John Rawls and Deep Economy

John Rawls was concerned with what we call distributive justice and the question of what we should do about inequalities in society. Should goods be distributed equally to everyone? Should we permit vast differences in social and economic status? How are justice and socioeconomic opportunity tied to each other?

This is relevant to Bill McKibben's book Deep Economy in two ways.

1. First, we can use the justice framework to make the case that our social system (that is, our system of social policy, ethics, and economic exchange) is conventional. We have a certain social/political/economic system and it produces certain results. But we don’t have to have that system. It might be the most just system, or it might undermine justice. If it does not produce the maximum degree of justice, then we should try to change it so that it is more just. In particular, we should always be working to try to improve the status of those that have the least, and we should always try to give people equality of opportunity.

This observation supports McKibben in his attempt to rethink economics, and in particular in his attempt to replace some market trends with a deeper concern for community. He argues very much like someone in the justice framework would: he argues that deeper and more robust communities will make people happier and will be more economically stable. This last point is important, because in the justice framework, people are risk-averse.

2. A second way that Rawls’s justice framework can be linked to the book is McKibben’s recognition that for people who are living at a subsistence level, access to global markets makes more sense than pursuing deeper, local economies. That’s because McKibben, like Rawls, knows that the concerns of people who have the least social status and economic goods will be different than those who have plenty.

If you're interested in more of my thoughts about what Deep Economy gets right (and wrong), you can read what I've written here.

Citizens and Consumers

In class yesterday we watched a video about Carrotmob.org. The idea behind it is that people want to do good, and one source of average people's power is the money they spend. So the company behind Carrotmob does the footwork of organizing ways to help people create good effects by deciding where to spend their money. In the video we watched, one food market agreed to put 22% of their Carrotmob-acquired profits toward increasing their energy efficiency.

I asked for your critical response to the video, and there were several good insights. One was that people might be traveling so far to participate, that it effectively wipes out the environmental good that's created. Another is that it can be inconvenient to participate, taking some extra time. And if it does take extra time, one wonders what else could be done with that time instead, such as some kind of service or personal action (don't we all have ways we could make our own lives energy efficient, if that's what we're into?) rather than standing in a checkout line. That is, does it create change in the right proportion to the perception of creating change?

In general, this sort of effort raises some difficult questions. Should there be skepticism about a for-profit company set up to facilitate environmental and social activism? Or is this a case where the people behind Carrotmob should be applauded for finding a way to set up a company that makes profits (well, presumably they will profit if the model works) by encouraging people and businesses to make a better world?

A different video that I've shown in class before--one which is perhaps more radical and more thought-provoking about economic and social arrangements--is "The Story of Stuff." Implicitly, this video criticizes the Carrotmob approach by questioning the culture of consumption and showing that it is a historical, intentionally created social arrangement. This gives a political valence to DIYers, MAKErs, and hackers, such as Mark Frauenfelder and Carla Sinclair, who visited RIT last month.

Hyper-Individualism

"All for One, and One for All": we discussed the benefits of tight communities--and the disadvantages, such as a loss of privacy, of options, and (sometimes) freedoms.

We can see McKibben's argument as being implicitly utilitarian: that local economies produce more satisfaction and less harm for more people than our current economy. How would someone argue with him on this point? Probably, it would have to be done on the basis of showing that his calculation of the benefits and disadvantages left something out.

One such disadvantage (which we did not discuss) is the possibility that tighter communities are related to higher levels of conflict between different communities--nationalism, racism, and the policing of ingroup/outgroup loyalties.

It's also plausible to see McKibben as relying on an argument from virtue ethics. You might read his argument not as a strict calculation of utility or preferences, but rather as an argument that says that certain qualities make for more virtuous communities and certain communities lend themselves to the flourishing of a certain kind of good character. He thinks our material and economic culture value things, people, and services that are "fast, cheap, and easy." Instead, he thinks we should build cities and economies which are deliberate, valuable, and lasting. This would promote virtues which are currently neglected, such as loyalty, responsibility, creativity, etc.

A question to consider is whether the only way to achieve the postive results that McKibben attributes is to cultivate cohesive communities that are local in geographical terms. Does technology permit us to participate in communities that are tight and supportive but distributed in space? Although McKibben is concerned with the transport of goods and the environmental toll of transportation, our economy is increasingly based in services, and knowledge and communication are no longer bound by space.

Along these lines, last fall I heard a report on NPR that, for a variety of reasons, local banks are much less affected by the banking crisis than the large conglomerates are. You can listen to the story here.

Also, a former student passed along this interesting timed map of WalMart's spread.

More vs. Better

Earlier this week we discussed the first chapter of Bill McKibben's Deep Economy in class, in which he examines the economic rationale for continued growth, considers some problems with economics, and lays out the framework for his book's argument. He promises to show us that there are alternatives to economic growth that are more environmentally sustainable over the long run and that don't sacrifice happiness or social stability. Will his arguments and examples be convincing?

We should keep our eye on the three points he promises to develop. These are challenges to the idea that there are no limits to economic growth (p.11).

1. One is political: growth, at least as we now create it, is producing more inequality than prosperity, more insecurity than progress.
2. [T]he second argument draws on physics and chemistry as much as on economics; it is the basic objection that we do not have the energy needed to keep the magic going, and can we deal with the pollution it creates?
3. The third argument is both less obvious and even more basic: growth is no longer making us happy.

The central claim of this chapter is that for 19th century utilitarianism (which is the foundation of our contemporary economic outlook), when society aimed at “MORE” economic growth and material wellbeing, it could ultimately achieve the ethical aim of "BETTER" human welfare and opportunities to pursue happiness. McKibben claims that in the U.S. at the beginning of the 21st century, getting "MORE" stuff and achieving a “BETTER” quality of life are no longer aims which are in sync with one another.

Utilitarians measure what is good according to the total of human happiness. That is, overall happiness provides the criterion for morality. If we had a science of happiness, it would contribute to a science of ethics.

Interestingly, we do now have a science of happiness which has been developed mostly by psychologists, but also by economists, anthropologists, and political scientists. They've found out that people are often mistaken about what will make them happy. It turns out that we're not very good at predicting our future happiness. There is a difference between what people anticipate will affect their happiness and what really makes them happy. If you think this is an interesting question, you might like this bloggingheads.tv interview with Eric Weiner, the author of a book on happiness.

Any further reactions to this chapter?