The death business
How can our economy shift from a model of unlimited growth, to growth within temporal & material limits? How can we retrain ourselves to work in ways which mimic natural ecosystems? How can the concept of capitalism and its proponents be replaced with a more productive frame of thought? Less abstractly, how can we utilize familiar elements of today’s broken systems, as a stepping stone for a better tomorrow?
The Two Types of Growth
We need to grow. Growth is a natural concept, unlimited growth is not. Eventually life dies and then begins again. Uncontrolled growth in one area is cancer. Rapid distributed growth is viral. Either of the two leads to an unbalanced system, one bound to destroy itself. With this in mind, we need death.
The mycelium infuses all landscapes, it holds soils together, it’s extremely tenacious — this holds up to 30 thousand times its mass. They’re the grand molecular disassemblers of nature, the soil magicians. They generate the humus soils across the land masses of Earth…so the mycelium is the mother that is giving nutrients from alder and birch trees, to hemlocks, cedars, and Douglas firs. – A great TED Talk by Paul Stamets
It is these types of structures that we find the most fit attribute for evolution: giving. When organisms or ideas growth steadily while maintaining an equilibrium, it is because they are giving something back to their environment and the other neighbouring inhabitants. This which they are giving, is something they can both afford to give. In the case of mycelium, strength. It is also that which enables new growth of future partners, such as birch, hemlocks, and cedars. In economic terms this is profit for both parties, a good business relationship.
Current Economic Growth Model
Traditional expansion for business has been in the form of capital and personelle. In both cases the goal is to own and exploit.
Capital allows for dominance in the market, and a return on investment. It enables further production then profits, but due to its high-cost nature, is limited to only those who can raise funding. Since capital investments are expensive, and since the purpose of such investment is to allow for market dominance, its nature is proprietary. It would be counterproductive to share one’s capital investments with competitors, especially to give it away.
Personelle allow for profit margins. Without personelle there would be no way to expand the use of one’s capital investments. People need to operate business processes. Margins are expanded by undervaluing labour. If labour was valued correctly, there would be no profit margin, for it would go to the direct participants in the production. Captial investment ensures the ability to undervalue labour and manage the margins. This is simple, but what is most devious, is the time limitation. Just as giving away investments destroys competitive advantage, enabling personelle jeopardizes profit margins. Should people become wealthy enough through work to afford capital investments, or aware enough to realize their devalued roles, authority would be challenge through competition or bargaining. It is to a business’s disadvantage to enable their labour to learn more than their job description, or work less than their life.
A Proposal for change
In the ecological world, most exchanges maintain a non-zero sum relationship. In addition, most organisms do not depend on only one other. This interdependence runs contrary to the capital-labour relationship in the economic world. Clearly the dominant investor needs a labour-force to operate the investment. Just as clearly, the labour-force needs not the investor, but the investment. Such investment could come in the form of a factory, computer, sewing machine, or simply space.
What I propose is a different way of expanding. Instead of investing in capital and seeking margins, we could raise capital and share returns. Instead of buying out lives via salary, we could buy a portion of time from many and ensure such a labourer will one day replace us. (www.cambrianhouse.com/)
Models like this can be seen in co-operatives, governments, and collective action groups alike. The difference is the scale and the cross-pollination. Imagine many governments, or being part of many distributed cooperatives. Imagines those cooperatives disbanding when their todo list is complete.
Imagination time
Imagine a space which is rented, or for consistency, owned. This is the capital, it is used in the pursuit of competitive advantage. It is maintained through operating overhead, taxes, rent, utilities amounting to $1200/month. It is used to keep employees in, and competitors out.
Now imagine a space which is free. A park bench, a picnic table, a coffee-shop, a library. It is improved by its inhabitants. Their fruits go into improving this place, and enabling it to hold others at the tune of $1200/month. Much like the mycealium, the more it grows the more solid the soil becomes, which allows for other trees to grow. Soil is composed of the decomposed, without this dead matter and biomaterial, it would be merely rocks.
Next imagine an employee who maintains a routine position operating a business. This person, in 40 years, does not progress, save the lengthening of his job description. The business employs this person for $30 000 the first year ending at $60 000 the final. This person spends an average of 8 hours per day at work, 5 days a week, 50 weeks of the year. Steadily, of those 40 years, margins have increased and the business has successfully marked-up (or devalued) that labour.
Finally imagine an employee who works on their talent, growth, and greater betterment in conjunction. This person works with various employers, but quickly grows to replace them. Businesses employ this person for $3000/year consistently. This person spends, with this one of many companies, a self-determined amount of hours per day working from different places, amounting to 200 hours.
Why now?
What makes this possible in our time, is the potential to know who needs help, and who can give help. Currently, that information lives mainly in personal networks, which run too slow and are too disconnected to service the rapid-turnover described.
To paint a vision. We will optimistically expand through parts of people, fortifying their base for growth, while gaining from them nutrients to fuel the betterment. This I call half-full-time in a growing space.
Give a man better and he’ll thank you today
Teach a man to better and you’ll thank him tomorrow
..and taxes
So, to address death. We must accept it is good for entities to die. Our economy is structured in such a way that death of a business is bankruptcy for the corporation and in many cases the operator. Ecologically, death is anything but bankrupt. Death breads life of all kinds, and prevents domination of one organism.
Not only does the ecosystem value death, it puts a pretty consistent deadline on life. [cats, dogs, horses, elephants, whales]. Imagine an economy where the lifespan of an institution was limited. It had a certain amount of time to learn, growth, give, and reflect. Stagnancy would be controlled and could only last for so long. Death is a noun, but the verbs it enables are key: growth, evolution, renewal, decomposition, reintegration. New ideas and organizations would flourish in the passing of an elder. Wisdom would be shared in the interest of legacy. What we need is to kill the institution. What we need is a natural economy.
