Corporations Are Not Humans : NotEven Close --- Episode 60

                                                          GOOD LIVING
                                         (continuation)

     From Overconsumption To Sustainable Community 
                                         (continuation)


                              SUSTAINABLE  LIVELIHOODS


   An important part of the demand for economic growth comes from the carefully cultivated myth that the only way we can keep people employed is to expand aggregate consumption to create jobs at a faster rate than corporations invest in labor-saving technology to eliminate them.  We neglect an important alternative --- to redefine the problem and concentrate on creating livelihoods rather than jobs.
   A job is defined by Webster's New World Dictionary as " a specific piece of work, as in one's trade, or done by agreement for pay ; anything one has to do ; task ; chore ; duty." A livelihood is defined as "a means of living or of supporting life." A job is a source of money. A livelihood is a means of living. Speaking of jobs evokes images of people working in factories and fast-food outlets of the world's largest corporations. Speaking of sustainable livelihoods evokes images of people and communities engaged in meeting individual and collective needs in environmentally responsible ways --- the vision of a local system of self-managing communities.
   We could be using advances in technology to give everyone more options for good, sustainable living. If we so choose, instead of demanding that those fortunate enough to have jobs sacrifice their family and community lives on the altar of competition while others languish in the ranks of the unemployed, we could be organizing our societies around a twenty-to thirty-hour work-week to assure secure and adequately compensated employment for almost every adult who wants a job. The time thus freed could be devoted to the social economy in activities that meet unmet needs and rebuild a badly tattered social fabric. 
   The possibilities are extraordinary once we acknowledge that many existing jobs not only are unsatisfying but also involve producing goods and services that are either unnecessary or cause major harm to society and to the environment. This includes a great many of the jobs in the automobile, chemical, packaging, and petroleum industries ; most advertising and marketing jobs ; the brokers and financial portfolio managers engaged in speculative and other extractive forms of investment ; ambulance-chasing lawyers ; 14 million arms industry workers worldwide; and the 30 million people employed by the world's military forces.
   This leads to a startling fact. Societies would be better off if, instead of paying hundreds of millions of people sometimes outrageous amounts to do work that is harmful to the quality of our living, we gave them the same pay to sit home and do nothing.  Although far from an optimal solution, it would make more sense than the wholly irrational practice of organizing societies to pay people to do things that result in a net reduction in real wealth and well-being. Why not organize to support them instead to do activities that are socially beneficial and environmentally benign, such as providing loving care and attention to children and the elderly, operating community markets and senior citizen centers, educating our young people, counseling drug addicts, providing proper care for the mentally ill, maintaining parks and commons, participating in community crime watch, organizing community social and cultural events, registering voters, cleaning up the environment, replanting forests, doing public-interest political advocacy, caring for community gardens, organizing community recycling programs, and retrofitting homes for energy conservation. Similarly, many of us could use more time for recreation, quiet solitude, and family life and to practice the disciplines and hobbies that keep us physically, mentally, psychologically, and spiritually healthy.
   Our problem is not too few jobs ; it is an economic structure that creates too much dependence on paid employment and then pays people to do harmful things while neglecting so many activities that are essential to a healthy society. It is instructive that until the last fifteen to twenty-five years, most adults---the majority women --- served society productively in unpaid work in the social economy. In many instances, these societies had a stronger social fabric and offered their members a greater sense of personal security and fulfillment than does our own.

   Although initiatives toward creating sustainable livelihood economies may evolve in different ways in response to different circumstances and aspirations, we may infer some of their features from the above principles and examples. For example, in urban areas, they would most likely be organized around local urban villages or neighborhoods that bring residential work, recreation, and commercial facilities together around sustainable production to meet local needs with a substantial degree of self-reliance. They would feature green spaces and intensive human interaction and seek considerable self-reliance in energy, biomass, and materials production.
   Human and environmental productive activities would be melded into local, closed-loop coproduction processes that recycle sewage, solid waste, and even air through fish ponds, gardens, and green areas to continually regenerate their own resource inputs. Urban agriculture and aquaculture, repair and reuse, and intensive recycling would provide abundant livelihood opportunities in vocations that increase sustainability. Organizing these activities around neighborhoods that are also largely self-reliant in social services would help renew family and community ties, decentralize administration, and increase the sharing of family responsibilities between men and women. Needs for transporting people and goods would be reduced. Locally produced foods would be fresh and unpackaged or preserved in reusable containers. 
   We might find a wide range of traditional and electronic-age cottage industries, many involved in various kinds of recycling, existing side by side with urban agriculture. Family support services such as community-based day care, family counseling, schools, family health services, and multipurpose community centers could become integral neighborhood functions, engaging people in useful and meaningful work within easy walking distance of their homes. Many localities may issue their own local currency to facilitate local transactions and limit the flow of money out of the community. Most adults would divide their time between activities relating to the money economy and those relating to the social economy. We would see a return of the multifunctional home that serves as a center of family and community life and drastically reduces dependence on the automobile and other energy - intensive forms of transportation. We might line our byways with trees rather than billboards. We might limit advertising to product information that is available on demand, only when we want it.
   On the path to true social efficiency, we would have ample time for other aspects of living, including recreation, cultural expression, intellectual and spiritual development, and political participation. We might travel to other facilities for cultural exchanges. We might maintain friendships and collegial relations with others around the world by videophone. Or we might conference on computer networks to share exotic recipes, ideas on how to organize a local food co-op, or experiences in campaigning to improve public transit service. We might tune in to the news broadcasts from Russia, India, and Chile to see how people there are reacting to election results in South Africa. 
   We do have the option of creating healthy societies that allow us to live whole lives. It is time to reclaim our power and get on with that task.