Sustainable Living
Un-Sustainable Rise Of Complexity and Bureaucracy
Date Sat 16 Aug 2008 | Leave a Comment
“Bureaucracy is the death of all sound work.”
– Albert Einstein
Bureaucracy irritates me, I mean REALLY <blanky> irritates me. All my friends hate bureaucracy. All my family hates bureaucracy. In fact, everyone I’ve ever mentioned the word bureaucracy to hates bureaucracy! If so many of us (seemingly all of us) hate bureaucracy, then why is it thriving? What is really going on here?
I believe the answers are critical elements to us building a better future with a sustainable economic system and hanging onto an atmosphere that you can actually breathe.
Increasing bureaucracy is not some benign quirk we should simply tolerate. Increasing bureaucracy is a tell-tale sign of bloated, inefficient systems (economies) that are simply not sustainable.
It’s worse than it looks… We’re not just talking about your classic text-book definition of bureaucracy here. What we’re seeing today is the momentous rise of an unproductive sector which I loosely categorize as “bureaucracy” and define as the parasitic drag affecting the REAL production and distribution of REAL essential goods.
My list of parasites includes administrators, accountants, salespeople, middle-men, traders, speculators, bankers, marketers, lawyers, CEOs and all those employed in non-essential government sectors. Basically if you don’t actually produce anything of value you’re on my list as a parasite!
Right now, some readers are nodding their heads in agreement while others are taking offense. That’s where it gets complicated. What is “essential”? What is “value”? As a society, we don’t really know anymore. It’s become a subjective matter because the issue has become incredibly complex. A couple of hundred years ago, to determine whether or not someone was a parasitic drag, we would have asked the simple question, “Did you contribute to putting food on the table or building the barn or fixing the wagon?”. With the exception of entertainers (for which we’ve always had a soft spot), if you answered no, then you hadn’t “earned your keep”.
Today that simplicity is gone. Mechanization, fueled by cheap, non-renewable fossil fuels has freed us from productive manual labor, allowing us to increase in complexity (specialization), pursue consumerism and wallow in the creation of non-sustainable, non-productive jobs! (See consumerism and sustainable job creation). Critically, it is that cheap energy which has allowed us to “afford” bureaucracy and tolerate the inefficient use of labor.
“Government machinery has been described as a marvelous labor saving device which enables ten men to do the work of one.”
– John Maynard Keynes
The Double-Whammy Of Bureaucracy, Complexity And Centralization
The “growth of complexity” is a recognized phenomenon of evolving systems like societies. Biological evolutionists describe blind variation and selective retention as tending to produce increases in both structural and functional complexity of evolving systems.
The trouble with societal evolution is that there is someone guiding the process. There is questionable “intelligence” manipulating things. The bureaucrats are at work. The “blind” variation is not so blind, the selective retention is skewed. Both forces have been railroaded by narrow self interest that ultimately leads to more centralized bureaucracy and more poor decisions. It’s a cancerous rot that is difficult to combat.
Here’s a true case that illustrates why bureaucracy thrives and why it’s so hard to combat… Selective retention at it’s worst…
Karen owned her own business. Gradually the profit margins dwindled under the ever-increasing administrative loads, taxes, and costs of compliance with new rules and regulations dreamed up and imposed by centralized bureaucracy.
She sold out (in more ways than one). And quickly landed a fairly cushy government job. Her thinking was, “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.” Ambitious, she climbed the ladder within her department until she reached managerial status with a great perks package.
One day the news filtered down that the bloated department was to be rationalized. The razor gang was trimming all dead wood. Karen’s ENTIRE branch was earmarked for pruning. What does a bureaucrat do in that situation? One finds a palatable solution!
Karen immediately contacted a few close confidantes in adjacent branches and on the main trunk. A plan was hatched and Karen was able to quietly reassure her underlings that all was not lost - accept your massive redundancy packages - We have a plan…
The generous redundancy packages were quickly tucked away and phase two kicked in… Karen’s public service buddies began pulling the required strings, nodding, winking and lobbying the appropriate people. In no time at all it was determined that a new branch should be created.
Of course, the new branch wouldn’t do exactly the same things as the old branch (nobody was too sure what that was anyway). What they did know for sure was that the new branch presented new challenges and the rates of pay would need to be adjusted upwards! The new branch is now thriving at great expense to the taxpayer and society in general.
The story is unfortunately all too common and illustrates the vicious circle behind expanding bureaucracy; Bureaucrats naturally don’t want to give up their jobs so will do anything in their power to keep them (forget efficiency and ideals like the collective good - it’s every man for himself!) and secondly, crushed by the sheer weight of bureaucracy everyone on the “outside” sees “joining ‘em” as an attractive option.
While we’re bagging bureaucracy let’s continue with another quick illustration of the stupidity of centralized governments and bureaucratic bungling…
Nobody really knows the full story because nobody has owned up yet. A few years back, a brand new police station was built in the village of Carinda (population 194) in Walgett shire, NSW. The sheer size of the station mystified locals, after all with a population of just 194 crime was practically non-existent. Somehow, the construction of this “overly large” police station received approval, passed inspection and was put into service in the wrong town! The police station was actually meant to be built at Quirindi, a town of 2500, many miles away. The oversized police station has become a tourist highlight and testament to the stupidity of centralized government.
I could go on with examples of monumental blunders at local, state and federal level; the rainwater tank fiasco, the septic tank fiasco, grey water policy confusion etc. Bureaucrats get it wrong over and over again and expect society to foot the bill.
Our centralized bureaucracies have no “common sense”, they’re inefficient and we can no longer afford them.
Joseph Tainter, in “Complexity, Problem Solving, and Sustainable Societies” points out that while a certain level of complexity is beneficial for the sake of efficiency, at some stage, societies hit the point of diminishing returns on complexity… Further investment in complexity becomes a counter-productive burden and alienates the society it was meant to serve…
“diminishing returns make complexity less attractive and breed disaffection. As taxes and other costs rise and there are fewer benefits at the local level, more and more people are attracted by the idea of being independent. The society “decomposes” as people pursue their immediate needs rather than the long-term goals of the leadership.”
I would say that we reached the point of diminishing returns on increasing complexity a long time ago. It’s my guess we reached that point in the late 1960’s, perhaps the 1970’s. The mind-boggling growth of complexity since then is just pushing on a string. Despite all the gadgetry and “stuff”, I just can’t see the evidence of any real improvement in our quality of life in the last 40 years, in fact, I’d argue that the social dysfunction we’re now seeing is evidence of society “decomposing”.
One thing is clear; complexity, bureaucracy and other non-productive parasitism has grown to unsustainable levels. What happens when cheap fossil fuel energy runs out? And cheap alternatives cannot be found? Again, Tainter speculates…
“One often-discussed path is cultural and economic simplicity and lower energy costs. This could come about through the “crash” that many fear — a genuine collapse over a period of one or two generations, with much violence, starvation, and loss of population. The alternative is the “soft landing” that many people hope for - a voluntary change to solar energy and green fuels, energy-conserving technologies, and less overall consumption. This is a utopian alternative that, as suggested above, will come about only if severe, prolonged hardship in industrial nations makes it attractive, and if economic growth and consumerism can be removed from the realm of ideology”
It’s little wonder that voluntary simplicity and self-sufficiency are gaining popularity. I’m firmly convinced that relocalization - creating self-sufficient communities - and decentralization is the path we need to take to engineer a soft landing.
Consumerism and Sustainable Job Creation
Date Sun 3 Aug 2008 | Leave a Comment
There are very few humans currently living on planet earth that would dare claim that everything is rosy with our system. Yet we’ve had a hundred years - a whole century of rapid developments in mechanization, technological advance and social tinkering which promised to deliver a better world. One of the main promises of mechanization and technological advance was to get the work done easier and faster. The result we expected was increased leisure time - futurists went so far as to speculate as to just what we might do with our time when work was no longer necessary!
But here we are a century later most of us still “working”. And according to workplace studies in Australia, we’re working even longer hours than 20 years ago! Yes, The nature of the work has changed, to be sure. Gone is much of the heavy labor thanks to machinery. And gone too are hundreds of thousands of jobs on assembly lines and factories thanks to robotics. Gone too are thousands of jobs in agriculture and other labor intensive industries.
Mechanization, robotics and computers have without question eliminated jobs.
So it begs the question: how come unemployment is low? As of late 2007, the Australian government was claiming record low unemployment and a dire skill shortage. So dire is our shortage of workers that immigration and special programs for foreign workers have been ramped up. Despite losing hundreds of thousands of jobs to mechanization we’re still all employed! We’re still all commuting to work - gobbling up oil and spitting out smog in the process. Worse, both partners, husband and wife are making the commute, often in two cars - double the trouble for the environment. In Australia, two incomes (jobs) have become “essential”.
All of a sudden we see that things are not adding up… Those futurists were obviously wrong and it’s now clear that we no longer even expect the technological advances to eliminate work. It’s also clear that as a society we still feel that all able-bodied members must have have a job or they’re somehow shirking their responsibility. Here’s proof…
Let’s say you become unemployed and need government unemployment payments (the Dole) to survive, There’s just no way you’re going to get payments without “jumping through the hoops” and documenting your concerted effort to find a job.
Just try this claim at your social security office: “Oh no, I don’t need an actual job. I’ve been displaced by machines so just give me the cash. Where do I sign?” The nice lady behind the counter will smile at your “joke” - it simply must be a joke - nobody in their right mind expects to be paid for NOT working. Clearly, the expectation is that we must have a job.
So eager are we to provide ourselves with jobs that we’ll trash the planet to achieve our goal…
The monumental problem with jobs is this; almost everyone who has a job must commute to work and that commute, whether powered by electricity (unless solar photovoltaic) or internal combustion engine, requires energy and so contributes to environmental degradation. Obviously some modes of powered transport are more planet friendly than others but the bottom line is this: moving vast numbers of people to their place of work is unsustainable.
Consumerism Creating Unnecessary Jobs
The second problem with “jobs” is that many are totally unnecessary. There, I’ve said it. And I just know that some people are going to be offended by this but the fact is there are a number of occupations that are flat out destroying the world and a total waste of human endeavor.
Telemarketing springs to mind as the first obvious example. This particularly annoying form of marketing is intrusive, wastes time, costs the environment resources and drives rampant consumption. Telemarketing does not create food, does not build shelter or essential products. Telemarketing’s primary objective is to make sales, or more accurately, “make money” and nothing more. Telemarketing would receive a big fat zero on my “usefulness” scale. And I must add, zero intrinsic value to society.
At the other end of the spectrum, let’s take an occupation like the growing of staple foods. Imagine a very productive farmer who single-handedly grows enough grain and wholesome vegetables to feed an entire village. On my “usefulness” scale his occupation would deserve a 9.
Now let’s look at an extreme “negative usefulness” occupation by imagining, for example, a “super-telemarketing instructor”. A master salesperson who travels the world teaching telemarketers how to manipulate people’s emotions over the telephone, overcome their target’s reservations and close more sales of useless energy-sucking consumer gadgets. He’s in big demand, regularly flying across the world to train aspiring telemarketers. In doing so he’s not only promoting and perpetuating a business model (occupation) that is practically worthless to society, he is fueling rampant consumption and has an enormous personal environmental footprint in non-essential air travel. His job is an environmental disaster.
Note: our imagined “super-telemarketing instructor” is a fictional character but he is, unfortunately, based on reality. High-powered sales, marketing and advertising people regularly jet-set around our world selling themselves, “selling the sizzle” and driving consumerism. Much of the international diplomatic circus is merely state-sponsored sales, marketing and the promotion of consumerism in disguise.
The Rise of an Unproductive Sector
The blunt, horrible truth is that mankind’s ingenuity - a century of mechanization and technological advances - has displaced workers from productive endeavor and forced us to “invent” new jobs. Growing public service. Growing bureaucracy. Growing government. Growing legal complexity stimulating ever more new specialist occupations to decipher the complexity! (Resulting in increased compliance costs and the need for ever more money). Business (busy-ness) can no longer make a profit providing for our needs - merely meeting demand is no longer enough - business must now create new needs in the minds of the consumer.
Welcome to the world of consumerism - the land of unnecessary, unproductive jobs - welcome to the grand illusion of debt-based money and artificial competition.
Affordable, Sustainable Housing Made Illegal!
Date Fri 18 Jul 2008 | Leave a Comment
I came by a recent copy of the Warwick local newspaper and was appalled to see the headline story was an unveiled threat by local council to vigorously pursue shire residents who were “living illegally” in sheds and other unapproved dwellings.
Local council crackdowns on non-approved dwellings are nothing new. Councils, of course, have the legal authority to take action but do they have the moral authority? Are their actions appropriate while Australia is in the midst of a housing affordability crisis? Do their actions reflect any consideration for sustainable practice?
The answer would have to be no, no and no again.
To be clear, we are not talking about non-approved dwellings built in suburbia or in zones covered by covenants that restrict type, style or material used in construction. Only the foolhardy would attempt that. We’re talking about larger rural-residential blocks and bush blocks where owners assumed they could do as they please. For the most part, these residents “living illegally” in sheds are “Aussie battlers” building on the cheap.
In past times these were people to be admired for their resourcefulness AND for their willingness to do it tough for a while. In past times it was considered responsible to live within one’s means, buying only what you could afford and attempting to be as self sufficient as possible.
Today, the scene is very different. Today, living within one’s means can mean “living illegally”. Today, we have rules and regulations (and peer pressure) that effectively force people to borrow money and live beyond their means.
Importantly, councils often justify evictions or legal orders by shifting the blame to neighbours and the wider community who have reported “illegal” dwellings because of concerns that the value of their own real estate will be lowered. Whatever the reasons, actions like reporting by neighbours, eviction and council demolition orders are symptomatic of societies driven by greed and rampant consumption - societies that have lost a sense of true value.
Building a sustainable economic system and society requires that we:
1.. Rapidly adjust government (local, state and federal) regulations that effectively sabotage or hamper sustainable outcomes.
2.. Foster rural sustainable communities (de-emphasizing real estate speculation) and that as good neighbours we respect the rights of those who are living within their means and that we NOT require them to meet the artificially high standards currently imposed.
Low Risk Renewable Energy Investment
Date Thu 27 Sep 2007 | Leave a Comment
These days interest in renewable energy is high and naturally interest in renewable energy investment has risen dramatically. Typical of societies driven by rampant consumerism all manner of con-men are stepping up to the plate to fleece well meaning investors with what amounts to little more than gambling in a highly speculative area. It’s very difficult to pick winners in alternative energy technologies.
Here’s a low risk “renewable energy investment” idea with a difference…
Some years back my wife and I bought a piece of cheap real estate just outside the town boundary of a sleepy little western NSW town. We were interested in self-sufficient living and figured that 4 acre block would be perfect. The block was brown and bare except for an incredible crop of thistles as thick as the hairs on a cat’s back.
Family and friends joked, calling us “visionaries”. What they really meant was nobody in the entire galaxy could see the potential apart from us - and that was precisely the reason it was cheap. Turns out there was another reason why it was cheap…
When we got the quote to get the power on we were staggered - the simple connection wasn’t so simple - the quote had the tone of a ransom note! $34,000 for grid connection - take it or leave it. Had it been a bush block with power at some distance we would have been prepared but this particular block had mains power along 2 sides.
According to the local electricity authority our installation was the tipping point. We would foot the bill for the required transformer upgrade. To put it more accurately, we would have to provide the infrastructure required to provide ourselves with the service!
We made the decision to go alternative energy with a stand-alone combination solar wind power system. The wind generator was a converted comet 3 windmill chosen because we had a poor wind site - the high solidity ratio of conventional windmill style provided a high torque, low start-up-speed wind generator. 8 solar panels, 1300 Amp-hour batteries and inverter were added. We lived off-grid for 7 years with a system that powered all mod cons including 240 volt refrigeration. The alternative home power system cost around $20,000.
When we sold and moved at the end of the seven years, the cost for electricity connection had miraculously decreased from the original quote of $37,000 to a mere $1,300! We were able to move on then taking all our alternative energy equipment, having saved the $37,000 and capitalizing on the mere $1300 connection fee and achieving a good price for the property.
It’s a sound strategy: purchase a bush block currently unserviced by the grid and simply wait. Blocks unserviced by the grid are marked down in value and relatively cheap. There are dozens of areas within Australia and no doubt other countries where the idea is a sure fire winner.
Self-Sufficiency The Key To Sustainable Living
Date Fri 18 May 2007 | Leave a Comment
Is “self sufficiency” just some outmoded ideal of the nineteen-sixties flower power days? Or does self-sufficiency offer the hope of a more sustainable world?
When we think of self-sufficiency it generally conjures up images of peasants toiling away in the garden to produce enough – just enough – to survive. We rarely associate self-sufficient living with a bountiful lifestyle, excess or even success.
On a national scale, self-sufficiency is seen as a hallmark of third world “banana republics” that haven’t yet embraced the WTO’s dream of globalism and international trade.
National self-sufficiency has been discarded. And at a personal level “who could be bothered?” Fact is self sufficiency is almost a dirty word these days.
But self-sufficiency within proper bounds is one of the few truly sustainable options for both individuals and nations if we’re to take man-made global warming or environmental care seriously.
The World Trade Organization, International Monetary Fund and other global power-mongers (gigantic unstoppable immortal corporations) hail international trade as the engine of global economic growth. According to these globalists, global economic growth through international free trade is the means to eliminate poverty, achieve “higher” standards of living and even prevent global warming. The latter is a simply outrageous claim as you’ll see…
The central idea of global economics is that nations can specialize in the production and export of certain goods for which they’re more climatically, technologically or natural resource suited. Nations will import what they’re not suited for and everything will be fine and dandy.
At first glance this global economic rationalism does seem rational but there’s a BIG problem that is conveniently overlooked in the pursuit of profits…
The movement of goods in international trade is responsible for around 20% of global greenhouse gas output and a huge contributor to global pollution. If that international trade were essential we may be able to live with the environmental cost or offset it in other ways but the reality is most of international trade is non-essential.
Unsustainable Non-Essential International Trade
It’s easy to understand why countries import the things they are unable to grow or manufacture. That would be essential international trade. That would make sense.
It’s not so easy to understand why a country would import things it is well able to grow or manufacture. That does not make sense. Yet what we see in the so-called developed western economies is massive imports of everything they are easily able to produce.
Most people are acutely aware of the problems …Citrus farmers in Australia are going broke while citrus products are imported from Brazil. …US and Australian manufacturing are in sharp decline because “cheaper” imports are easily shipped from the other side of the world. Fruit, cars, livestock, grains, washing machines, TV’s, shoes, meats, buttons, doodads, thingamajigs and widgets – all these and more are being shipped daily in some kind of vast shipping frenzy - to countries that can quite easily produce those goods!
Does it make sense? No. It’s nonsense and it’s unsustainable practice.
The blunt truth is that globalists are pushing international trade to unsustainable limits in search of greater profits. Not only is it costing the environment but it’s also undermining the security of individual nations as they abandon national self-sufficiency for “global integration”.