Conservation Economy: The Architecture of Statism... (Part 3)

Mr.Atos

The Conservation Economy...

Conservation Economy in theory is a means to encourage Sustainability through Man’s social and professional endeavors. According to this model, the health of ecosystems and communities alike suffer when choices remain unregulated. Economic dependence on so-called ‘destructive’ activities creates stresses in the system components that threaten its very existence. The model therefore seeks to create an economy that focuses on human needs while protecting natural systems. Growth is to be maintained ‘organically’ filling new niches and enriching 'human capacities.' Economic arrangements are ‘designed’ to include abstract considerations of value ordained according to dictated models for idealized conditions of preferred balance. They include, but are not limited to Natural and Social assets, the Fundamental Needs of people and the Ecosystems which sustain them. Additionally, desirable characteristics are given notable consideration, including Social Justice, Fairness, and Cultural Diversity, to name a few. This is thought to be the starting point for an alternative economic prosperity; a sustainable conception transcending the trivialities of consumption, production, and wealth.

In fact, the Conservation Economy model risks a substituting of the moral concept of liberty with an indefinable abstract called fairness. It seeks to replace systemic equilibrium with a proscribe definition of balance; exchanging the emancipating mechanism of the dollar with the coercive submission to regulation, and the demoralizing capital of obedience. Personal desires are surrendered to authoritarian whim. Property rights, likewise and by necessity, must be severely limited and ultimately abolished altogether; forfeited to collective stewardship. Choice is likewise relinquished by finite sets of mandated alternatives dictated by collective consensus on ‘poorly understood’, ‘loosely measured’ variables oddly deemed to be ‘chronically undervalued.’ But, undervalued by whom? The market is not a hypothetical, after all. It is the moral representation of the exercised liberty of productive people recognizing, achieving and enjoying their own individual existence. In a free nation, moral decisions are encouraged. Philosophy and religion provide ethical guidance. Government is the manifestation of these values and operates from that basis in accordance with a set of ideal principles. But, ultimately all choices are left to the individual as the primary benefactor of the dividends and consequences. The shift to a Conservation Economy will scrap that concept nearly entirely, alternatively imposing the experimental bridle of Behavior Economics onto a dynamic system of Capitalist mechanisms with the reigns pulled tight by powerful government oversight.

While it is true that all economic models recognize a government’s role in the market (enforcing legality of transaction, protecting property rights, and imposing limited regulation, for instance ) they general agree that individuals are better able to act in accordance with their values and preferences than an officer of the state. Behavioralists do not. While some (perhaps most) people in the community will exercise ‘preferable’ choices, many will not. The founders of this Constitutional Republic, understood that inevitability as a necessary subordinate to the primacy of liberty. Behaviorist systems, on the other hand, require absolute adherence to doctrine and seek, therefore, to dictate accordingly to a minority of deficiency. It thus surrenders common liberty to the potential – indeed the presumption – of human failure. Dictating the values of the market is akin to restricting freedom. Benign and benevolent as the model may appear, a Conservation Economy transforms the relationship between individual and government from one of symbiotic participation, to that of reverent submission. Where such models have been applied, standards of living have suffered, unemployment rates multiply, industrial production slips. The value of life diminishes as a whole. Esteem becomes a rare luxury. Dependency replaces productive ambition as a default state of the human condition in a contemporary revival of medieval feudalism. It is a model for degenerative Statism … a condition that is, in no way moral, nor sustainable.

Continued, Part 4 - The Architecture of Sustainable Liberty...

See also,
Part 1 - Sustainable Design...
Part 2 - The Capital Of The Mind...