Prosperity, Justice, Environmental Health - response

Looking at the health of an environment should always have been important to economists (or at least in retrospect, it is easy to assume this). The earliest iterations of wealth would have been base resources- you have water/you have land/you have power/you have the ability to pass on your genes/ you are wealthy. As economic systems have evolved over time, the valuation systems we use have, too, evolved.

I certainly daydream of times when the value of something was more obvious. You were hungry and you had to climb up 30-feet in order to get to that bush on the mountain to get the berries or you had to patiently wait to hunt a deer or you had to wander and wander and collect tubers and fruits and leaves as you could. The value of these direct actions is visceral and obvious. The value of fixing your own roof and of finding a better material to make your kettle out of is obvious - you measure it through your own experiences and through the observational practices of engaging with the material and experiential world - things last longer, hunger is sated, shelters are protected.

It is precisely this type of VALUE that our economic systems and our legislative powers cannot make sense of. Many of the truest measures of success/wealth/health etc - aren't measurable by the current practices that require economic statistics to inform legislation etc. How do we measure the value of an acre of forest or a healthy pod of humpback whales or composting or preventive stress relief? Reactionary economics can often be more lucrative to the dollar, but what about the value that is rooted in survival in its original and truest sense?

Though I have never had prolonged experience with life in its most fundamental image, except the minorly similar experience of camping for extended periods of time - I long to understand it. I long to be in touch with something that modern, super-global economies have stripped away in many ways, and that is the true understanding of the regional economic landscape within which I endure. There are many people on this globe who do understand survival, who do know hunger or lack of shelter or the true value of things. I also believe that many of these individuals are trapped in the red tape of economic and social systems that strangle their well being for the sake of power struggles that prioritize politics over basic well-being.

In this article, we frequently encounter the question of: WHAT DO WE VALUE? There is something quite elegant about this in my mind. Whatever we value IS the driver of our economies, and this is something that goes back to the beginning of economies and endures until the present time. It is perhaps true in some minds, that economics didn't exist until the existence of money, however I think that the idea of transferring goods for value is innate in the social systems of many animals, including humans. Where humans differ distinctly does show up with the arrival of moneys- those entities that are mere representatives of value. With that, and with the rise of commercially-driven economies, I believe that our views of survival, need, and value have changed. As supply chains move farther and farther away from the consumer, the understanding of the sustainability of those supplies, those goods - is less and less obvious. It becomes nearly impossible for consumers to easily understand the power of their spending (or, indeed, the sustainability of their consumptive patterns).

In regards to statistical visibility, I am fascinated. We are no longer disparate groups of 60-500 individuals co-existing within a small cohorts of relatively like-minded individuals. Managing varying valuation systems in a global economy within which most countries rely on some outside economic relationships - seems almost unrealistic. How do we balance the need for local, independent responsibility for economic and environmental protection - against the imperative need for focus on global unity regarding environmental and social justice? How do we create economic systems that inspire citizens to act in ways that - in their net value - shape those economic systems to continue inspiring participating entities?

If the future of economics were to take into consideration what societies actually value, I wonder what that would look like? As it is, in commercially-driven societies, we cannot lie. We vote with our dollars, we can permit ourselves all levels of discretion, however the GDP and the general outcomes of the market leave traces of our collective choices each day/week/month/year and pay tribute to our true priorities. As we vote on our priorities with our money, it becomes clear what our general drivers are, and individual voices begin to disappear. It is perhaps the way of the future to measure these collective priorities through economics - to prioritize those as issues/products/ideas that hold economic and social value. But, what of the innumerable entities that hold extreme value to our survival - but lack statistical representation? How do we give voice to these entities so that they may receive the measurable weight that so drives our legislative powers and thus inspire the decision making of individuals within such systems? Can we, instead, address such entities in reverse? By, perhaps, inspiring individuals to act and consume and represent their own values and, thusly, shape the economy from the bottom up?

In spite of our voices being watered down, in spite of the abstractions of money and the separation of humans from other wildlife in regards to the systems with which we measure survival - I would love for us to regain an understanding of what survival means in its most basic form. Societies have given us much enrichment beyond the most basic survival, however I suspect that that enrichment has, in ways (chiefly through ideas focused on CONVENIENCE) robbed us of a true knowing that would have us respect the fundamental bank from which we extract our wealth - the environment.

More on the evolution of money and money systems and the effects it's had on environmentalism soon! Thanks for your contributions everyone, Sarah