from OnTheCommons.org:
Enlarging Our Sense of "the Economy"It's time to stop markets from abusing the commons for hidden subsidies and free dumpingBy David Bollier & Jonathan Rowe
For more than two hundred years, mainstream thinking has regarded the market as the primary source of material “progress.” And indeed, to a large extent that’s been true. But yesterday is not forever. Today the market is approaching a point of diminishing returns – systemic diminishing returns. It is yielding less well-being per unit of output by practically any measure, and more problems instead: obesity instead of good health, congestion instead of mobility , time deficits instead of leisure, depression and stress instead of a sense of well-being, social fracture rather than cohesion, environmental degradation rather than improvement.
In place of wealth, the economic machinery increasingly turns out what John Ruskin, the 19th Century essayist on art and economics, called “illth,” which is accumulation that fosters ill results rather than towards weal, or well-being.This is not just a matter of distribution, which is the traditional concern of the Left. Inequitable distribution is a major problem, to be sure, and becoming more so. But to redistribute illth is not necessarily to do anyone a great favor.
The destructive tendencies of the modern corporate market are much noted, in a scattered and fragmentary way. The environmental movement, “smart growth” advocates, Wal-Mart critics, opponents of the corporate cooption of university research, and of patents on genes – each has a piece of the story. Each speaks from an awareness that the market is going too far.
Yet there is no contemporary master narrative that unifies such movements; nor a challenge to market fundamentalism that does not carry echoes of old, discredited ideology. The economic problem is not markets per se. To the contrary, markets can be spontaneous and flexible; and can provide an outlet for enterprise and creativity. Most of us would not want to live without them, in some form. The problem is that the modern corporate market—which is very different from small scale local ones — has exceeded the boundaries of its own usefulness. Much of what is called “growth” today actually is a form of cannibalization, in which the market consumes that which ultimately sustains us all.
The Economic “We” replaces “Me”Over the past two centuries, a central challenge of humanity has been to fill the void of material scarcity, and we have succeeded to some extent;. There is now enough food and other products to meet most human needs if they were distributed more adequately. That’s the challenge of the current century; and it’s not just a question of rejiggering the market. It also means reconstructing of the commons, both natural and social, which is the fundamental source of sustenance and well-being. The air, water and sunshine; libraries and language and the legacies of science – without these and much else like them, there will be scarcity and collapse no matter how hard the market churns. ...........(more)
The complete piece is at:
http://onthecommons.org/enlarging-our-sense-economy
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