For those of us who want the purpose of government and society to be creating the best life for the most people there are two fundamental questions.
First: how to produce what is good for people and produces a good life.
Second: how to distribute what is good for people and produces a good life.
Among people of genuine good will there’s a lot of disagreement about how to do this.
The argument of capitalists is follows: if you produce something someone wants and is able to buy you’ve increased utility. If they didn’t want to buy it, they wouldn’t, so it must be good for them. Trying to figure out what is good for people is stupid: individuals know better than government or firms, so whatever they actually buy (or do) must be what they want, and what they want must be good for them.
Whoever sells the most at the most profit must be producing most utility, so if you have a lot of money this means you’re doing a lot of good and not only do you deserve your money, you should have it because money is the ability to command resources and you’ve proved that when you command resources you increase utility. Making money is the same as producing utility, in other words.
Now the smarter capitalists (non libertarians) admit that there are edge cases: people may want heroin, but we still make it illegal. They don’t think there are a lot of edge cases.
The counter-arguments are pretty simple: when we look at time periods where oligarchs are in control like the gilded era or the neoliberal era, they all end in disaster for the society. In the case of the gilded age, a direct road to the Great Depression (without which WWII probably doesn’t happen). In the case of neoliberalism, a multi-decade increase in inequality, and in the heartland, most social statistics turning negative. (Things like, oh, lifespan and child mortality.) Massive homelessness, hunger, all that stuff. (I’m old enough to remember when there were no food banks.)
Such people argue that “utility” is meaningless: it’s a circular definition, whatever people do is what they want to do and must be good. We all know that we often do things that aren’t good for us (mmm, a nice can of coke) and all of us who aren’t near the top of society have “freely” worked at jobs we hated because not doing so would lead to homelessness. Coercion is all thru the system, and it can’t operate without it. If it could, they wouldn’t need so many police.
Note that the idea that greed and wealth are good flies in the face of pretty much all traditional ethical teaching. Doesn’t matter if it’s Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Moslem or even most pagan faiths: they all condemn having much more than you need when others are poor or hungry.
But, say the capitalists, we tried that for a long time and what worked to create widespread prosperity was capitalism!
Was it?
Or was it industrialization, which we did in capitalist ways and can we imagine that industrialization could have been done in other ways?
Or perhaps the capitalists are right (Marx thought so) and industrialization required capitalism, but once we’re industrialized, we should find a better way, because we know that capitalism is unstable and tends to devolve into fascism, plus tends to create oligarchies over time which then cause massive economic problems.
Or, perhaps the argument is for certain types of capitalism: the New Deal variety worked pretty well, after all. Except that it devolved in neoliberalism and gave away an industrial base which it took the West centuries to build. (Not that China shouldn’t industrialize, but that doing so by wiping out Western industry seems pretty bad for Westerners.)
Then there’s the ecological argument: if capitalism can’t control its environmental destruction, and if that environmental destruction is so serious that it endangers hundreds of millions to billions of lives and is causing a mass extinction event, perhaps whether or not it creates, for a few centuries, prosperity for some people, is not all that relevant. I can keep myself warm by burning my possessions one by one, then burning down my house, but no one thinks that’s smart.
I think a fair reading of capitalism is that it failed to handle to industrialization’s negative side effects and that it regularly devolves into degraded political forms which do great harm.
The “well, it’s the best thing we’ve come up” with argument is foolish: if the best thing we’ve come up with will kill billions of people and keeps causing wars and impoverishing people even though there’s a surplus, we obviously need to come up with something better.
We’ve changed our governing forms and our economic forms many times in the past. We’ve tried new things. The idea that this is (or was) the “end of history” and capitalism and neoliberal democracy are the best we can do is argument for running ourselves off a cliff and after the rise of the CPC, the idea that oligarchy/neoliberalism or “liberal” democracy are the best systems even in their own terms is obviously bullshit. China’s crushing them.
That’s not a brief for China, precisely, it has its own issues and continues an over-consumption economy based on planned obsolescence. But it does demolish the idea that how we do things in the West is obviously superior and can never be replaced by anything better.
But this still comes back to the original two questions: how do we produce what is good and how do we distribute what we create?
Add to them “how do we live in prosperous societies with high welfare without destroying the environment or drawing down irreplaceable resources?”
And those are the questions we haven’t got a good answer to yet and which we urgently need answers to because right now we aren’t just walking off a cliff, we’re feeding ourselves into a chipper foot first.
China, as much as I admire them, and as much as they are doing more than anyone else for the environment (it isn’t even close) is just running an old playbook: the same one America ran, the same one Japan ran, the same one South Korea ran.
And while it’s good that they’re increasing electrification and finally getting carbon under control, it’s not enough by itself because there’s still far too much needless consumption in order to keep the profit feedback mechanism which runs markets (and the Chinese have very competitive markets, just ones that operate under general direction guidance).
I’m not giving answers to these questions today. If you have some, feel free to put them in comments. I have a few ideas, of course, but I think it’s more important for most people to start asking the right questions, and to agree that they are the right questions, than to leap to answers, because if we don’t agree on problems and goals, we won’t agree on solutions.
So start thinking.
What I write here is for the benefit of everyone, but alas, I live in capitalism and I, and the site, take money to keep running. If you value the writing here and can, please subscribe or donate.
Eric Anderson
Question: is there any example of humanity choosing to not over consume under any system?
Put another way, we’re simply witnessing the long arc of humanity as apex predator. Everything it touches is the prey. Sooner or later the apex predator over consumes the prey and the population crashes.
The planet has never experienced a sentient mammal whose prey is the entire resource base of the world. In such context the cycle takes a different timeline. But, it’s the same cycle.
I’m afraid that until humanity crashes at least 50% of its population in a generation, the real sustainability lesson won’t be learned. We’re just too hardwired to consume everything regardless of the consequence. We’re no different than hares and lynx.
Ian Welsh
Yeah, actually research into commons shows many of them stable over periods of centuries.
The idea that over-consumption is automatic and part of human nature is not supported by historical and anthropological research.
Carborundum
Same goal (I think), but I would put this somewhat differently – I would posit that the purpose of government is to regulate a continually emergent political economic system, the purpose of which is creating a good life for the most people (I am suspicious of optimization functions, particularly in political contexts; way too much experience of “best” meaning “best for me, nuts to thee”).
This disarticulation of government and society is not a semantic quibble. Government, in general, is much better at creating conditions for the creation of things than the actual creative act itself. I have many scars, psychic and real, in exotic locations to support this view. Similarly, I’ve seen a fair number of societies and I don’t think I’ve seen any that truly, truly have a purpose. Their political economies, very much so – societies themself, in the sense of all their myriad rules and members, not so much.
Similarly, I would posit that the two key questions need riders, to the effect of “without producing unmanageable externalities”. If we can produce massive amounts of “what is good for people” without downside, let’s knock ourselves out. Similarly, I really don’t have a problem with some dweeb deciding that they need to have disproportionate amounts of “what is good”, so long as that isn’t depriving others of a reasonable share of “good” and/or they don’t decide to use their obscene pile of “good” to purchase the ability to fuck with people. As I think we’ve seen, that doesn’t seem to be how humans are working these days, so we’re going to need to have some means of externality management.
spud
capitalism simply cannot work for long, if ever, if socialism does not get it under control. as soon as socialism appears on the horizon, because capitalism causes massive grinding poverty, where the people no longer fear the bullets, the capitalist will turn to fascism every single time.
that’s how fascism came into being, the capitalist response to socialism.
its government policies that make capitalism work and help alleviate poverty.
its not selling cheap dvd players to people living under bridges.
Cheap consumables alone are not sufficient to alleviate poverty; comprehensive solutions must include access to education, healthcare, and sustainable economic opportunities. Addressing systemic issues and providing technological innovations are essential for long-term poverty reduction.
borgenproject.org hofna.org
Bill Clinton’s trade policies in the 1990s facilitated the import of cheap Chinese goods, which benefited American consumers by providing lower prices. However, these policies also led to significant job losses in the U.S. manufacturing sector.
insideclimatenews.org PBS
Impact of Bill Clinton’s Trade Policies
Lower Prices: Clinton’s trade policies in the 1990s allowed for the import of cheap Chinese goods, which significantly reduced prices for American consumers.
Increased Variety: The influx of Chinese products expanded the range of available goods in the U.S. market, providing consumers with more choices.
Consequences for U.S. Manufacturing
Job Losses: While consumers benefited from lower prices, the trade policies led to substantial job losses in the U.S. manufacturing sector. Many companies relocated production to China to take advantage of lower labor costs.
Wage Pressure: The shift of manufacturing jobs overseas resulted in downward pressure on wages for American workers, particularly in industries that faced competition from Chinese imports.
Summary of Trade Dynamics
Aspect Description
Consumer Benefits Lower prices and increased variety of goods available in the U.S. market.
Manufacturing Impact Significant job losses and wage pressure in the U.S. manufacturing sector.
Clinton’s trade policies created a complex economic landscape where American consumers enjoyed immediate benefits, but the long-term effects on the manufacturing workforce were detrimental.
insideclimatenews.org
————
the commons produced a fair living for many, with time to enjoy life.
the capitalists stole the commons, and still are. the capitalist will chop down the last tree on the planet for profit, catch the last fish for the same reason, and mine the last mineral left on earth for the same reasons, then start shooting.
the star trek economy is the only hope to stopping this. other wise rosa luxemburg is correct.
bruce wilder
time periods where oligarchs are in control . . . In the case of the gilded age, a direct road to the Great Depression . . .
The “Gilded Age” was a big, friggin’ surprise. The liberal philosophers who constructed the critiques of feudal tradition and authority, who abolished slavery and the slave trade, championed science and constitutional, representative democracy were expecting to “free” humanity by means of deliberate, rational, gradual reform. They were cheerleading the abolition of slavery, the dethronement of landed aristocracy and religious authority, the enlightenment of free speech, free trade and free minds. They seem to have expected a commonwealth of disparate, independent producers in a decentralized division of free labor.
What happened in the Second Industrial Revolution emerged largely unexpected from the contention and chaos and inventiveness and a great, urgent growth of human activity that followed from a political building and demolition program. The liberal rationales were not the design of anything really — they were quickly adapted as apologies for cruelty, hypocrisy, and new forms of ignorance, resistance and denial as well as new programs of reform and hope.
The great, core failure, in my humble opinion, right up to the present crisis of runaway climate change and ecological collapse, comes down to the failure of political economy as a social science. When humanity was actively inventing new models and modes for organizing production and distribution beginning in the 1860s and 1870s, humanity’s collective capacity to retrospectively rationalize what it was doing and process that rationalization into a useful, workable theory completely broke down.
The neoclassical economics — born in the 1860s — that undergirds neoliberal ideology is absurdly stupid and ignorant, yammering on about “markets” that don’t exist and launching from there to civic theology. It has been blocking all intellectual attempts to collectively think thru a policy response to climate change. Marxism might actually be worse. Where we need architects and engineers to reorganize the global economy, we have theologians and patent medicine salesmen doing greenwashing.
It was the incapacity of neoclassical economics to invent an alternative to gold standard dogmatism after WWI that prevented productive reorganization of European economies. The “rational” experts could not persuade the people or the politicians. Fascism was the irrational response to the crises that resulted from the economic policy palsy.
The economic crises of the 1920s leading to the Great Depression really were down to the handicaps put on politics by the economic theories of the day. Which, to a bizarre extent, are still our conventional economic theories.
I don’t know how humanity can free itself from its apparent inability to embrace an adequate theory of political economy.
Paul
It’s the use of technology that’s the underlying problem.
The use of even basic technology such as fire, the wheel, agriculture all help to cut corners and make it easier for human populations to grow without the previous barriers that used to prevent it.
The use of tools and technology is a human trait.
If we can reduce/stop its use and reduce, vastly, the population, then perhaps we have a chance. (Spoiler- Not going to happen).
But then, we’d have nothing to shield the remaining population from the effects of climate change.
There’s nothing really we can do. We have no agency.
https://problemspredicamentsandtechnology.blogspot.com/?m=1
Barry Kelly
I don’t think overconsumption is a real problem. There are a lot of side effects, but to attack the side-effects by saying no, you are not allowed to consume, is not a government system I would want to live under. I want to consume the fruits of my labour. By all means, price in the costs, regulate the side effects, but don’t tell me I can’t consume what I produce.
Similarly, the framing of your two questions assumes that production and distribution are yours to control. Are they? Is a government with free agency to control these things absolutely a government you would want to hand control over to your political enemies?
Are there other ways to achieve the outcomes you want with less powerful tools that are less likely to be abused?
Jan Wiklund
There is a lot of research of what causes happiness; one of the best list is Richard Layard’s book that simply is called Happiness: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/54928/happiness-by-layard-richard/9780241952795.
The biggest point is equality. Then come relatives and friends, security, trust and feeling of usefulness. Having some kind of ideology that ties everything together is also good. “More money”, when the essential is covered, doesn’t create happiness at all.
Some of this is directly counter to capitalism. At least in its neoliberal shape. And if (neo-liberal) capitalism creates more unhappiness, what is it then good for?
Eric Anderson
That’s dogma, Ian. Remember, I’ve an M.S. in Bioregional Planning and Community Design. I’ve read all the Ostrom.
And, that doesn’t address the actual wider issue of consumption. It just addresses the narrow issue of commons governance. Sure, research exists showing that a commons can be sustainably maintained without enclosure.
But, those families are still having kids beyond replacement rate. And, so are theirs.
Hell, I’m gonna guess if you back to the areas Ostrom did her study on … the commons are under black top.
The blob … the expansion … the consumption. It has never stopped, and will never stop until nature stops it because we’ve eaten all the seed corn.
Eric Anderson
And, I come back to Aldo Leopold’s concept that humanity needs to develop a “land ethic” before any true sustainability progress can be made. We abuse the land because we treat it as a commodity belonging to us, rather than a community to which we belong.
So long as we approach the issue as one with some technocratic fix we’ll keep getting the same results. It’s a moral/ethical problem. So we have to look to history and find examples of humans morally/ethically evolving.
It’s not an intellectual thing. It’s more akin to religious conversion. Getting sober taught me that. Things have to get so (family blogging) bad all the old ways are abandoned in favor of a new way of looking at the world.
My conversion was “I don’t drink.”
Huamnity’s conversion has to be “I don’t consume for the sake of consumption.” Perfectly anathema to everything we’re taught from day one.
spud
Keen cleans the floor with the capitalist. its a myth that capitalism lifts people out of poverty. its the exact opposite, its all government policies that lift people out of poverty, otherwise the capitalist accrues almost all profits for themselves.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSVfK3COq5I
Steve Keen HUMILIATES Patrick Bet-David Over Disgusting US Healthcare Lies!
Aug 12, 2026 #SteveKeen #PBDPodcast #TheSilasWire
Did an elite economist just expose the biggest lie about American healthcare on the PBD Podcast? Watch as Steve Keen DESTROYS PBD with undeniable facts: “We pay $14,000 for worse life expectancy?!” revealing the shocking truth about America’s broken medical system.
In this explosive breakdown from The Silas Wire, commentator Silas Miller dissects a heated debate on the PBD Podcast between host Patrick Bet-David and renowned economist Professor Steve Keen.
What starts as a discussion about China’s economic rise quickly devolves into a masterclass on the failures of the American healthcare system. When Bet-David relies on tired political slogans to defend US capitalism, Keen completely derails the narrative by bringing up a devastating reality: the United States has a lower life expectancy than virtually every other major Western nation, despite paying nearly three times as much per capita.
But Silas Miller doesn’t just let the debate speak for itself; he brings the documented receipts. Diving into the latest OECD health statistics, Miller confirms that Americans spend an astronomical $14,885 per person annually, only to receive almost three fewer years of life expectancy compared to countries spending half that amount.
Miller also cuts through the “capitalism versus communism” talking points, fact-checking Keen’s claims about China lifting roughly 800 million people out of extreme poverty through a hybrid economic model. If you are tired of podcast pundits dodging hard data with patriotic slogans while everyday citizens ration insulin and drown in medical debt, this deep dive is essential viewing for true media accountability.
Eric Anderson
Show me a society where consumption was not linked to social status and I’ll show you a blue print to change the world.
We’re just animals that think we’re special, but at the end of the day are prone to the same biological laws governing the rest of the mammalian world.
“Look! Me have big antlers. Me make better baby.”
Consume as much as you can as fast as possible before the other guy because that chick over there that we’re all competing for is always evaluating fitness and we only have a few short years to demonstrate we’re the most fit.
Reptile brain trumps the neocortex every time. Reptile brain only evolves through extreme pain and deprivation.
Eric Anderson
Want to fix the over-consumption issue?
Make everyone who conspicuously overconsumes a pariah.
If the chances of reproduction are low because your cohort hung you from a high branch for conspicuously overconsuming, then overconsumption as marker for reproductive fitness will disappear in a couple generations.
But again, the ethic needs to change first.
david lamy
Whatever system can do this: give priority to preserving the bottom of the food chain. I rarely have collisions with insects on my bike rides anymore.
StewartM
Spud
Job Losses: While consumers benefited from lower prices,
I would dispute this. Say, running shoes. They were about $100 per pair before they were outsourced, and after outsourcing they were STILL $100 a pair. The lower costs were just taken as higher profit.
This is especially true after the lapse of enforcing anti-trust law (starting with Reagan) which allowed for buyouts and consolidations which reduced competition and allowed manufacturers to essentially set monopoly prices at at the maximum of the sales x margin curve.
StewartM
To me, all the answers to your questions, revolve around the main question of:
“How do we create a state-level political system that prohibits sociopaths from taking over?”
Because the economic system that causes so much misery and environmental degradation is a consequence of “death bet” Ayn Randian mis-labeled “rational” leadership where it’s all about ME ME ME. If your interests align with the group rather than you, and with unborn posterity and not what’s just best for the rest of your life, then decisions get better. Competency matters too, and we lack that as well.
The reason why hunter-gatherer societies tend to be kinder than our state-level ones is that sociopathy is an obstacle to leadership; you get to be a leader just because people know that you ‘know what you’re talking about’ (competency) and have demonstrated that you always ‘do the right’ thing by everyone else. Except for the verbal acclaim, leadership is a materially thankless job.
ProNewerDeal
There is the Invididual sector & the Societal sector.
I believe that Societal problems, including climate change & limited key resource depletion, pandemics like Covid, nuclear war risk MAYBE can be solved/mitigated by internationally center-left Scandinavian-style social democracy/ Ditto for certain more left political economy approaches, like 1970s Chile Salvador Allende version of Democratic Socialism, or the current Chinese Communist government.
I do not believe that political economy versions more right-wing than Scandinavian social democracy can solve Societal problems, including the right-wing 1980s-now Reganomics neoliberal USA.
Perhaps Covid is a case example. Athough not perfect, the best global results were communist China & Ardern-led social democracy New Zealand in terms of minimum excess deaths. Reaganomics/neoliberal US under both ConManD0n & Biden showed clearly the short-term capitalist quarterly profits were more important than any deaths or public health goals.
Personally I would prefer to live in social democracy over communism for the civil liberties. Afaik any existing communist government had weak/minimal civil liberties.
I know that US Reaganomics/neoliberal political economy is unsustainable & can not solve Societal problems. I am open minded on what the best political economy form for the 2020s-2090s in terms of solving Societal problems should be.
Ian Welsh
What we can do and will do changes.
Right now everyone’s screaming about too few children, not too many. Once there were no democracies. Once there were no kings. Once there was no agriculture. Once there was no flying.
Humans can change how they do things. The question is only how wide the range is.
We work on the assumption that we can change to avoid over-consumption. That we have had periods where we didn’t produce too many kids, that we have had periods when the commons were stable, and that we can combine the two.
We work on that assumption because the other assumption offers no route forward.
Ian Welsh
Government already forces you to produce in many different ways, and if you don’t things go badly for you. Weird idea that government doesn’t do this.
And when governments encountered people who didn’t work more than they had to, they made sure to change that and they were very good at it. Those people’s who resisted to the death, died.
bruce wilder
Climate change and ecological collapse are being driven by waste overwhelming the earth’s capacity to assimilate waste. We, humans, are poisoning our little, blue petri dish circling the sun.
The way neoliberal global “market” capitalism organizes production involves a lot of low or negative marginal-value effort and resource-use. If the world community could recognize the reality of pervasive waste and deliberately constrain energy use (energy use because all energy use entails entropy and waste) in a crash conservation effort, we might begin to curtail the carbon pump and resource depletion creating hell-on-earth for our posterity. We could collectively work much less and still eat just fine.
I used to read earlier generation IPCC reports. Always a blizzard of climate science scenarios. Followed by utter rubbish from academic economists. They ought to be constructing economic models analyzing 300 years of the global industrial revolutions to match the elaborate climate science models, so we can understand how we could intervene in the economy.
People are speculating about climate engineering interventions in large part because the climate are almost good enough to suggest some possible interventions.
The most effective intervention would be radical energy conservation to constrain waste, but exploring economic interventions to accomplish that require elaborate economic modeling. And, most of the economic modeling has been done at a useless level of esoteric abstraction and fantastic assumptions about “growth” untethered to earthly concerns and constraints.
Meanwhile, many people are complacently imagining swapping out fossil fuels for “electricity” sourced from magically produced solar panels and windmills. And, the handful of climate policy pros have drawn up crazy plans to draw carbon out of the air and ocean to make their scenarios work.
spud
StewartM
Spud
Job Losses: While consumers benefited from lower prices,
that was not my statistic, that was the justification the clintonites used for gutting americas wages, you get cheap stuff. but its not so cheap if you lose your standard of living.
spud
ProNewerDeal;
years ago i read a letter from someone who remained anonymous because his father was in the ambassador core.
he was stationed in a communist country. he said he made local friends, and when they went out, no matter the time, they never encountered the police most of the time, and when they did, the police ignored them.
when he came home, his friends feared going out because of the police. he was astounded.
the bill of rights has been all but gutted, not much left.
———-
Communist countries often had police forces that were used to enforce state control and suppress dissent, leading to a different relationship with the police compared to the fear experienced in the United States, especially during the Red Scare. In the U.S., the fear of police was heightened by concerns over civil liberties and systemic racism, particularly in the context of police brutality and accountability issues.
Council on Foreign Relations johndclare.net
Comparison of Police Perception in Communist Countries and the U.S.
Relationship with Police
Aspect Communist Countries United States
Purpose of Police Enforce state control and suppress dissent Protect civil liberties and maintain order
Public Perception Generally viewed as a tool of the state Often feared due to concerns over brutality and racism
Accountability Limited accountability to the public Increasing calls for accountability and reform
Key Differences
Enforcement Role: In communist countries, police forces were primarily used to maintain state power and control over the populace. This often resulted in a lack of fear among citizens regarding police actions, as they were seen as enforcers of the state’s ideology.
Fear in the U.S.: In contrast, Americans have historically experienced a heightened fear of police, particularly during periods like the Red Scare. This fear is rooted in concerns over civil liberties, systemic racism, and instances of police brutality. The relationship is complicated by the perception that police may not always act in the public’s best interest.
The contrasting perceptions of police in communist countries versus the United States highlight significant differences in the role and accountability of law enforcement. While police in communist regimes are often seen as instruments of state power, Americans frequently view them with suspicion due to historical and ongoing issues related to civil rights and systemic injustice.
Council on Foreign Relations My Staging Website
Brian M
Industrialization was a side-effect. The enabling factor was the surplus created by excess energy. Energy, by definition, is the foundation of life. We highly creative apes figured out how to access millions of years of stored fossil carbon energy. This provided the surplus energy that allowed for industrialization and virtually everything else you can see on this planet outside of oceans and preserved wilderness.
That situation was a one-time bounty, which we chose to spend on a 150-200 year party binge. We got some great stuff out of it, for sure, but that party is going to end. There will not be another move to a more energy dense source beyond oil. Whatever humans are on the planet will have to learn to make do with a more or less constantly decreasing energy surplus. Less economic activity, less stuff, less.
We do know how to do this, or we did. Many aboriginal people around the world still do. But it’s been a very long time for us Westerners. The colonial settler mentality, enabled by surplus (first food energy, then fossil energy), provided additional access to surplus (energy, materials, food) and allowed a minority to live beyond their environmental supports in a way that was previously unimaginable. Unfortunately, it was also unsustainable. So, it will stop.
Humans will learn to live within the scope of the energy available to them. Sadly, we are not wise or long term thinkers or particularly good planners, so there will likely be many fewer of us by the time we do. We could envision a future with less energy and plan for an equitable and just reduction and balancing of energy and resources. With a declining population (something that falling fertility suggests is pretty much baked in) we might be able to creatively and intelligently adjust to a lower standard of living by improving our quality of life. Unfortunately, the current trend seems to be more towards zero-sum thinking and a beggar-thy-neighbor approach to global interaction.
Regardless, the amount of energy available to humanity will inevitably fall and with it the surplus energy that allows so much of the magical activity that we currently take for granted. We once knew how to exist in balance with nature. Eventually, we will again. The question is how long will it take and how much pain will we inflict on ourselves on the journey.
Swamp Yankee
Re: the commons.
I want to offer the following empirical point:
I wrote my doctoral dissertation in history on how Towns in early New England managed their common natural resources through their Town Meetings. To make a long story short — the Towns in this region of Massachusetts in the 17th through early 19th centuries spent a tremendous amount of energy, and wrote a great many municipal statutes, regulating common natural resources, especially alewives (river herring — critical as a food resource in early spring), marsh and meadows, beaches, and bog iron ore. I think persuasive evidence suggests this pattern continues in the 20th and 21st centuries.
In New England, the English commons tradition largely was kept intact — many of the same places that were common in the 17th century are common in the 21st (see, e.g., Robert McCullough, _The Landscape of Community: A History of Communal Forests in New England_ (1995) https://archive.org/details/landscapeofcommu0000mccu). In my own town, the commons have remained common — the Town Poor Farm became the Town Forest, out of which other Town properties have been carved over the years (the Senior Center, the dump/transfer station, the new police station, the Town cemetery); but it mostly remains forested and open to the public, and this is pretty universal in New England outside Rt. 128 (the Boston ring road).
Indeed, Massachusetts statute, as well as the laws of New Hampshire and Maine, follow the 1641 Massachusetts Body of Liberties, which guarantee fishing, fowling, and navigation rights in Great Ponds, which are 10 acres or over, and are legally common. This is a living, statutory enactment of the commons regime, and it is still one that is important for anyone who fishes, paddles, or hunts in these ponds.
In New England, at least, the great weight of historical evidence shows that the commons regime inherited from medieval England was successfully reproduced and remains intact. A different world is in fact possible than that which is purported to be hegemonic, and it is worth noting that the maintenance of this commons regime occurs in a region that has a high human development index, has historically been a center of Reformed Protestant capitalism (See also Scotland, the Netherlands, and Switzerland, following Max Weber), and whose governments (except New Hampshire) are broadly speaking North Atlantic social democracies.
I don’t think this is an accident; I think all these traits are related and inform one another.