Resource Allocation: Air, Water, Food, Fiber & Energy

[Feral!]

Under corporate capitalism, industry privatizes profits and socializes costs. How do we create an open source system for managing our resources responsibly? Do we need more regulation? Should we trust the free market? Should we build a global energy and transportation grid to distribute resources, or should we tear it all down and look toward localized sustainability?

[Gary F. Moraco]

Localized sustainability.

[Michael]

Agreed -- but I think the best approach to that is to examine actual locally sustainable solutions, then provide an investment fund for people wanting to start businesses that work towards locally sustainable economies.

Case in point: last winter I had a bee in my bonnet about aquaponics -- this involves aquaculture (farming fish) and using the high-nitrogen "waste" output as hydroponic fertilizer for plants. It works quite well, actually, but we move a lot. Aquaria don't really move well.

Anyway, there's work being done in that kind of local food production. It's high-yield, works in any climate, and you really can grow your own food in your backyard on a suburban scale -- even enough to feed your neighbors. And there is no fuel consumed at all. (And we needn't even talk about the health benefits.) In a post-oil economy, we will need technology like that to avoid starvation.

Here in Puerto Rico, again, I'm interested in local produce; there isn't much. As the price of oil rises, there will be hunger here if nothing is done; all the food comes from off-island.

Now, it is my opinion that the free market will, in fact, address this sort of problem. Six billion people have a truly unimaginable amount of creativity, and like it or not, the free market is the best known system for supporting creative solutions to problems. What we need to do is to support that system by making sustainable ideas easy to find and easy to implement. By doing that, we can implement sustainable solutions earlier than the free market would ever notice them, making that response nimbler.

And it will have to be nimble. Our present system is not a free market -- especially where the commerce of ideas is concerned. Corporations actively suppress research and ideas that they see as threatening to their next quarter bottom line. That self-destructive behavior (at the societal level) has to be eliminated if we're going to weather the problems we face this century. It's an indulgence we can no longer afford.

That's the way I see it, anyway.

(Incidentally, my Internet connection was down for nearly 40 hours! It's like getting my oxygen back.)

[Advocate]

First we need a reasonably specific definition of what those resources are which are required for human survival.
They are: nourishment (includes food, air, water), sleep, and warmth (shelter, clothing). Of course each may be broken down into various other categories but that covers the basics. Now we can tackle them individually.

[Michael]

Maslow's hierarchy of human needs is a great place to start when discussing human needs.

He arranges needs in a seven-layer hierarchy; each layer must be satisfied before a person can worry about the next layer up. The first four layers are "deficiency needs" -- you don't feel anything if they're met, but you're anxious if they're not, and the last three layers are "being" or "growth" needs.

The lower half of the hierarchy is:

1. Physiological needs - air, water, food, excretion, shelter, sleep, and sex. (That last one varies by person, of course.)

2. Safety needs - security from violence/crime, security of employment, health, safety net against accident

3. Social needs - friendship, family relationships, sexual intimacy

4. Esteem needs - respect of others, street cred, online karma, fame and glory

Got those? Those are his deficiency needs. I'm not sure I agree that #4 is a deficiency-level category, but the point isn't the precise categorization, just the notion that there can be categorization into a hierarchical set of needs.

Read the Wikipedia article for details on the growth needs, if you're interested. They're not germane to this topic, anyway -- this topic really is about physiological needs. In a civilized society, can we really say that anyone should be deprived of the basic means to live?

Follow that path and you'll see that society should provide everyone with food, water, and shelter -- I'm going to bet that about 70% of the people here don't agree with that. If not -- why not? Assuming that there were resources allocated to feed and clothe anybody who needed it, and there was a magical mechanism to prevent bureaucratic waste, can you justify letting people starve to death?

In fact, I'd have to say that the safety needs are also a function of any civilized society. Certainly everyone believes that a police force should have public support to provide security from crime. How is that acceptable when public funding for health care is not? Use the other side of the paper if necessary.

[Advocate]

I would think the whole question of resources would have to be applied most appropriately and immediately to the physiological needs category. But resources aren't needed to provide excretion and sex isn't a need as evidenced by the fact that some people never have it and are fine.

Furthermore you don't NEED the rest, even you have a human right of some and human privilege of others in most societies.

Beyond the needs of simple survival we have a "need" for education, socialization and gainful activity as a means to better that survival and the Rights to privacy, freedom of expression and freedom of movement as necessary enablers for all the rest.

Maslow was on the right track, of course there's a heirarchy of needs but the things he mentions are not all needs, many are wants, a very different proposition, particularly when you're talking about resource distribution. The majority of resource distribution problems today is precisely because some wants of some are put on par with actual needs of others.

I'm pretty sure my 3 sets of 3 needs cover all that is required for a) survival b) making use of that survival c) being allowed to make use of that survival.

As to safety, it's a privilege, not a need. Many people get by without safety, many do not, but it only takes one exception to disprove the rule. It's a privilege of civilization. Any government worth it's salt will provide it, but it's possible to live without it.

Socialization is a bit of a sticky point. We're all social creatures to one degree or another but a case can be made that a hermit is as human. I must disagree. For a person to have no contact with others puts them in a purely naturalistic mode, one no different than any given animal where survival is only for the sake of survival and when they're gone nothing they were/did matters. Only in human society, because we care about things and look forward not only for ourselves but for our species (unless you're a christian for whom the world will end soon anyway) do we get the added privilege/burden of any of this Mattering.

Summation: Needs, wants, rights, and privileges need to be clearly separated if we're going to come up with a proper solution to any resource issue aimed in that direction.

[Michael]

Well, but it's a sliding scale, right? At the most basic are the needs you will die without (in order of urgency, with air being right up on top.) At the least basic are the needs we all are pretty sure a government shouldn't provide. There is some argument possible about the precise order, and perhaps the scale of gaps between these needs, but I'm not sure how sensible it is to try to say, "This is a need, but that is only a want."

And I don't think safety is a privilege. In fact, it's a right, according to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and our own Declaration of Indepence: the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That doesn't make it a privilege, now does it? Sorry, I'm kind of picky on points of human rights.

I will gladly give you the point about the wants of some being put on a par with the actual needs of others, though. I'm just not sure that the distinctions between needs, wants, rights, and privileges are adequately captured by four categories that have so many extra connotations.

And I'm not sure we should only be aspiring to mere survival anyway. Although that should at least be our rock-bottom minimum. Perhaps people might agree that survival needs are an adequate motivation for income redistribution? Or something?

Bah. I'm not even sure this comment is worth posting, but there it is.

[RU Sirius]

I really think a contemporary human being is a cyborg and "needs" a computer and net access and in general needs to have access to a data-rich environment -- access to virtuality, and some sense of agency in the mediated environment, particularly so long as so many other people have it. In some sense, these are neurological needs that are more fundamental to us now then they were when Maslow was creating his hierarchy..

[Yodhe]

Assuming that you categorize yourself into the definition of a "proto"-cyborg, and you believe that you need a computer (which is a fair proposition imho), how do you feel, think and ponder upon the concept put forward by Marshal McLuhan in "Understanding Media - Extensions of Man", that these same technologies, extensions also amputate.castrate other aspects of ourselves, and what do you consider if any the effects of this to be upon ourselves to act politically?

[Advocate]

The key is "can it be done without" which cuts out nearly everything. "can it be done without and you'll still have a life beyond survival, worth living as a human being" is a grey area. I still consider those needs. But! safety isn't something that fits either of those criteria. In fact we're in danger 100% of the time. Mortal danger. And we don't even know from what quarter it comes. The need of adequate fodder for our brain can fit the second category above, but besides "education, socialization, and gainful activity", how could it be any more specific? Those things are different for each individual.

[Michael]

Oh, I'm sorry, that's balderdash. Yes, by sufficient invocation of sophistry you can say we're in undefined mortal danger 100% of the time -- my God, the Sun could go nova! -- but we don't exist in a continual state of anxiety. Freedom from anxiety is the need which is obviously meant by "safety". I mean, Jesus, just defining safety as an illusion? That's simply hand waving.

So if you're just playing with words, then fine -- nice conceit. But if you mean to argue, seriously, that safety and security are not needs to be addressed by a society, I reject your argument.

[Advocate]

The feeling of safety/security is quite a different animal than actual safety/security. For example, our chance of being involved in a terrorist incident now is, as it has always been, less than then chance of being hit by lightning, and it's now more than twice as likely as it was before 911.

[Michael]

Yes, and I regard this administration's theft of that sense of security to be a crime. Don't you? Especially since on a global level you're still more likely to die by mule kick.

Anything above the physiological level is an emotional need anyway, by definition. Although I suppose a case could definitely be made that actual threats to actual security should be identified and addressed. Perhaps not by government -- certainly they're not doing a great job of it at the moment (exactly the inverse, really) -- but in some way. After all, building codes mandate lightning rods, and I'm pretty sure most people consider that a Good Idea.