Solutions Part I
I am now required to post once a day for the next month, so try to keep up!
I’m sure most of us are aware by now of all the problems we face in this world. There are plenty of ideas out there for solutions to our problems, but I have to say, I’m unimpressed with a vast majority of them. There are several I hear a lot, and the next few posts will be about them. Here’s the first one:
Tweak our current economic system so it puts a monetary value on nature.
Problem: This approach does not acknowledge the inherent lack of sustainability our current economic system (henceforth referred to as CES) has. It is not only reliant on infinite growth (which cannot be amended), but it has distinctly dissociative characteristics. If the CES promotes and relies on a complete detachment between product and stakeholder, source and profit, producer and consumer, worker and capitalist; then how on earth are we supposed to connect environmental health and justice to economics? Assigning a monetary value to nature is like assigning a monetary value to a human being. It can be done, I suppose, but it is meaningless. Equating inherent value with monetary value is extremely dangerous, and we already do enough of that.
Solution: We need to stop valuing profit for profit’s sake. Many equate the term economics with our CES, but that isn’t what it means. An economic system is a system of producing, consuming, and distributing goods and services. The possibilities are endless. My favourite, of course, is the libertarian socialist (or what I like to call anarcho-socialist) system, where worker collectives fuel production. This gets rid of the hierarchy found in traditional businesses and corporations. And while many may claim that a democratic approach to business is impossible, it has been proven time and again to be quite possible. I would like to see a local currency scheme combined with worker collectives, rotational local leadership, and fair representative leadership at the higher (state, national, global) levels.
For a good example of relatively large-scale libertarian socialism that worked for a while, read this.
