Message-ID: <3.0.32.19970110073515.007ea8f0@ilhawaii.net> Date: Fri, 10 Jan 1997 07:35:18 -1000 From: Jay Hanson <mailto:jhanson@ILHAWAII.NET> Subject: New Organizing Principle To: Multiple recipients of list DEVEL-L <mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU>
At 10:57 AM 1/10/97 -0500, you wrote: >Dear Jay,
>
>I'll make this very brief. You say
>
>>Capitalism is unsustainable because it depletes "nonrenewable" resources
>and corrupts renewable resources so badly that they become nonrenewable.
>These properties are not unique to capitalism. Nevertheless, capitalism
>belongs to a class of economic systems (so do all existing modern economic
>systems), that have these properties.
>
>I think this is an accurate statement of the problem. The issue is not one=
of >capitalism but of modern economic systems that seek to raise the living
>standards and consumption levels of large numbers of people. Your would
>prefer, I gather, that the world population shrink down to the point where=
it will=20 >not strain the existing environment and resource base. This is one=
solution.=20 >Of course, it is one that presumes a major die-off of much of the exiting=
world >population, since no steps would be taken to provide the wherewithall to
>support and sustain them. Do you have a preferred means by which this
>dying should be effected? Let the poor die? Let the genetically inferior=
die?=20 >Let the believers in inferior ideas die? Would you suggest that Dr. Lisse=
stop >trying to save lives in Namibia? What is your development theory?
If we lived in a sane world (we do not), and were ready to organize for the commond good (which we aren't, and won't be until we arive at anarchy), then I would suggest we adopt some variation of Garrett Hardin's advice:
"Animal lovers and professional biologists should be able to agree on the ultimate goal of game management: to minimize the aggregate suffering of animals. They differ in their time horizons and in the focus of their immediate attention. Biologists insist that time has no stop and that we should seek to maximize the wellbeing of the herd over an indefinite period of time. To do that we must 'read the landscape,' looking for signs of overexploitation of the environment by a population that has grown beyond the carrying capacity.
"By contrast, the typical animal lover ignores the landscape while focusing on individual animals. To assert preemptive animal rights amounts to asserting the sanctity of animal life, meaning each and every individual life. Were an ecologist to use a similar rhetoric he would speak of the 'sanctity of carrying capacity.' By this he would mean that we must consider the needs not only of the animals in front of us today but also of unborn descendants reaching into the indefinite future.
"Time has no stop, the world is finite, biological reproduction is necessarily exponential: for these combined reasons the sanctity strategy as pursued by animal lovers in the long run saves fewer lives, and these at a more miserable level of existence, than does the capacity strategy pursued by ecologically knowledgeable biologists." = = = =97Garrett Hardin=20