Ashwani and all, I think the critical point that Brian and Herman and others
like them make is that, while it may be difficult to manage an economy to
achieve steady-state, it is almost certainly impossible to do when the reigning
paradigm is that growth is good. When every policy or economic decision is
aimed at growing the GNP/GDP it is very unlikely that we will achieve a steady
state. I think to suggest that steady-state economy implies 'staying put'
creates a straw man - yes, as individuals, communities, a species we are
inevitably going to change over time. Steady state implies (I believe, in the
context we are talking here) zero-growth. That doesn't mean 'no change'. Best.
Jeff Houlahan
-----Original Message-----
From: Ashwani Vasishth <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU
Date: Mon, 2 Apr 2007 21:58:22 -0700
Subject: Re: Equilibrium/Steady State and Complexity/Evolution
At 12:21 AM +0000 4/3/07, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> - no politburo required when the democratic rider is strong enough for the
>capitalist horse.
>
Respectfully , Brian, that's a rather substantial caveat to slip in
to the conversation. All evidence that I see from tracking everyday
politics and policy shows me that democracy is steadily losing out to
corporate capitalism--every where. Not only does it no longer matter
that people should get what they want, people often don't know what
they should want. (And even when they know what they want and do get
it, it turns out to be connected to all sorts of things that they
definitely don't want.) Then what is to be done?
But more importantly, show me the mechanism that would keep any
economy at an actual "steady state." It seems to me that we
currently expend huge amounts of effort in attempting to "keep the
economy on an even keel," but even there, we fail more often than
not. The idea that we can stay put, in any fashion, seems to me
completely an unnatural state of affairs, except if it is taken
metaphorically. (And then it does very little for us, near as I can
tell.)
I like Daly et al., and agree with them about the need to manage for
a different set of objectives than physical or morphological growth.
I buy the quite meaningful distinction between growth and
development. But the root reason(s) that an ecosystem approach is
imperative to the management of life is because the world is a
dynamical place that, further, can not be singularly defined. Show
me what specific steps we could take--both as individuals and as
groups (ontogeny and phylogeny both have standing in this, yes?)--to
get away from growth and toward a steady state?
I don't doubt in the least that there are a host of policies that
would move us toward development and away from growth (adopting Cobb
et al.s' Genuine Progress Indicators is only one example), but how
does one stay put, in life, without first needing to deny both
complexity and evolution?
By the way, a wonderful history of the idea of equilibrium in US
social science is:
Russett, Cynthia E. 1966. The Concept of Equilibrium in American
Social Thought. New Haven, London: Yale University Press.
And on the idea of evolutionary progress, see:
Nitecki, Matthew H. (ed.). 1988. Evolutionary Progress. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Cheers,
-
Ashwani
Vasishth [EMAIL PROTECTED] (818) 677-6137
http://www.csun.edu/~vasishth/
http://www.myspace.com/ashwanivasishth
