Why do we produce only Garbage?

Peak Oil and Future of Humantiy - Part2
This is a continuation from the previous post.

In this post, I examine a possible solution to the Peak Oil question, and use this as a basis to evaluate the current economic models.

In order to investigate the current predicament of mankind, we have to first examine – what is the real progress we achieved from an evolutionary stand point, and what are some of the areas where we became a burden on the environment.

From an evolutionary standpoint, any species’ evolution has to be evaluated from very simple bases:

1. How does the species live together? Are member of the community live isolated, individualistic lives, or is there team work, social organization etc?
2. How does the species live with respect to the larger environment, and its relationships to the overall ecology, other species and so on
3. How does the species store and transmit its knowledge and awareness to its subsequent generations?

The greatest evolution of humans in the last several hundred years (starting from say 9th Century up till now) could be best summarized as follows:

1. The mankind’s discovery of democracy as a primary social organization scheme. There are several theories about why democratic form of government is the best form of government from a political perspective – I have no intention of recapturing those arguments, but from a modeling perspective, the greatest advantage of a democratic model is that it allows the individual member of the society to pursue his/her own purpose, even though such a purpose may not be directly in alignment with the purpose of the larger society in general. This is the most flexible form of organization – it retains the freedom, experimentation, pursuing individual goals by members, without sacrificing the larger interests of the society.

2. Today, there is a definite shift from the age of the hero to the age of the humble. Heroes like Genghis Khan, Caesar, and Hitler do not exist anymore. An average human being today is a humble human being. Finally, human beings have learnt the technique of achieving synergy from team work. Today, a set of ordinary people can come together to achieve extraordinary results. There are tons of examples of this – wikipedia is perhaps the best example. If you notice the great sports personalities today – Roger Federer, Agassi, Sachin Tendulkar – they endeared themselves to the public because of their humility and humbleness, and they readily acknowledge the strengths of their peers and opponents.

3. The Internet and the Web shifted the awareness and sharing between the members of the community to unprecedented levels. They are not inventions of any single individuals, or even group of individuals, and they are not owned by any one in particular. And, contribution to the Web does not give any immediate ‘material reward’ – even then, it is the single largest effort currently in development.

4. There is a subtle shift in our economic model – we seem to be moving away from the industrial economy into service oriented economy. The major difference between these two economic models is very important for our future survival and development. The basis of the industrial economy is centered around controlling of access to information, and ownership and possession of resources where as the basis of the service oriented economy centers around decentralization of access to information, and using of resources without really possessing or owning them.

The above is a very short summary of our achievements as a species. However, our major weakness is how we live in relationship to our environment. Global Warming, our ever increasing thirst to consume all natural resources, the amount of garbage and toxins we release into our environment, our sense of superiority as a species are our weak links. There is a heavy price that we have to pay for the persistent apathy to our environment.

Consider how a plant lives in relationship to its environment. Let’s take the example of a rose plant. In its entire life time, all it needs from the environment is a handful of dirt, a few mugs of water each day, and sunlight that exists everywhere – and from these simple resources that it consumes, it produces a beautiful flower every day. Its function lies in the ‘complexity’ of transformation it performs to the resources it consumes, not in how much and how many of such resources it consumes. And, it does not release toxic hydro carbons in this process, it releases life sustaining oxygen.

Humans on the other hand – specialized in how fast we consume the natural resources provided to us by our environment and give nothing in return. We lack gratitude.

The problem lies in our current economic model. Economists should measure Gross Domestic Consumption instead of Gross Domestic Production – because, we do not really produce anything at all, except garbage – from the point of view of the larger ecology and environment. The current definition of performance and efficiency as measured by corporations, individuals, governments, societies and cultures is centered on how fast we can consume the given resources. There is really no definition of efficiency that measures our productivity by means of how little we consumed in relation to what we produce!!

I believe our future survival and development lies in changing this GDC to real GDP.

In the next post, I shall provide a solution to this problem.