Contemplating Economy Ecologically

Here’s a blog post from one of our Beardsley “Alumni”, Frank Callo.
I am attaching the first part of Frank’s discussion here.
For the rest of the bit, check out Frank’s blog here.
Frank’s an upstanding member of the Knoxville Permaculture Guild.

I told Frank he needed to read Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered

anywho…

give it up for Frank:

Contemplating economy ecologically

I’d like to talk a bit about the connection between the need to re localize and rescale economies and how this relates to avoiding the kind of economic upheaval we are experiencing right now. As the post title suggests, what I aim at is an economy that functions like an organic system. I will use the example of a bio-region as a model for this.

Broadly speaking, a bio-region, say a forested river valley, is a system involving a material base (soil nutrients and water) which utilizes solar energy to generate and maintain a population of living organisms. Ideally, as the population reaches a certain density, the processing of soil nutrients and solar energy is turned from population growth to maintaining stability in that population.

Such a system will display periodic fluctuations in its sub populations. For example, a particularly wet year might lead to exceptional vegetative growth. This in turn will mean an increase in the herbivore population of the Vally. It could be that the herbivore population will continue to grow until it overwhelms the plant population’s ability to sustain it. It might mean that the carnivore population will grow with the availability of food and will eventually overwhelm the herbivore population’s ability to sustain it. Despite such fluctuations the density of any sub population will keep close to an average over time. Finally, it is important to understand that the an important part of the material base of such systems is maintained by the corpses of burnt out organisms which are “down cycled” through the process of decomposition.

One of the noteworthy differences between a system like this and most economic systems is that growth is not the system’s goal. A healthy ecosystem is one that fills it’s niche and then maintains this level with as little fluctuation as possible. It could be said that the system “lives within its means”.

An important aspect of this “organic frugality” is that the organisms that benefit from the material base of the system eventually become part of this base. The tree may act as though its whole purpose for living is the nut that will grow into a new tree. Despite this, the leaves that fall from the tree each year, and eventually the tree itself, become part of the material base on which the whole system depends. The system as a whole allows broad opportunity for individual organisms and species to flourish. Never the less there is an under laying law at work, namely, that in the end everyone works for the good of the system as a whole. In spite of, or perhaps because of the ignorance of trees, squirrels and timber wolves to this law, no one tries to transgress the law.

Humans have devised many systems whereby they attempt to transgress the aforementioned law. Our economic systems, like many other institutions, present a temptation to transgress. I will not hesitate to state that this is folly. They also present an opportunity to use this law learned from nature to organize our lives in a way which will be harmonious with nature. The latter is the path of wisdom. I will now turn to specifically economic considerations to illustrate both paths.
Let us consider a certain kind of financial institution that was common in the US until about a half century ago, especially in small towns. Town’s folk would deposit their money into savings accounts. These accounts would form a pool of financial resources that could be drawn upon by other town’s folk in the form of loans. The interest levied on these loans would, in turn, provide depositors with a small amount of interest on their savings accounts.

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