Open Source Ecology Forums

Endelevu

Paul Romer is promoting the concept of charter cities (
http://www.ted.com/talks/paul_romer.html ).

Overall, the idea of setting up charters to solve today's challenges seems like a novel and inspiring idea, rather than trying to work under economic and legislative systems designed to serve a bygone era and that in some cases may even hamper a communities abilities to solve current challenges.

I would add 1 word to Mr. Romer's concept. Sustainability, or, Sustainable Charter Cities.

Sustainable Charter Cities could be designed from the ground up to not even include personal motorized transport in the mix. Given the right scenario such charter cities could be more efficient then non sustainable cities due to many reasons, including a lower living cost (public and self powered transport without the associated mortage of a car and its operating costs), better health among the inhabitants (due to more walking and bicycling) and in turn lower health care costs.

With a sustainable city the agricultural land and watershed deeded to the charter city should be large enough to support it. If not, then the desalinization plants used to supply fresh water should be owned as a public trust and not privatized. I suppose, my biggest bone of contention with Paul Romer's ideas is that he encourages the public utilities to be privatized, to take the view that water is a good or commodity rather than a right to be held in the public trust. Generally, its a bad idea to allow companies to own any monopoly and as far as I know there is not one example of a privatized water company buying out a public trust where the end result was not higher rates for the community and lower quality of service. The perfect case example, is Coca Cola buying water rights in areas of Ghana, where the only source of clean water came to be water bottled by coca cola under the Dasani name and costing more than coca cola itself.

My second worry with Paul Romer's ideas are that within the context of mandating such privatizations under the rubric of the world bank, where the countries must accept foreign privatization of public trusts, in exchange for loans often used to pay off the interest on debt accumulated by corrupt governments and ending up perpetually enslaving the people to this debt. Rather, I would hope to see and hopefully help to implement the concepts of voluntary default throughout developing nations, as was the case in Argentina.

From such a kickoff point there could be a great deal of potential from Sustainable Charter Cities that were largely owned by the host government that sponsored them. For example, it would be ideal to see the Ivory Coast vertical its cocoa industry in such a charter city, invite Nestle to set up production in such a charter city, learn the ways and means of the Nestle's of the worlds business practices, and then spin off companies to compete against them at all levels in the Vertical. It is what China does and it works for them...would like to see the bonds broke of economic slavery many developing countries are under under a similar framework.

So the above are some premises and thoughts of what could be done the next step would be how to do it. I believe, aid groups that could deploy Open Source Ecology kits and training as the kickoff towards implementation of such charter cities would be a bold step in the right direction. Imagine building a city or re-orienting a nation towards sustainability using open source ecology tools, ways and means, where the ownership was primarily in indigenous hands.

My new career is focused exclusively on the concept of sustainable charter cities and over the coming decades hope to work with the open source ecology movement and in the mean time wish you all the best.

Sincerely,

Shane Murray

Ned_Ludd

I agree with your concerns. I am professionally very interested in urban design, and quite excited about new foundations based on sustainable models: though I have become rather cynical about many of the proposed models. It is, perhaps, because what I would really like to see is a model based on the convergences between ecological sustainability and radical personal liberty. That is, removing artificial need structures eliminates the need for the bulk of restrictions on personal liberty, and renders all kinds of activities exceptional and thus perfectly harmless. That's what I miss in many of these proposals, space for exceptions.

Endelevu

@Ned, thanks for the comments! Could you give me the ideas of personal liberty you are positing?

Ned_Ludd

Shane, my derivation of the primacy of personal liberty is theological and, therefore, perhaps not appropriate to the current forum. Suffice it to say that I regard liberty to be not only the greatest but in fact the only political good: whatever a system or situation might deliver, if it does not deliver liberty it fails in its primary object.

There is a tendency among some to display their sophistication by expressing, with a distinctly Continental shrug, their wholesale incomprehension of Proudhon's famous catalogue of the ills of government: that they recognize none of it in their bureaucratic indoor life-world. The arrogance therein does not lie very deep. It is that of an amused salamander who might say to one damned to hell, "Don't tell me you're finding it a bit warm!" I am not frightened to admit that I feel the modern tendency to micro-manage closing about my throat. Every exponential increase in hard-drive capacity fills me with dread, for bureaucrats will invent things to fill it, and will try to extract them from my hide.

There is a manifestation of sustainability - to my mind one of few that are stable enough to be sustainably sustainable - that is based on smallness, localness, and what one might term "nonprogressive innovation"; and in it I see the potential for every pretext for officiousness to collapse. I explore it here, in terms of the key phenomenon of the automobile. There the principle is, eliminate dependence on automobiles, so that the automotive phenomenon shrinks below a key threshold, and the pretext for controlling what sort of automobiles exist collapses. That would leave me free to build and drive what I want, as the impact given the scale would be negligible. The crucial characteristic that automobiles need and currently lack is neither cleanness nor efficiency, but fewness. Fewness is an element of design: today's cars are designed to be many.

This analysis in terms of an automotive focus is informative in other contexts. It reveals elements of other systems that are otherwise not readily apprehensible; where they are mechanical rather than organic (e.g. capitalism has the sole advantage of being an organic system, as it accommodates motives indifferent or even contrary to itself as functional components of itself. Recognizing that capitalism is a system rather than the default condition in the absence of a system reveals the possibility of other systems that share this organic character but lack the disastrous disadvantages of capitalism.) In other words, our attempts to manage our ecology too often resemble petrochemical monoculture rather than organic mixed farming.

Matt_Maier

While I agree with the sentiment, I doubt the engineering. What OSE is doing is small-scale, MAYBE village level stuff. It will take decades to work out the kinks in the system so that it works at the village level. I do not forsee OSE scaling up to city-sized endeavors. The basic principles of open source technology might scale, but the implementation will be very different.

As far as I know (and I'm not an expert) utilities and infrastructure are already effectively open source. If a city wants to build a train they can just go look at a bunch of trains in other cities and copy what worked. I don't think anyone keeps that stuff secret. They just don't talk about it becuase it's incredibly boring.

The issue isn't the engineering tools not being available. The issue is that everyone, particularly politicians, thinks in "for profit" terms. Open source is basically just a service-oriented charity activity. It doesn't pay the bills. Anyone who is going to design or operate the infrastructure for an entire city is going to want to get paid and paid well. Otherwise they'll go do something else that pays. The potential exists for an open source approach to become a requirement that governments adhere to because it is more efficient, transparent and in the public interest. However, open source has not proven itself yet.

I suppose if OSE's experimental village works it will go a long way towards justifying experimentation on a larger scale.

Matt_Maier

"Recognizing that capitalism is a system rather than the default condition in the absence of a system reveals the possibility of other systems that share this organic character but lack the disastrous disadvantages of capitalism.) In other words, our attempts to manage our ecology too often resemble petrochemical monoculture rather than organic mixed farming."

> It could easily be that I'm misunderstanding, but I have to disagree with that. The fundamental component of capitalism is an exchange of goods and services that defines a value and is such an inescapable function that it can't possibly be optional. For better or worse, externalities will always be difficult, if not impossible, to price into the market. We can't care about what we don't perceive as affecting us. Calling this a "problem" is kind of like calling gravity a problem. There's no point in categorizing it that way because there's no "solution." the tragedy of the commons is not something that can be "fixed."

elifarley

More info about the tragedy of the commons (and a refutation, by Ian Angus):

OSE custom search: tragedy of the commons

Matt_Maier

"Hardin simply ignored what actually happens in a real commons: self-regulation by the communities involved."

> Actually, he addressed that. "To judge from the critical literature, the weightiest mistake in my synthesizing paper was the omission of the modifying adjective “unmanaged.”" http://www.sciencemag.org/content/280/5364/682.full?HITS=10&andorexacttitle=or&maxtoshow=&resourcetype=HWCIT%2CHWELTR&RESULTFORMAT=&FIRSTINDEX=0&searchid=1&hits=10&fdate=7%2F1%2F1880&sortspec=relevance&tdate=12%2F31%2F2008&andorexacttitleabs=or&andorexactfulltext=or&author1=hardin%252C%20g

"Hardin's argument started with the unproven assertion that herdsmen always want to expand their herds..."

> That's inaccurate. That part was a rebuttal to the argument that the "invisible hand" will guide self-centered individual actions towards the greatest good for the population as a whole, "The rebuttal to the invisible hand in population control is to be found in a scenario first sketched in a little-known pamphlet (6) in 1833 by a mathematical amateur named William Forster Lloyd (1794-1852). We may well call it "the tragedy of the commons," http://www.sciencemag.org/content/162/3859/1243.full So, it was an un-qualified thought experiment which took the "invisible hand" argument at face value and demonstrated how it contradicted itself.

> In my opinion, this thesis still stands. There is a class of problems that do not have a technical solution. Marcin's approach is a perfect example. On the surface one might think his goal is technological, but I think that's missing the point. He seems to be treating the technology as a means to the end of cultural change. Whether he stated it in so many words or not, he has implicitly accepted the fact that overpopulation cannot be solved by technology. At best, it can be mitigated. Eventually, no matter how cleverly we use our resources, we will run out. The only way to avoid it indefinitely is to change our culture. Hardin was simply arguing that "change our culture" is a terrifying phrase. By necessity, it means either death or abstinence. Either one can be forced on us by the laws of nature, or adopted in a largely voluntary manner, but ultimately it's the only sustainable solution. At the moment, human culture doesn't accept the concept of self-imposed population limits. Even China, with their strong communist government, can't enforce that kind of rule.

Ned_Ludd

I think the only thing the tragedy of the commons thing establishes convincingly is that cigar-smoking Englishmen in top hats and tails would make poor herdsmen. And I really don't think population is an issue.

What I meant about capitalism was merely that it serves as an example of a system that, surprisingly, has an organic character, by which I do not mean that capitalism feels like bean sprouts - I think we agree that it doesn't - but that it has a basic disconnect of overall object and discrete participant motivations which is typical of all organic systems. Systems that require widespread alignment of participant motivations with a common goal are necessarily mechanical. My point is that it is possible to devise social systems that have that organic character but which are not capitalism. And that is what is needed.

It is needed also in solutions proposed to our current ecological crisis, for the predominant practice is almost wholly mechanical. So much for "doing our bit for the environment".

As regards survival, what is its value? Would it be wise to trade one's stomach for food? Shall we solve all our social ills by standardly inducing coma at birth? Is that life? What, after all, do we want to survive for? Death or abstinence? Death or feigning death? I'd rather go out with a bang, then ...

But I am not yet so desperate. I do not see a contradiction between sustainability and liberty. As a mutualist I see sustainability through liberty: our ecological problem is not a species-problem* but a culturally-specific, relatively recent historical need-structure problem, whose roots are largely identical with those of our subjection.

(*A preoccupation with "humankind" is a common cause of confused thinking these days. I can suggest nothing better than to parenthesize it, if only for a time, and to adopt a radically nominalist stance, like Roscelin might have. That is, there is no species but only creatures; no society but only relationships; no Life but only lives. At the very least it would force a reappraisal of things, which is always salutary.)

Matt_Maier

"My point is that it is possible to devise social systems that have that organic character but which are not capitalism."

> Capitalism is an economic system, not a social system.

"I do not see a contradiction between sustainability and liberty."

> I see one. Liberty means doing what you will. Sustainability means doing only things that can be done indefinitely. Because the classes of "what I will" and "can be done indefinitely" are not identical, there is a contradiction. One must be prioritized over the other.

"our ecological problem is not a species-problem* but a culturally-specific, relatively recent historical need-structure problem..."

> It's not culturally specific, but it is recent. It's only recent because our population has finally grown to the point where there is literally no where else to put anybody. Prior to this point in history, there was always more land to expand in to, or more natural resources to learn to exploit. We are running out of those possibilities. The only thing we haven't learned how to exploit is fission/fusion, and that can't help because what we need is food. We're simply filling the world with too many hungry people.

Ned_Ludd

Matt

"Capitalism is an economic system, not a social system." How is a system economic without necessarily being social as well?

"I see one. Liberty means doing what you will. Sustainability means doing only things that can be done indefinitely. Because the classes of 'what I will' and 'can be done indefinitely' are not identical, there is a contradiction. One must be prioritized over the other." I mean liberty, in the normal socio-political sense, not omnipotence. That is, the absence of coercion with respect to the range of acts that are practically available to me. If that range falls within the class of that which can be done indefinitely, there is no contradiction. Hence my emphasis on systems, on structures of contingent needs (contingent in the sense of "dependent on other things; for other purposes", not "emergency"). Dismantling those need structures impacts the scale of activities radically, reducing common and consequently problematic activities to exceptional and therefore unproblematic activities. And this expands my level of practical personal liberty.

"It's not culturally specific, but it is recent." It is very much a "Western" problem, i.e. a problem of industry and commerce. But we of the West are all too ready to identify with our most wildly exceptional examples, and take the rest of the world with us. "Humankind" again? Not only do we create that category, we allow the outrageous fluke of government spending that caused an infinitesimal minority of us to end up in so unlikely a place as the Moon to redefine that category. Giant leap, indeed! We need to master the esoteric concept of "some people". Without it we're thinking in circles.

"It's only recent because our population has finally grown to the point where there is literally no where else to put anybody. Prior to this point in history, there was always more land to expand in to, or more natural resources to learn to exploit. We are running out of those possibilities. The only thing we haven't learned how to exploit is fission/fusion, and that can't help because what we need is food. We're simply filling the world with too many hungry people." Hunger is not caused by lack of food but by lack of access to food, specifically lack of the power to produce food. There is enough food to go around, and then some. There is enough land to go around. There is more than enough in the way of building materials, etc. It is that Some People - and their robotic familiars, the corporations - are able to dedicate huge chunks of all that to ensuring industrial-economic Roundaboutness that causes so little to be left over for the rest of us. And then they have the cheek to expect us to go all austere and monastic to compensate.

That is the very first thing that needs to be understood.

Howdy, Stranger!

Categories

In this Discussion

Open Source Ecology Forums