The current budget sequester raises
many questions about what America should do reduce our budget deficits and
arrive at an ongoing budget scenario that (1) is sustainable in itself and (2)
addresses issues that will ensure a healthy and sustainable society for our
citizens. In The Myth of Progress (2006, University
Press of New England), Tom Wessels reflects on what the laws of nature can tell
us about how we need to care for our societal ecology. Wessels makes several important points
in this concise book:
First,
we need to abandon the linear thinking that has tended to dominate economic
theory and practice for the past century.
Linear thinking reflects an industrial approach to the economy: that the world is like a machine—in
which “each part works in a lockstep way with the other parts, so that the
system always follows the exact same sequence of interactions between the
parts” (p. 6). In reality,
he argues, we live in a nonlinear, complex system that is less predictable
because the parts interact in multiple ways, so that the system is much greater
than the sum of its parts. Complex
systems, Wessel notes, generate “emergent properties—things that couldn’t be
predicted just by examining the parts” (p. 9). He also notes that complex systems tend to be nested within
each other, which helps to maintain system integrity.
Second,
Wessels argues that, just as natural ecological systems depend on diversity to
sustain themselves, our political ecology also benefits from diversity. “The foundation of sustained progress
lies in stable systems that increase diversity through time to resist
perturbations” (p. 78).
Systems that lack diversity are more likely to be adversely affected by
external changes because they lack means to adjust. Wessel offers several examples of where the American economy
is becoming less diverse and, in the process, less stable: the rise of industrial farming over
smaller family farms, increasing consolidation of the news media under less
than two dozen large corporations, and the rise of corporate power that
displaces small businesses. A good
example of the last change is Walmart, which has reduced economic diversity by
killing small local retailers in communities across the country.
Third,
he notes, “Large-scale change in complex systems never comes from the top down;
it always bubbles up from the bottom.
That means that large-scale social, political, and economic change comes
from the citizenry, whom elected officials will follow when its collective
voice becomes loud enough” (p. 60).
What
does this suggest for how we should deal with the federal deficit and the sequester? For one, we should be aware of how
budget cuts might create unanticipated “feedback loops” within our complex
economic and political system.
Across the board cuts could have both positive and negative consequences;
either way, we need to be sensitive to the potential for unforeseen
consequences. On one hand,
it is essential that there be some discretion about how cuts are made. On the other, it is important that we
use the sequester to make real cuts that result in real change.
At
the same time, we should use the sequester to eliminate subsidies to activities
that work against economic diversity and that create instability. For instance, this would be a good time
to eliminate subsidies to large-scale corporate farming operations and to the oil
industry. We should invest some of the saved funds
to support small, family farms and local cooperatives and to support innovation
in wind, solar, and other sources of energy in order to diversify our food and
energy resources and allow us to be more responsive to climate change and other
external threats to stability.
I
am a firm believer that the final solution will require more than just an
across the board cut in expenses.
New revenues should be at least one quarter of the total solution, which
assumes closing existing loopholes in federal income taxes. Beyond that, however, we will need
significant cuts, even if the hatchet approach of the sequester can be
avoided. Let’s hope that, in
both sides of the process, we keep Wessels’ ideas in mind and find solutions
that recognize that our society—and our economy—is a complex, rather than
linear, system.
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