for me? Why should I rob an American of the opportunity to practice the craft of shirt making? We brag that our net export of chemicals helps ameliorate our trade deficit, which, clearly, is a problem as it contributes to colonialism, but why should we breathe air polluted to make chemicals for Germans?
Clearly, the old reason for foreign trade, namely, comparative advantage, no longer applies as Swiss watches can be made as well in Detroit as in Zurich. The exceptions are so small in number that I do not know of any and even these could be corrected by universal education and sharing of natural resources when it is absolutely necessary to do so to ensure equality of wealth. Amusingly, we once thought that good marijuana had to come from abroad, but now the best quality “pot” is grown right here in the good old USA. Mightn’t the same be true of coffee, assuming people prefer it over more efficacious artificial “speed”? Some people attribute such good health as the Chinese people do enjoy to the fact that they eat only indigenous foods. That might argue against the necessity to transplant foreign crops.
Obviously, natural resources are distributed unequally around the globe and perhaps we need some sort of weak world federalism to help us correct these inequities without strings attached, i.e., without any payments A weak world federalism to distribute essential natural resources without payments should be discussed in detail. It is very important. By “weak” I mean without the power to pass laws.
Eventually national borders will disappear, but by that time the world will be divided into small decentralized eco-communities and the evils of trade and imperialism will not create significant difficulties as they do now. Clearly, it is the intention of multi-national corporations with allegiance to no sovereign entity other than themselves to take over the world and reduce it to the Orwellian nightmare. Eventually, I need to explain why I believe this is true.
I shall explain how imperialism and colonization works and why even foreign aid is a tool of depredation. The emergy analysis developed in the chapter on thermodynamics, emergy, and economics will be an enormous aid to understanding this. Compared to the evil done by the American Empire, the Roman Empire was a mere shell game. The renunciation of imperialism will permit the United States to dispose of its huge military machine and eliminate the temptation to indulge in military adventurism abroad, which will no longer serve the economic agendas of the acquisitive power elite among us. But, first, we had better disarm Germany and especially Japan as we are entitled to do as the victors in World War II. Japan and Germany continue to have dangerous dreams of empire. This is obvious. Also, we needn’t be afraid of terrorism when we are no longer doing anything that makes people want to hurt us, so we wouldn’t have to violate the Fourth Amendment at airports.
The compelling reason for decentralization is the disappearance of our storehouses of high-grade energy, especially petroleum. Sustainable energy cannot supply more than about fifteen terawatt years per year and that is a hard technological limit not likely ever to be exceeded. The best we can do is more likely to be between five and ten terawatt years per year, realistically speaking. Only about one hundred terawatts goes into photosynthesis. Is it imaginable that we could harvest 10% of that? Is it conceivable that man will ever develop a solar collector more efficient than a tree, which has taken millions of years to evolve. (Alfred) Joyce Kilmer’s famous poem takes on a new scientific metaphorical meaning! (The fraction of incident solar energy absorbed by a tree may be small, but it maintains itself, reproduces itself, etc., which a non-living device may not do; therefore, its economic efficiency will be higher in the sense of emergy analysis.)
In any case, it seems unlikely that we can afford energy for transportation. This will be discussed at length. We should, therefore, phase out the building of roads, drilling for oil (except to help eliminate the need for oil), airports, steamships, automobiles, airplanes, and limit considerably the manufacture of railroad equipment, although we will need a few single-track lines connecting our eco-communities to effect economies of scale. We must budget some of our declining petroleum reserves to help people from large urban areas move near farms and forests (deurbanization). We might begin with the voluntary relocation of the victims of severe floods, earthquakes, and other natural disasters that indicate the folly of living where they do.
We must do much more research on sustainable energy, economic planning, and community planning. We shall not give up our knowledge of electronics, quantum theory, and higher math, but we had better begin to salvage what we can of the tribal wisdom that we will need to tread lightly on the earth like Indians living in harmony with nature. Thus, we had better begin trying to learn from the few tribal people upon whom we have not yet committed genocide. We must begin to treat them as valuable endangered resources as well as brothers and sisters. Clearly, our lives might be enhanced by scientific knowledge, but we had better stop using it to subdue Nature rather than to create a partnership with her. This will provide opportunities for many participants whose work in business, commerce, government, and the military will no longer be needed.
This is an important aspect of our theory and asks for a significant change in the point of view of many readers. We have classified the prohibitions on accumulation of wealth and power, imperialism, and colonization as delegislation because a few laws can eliminate thousands of laws – if not millions of laws. Most of the law protects the Haves from the Have-Nots and supports the biases and superstitions of the masses. Eventually, we wish to replace laws with rational morals. With wealth equilibrated and no way to accumulate more than anyone else, most laws are unnecessary, but we can still expect some people to violate even rational morals. I suggest the following program: (i) legalize the victimless crimes, namely, drugs, prostitution, all kinds of consensual sex, gambling (which will soon disappear anyway as will prostitution), (ii) abandon capital punishment (the argument for this is irrefragable and was given in the essay “On Crime and Punishment” [3]), (iii) gradually eliminate jails (remember, the incentives for crime will be disappearing) and reject the notion of revenge or punishment, and, finally, (iv) treat violators of commonly accepted rational morals like captured heads of sovereign states, i.e., better than we treat ourselves. This may seem very strange, but I hope to show the reader that it is reasonable.
In keeping with respect for persons who do not share our sense of right and wrong, I suggest that we create easy access to forums of dissent, i.e., open TV stations, journals, and newspapers (if indeed newspapers have not been replaced by computer bulletin boards). (I have heard it mentioned that the computer, the newspaper, television, radio, and the television will all be replaced by one instrument that will be centered around the telephone, which, after all, links many people in the world already. I only hope that we can spare the energy, or rather the emergy, for such an enterprise.) Freedom of dissent is the cornerstone of liberty as no one is obliged to accept any system of morals – even the morals presented here.
In the book, I shall discuss why I believe all of these difficulties are surmountable; but, for now, I think I had better list them. The reader can then begin thinking about them himself.
1. The point of this essay is to prove the main theorem, namely, the abandonment of competition for status is a necessary and sufficient condition for the sustainable happiness of all of humanity. (Status is a person’s position in a social hierarchy based upon (i) material wealth, (ii) political or managerial power or negotiable influence, i. e., intellectual, personal, or economic influence that can be used to acquire wealth or to acquire more power or that has been acquired because one has status, or (iii) negotiable fame, i. e., fame that might be used to acquire wealth, power, or negotiable influence or has been acquired because of prior acquisitions. Importance is a person’s position in a social hierarchy based upon (i) influence over other people that can affect their attitudes, opinions, and decisions, i. e., non-negotiable influence, or (ii) wide recognition of excellence in a person’s character or achievements, i. e., non-negotiable fame.)
2. We must convince the reader that we have a reasonable conception of human happiness. Some critics will claim that human nature is well-understood and that it is incapable of cooperation to the extent called for here. Man needs to struggle for his survival, they would say. I claim that we know as much about human nature as we know about everything else, i.e., practically nothing. In particular, we have not observed man in a cooperative society. The last chance to do so is rapidly disappearing as the few tribal people who practice cooperation are being exterminated systematically. I am aware that some of my conclusions seem to indicate a special knowledge of human nature. Hopefully, this “special” knowledge will be sufficiently well-documented, perhaps even given a scientific basis. Otherwise, it must be included in the philosophical assumptions and articles of faith listed in the book.
3. We need to show that materialism causes catastrophic instances of tyranny, falsity, and geophagy and that without materialism we are unlikely to encounter serious instances of tyranny, falsity, and geophagy that we cannot handle. (Also, we would like to show that tyranny, falsity, and geophagy are equivalent to one another in terms of incidence; i.e., either they are all present or none of them is present.) Actually, this is not too troublesome. It is done rather completely in Part II of the book.
4. We must prove that our system of axiomatic morality is complete and that it eliminates gray areas. Despite the radical conclusions derived from the Freedom Axiom (restricting procreation and commerce), acceptance of the three moral axioms has a decent chance for universal acceptance. However, as things stand now, every religious group will want to add its own special and (essentially) arbitrary morals. Jews and Muslims will want to prohibit eating pork. One of the sects will want to prohibit blood transfusions. This is not a problem so long as no one tries to apply these special (taboo) morals to the entire population. That’s why the battles over abortion and drug prohibition are so important. Laws against abortion and taking drugs are violations of the Freedom Axiom. Even supposing we can overcome these barriers to rational morality, we anticipate some difficulty when we announce that (under most circumstances) no one shall prohibit a child having sex with an animal as long as both parties consent. Even the most open-minded among us might have a problem recognizing that even that cannot be forbidden under every circumstance. I shall have much more to say about rational sexual morals elsewhere.
5. In particular, and most difficult, we must convince the reader that the Freedom Axiom implies the necessity for equality of wealth and power. We need to show that society will function under these conditions even though we exact no penalty for not contributing to the economy, moreover society will fail utterly without equality of wealth and power. Basic equality of wealth and basic equality of power among all people is a sine qua non.
6. Then we must prove three difficult points: (i) society can function without leaders, in fact it must function without leaders because from among many leaders at least a few tyrants are bound to arise and we cannot afford tyrants; (ii) we can effect social change without leaders; and (iii) we can prevent the rise of leaders. (Since we do not wish to cultivate political leaders, we do not advocate forming political parties – unless we can suitably redefine the political party.) This is a very troublesome point. The best we shall be able to do is provide a thought experiment (a case study) in which a society changes radically without a distinguished leader. We will then leave it up to faith that this can actually occur.
7. We must show that the church, the sovereign state, and business (in all of its ramifications) are harmful and useless and that, in point of fact, we can and must do much better. We must show that violations of (irrational) taboo morals, e.g., sexual morals, are not harmful (under normal circumstances), but violations of the morals proposed in this essay, e.g., hoarding of wealth, are. This is easy. The careful and thoughtful reader should be convinced by now.
8. We need to prove the absolute necessity of economic shrinkage and determine as closely as possible how abundantly we might live while sharing wealth essentially equally. We need to convince ourselves that it will be possible to stabilize or shrink the population under these circumstances. (If people are adequately fed, what is to stop them from having too many children?) The necessity proof is given in the chapter on thermodynamics, emergy, and economics. The problem of population stabilization will be discussed fully. I think that the combination of removal of the usual incentives to excessive procreation [(i) likelihood of infant mortality, (ii) use of children as labor, (iii) expectations of being supported in later life by children, (iv) imagining that one has achieved a sort of immortality, and (v) use of children to propagate belief systems] and a thorough grounding of children, especially, in the immorality of excessive procreation will allow us to stabilize the population without coercion.
9. We must show that people will produce wealth in order to be effective and hence happy. They will share this wealth equally and refuse compensation for it because that would create a contingency that would diminish their own personal freedom. These ideas might not be acceptable until more scientific experiments are performed. I shall refer to ongoing research [5] and suggest additional experiments in the sequel.
10. We need to prove the immorality and harmfulness of foreign trade and dispel the myth of the global economy forever. The global economy is the new Big Lie. (The old Big Lie was the international communist conspiracy. It, too, was used as a “boogie man” to frighten workers into docile compliance with the best interests of capitalists.) Opponents of “free trade” ask for fair trade, but I have never encountered an example of a trade that would be fair. (I am not opposed to adjustments in disparities of natural abundance without compensation or strings attached, but this comes much later.)
11. We will need to convince the reader of the correctness and practicality of our new theory of crime and punishment. This will necessitate the rejection of all organized religions that we know of. I suppose this makes our task nearly impossible in the unfortunate case where the reader is already a “believer”. I have never witnessed a person being talked out of his religion, but I have never seen a proof that it cannot be done either.
12. Finally, we must have faith that appropriate social change can occur. I, personally, do not see a way to prove that it will. Of course, Mother Nature will ensure that some kind of change will occur, but we might not like it.
What people who are provided with the necessities of life really want, rather than wealth and power, is satisfaction, which comes only from spiritual growth and creative endeavor. One need only observe the behavior of people who are actually achieving satisfaction to verify this spiritual law. Recent research in intrinsic motivation by John Condry of Cornell University [17] and Ed Deci and Richard Ryan of The University of Rochester [5,18] seems to bear this out. Research seems to show that people who are promised rewards to complete a given task are less creative and do a worse job than those who are promised nothing.
People who love their work will work, or shall we call it play? Also, people who feel a responsibility to society or are just plain reasonable will be productive. Hopefully, education will make both work and leisure enjoyable and fulfilling. Also, education might make our system of morals very attractive on aesthetic and utilitarian grounds, but children will be taught to examine the fundamental philosophical assumptions closely and often. The most onerous work is most amenable to automation. It is more efficient to invest in technology, humanized technology, than in labor, therefore, more and more labor will be transferred to technology, which is more fun anyway, although I probably could not convince a carpenter of that, but there will be plenty to do with our hands. (Actually, the carpenter’s craft is humanized technology and one of the best kinds.) Finally, it is efficient to invest in science before investing in technology. Thus, more and more human effort will be transferred to science, which, according to many, is the most fun of all, especially if one doesn’t have to write proposals or take any flak from the system.
Planning will be an exercise in applied math, not applied politics – mixed-integer nonlinear programming, for example. The planners will have the power to find the best solutions given data supplied by the people, i.e., no more power than anyone else. Producers will be free to select the plan of their choice. This will not have an undue effect on the input-output matrices [19] because plans computed independently will be nearly interchangeable since everyone will have access to the best scientific techniques. Trade secrets will be pointless. Although globally optimal plans might entail combinatorial complexity [20, 21] and be impossible to calculate on a computer, even sub-optimal plans will be amazingly superior to the way we run our economy now. This requires a proof, which I will attempt to supply, Milton Friedman’s theories notwithstanding. (It is easy to see that his premises are never met in “real life”.)
People who do not accept the system of morality that determines acceptable behavior must be treated with the respect due to sovereign heads of states. They are not criminals. People who accept the moral basis but violate it are criminals. However, we will be able to afford to expend some effort in dealing with criminals humanely because crime, as a manifestation of class and race warfare, will not be ubiquitous.
Conservatives think that the average person is unfit to serve as a spokesperson, communicator, or organizer. I believe that any deficiencies in these respects from which the average person may suffer are due to conservative policies, primarily the lies that are told in school and the grooming of children to be cogs in the giant capitalistic economic machine.
I expect that the impediments to educating everyone to the full extent of his or her capacity will be removed by telling the truth in the schools and by educating people in their own best interests rather than in the best interests of business. People who feel that they are unfit are free to refuse to serve. But, most important of all, no one will wield the power or carry the responsibility that leaders carry in government and business today. These jobs, for which people are selected randomly, have only slightly more visibility than other jobs and that is the only circumstance from which society needs to be protected. I suggest a new pedagogy, actually based somewhat on Goethe’s William Meister’s Apprenticeship and Travels [22].
[We teach music first, then geometry, then verbalization (reading and writing in our native language and some classical and modern foreign languages) before we teach “facts”. By the age of ten, children should be able to recognize intervals, scales, and chords. This prepares the way for mathematics! Notice that music, mathematics, and verbalization are, in part, languages, but languages are actually tools for thinking as well as the key to communication with other people and all knowledge. {An essay on this new pedagogy is in the planning stage. 6-22-2004}]
People often imagine that human nature is well-understood. As stated above, I do not believe this is true. Our understanding of human nature, like our understanding of everything else, is primitive. In particular, we have no idea how people will behave in a cooperative society. We have observed them only in a very corrupt world. Even our observation of “primitive” tribal people, who may be living somewhat without competition, or competition less savage than business, leaves much to be desired. We always seem to bring our corrupting influences with us. Thus, I don’t think the human-nature argument is well-founded.
On the other hand, my arguments may appear to assume a great deal about human nature. I believe that is a fair criticism. Hopefully, the ideas about intrinsic motivation can be proved. I believe my other observations are relatively likely to be true. Undoubtedly, I have made claims to a better understanding of human nature than my political opponents can lay claim to and I believe that the future will bear me out.
To the conservatives, who do not recognize the need for a complete transformation of society in which an entirely new social-economic-political system is constructed from the ashes of the corrupt and obsolete institutions of the Western world, I must address eight questions:
1. What do you intend to do about the homeless, the disenfranchised, the welfare class, the working poor, the millions of Americans who are not covered by adequate health insurance, and the intolerable conditions in the Third World?
2. How do you intend to address the intolerable injustice of two legal systems – one for the rich, another for the poor – and what about the incredible disparity in legal clout between corporations and ordinary individuals?
3. How are you going to protect yourselves from an enraged “criminal” (soon to become “terrorist”) class?
4. How are you going to eliminate environmental pollution in the face of industrial competition, both domestic and foreign? Small reductions in pollution can lead to economic savings, but we can prove that it is still more efficient economically to pollute unacceptably than not to pollute beyond acceptable limits in a capitalist-style economy.
5. How are you going to eliminate the threat of war?
6. In view of the high probability that the winner of campaigns for elected office will continue to be the candidate that spends the most money on advanced scientific marketing techniques, how do you intend to restore democracy to America?
7. Why must I concern myself with money (to hold my own in an improper game) simply because you insist upon living your life under a cloak of greed and fear?
8. Finally, what do you intend to do about the situation described in “Thermodynamics, Emergy, and Economics”, namely, ten billion people living on an energy budget that is likely to be less than ten terawatts per year (1 kilowatt per person) because of the exhaustion of high-grade fossil fuel reserves?
The minimal changes required to save the world, then, are equality of wealth and power in a quasi-steady-state world (with a stabilized or shrinking human population). This can be achieved by (i) abandoning money and other instruments for hoarding wealth, (ii) abandoning business, trade, commerce, free enterprise, capitalism, or whatever you want to call it, (iii) embracing worker ownership of the means of production, (iv) reducing the size of government to practically nothing while replacing a corrupt and incomprehensible system of laws based on taboos, superstitions, and lies with rational morals and abandoning the institutions of punishment and revenge, (v) abandoning the institution of leadership, which is really a eulogistic term for bosses, and (vi) establishing small, decentralized eco-communities that are practically independent economically. I hope no one rejects these ideas without showing in detail why they are wrong. If we do what is only “realistic”, we may end up doing something that is useless or harmful. The author regrets that the discussion of the details of the social transformations advocated in this essay will have to be deferred.
1. Shaw, George Bernard, Preface to The Millionairess, Penguin Books, Baltimore (1961). [back to text]
2. Wayburn, Thomas L., On the Preservation of Species, American Policy Inst., Houston (1995). 1-[back to text] 2-[back to text] 3-[back to text] 4-[back to text]
3. Wayburn, Thomas L., Papers of Thomas Wayburn, Vol. I, American Policy Inst., Houston (1997). 1-[back to text] 2-[back to text] 3-[back to text] 4-[back to text] 5-[back to text] 6-[back to text]
4. Marx, Karl, and Frederick Engels, The Communist Manifesto, Washington Square Press, New York (1964). [back to text]
5. Deci, Edward L. and Richard M. Ryan, Intrinsic Motivation and Self-Determination in Human Behavior, Plenum Press, New York (1985). [back to text]
6. Vonnegut, Kurt, Hocus Pocus, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York (1990) p.41. [back to text]
7. Bentham, Jeremy, Bentham's Handbook of Political Fallacies, Ed. Harold A. Larrabee, Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore (1952). [back to text]
8. Odum, Howard T. and Jan E. Arding, Emergy Analysis of Shrimp Mariculture in Ecuador, Center for Wetlands, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611, 1991. [back to text]
9. Ehrlich, Anne H. and Paul R. Ehrlich, Earth, Franklin Watts, New York (1987). [back to text]
10. Russell, Bertrand, On Ethics, Sex, and Marriage, Ed. Al Seckel, Prometheus Books, Buffalo, New York (1987). [back to text]
11. Popper, Karl R., Conjectures and Refutations, Basic Books, New York (1965). [back to text]
12. Schumacher, E. F., Small Is Beautiful, Economics as if People Mattered, Perennial Library, Harper and Row, New York (1973). [back to text]
13. Shaw, George Bernard, “Preface to Androcles and the Lion,” Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan, Major Barbara, Androcles & the Lion, Modern Library, New York (1952). [back to text]
14. Lewis, Rob, "Pursuing Democracy", SA: An Opinionated Journal of Opinionated Essays, 1, No.1, (1991). [back to text]
15. Swann, Robert, “2cd Issue of Berkshire Farm Notes”, Newsletter of the E. F. Schumacher Society, Box 76, RD 3, Great Barrington, Massachusetts 01230, Winter 1990 /1991. [back to text]
16. Condry, John, “Enhancing Motivation: A Social Developmental Perspective”, in Advances in Motivation and Achievement, Vol. 5: Enhancing Motivation, Eds. Martin L. Maehr and Douglas A. Kleiber, JAI Press, Greenwich, Connecticut (1987). [back to text]
17. Deci, Edward L. and Richard M. Ryan, "A Motivational Approach to Self: Integration in Personality," Nebraska Symposium on Motivation 1990, Dept. of Psychology, University of Rochester (1991). [back to text]
18. Herendeen, R., “An Energy Input-Output Matrix for the United States, 1963”, User’s Guide, CAC Doc. No. 69, Center for Advanced Computation, University of Illinois, March, 1973. [back to text]
19. Traub, J., and G. Wasilkowski, H. Woznikowski, Information-Based Complexity, Academic Press, New York (1988). [back to text]
20. Kowalski, M., K. Sikorski, and F. Stenger, Select Topics in Approximation and Computation, Oxford University Press, New York (1995). [back to text]
21. Goethe, William Meister’s Apprenticeship and Travels, Thomas Carlyle, translator, A. L. Burt, New York (1839). [back to text] [The book hyperlink is to a book for sale. It will be replaced by the book on-line if I can find it.]
October 12, 1990
Revised July 30, 1992
Revised October 6, 1994