Loomio
Thu 13 Oct 2016 4:32PM

Model Sustainability: National vs. Global

J Joe Public Seen by 47

For any model to attain long-term sustainability does it need to be created from a global advocacy perspective? Or do you believe in insufficiency for all and feel nations must look out for themselves?

In my opinion the latter sets up failure as nationalism competition leads to conflict and great waste and inefficiency of limited resources. But I want to better understand what you all think is the best path forward.

JR

John Rhoads Fri 14 Oct 2016 5:37AM

For me, a model that attains long-term sustainability will come organically or in a way that has man re-coupling himself to nature and is non-exploitative from an economic POV. I see your point but there is nothing that says this "breakaway nation" may not actually have more of its ducks in a row than this so-called global advocacy. The proof is in the pudding. Good decisions are good decisions regardless of scale or isolation yet I see your point about rogue nations doing insane nuclear experiments or polluting without the rest of us aware of it. I'm of the opinion that accountability will happen as soon as capitalism starts taking a back seat and populations start to relax due to decreased pressures on living requirements. The main reason all this negativity is happening is due to the stressors that come with hard-to-live-by and inequality-producing capitalism. Also, the pretense of national competition implies capitalism. What if nations behaved less so? I think more trust would come once we knew people weren't out to rape the earth and the masses for profit.

LT

Linda Thompson-Bomar Mon 17 Oct 2016 1:59AM

Can this question be better understood by looking at the great experiment called the European Union. Nations striving to find their perfect niche in a group economic solution. If the downward pressure of capitalism were offset by democratically run enterprises throughout europe, wouldn't the poorly performing states such as Greece, Ireland, or Spain, be better able to respond to their neighbors by develpoing their own unique economic strategy that would uplift their populations and yet cooperate in a unified way. Isn't it capitalism that creates discord/competion between nations?

J

Joe Mon 17 Oct 2016 11:59AM

I think so too. Thanks for this reference.

The LE model asks communities - no matter how big (global) or small (local) - to work toward the greater mission, long-term sustainability to assure as good a future for 'them', but simultaneously take care of life in the present, locally, working toward greater efficiency and minimal precious natural resource waste locally.

Capitalism creates lots of needless stuff from the LE POV. This stuff = waste from the LE POV. Capitalism always has the worry of jobs for the people. LE does not because as computers, robots, machinery, etc. eliminate person work and bring about greater efficiency and waste reduction the people get more time for creativity work.

Some people work to create even more efficiency and waste reduction. Others focus on governance, education, entertainment, etc. Or they just have more free time to enjoy life.

In the LE world "valued work" has a whole new look. Now not doing certain activities can be just as valuable as doing certain activities. This is the reality of working within a limited physical control volume (think thermodynamics CV.) Our planet is our present CV challenge. It can only give us so much from the long-term sustainability POV.

The concept of capitalism does not disappear in the LE model. Instead it shifts over to a different pursuit - the pursuit of happiness for self and for others. We will still all compete for generating as much happiness as we can in a very capitalistic manner - using our creativity to attain the attention that is important to happiness. (More on a very important type of happiness later.) But the cool thing about this type of happiness is it only takes a single other being to generate this type of happiness, so the competition (vs. $ competition) is far less rigorous and more easily attainable on a day by day basis.

The way the LE works is everyone focuses far more on the must do work and the needless stuff does not get the attention and effort.

Food production is a huge challenge for the future, especially when we shift back to locally grown food. The huge factory farms and all big corporations go away. People collaborate to co-create in coops that often do not pay you $ directly. You work together because it helps the overall mission more.

Resource continuity laws greatly limit what can be done with physical resources. The people of today do not own the resources. Every generation knows they are only a small piece of the whole story in the long-term sustainability plan. But yet there is still the limitless challenge of increased efficiency and waste reduction that is getting us up out of bed each day and driving us forward in time and space.

The universe provides us plenty of "challenges" to create solutions for. The LE model looks to greatly reduce the "problems" created by humanity within the universe. Problems we have created within our minds and problems we have created for our planet. Again there's the need for endless work addressing all these challenges and problems. No one will ever have nothing to work on.

The LE model creates a great shift in purpose and the challenge is to create agreement of what exactly this greater purpose is.

E.g. "Who would not agree to handing their kids a better future world?"

Now think about this purpose co-creation case as a muxive list. What will be the muxits? And in what ordering will they emerge as?