|
Cook, Earl
Ferguson, Man, Energy, Society, Freeman.: 1976 ISBN 071670725X,
Page 203
Life in a high energy
society is in sharp contrast to life in a low energy society. Family and
community are subordinated to the state because most goods and services are
produced outside the family and because the means of social control do not
depend upon the family’s and community’s allocating status and inculcating
behavior. All goods come from production units much larger than the family
and for the most part outside the community. Services are performed by
specialists, only the more common of whom will be found within the immediate
community, and by consumer-operated power appliances. The centralization of
mass production and the proliferation of service centers require extensive
transportation and communication networks; the speeds at which bodies and
goods are moved, and words and pictures transmitted, become important
indicators of the vitality of a high energy society.
Jorge, Antonia.
Competition, Cooperation, Efficiency, and Social Organization. New
Jersey: 1978. ISBN 0838620264, Page 56
When we observe
modern technology mixed with a “backward” human factor in an underdeveloped
country, we know we must “modernize” the latter if we are to have a higher
degree of economic efficiency. Unfortunately, our present knowledge is not
sufficient to determine what efficiency values may be attached either to the
performance of labor under various organizational alternatives or to the
managerial and organizational forms that would result from the presence of
different “spirits” in the human beings involved.
Steve Weinberg, “Mr. Bottomline,” On
Earth Magazine, Spring 2003 Pages 34-5
John D. Graham is a brilliant theoretician who
achieved tenure at Harvard when he was thirty-two. Now, at forty-six, he is
the person journalists call the bush administration’s “regulatory czar.”
Every economically significant regulation drafted by every executive branch
agency to carry out the laws of Congress—on power plants or forest
conservation, on meat inspection or dioxin—must cross Graham’s desk before
it goes into force. He decides whether the protection is worth the price.
On environmental matters, his answer is often No.
Graham’s specialty is a long-established but
controversial number-crunching technique called cost-benefit analysis. Its
purpose is to quantify, in dollars, every cost and every benefit of a
possible course of action. Because Graham has spent his entire professional
life working to enshrine it (and its near cousin, risk analysis) at the
center of public policy, his nomination process was highly contentious. He
got thirty-seven “No” votes in the Senate—second only to attorney General
John Ashcroft, a better-known figure appointed to a much higher-profile
office. Among the letters sent to the Senate abut Graham was a critique
signed by fifty-one academics; they charged that he had repeatedly lowballed
health and environmental benefits, used “extreme and highly disputed”
economic assumptions, and issued hard-and fast opinions on complex medical
and scientific topics in which he had no training….
He religiously follows the advice he gave in a
1996 speech to the Heritage Foundation: Be careful what you say. At a
panel for the foundation (a think tank that champions weakening government
regulations), other speakers talked about “regulatory relief.” Graham said,
“I think our message should be that we want smarter, more efficient
regulation in order to get more protection at less cost. Therefore, the
word ‘relief’ is entirely inappropriate.”
Ralph Nader, Crashing the Party. New
York: St. Martin’s Press, 2002. ISBN 0312284330
Having lost key committee chairs and the
Congress to the Republicans and Republicrats, some Washington-based
environmental groups persuaded themselves that they could maneuver or
outsmart polluting companies through private deals with them. One such
deal, involving the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and their West
Coast representative Ralph Cavanagh, resulted in California’s electricity
deregulation fiasco. This idea was the brainstorm of John Bryson, CEO of
the Southern California Edison Company and NDRC. The latter thought that
competition in generating and distributing electricity would bring more
conservation, more renewable energy on-line, and cheaper prices for
consumers. Deregulation unanimously passed the California legislature in
1996 with very little public awareness or discussion. Our attempt in 1998
to repeal parts of this bad law by a statewide referendum - Proposition 9 -
failed by a wide margin due to a $45 million television campaign by the
utilities. Having given up on the prospect of regulation, California turned
over regulatory power to the electric companies, their holding companies,
and the large out-of-state power generators that have turned electricity
into a speculative commodity. The harshest price consequences for consumers
and taxpayers have resulted, shaking the state’s economy and increasing
costs to business. Any regulatory authority to stem this crisis was given
up in 1996 to corporate supremacy.
It is difficult to recall major advances in
fairness or living conditions in our country’s history that were not
struggled over or wrenched from the avaricious grasp of the rulers by the
ruled. I am not speaking of charity here. As I said repeatedly at rallies
all over the country, a society that has more justice is a society that
needs less charity.
That night I kept coming back to the critical
medium called word of mouth which, by the way, made this major outpouring of
Bostonians and college students possible. “Replace some of the small talk
with exciting political talk about the future of this country,” I urged at
the rally.
Complex, changing societies need more public or
citizen time for a more just society if our private time is to be enjoyable,
peaceful, safe, and productive. Each person has a contribution to make. It
is sometimes useful to evoke a metaphor from the natural world. The great
natural asset of our country which is the Mississippi River start with a
drop of water in northern Minnesota. One drop joins with other drops to
form a tiny rivulet that joins with other rivulets to form a brook, which
together with other brooks makes a stream that with other streams makes a
river, which together with other rivers swells the mighty Mississippi. So,
too, is the case with millions of citizens, watering the life-expanding
potential of a functioning democracy open to fresh ideas and replenishing
initiatives.
Page 319
1. Enact legislation that mandates publicly
financed public elections and broad reforms of the electoral process.
Strengthen citizen participation in our political economy.
2. Enact living-wage laws, strengthen
worker health and safety laws, and repeal Taft-Hartley and other
obstructions to collective bargaining and worker rights.
3. Issue environmental protection standards
to systematically reduce damaging environmental toxins and to promote
sustainable technologies.
4. Provide full Medicare coverage for
everyone and revamp our national programs for prevention of disease and
trauma.
5. Launch a national mission to abolish
poverty, as other Western democracies have done, based on proposals made
long ago by conservatives, liberals, and progressives.
6. Design and implement a national security
policy to counter violence and the silent mass violence of global diseases,
environmental devastation, and extreme poverty. Reduce waste and corporate
domination of defense budgets—a wasteful defense i s a weak defense. Wage
peace and advance nonviolence by education and by foreseeing and
forestalling global perils.
7. Renegotiate NAFTA and GATT to be
democratic and to be “pull-up,” not “pull-down,” trade agreements that
subordinate labor, consumer, and environmental standards to trade matters.
8. End criminal justice system
discrimination, reject the failed war on drugs, and replace for-profit
corporate prisons with superior public institutions.
9. Defend and strengthen the civil justice
system, apply criminal laws against corporate crime, and fully prosecute
consumer fraud and abuses. Expand consumer, worker, and children’s health,
safety, and economic rights.
10. Strengthen investor-shareholder rights,
remedies, and authority over managers and officers and boards of directors
so that those who own the companies also control them. End the massive
corporate welfare schemes that distort and misallocate public budgets.
Reintroduce the historic function of corporate chartering as an instrument
of ensuring corporate accountability and the sovereignty of the people.
Bizimana, Nsekuye.
“Development and Breakdown in Rwanda.”
The Myth of the Modern. Pages 124-5
Applying the same
economic criteria for judging development in Rwanda as in the West, the
authorities in Kigali had reason to be pleased with the results attained up
until the breakdown in 1994. In the rural areas the quality of housing had
been improved from huts to stable houses, and primary hygiene practices had
been instituted. Many industrial products (with negative effects that only
became evident later) offered more comfort than the traditional way of
life. More Rwandans were being educated at home and abroad, and the number
of subjects taught at the national university had increased. In fact,
Rwandans were proud in claiming that Kigali had become a little European
island in Rwanda.
The fact is,
however, that from the point of view of human development, a sharp
deterioration in the quality of life had taken place. The influx of every
imaginable Western industrial product, from washing machines, hi-fi sets and
video players to sweets and cars, led to an even greater admiration of the
West. People wanted to acquire these fine things more than ever, but only a
small portion of the population could afford them. The result of all this
was the creation of an arrogant bourgeoisie, who believed in the principle
that 'the more you have, the better you are.' Such powerful bourgeoisies
formed a state within a state, thus controlling almost everything. This was
similar to the dictatorship-of-capital seen in the West. The benefits of
modernisation were rarely distributed equal. Thus those areas with fine
modern installations despised the areas without. As a result, tension
developed between different areas within the country. This is known as
regionalism. In many African countries, regionalism corresponds to
tribalism, because different tribes live in different regions. Money reigns
and thus people go to any measure to acquire it. This striving after money
inflicted serious damage upon our culture. Egoism gained ground. Nobody
did anything unless he personally intended to gain from it. Little was
shared and the spirit of solidarity amongst our people collapsed.
Description of
video “Ancient Futures: Learning From Ladakh” The Video Project
$19.95 (800) 4-PLANET by Liza Gross, Sierra Club magazine
What happens when
modern development encroaches upon an ancient culture high in the harsh
Tibetan plateau of northern India?
Not even Ladakhis—mostly
Buddhists with deep spiritual ties to the earth can resist the onslaught of
an increasingly global economy. This insightful case study based on Helena
Norberg-Hodge’s book of the same title (published by Sierra Club Books in
1991), examines how development with its attendant seductive images of
glamour and gadgets promising life free of hardship, destroys social and
ecological bonds. Pollution, resource depletion, sprawl, breakdown of
family and community, crime, growing economic disparity—all are crises in
industrialized nations.
While these problems
are not the sole province of the West, Norberg-Hodge traces their appearance
in Ladakh to Western national of progress. And because modernization has
taken hold so rapidly here, the roots of these modern maladies, mostly
obscured in the West, are easier to trace.
“Development has
systematically dismantled the local economy and self-reliance, and the first
victim is the small farmer whose livelihood is completely undermined,”
Norberg-Hodge tells us. Ldakhis are buying heavily subsidized wheat trucked
in from the plains of India because it’s cheaper than grain grown minutes
away in local villages. They are drifting away from a cooperative
small-farm model, based on organic farming and renewable resources, toward
dependence on chemical-intensive agriculture and imported goods and
services.
Once protected from
food shortages and rationing by these close-knit communities, villagers are
now at the mercy of market forces beyond their control and of roads that are
impassable two-thirds of the year. Forced into competition for scarce,
meaningless work that doesn’t pay enough to meet basic needs, they’ve become
alienated from their neighbors. Broken community ties have led to
escalating crime and homelessness, virtually unheard of 20 years ago.
“There has been progress,” on Ladakli says, “but people are not as happy as
they once were.”
Respect for
ecological limits is yielding to modern promises of uncontrolled economic
growth and consumption, as this fragile high-desert ecosystem succumbs to
the corollaries of modernization: garbage and human-waste-filled streets and
waterways, chemical-fertilizer and pesticide-laden fields, increasing
population and ethnic friction, and loss of respect for women and families.
The film does not
suggest that we renounce our wicked Western ways and head for the hills, but
that we reestablish our ties to the earth, recognize its natural limitations
by developing renewable energy sources and recycling waste, and resist
globalization by supporting local cottage industries and small farmers. In
the end, these rules to live by transcend cultural boundaries, and Norberg-Hodge
eloquently shows us the way to follow them.
LYNCHED NEGRO
by MAXWELL BODENHEIM
Your downcast, harlequin,
defenceless face
Was turned to ashen flakes,
and wavered up
In lightly shapeless
impotence upon
The sprightly scandals of a
morning wind,
The hands of other men fell
on your breast,
Like scores of scorpions
instinctively
Expelled from jungle-spots
within their hearts.
Your blood, in fine quick
problems, spattered out
Upon the morning air that
studied them
And left complete, dry
answers on your skin.
(Oh, what is life but cold
arithmetic
Where fractions serve as
subtleties and add
Refinement to the rise and
fall of dull,
Blunt numbers shuffled
indisputably:
And what is death but
mathematics where
The numbers graduate to
higher planes
And leave a "terrifying"
interest?)
Yet, something beyond pain
within your shriek
Would indicate, black man,
that sky-large brains
Can stumble in their count
and recognize
An eerie, unrelenting
quality
Forever in revolt against
their plans.
Emotion and its choking
metaphors
Insist that two times two is
never quite
The four that "life"
methodically brands
On nations and the ceaseless
pain of men.
You were accused of
tendering a strong,
Experimental hatred to the
frail,
Intense obstruction of a
woman's flesh,
And endlessly you squawked
your innocence.
But crime and justice do not
live beyond
The point where death, with
one, efficient whim,
Corrects the tongues of
bungling, churlish men.
Claxton, Guy.
Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind. U.S.A.: 1997. ISBN 0880016221,
Pages 4, 5 and 6
The individuals and
societies of the West have rather lost touch with the value of
contemplation. Only active thinking is regarded as productive. Sitting
gazing absently at your office wall or out of the classroom window is not of
value. Yet many of those whom our society admires as icons of creativity
and wisdom have spent much of their time doing nothing. Einstein, it is
said, would frequently be found in his office At Princeton staring into
space. The Dalai Lama spends hours each day in meditation. Even that
paragon of penetrating insight, Sherlock Holmes, is described by his creator
as entering a meditative state 'with a dreaming vacant expression in his
eyes'.
There are a number
of reasons why slow knowing has fallen into disuse. Partly it is due to our
changing conception of, and attitude towards, time. In
pre-seventeenth-century Europe a leisurely approach to thinking was much
more common, and in other cultures it still is. A tribal meeting at a Maori
marae can last for days, until everyone has had time to assimilate the
issues, to have their say, and to form a consensus. However, the idea that
time is plentiful is in many parts of the world now seen as laughably
old-fashioned and self-indulgent.
Swedish
anthropologist Helena Norberg-Hodge has documented the way in which the
introduction of Western culture has radically altered the pace of life in
the traditional society of Ladakh, for example. Until ten years ago, a
Ladakhi wedding lasting a fortnight. But their lifestyle rapidly altered
following the introduction of some simple 'labour-savings' changes: tools,
such as the Rotovator, to make ploughing quicker and easier; and some new
crops and livestock, such as dairy cows. Compared to the traditional yak,
cows yield more milk than a family needs, creating a surplus which can be
turned into cheese and sold to bring in some extra cash. While there is no
harm in taking life a little easier, in encouraging families to accumulate
a little 'wealth', unfortunately this apparently benign aid package' also
gave the Ladakhis a new view of time – as something in short supply.
Instead of the Rotovators and the cows generating more leisure, they have in
fact reduced it. People are now busier than they were: busy creating
wealth -- and 'saving time'. Today a Ladakhi wedding lasts less than a day,
just like an English one. Within the Western mindset, time becomes a
commodity, and one inevitable consequence is the urge to 'think faster': to
solve problems and make decisions quickly.
Partly the decline
of slow thinking is to do with the rise of what the American social critic
Neil Postman has called 'technopoly' -- the widespread view that every ill
is a problem which has a potential solution; solutions are provided by
technological advances, which are generated by clear, purposeful,
disciplined thinking; and the faster problems are solved, the better. Thus,
as the Ladakhis have recently joined us in believing, time is an adversary
over which technology can triumph. For Postman, technolopoly is based on
the beliefs that the primary, if not the only goal of human labour and
thought is efficiency; that technical calculation is in all respects
superior to human judgment; that in fact human judgment cannot be trusted,
because it is plagued by laxity, ambiguity, and unnecessary complexity;
that subjectivity is an obstacle to clear thinking; that what cannot be
measured either does not exist or is of no value; and that the affairs of
citizens are best guided and conducted by 'experts.'
In such a culture,
time spent exploring the question is only justified to the extent that it
clearly leads towards a solution to the problem. To spend time dwelling on
the question to see if it may lead to a deeper question seems inefficient,
self-indulgent or perverse.
In contemporary
'Western' society (which now effectively covers the globe), we seem to have
generated an inner, psychological culture of speed, pressure and the need
for control -- mirroring the outer culture of efficiency and productivity --
in which access to the slower modes of mind has been lost. People are in a
hurry to know, to have answers, to plan and solve. We urgently want
explanations: Theories of Everything, from marital mishaps to the origin of
the universe. We want more data, more ideas; we want them faster; and we
want them, with just a little thought, to tell us clearly what to do.
We find ourselves in
a culture which has lost sight (not least in its education system) of some
fundamental distinctions, like those between being wise, being clever,
having your 'wits' about you, and being merely well informed. We have been
inadvertently trapped in a single mode of mind that is characterised by
information-gathering, intellect and impatience, one that requires you to be
explicit, articulate, purposeful and to show your reasoning. We are thus
committed (and restricted) to those ways of knowing that can function in
such a high-speed mental climate: predominantly those that use language
(or other symbol systems) as a medium and deliberation as a method. As a
culture we are, in consequence, very good at solving analytic and
technological problems. The trouble is that we tend, increasingly, to
treat all human predicaments as if they were of this type, including those
for which such mental tools are inappropriate. We meet with cleverness,
focus and deliberation those challenges that can only properly be handled
with patience, intuition and relaxation.
To tap into the
leisurely ways of knowing, one must dare to wait. Knowing emerges from, and
is a response to, not-knowing. Learning -- the process of coming to know --
emerges from uncertainty. Ambivalently, learning seeks to reduce
uncertainty, by transmuting the strange into the familiar, but it also needs
to tolerate uncertainty, as the seedbed in which ideas germinate and
responses form. If either one of these two aspects of learning
predominates, then the balance of the mind is disturbed. If the passive
acceptance of not-knowing overwhelms the active search for meaning and
control, then one may fall into fatalism and dependency. While if the need
for certainty becomes intemperate, undermining the ability to tolerate
confusion, then one may develop a vulnerability to demagoguery and dogma,
liable to cling to options and beliefs that may not fit the bill, but which
do assuage the anxiety.
Town asked to improve energy efficiency By
DANIEL BARLOW Brattleboro Reformer Thursday, March 11, 2004
BRATTLEBORO—Paul Cameron sees the $10,000 in
funding he is asking for as more than just his group’s budget for the coming
year—it’s an investment in the future of the community. Cameron, the head of
the nonprofit group Brattleboro Climate Protection, is asking the
Brattleboro Town Meeting Representatives on March 20 for the funding so that
his group can continue working on a plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions
in town.
“I look at it as a moderate investment in
Brattleboro’s future,” said Cameron on Wednesday. “The result will be lower
taxes, cleaner air and an improved quality of life.”
Part of an international movement to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions and improve energy efficiency, the local group is
part of the Cities for Climate Protection campaign, an effort that has taken
root in 550 local
governments, including 150 in the United
States. Other nearby towns that have similar groups include Burlington,
Keene, N.H., and Amherst, Mass. The Brattleboro group was formed in June
2002 and has an office in the planning office at the municipal center. It
has worked with town and school officials on a plan to reduce emissions in
town-owned buildings and Brattleboro’s elementary schools by 20 percent over
the next six years.
The group is also seeking to reduce emissions
throughout town by 10 percent by 2010 and plans to launch a campaign later
this year to sign up local businesses. Companies such as Fibermark and
Putney Paper Co. have expressed interest, said Cameron.
Under the current plan, reducing the town’s
emissions and increasing buildings’ energy efficiency would mean no initial
financial contribution, explained Cameron; instead the cost of the energy
audit and retrofitting would be taken from the savings made by the
alterations. The town currently spends more than $700,000 annually on energy
and the town’s elementary schools spend approximately $135,000. It is
estimated that around $84,000 will be saved each year if the town buildings
and elementary schools reduce energy consumption by 10 percent, Cameron
said. “That will save the taxpayers money,” said Cameron. “That is funds
that can be used for other town services.”
Among the accomplishments in 2002 was the
conversion of some of the Windham Solid Waste District’s vehicles to
biodiesel, the introduction of a biodiesel pump at the Fleming Oil Co.
station in West Chesterfield, N.H., and hosting an energy-effecient workshop
attended by representatives from approximately 40 Brattleboro businesses.
In Burlington, a group similar to Brattleboro
Climate Protection has been active since 1996, and city and state buildings
in the area have signed up for the 10 percent challenge, said Debra Sachs,
the director of that group. In the past few years, hundreds of households in
Burlington have signed up for the challenge and recently 200 employees at
IBM signed up and vowed to look at transportation alternatives to and from
work to reduce vehicle emissions.
“It’s amazing how it has really taken on a life
of its own,” said Sachs.“We have a very transparent and transferable program
that others can take and make their own.” Brattleboro Climate Protection has
typically been funded through a combination of grants, private donations and
town funds. In 2003 the town gave the group $8,500 and donations and grants
gave the effort another boost of $12,000.
Selectboard member and supporter of the climate
group Pat DeAngelo said the effort is a “win-win” for the town’s finances
and the town’s environment. “Let’s say the audit comes back and says it will
cost $30,000 to implement the recommendations,” she said. “Well, that seems
like a lot of money, but not once you factor in what the town will be saving
each year by implementing it.”
“Plus we are cleaning up our air and improving
the health of everyone in town,” she added.
Looking to the future, Cameron said his group
plans to have local businesses sign up to the 10 percent challenge via a Web
site to track their emission reduction efforts. There are also plans to
establish an award program for the companies that improve their efficiency.
The group will also continue to push biodiesel
as a healthy alternative, coordinate more workshops and look for other
opportunities to use wood-chip heating systems. If the $10,000 allocation is
not approved at town meeting, the impact on the group’s efforts is not
clear, said Cameron. The group’s efforts would likely look much different,
he explained, if the funding support from the town did not get approved.
“It’s going to save money for the town,” he
said. “There are real gains here.”
PRICELESS: On Knowing
the Price of Everything and the Value of Nothing,
by Frank Ackerman and Lisa Heinzerling, The New Press, 270 pp., $25.95
reviewed
by Osha Gray Davidson in OnEarth from the Natural Resources Defense
Council, Spring 2004
A doctor, an architect, and
an economist were sitting in a bar arguing over who had the most important
profession. "Clearly, it's surgery," claimed the doctor. "After all, God
created Eve by removing one of Adam's ribs." The architect disagreed,
saying that her job was by far the most important. "Way before Adam and Eve,
God built the heavens and the earth out of chaos," she insisted.
The economist leaned back
in his chair, smiled, and said quietly, "And who do you think created the
chaos?" The joke, of course, is that economists claim to bring order to a
chaotic world. But the humor seems more apt than amusing these days, with
the Bush administration shredding decades of environmental laws, often
justifying its actions with an economic strategy -- cost-benefit analysis --
that seems perfectly reasonable but is in truth fundamentally flawed.
When the Bush
administration announced in 2001 that it was appointing economist John
Graham to head the little-known Office of Information and Regulatory
Affairs, the White House bureaucracy that reviews regulations proposed by
the various government agencies, it claimed that Graham would bring order to
the way the federal government regulates everything from the amount of
mercury a coal-burning power plant can release, to how many trees we should
log from our national forests. But instead of order, Graham's obsession with
cost-benefit analysis has brought more chaos -- and controversy.
Among the bizarre concepts
Graham has championed is the notion that older people are worth less than
the young. According to this logic, if Regulation A would save the lives of
50 3-year-olds each year, at a fixed cost, that might be worth doing. But
Regulation B, which would save the lives of 50 elderly citizens each year at
the same cost, would get scratched. That's because by already having lived
many years, the elderly have, in effect, used up much of their value to
society.
Graham's championing of
this "life expectancy" approach (or "senior death discount," as critics call
it) so outraged advocates for the elderly that last May, then-administrator
of the Environmental Protection Agency Christie Whitman was forced to assure
the public that the agency wasn't basing any of its decisions on Graham's
calculation that the lives of people past 70 are worth precisely 37.8
percent less than the lives of everyone else.
That's not to say that
there's anything wrong with the underlying principle of cost-benefit. We all
use it to make decisions every day. Let's say you want to buy a mountain
bike, for example. You find a mid-priced one that you like, with good rear
shocks. The salesperson, however, steers you toward a "state-of-the-art"
model, with rear and front shocks, a superlight frame, and hydraulic disc
brakes. Just one problem: It costs three times as much as the bike you
selected. So you think about your dwindling bank balance and that looming
mortgage payment. You consider that you're likely to use the bike only a
couple of weekends a month. It'd be great to have the primo model, but, all
things considered, you decide it makes more sense to go with the less
expensive bike.
What you just did in your
head was a quick cost-benefit analysis. It's clearly reasonable and helpful
when used properly, but problems arise and multiply when policy makers use
it as their primary tool to evaluate proposed environmental and health
policies, such as whether to put a limit on the pollutants that cause global
warming. As Frank Ackerman and Lisa Heinzerling make clear in their
important new book, Priceless, when cost-benefit analysis is misused,
as it is in the Bush White House, it becomes, literally, a formula for
disaster.
"[This economic] theory
gives us opaque and technical reasons to do the obviously wrong thing," they
conclude. "Cost-benefit analysis promotes a deregulatory agenda under the
cover of scientific objectivity."
There are a number of
reasons why this is so, and Ackerman (an economist at Tufts University) and
Heinzerling (a law professor at Georgetown) do an excellent job of
explaining the many deficiencies of cost-benefit, and they do it in clear,
jargon-free prose -- no small feat when writing about economics.
They point out that costs
of regulations are easy to quantify, while benefits are not. It's one thing
to put a price tag on the cost of new "scrubbers" to remove pollutants from
smokestacks. But to do a cost-benefit analysis, you have to compare that
cost to its purported benefit, and how do you decide how much clean air is
worth? Scientists may be able to estimate how many lives will be saved by
such a regulation, but economists then have to convert those lives into
dollars -- a slippery business. And that's not all they have to do, because
air pollution doesn't just kill people outright, it is also responsible for
a variety of chronic ailments such as bronchitis and asthma. How will those
be "monetized" (the economic term for fixing a dollar value to intangibles
-- a necessary bit of jargon in this debate)? And what about something even
more abstract, such as the psychological benefit to parents who live
downwind from less-polluting smokestacks and who know that their children
are not at increased risk for developing respiratory illnesses? What dollar
figure do you put on that? In practice, what happens most often, as the
authors point out, is that if economists can't monetize it, they ignore it.
And many of the benefits of environmental regulations, from the sense of
tranquility fostered by an open landscape to the biodiversity of a forest
left unlogged, resist monetization. When forced into a narrow economic
framework, Ackerman and Heinzerling argue, the benefits of environmental
regulations will nearly always be understated.
While costs are easy to
translate into dollars, they are also easy to inflate. Consider the case of
vinyl chloride, a chemical used in a variety of manufacturing processes and
a known carcinogen. In 1974, the government proposed lowering the maximum
daily amount that workers could be exposed to vinyl chloride from 200 parts
per million (ppm) to one ppm. Industry executives howled that the new
regulation would bankrupt them. Compliance, they maintained, could cost
upward of $90 billion. The government adopted the rule anyway. A few years
later, a study found that compliance had actually cost $278 million. Why?
Because when forced to lower worker exposure, business did what it does
best: It innovated, designing new technologies to lower costs.
Decades later,
regulation-phobic industries are still spending a lot of money trying to
hamper the government's ability to effectively regulate them. Before going
to work for the White House, John Graham founded and directed the Harvard
Center for Risk Analysis, its funding provided by large corporations, many
of which have demonstrated a staunch antiregulatory agenda: General Motors,
Union Carbide, Exxon, to name a few. It's hardly surprising, then, that a
1995 study coauthored by Graham purports to show how regulations -- when not
subject to the scientific rigors of cost-benefit analysis -- can end up
being wildly expensive and of meager benefit. Ackerman and Heinzerling take
the study apart and instead demonstrate how Graham manipulated data to
achieve the results he wanted. Judging by the regulations Graham cites, it's
hard to imagine how the country remains solvent.
Take one measure limiting
the emissions of chloroform at paper mills. Graham's study showed that, for
every year of human life saved, the regulation would cost industry a
whopping $99 billion. What he fails to make clear is that the measure was
never put into law. No government agency even advocated that it be put into
law. Graham's analysis, and more significantly how it has been portrayed by
antiregulatory conservatives, muddles the distinction among actual
regulations, measures that were considered and rejected (precisely because
they weren't cost-effective), and others -- like the $99 billion example
above -- that were never seriously considered at all.
On the surface, Graham's
list suggests that government regulations are an undue burden on industries.
But Ackerman and Heinzerling reveal that of the 10 most expensive
regulations listed by Graham, nine were never enacted into law. This
academic sleight of hand is troubling coming from a prestigious institution
such as Harvard. But when such misrepresentations are the work of an
individual who becomes a powerful government official -- one whose decisions
affect the fate of Americans' health and the environment for generations to
come -- it's downright scary.
The most essential feature
of cost-benefit analysis, at least when it's used to decide among public
health and safety regulations, is also its most troublesome, and that is the
belief that economists can accurately calculate the value of a human life.
Proponents like John Graham defend this notion with near religious zeal, but
are economists really able to produce such a number? Well, in 2002 the Bush
administration said that for the purpose of cost-benefit studies, it would
value each human life at $3.7 million. Yet, just two years earlier, the
Clinton administration determined that a human life is worth $6.1 million --
a figure that's 65 percent higher. There are scores of economists out there,
each pushing his own "life valuation" equation. Some say a human life is
worth only $100,000; others say it's worth $12 million. The enormous range
shows the absurdity of the exercise itself. But it's especially ironic that
the conservative, "pro-life" Bush administration would choose a formula that
dramatically devalues human life -- at least when it comes to regulating the
polluting industries that have contributed large amounts to the president's
campaign coffer.
The holy grail of
cost-benefit analysis -- the true monetary value of a human life -- won't be
found in even the most complicated equations, assert Ackerman and
Heinzerling. Human life, they write, is literally priceless, as are many of
the other things economists like Graham rack their brains to put a price tag
on. What formula will tell us how much the remaining 90 wild California
condors are worth? How much would you take for the Grand Canyon?
Environmentalists who play
the dollar game may win those battles where the monetary benefits of what is
being saved are easy to calculate, but they will eventually lose the war. By
trying to determine the value of nature (in 1997, one group of eco-minded
economists and scientists put a price tag of $33 trillion on the entire
biosphere), they concede the premise of cost-benefit analysis: that
everything has a price, and what doesn't have a price has no value. Ackerman
and Heinzerling argue persuasively that values -- the nonmonetary kind --
are really what should be at the heart of crafting policies to protect our
health, safety, and the environment. Ardent cost-benefit advocates such as
Graham believe that they can reduce the complicated mechanics of democratic
decision making to mathematical formulas. But, as the authors write, when it
comes to these vital issues "there is no formula... For good decisions,
public debate and participation are essential." The authors' alternative to
the cost-benefit binge of the current administration is that we stop
believing that there is a perfectly objective, scientific method out there
that will essentially make our regulatory decisions for us, and instead
embrace spirited public debate. Not a bad idea for a democracy.
In their final chapter they
offer some basic principles to guide the discussion -- "an attitude rather
than an algorithm." If the authors are less successful in articulating these
principles than they are in debunking cost-benefit, that's understandable
and perhaps inevitable. After all, it is easier to pick apart algorithms
than it is to delineate an attitude. The principles they offer are admirable
(who could argue with the proposition that policies should "promote
fairness"?), but they're a bit fuzzy, and we've heard them all before. That
doesn't mean they're wrong -- just that they don't add anything particularly
new to the debate.
But this one small fault
shouldn't detract from Ackerman and Heinzerling's very real achievement:
Priceless exposes a little-known but significant and fatal flaw at the
heart of the Bush administration's antiregulatory crusade.
Efficiency cannot be
placed above equity, THE TIMES OF INDIA, FRIDAY, APRIL 02, 2004
COUNTERVIEW
The case against
reservations in the private sector does not stand up to scrutiny as it is
based on a priori notions decontextualised from social reality. One such
unquestioned virtue is 'efficiency', or the pursuit of profit through
optimal utilisation of resources, both material and human.
Human resources are
considered to be most efficient when, in the employer's perception, they
possess the qualifications to perform the specific tasks assigned to them.
It is, however, far from realistic to assume that the 'best' persons are
employed, since all forms of recruitment, public or private, suffer from
arbitrariness and subjectivity.
'Merit' and 'efficiency'
are given the go-by even in the private sector, more so in large
organisations where self-serving bureaucracies pursuing goals other than
profit maximisation run the show. Economists such as Joseph Schumpeter,
William Baumol and J K Galbraith have pointed to the role of the faceless
technocracy in these organisations. Therefore, efficiency would not be
compromised if reservations were introduced to address social concerns.
A moot point is whether
efficiency should be pursued at the expense of equity in a poor, labour-abundant
country such as ours. Efficiency is a concept that derives from labour-scarce
economies which need to focus on improving the productivity of each
individual. In India , pure efficiency would leave out of the economy and
market a sea of individuals, thereby not only creating social schisms but
also reducing the size of the market. The deepening of the market as opposed
to its widening may not yield quite the same results for the entrepreneurial
class, because satiated people consume less.
Therefore, a broader market
comprising diverse cultures will recompense what is arguably lost by way of
merit or efficiency. Corporates in the US pursue affirmative action more out
of enlightened self-interest than altruism. Finally, private capital cannot
be isolated from the public, just as the private sphere of the individual
cannot be delinked from her social existence. The pursuit of a
reservations-free domain seems just as illusory as that of a free market.
Myers, David G.,
Ph.D. “Does Economic Growth Improve Human Morale?” Newsletter from the
Center for a New American Dream 1997
Page 3
As a young man fresh
out of college, I served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in rural Nepal. My
one-room house had no electricity, no heat, no indoor toilet, no running
water. The local diet offered little variety and virtually no meat... Yet,
although my living conditions in Nepal were a bit startling at first, the
most salient feature of my experience was how quickly they came to seem
normal. Within a matter of weeks, I lost all sense of impoverishment.
Indeed, my monthly stipend was more than most others had in my village, and
with it I experienced a feeling of prosperity that I have recaptured only in
recent years. [Citing Robert H Frank: “The Empty Wealth of Nations,”
Unpublished manuscript, Johnson Graduate School of Management, Cornell
University, 1996.]
Blumm, Michael.
“The fallacies of free market environmentalism.” Harvard Journal of Law &
Public Policy, Spring92, Vol. 15, Issue 2,
p371, 19p
The liberty of those
who emit air pollutants, discharge water contaminants, or dispose of
hazardous waste materials may well be increased. But those exposed to
environmental degradation lose liberty. And the numbers of liberty-losers
typically outnumber considerably the liberty-gainers. Whether aggregate
liberty is gained from market transactions is difficult to ascertain, but it
is clear that some of the liberty-losers pay enormous health costs….
Unfortunately, it is
a fantastic myth. Markets persistently fail to produce the ecological and
health information necessary to allocate efficiently environmental
resources. By focusing exclusively on “willingness to pay,” markets assume
the wisdom of current preferences and the fairness of existing wealth
distribution. They also carve out a significant role for the judiciary, the
least representative branch of government, to allocate environmental
resources. For these reasons, markets cannot supplant government
intervention to correct environmental market failure.
Goldsmith,
Edward, et al. The Future of Progress. 1995.
Page 11
The economic
paradigm
According to modern
economics, a continuous increase in economic output is necessary, both to
increase prosperity and to solve environmental and social problems. This
belief, in fact, underlies the policies of every government, regardless of
their position on the political spectrum. A narrowly defined criterion of
economic efficiency is used to plan and administer economies, and factors
that can be reduced to monetary value are given primary importance.
Production choices are dictated by those who wield power in the money
economy.
Page 12
The economic growth
imperative compels businesses to constantly grow, to find new markets,
resources, and areas of life to colonise. Products are made to wear out
sooner than necessary. Marketing professionals use whatever means are
available, including the creation of new 'needs', to stimulate consumer
spending.
Page 94
Development has
brought not only tourism, but also Western and Indian films and, more
recently, television. Together they provide overwhelming images of luxury
and power. There are countless tools and magical gadgets. And there are
machines -- machines to take pictures, machines to tell the time, machines
to make fire, to travel from one place to another, to talk with someone far
away. Machines can do everything for you; it's no wonder the tourists look
so clean and have such soft, white hands.
Media images focus
on the rich, the beautiful, and the brave, whose lives are endless action
and glamour. For young Ladakhis, the picture is irresistible. It is an
overwhelmingly exciting version of an urban 'American Dream', with an
emphasis on speed, youthfulness, super-cleanliness, beauty, fashion and
competitiveness. Progress" is also stress: humans dominate nature, while
technological change is embraced at all costs.
In contrast to these
utopian images from another culture, village life seems primitive, silly and
inefficient. The one-dimensional view of modern life becomes a slap in the
face. Young Ladakhis -- who are asked by their parents to choose a way of
life that involves working in the fields and getting their hands dirty for
very little or no money -- feel ashamed of their own culture. Traditional
Ladakh seems absurd compared with the world of the tourists and film heroes.
This same pattern is
being repeated in rural areas all over the South, where millions of young
people believe modern Western culture to be far superior to their own. This
is not surprising: looking as they do from the outside, all they can see is
the material side of the modern world – the side in which Western culture
excels. They cannot so readily see the social or psychological dimensions –
the stress, the loneliness, the fear of growing old. Nor can they see
environmental decay, inflation, or unemployment. On the other hand, they
know their own culture inside out, including all its limitations and
imperfections.
Harrington
Emerson, The Twelve Principles Of Efficiency The Engineering Magazine
Co., New York, 1919, Page 376
Woman brings a baby
into the world, but men organize a million grown babies into an army; a
woman feeds her infant from her own breast, but men organize a commissariat
department that encircles the world; woman teaches each separate human being
to rise from all fours and walk like a man, but a von Moltke speaks the word
and a million men tramp in time and measure; woman chews hides and greases
them and smokes them into the softest leather, out of which she cuts and
sews moccasins, but men take the hides of five continents and cut them into
a million pairs of shoes a week; woman spins her single thread and weaves it
into cloth men run their thousand spindles and weave their miles of fabrics;
woman makes tepees, but men build hundred-story-high skyscrapers, housing
20,000 people; woman croons her lullaby to her restless baby, but men
organize grand opera, develop the phonograph; woman whispers to her lover at
the tryst, but men by speech to multitudes secure presidential nominations
and pile up for the presidency a million votes more than the triumphantly
elected Cleveland; men connect their offices with all the other business
offices in the country and shout their affairs across the continent, or send
their danger calls two-thousand miles through the air.
Sarewitz, Daniel R.
Frontiers of Illusion. 1996. ISBN 1566394155,
Page 124
The raison d’etre of
both the basic research system and capitalism is the pursuit of growth of
knowledge and insight in the one case, and of productivity and wealth in the
other. And the key to growth in each case is the self-interested
motivations of the individual—of individual scientists pursuing their
curiosity and individual consumers maximizing their utility. The cumulative
effect of all this selfish action is progress for all. But the analogy goes
deeper, in that the rhetoric of both basic research and the free market is
rooted in an efficiency ethic that gives primacy to magnitude of growth
while viewing direction of growth as intrinsically unpredictable and thus
outside the domain of government control. From this perspective it is the
job of the government to encourage growth of the knowledge base and of the
economy but not to try to influence the character of this growth in any
way.
George Washington,
First State of the Union Address, January 8, 1790 in New York City
I shall derive great
satisfaction from a cooperation with you... in the pleasing—though arduous
task --... of ensuring to our fellow citizens the blessings they have a
right to expect.. from a free, efficient, and equal Government.
Mission Statement
of the Million Man March --www.zmag.org/zmag/articles/dec95albert.htm
"We, the Black men
and women, the organizations and persons participating in this historic
Million Man March…concerned about increasing racism and the continuing
commitment to white supremacy in this country; deteriorating social
conditions, degradation of the environment and the impact of these on our
community, the larger society, and the world…"
"We begin our
challenge to corporations by rejecting the widespread notion … that
corporations have no social responsibility except to maximize profit within
the rules of an open and competitive market… The weight of corporations in
modern life is overwhelming and their commitment to maximizing profit and
technological efficiency can and often does lead to tremendous social costs
such as deteriorating and dangerous working conditions, massive layoffs,
harmful products projected as beneficial, environmental degradation,
deindustrialization, corporate relocation, and disinvestment in social
structures and development
Zeldin, Theodore,
Philosophical Anthropology: An Intimate History of Humanity, New York:
1994, ISBN 006017160X, Page 469
In ancient times,
justice was blind, unable to recognize the humanity that is in everybody.
In modern times it has been one-eyed, narrowly focused on the principle of
impersonality, imposing the same rules on everybody so as to avoid nepotism
and favouritism, but unable to notice what people feel when they are treated
impersonally and coldly, however justly or efficiently. The impersonal
monetary compensations of the welfare state have not been able to heal the
wounds of unfairness, because nothing can compensate adequately for a wasted
life, least of all when even in the USA, which has studied efficiency to its
limits, it takes seven tax dollars to get one additional dollar of income
into the hands of a poor person. Only with both eyes open is it possible to
see that humans have always needed not just food and shelter, health and
education, but also work that is not soul-destroying and relationships that
do more than keep loneliness out, humans need to be recognized as persons.
Bruce Springsteen,
CBS News, Interview on 60 Minutes, New York: 1996 Page 11 of the
transcript
Mr. Springsteen: In
my opinion, it was the failed policies; you know, that the efficiency of the
economy is not the most paramount thing. A country’s judged not by just its
accomplishments, but by its compassion, the health and welfare of its
citizens, you know. That’s the—that’s the core of its spirit.
Sclove, Richard,
Democracy And Technology, New York: 1995. ISBN 089862861X,
Page 48
What of the concern
that strong democracy could be grossly inefficient—wasteful of time and
hazardous to prosperity? As with competing forms of social organization,
there are such risks. But this concern may also involve misconstruing the
meaning of efficiency and the nature of strong democracy.
An action is
efficient if it accomplishes its end without the unnecessary expenditure of
scarce resources. However, in a strong democracy social ends are not simply
given. They must be formulated via a strong democratic process. Thus,
rather than conceivably impairing economic efficiency, democracy is a
precondition for legitimately specifying the ends with respect to which
efficiency is defined.
Mark Twain, from
Internet site Quoteland.com
"We have a criminal
jury system which is superior to any in the world; and its efficiency is
only marred by the difficulty of finding twelve men every day who don't know
anything and can't read."
Gouyette,
Claudine; Pestieau, Pierre “Efficiency of the Welfare State.” Kyklos, 1999,
Vol. 52 Issue 4, p537, 17p, 5 charts, 3 graphs
To better grasp our
approach, consider two countries that are identical in all respects but for
the way their welfare state operates. In the first country social spending
is allocated towards the truly poor households, or towards those facing
unexpected income losses; transfer programs as well as the production of
social services are run efficiently in terms of costs and resource
utilization. In the second country, the picture is totally different: the
Matthew effect prevails; administrative costs are rather high and productive
efficiency in social services is low. It is pretty clear that in aggregate
terms, efficiency is greater in the first country than in the second one and
our aggregate measure would reflect this difference (obviously, the
assumption that these two countries are identical in all other respects is
crucial)….
The welfare state
consists of two types of programs: transfer programs such as welfare, social
security, unemployment insurance, and production of services by hospitals,
day care and schools. The issue of efficiency in transfer programs can be
considered in two ways: whether transfers are made to the right people and
whether the financial intermediation is cost efficient. Efficiency in the
provision of services is expressed in terms of resource utilization: can we
produce the same quantity and quality of services with less resources, or
conversely, can we produce more and better services with the same amount of
resources?
We have seen that
there exist clear inefficiencies in distributing services. Because of
administrative complexity or fear of stigmatization, the most needy can fall
outside the protection of the welfare state. Regarding the administrative
cost of social insurance, particularly health and retirement insurance, a
single public provider tends to be cheaper than a multiplicity of private
firms. Finally, in the production of services, there are clear efficiency
slacks, but they are not so dependent on ownership, public or private. What
matters is competition and autonomy.
The conclusion to
draw from this survey is clear. First, one needs to fight the Matthew
effect, and if this is not possible, make transfers transparent and
universalistic. Second, one needs to keep administrative costs at their
current level, while at the same time maintain the quality of services
provided. Third, one needs to introduce competition and autonomy in the
management of social services. With an energetic efficiency-enhancing
approach, the welfare state can recoup its credibility and recover
desperately needed resources.
( The concept of
‘Matthew effect’ is used by sociologists in different areas (see, e.g.,
Deleeck et al. 1983). It is called after the ‘Parable of Talents’ as told in
the Gospel according to Matthew: ‘For into every one that hath shall be
given, and he shall have abundance; but from him that hath not shall be
taken away even that which he hath’, Matthew 25-29.)
Fermi, Rachel,
Picturing The Bomb, New York, 1995: ISBN 0810937352,
Page 1
Because they
understood the energetics of nuclear fission—the enormous output of energy
for such a small input of material—the physicists also understood almost
immediately that this unexpected discovery would have major political
consequences. One atomic bomb, probably not much bigger than an ordinary
aerial bomb, certainly no bigger than a truck, could destroy a city.
Arthur M. Okun,
Equality and Equity: The Big Tradeoff, Washington, DC: The Brookings
Institution, 1975, Pages 6 and 10
Features of Rights
An obvious feature of
rights—in sharp contrast with economic assets—is that they are acquired and
exercised without any monetary charge. Because citizens do not normally
have to pay a price for using their rights, they lack the usual incentive to
economize on exercising them....
Second, because
rights are universally distributed, they do not invoke the economist’s
principle of comparative advantage that tells people to specialize in the
things they do particularly well. Everybody can get into the act, including
some who are not talented actors....
A third
characteristic of rights is that they are not distributed as incentives, or
as rewards or penalties. Unlike the dollar prizes of the marketplace or the
non-pecuniary honors and awards elsewhere, extra rights and duties are not
used to channel behavior into socially constructive pursuits....
A century ago, that
advocate of thoroughgoing laissez-faire, Herbert Spencer, opposed a host of
universally distributed public services, resting his criticisms on several
grounds, including disincentive effects....
Fourth, the
distribution of rights stresses equality even at the expense of equity and
freedom. When people differ in capabilities, interests and preferences,
identical treatment is not equitable treatment, at least by some standards.
That most important
principle—that rights cannot be bought or sold—is the final characteristic
on my list. The owner may not trade a right away to another individual
either for extra helpings of other rights or for money or goods....
The Reasons for
Rights
Why then does society
establish these inefficient rights? The justifications for rights take
three routes—libertarian, pluralistic, and humanistic.
Liberty
To the advocate of
laissez-faire, many rights protect the individual against he encroachment of
the state, and thus convey benefits that far outweigh any cost of economic
inefficiency....
The traditional
rationale for public interference with market exchange and for the public
provision of services rests on so-called “externalities,” which involve the
interests of third parties. Environmental regulations are necessary because
the pollution of the air and the water by one individual harms innocent
bystanders.
Pluralism
Rights can then be
viewed as a protection against the market domination that would arise if
everything could be bought on sold for money. Everyone but an economist
knows without asking why money shouldn’t buy some things.... Society
refuses to turn itself into a giant vending machine that delivers anything
and everything for the proper number of coins.
These rights that are
obtained without a quid pro quo recognize the worth of every citizen in the
society. They go along with membership in the club. They then become the
hallmarks of affiliation, a part of human dignity, and take on added
significance for that reason. Because they are entitlements and not
handouts, people can accept them freely without feeling like freeloaders.
Norgard, Jorgen
S. Declining Efficiency in the Economy. Denmark: 1996. ISSN
13964038, Page 281
The only way economic
growth can continue in a society where people’s economic wants are already
rather satisfied is to provide satisfaction in a more inefficient way. One
way is to convince people to prefer be |