The globalized consumption economy is in a unique and possibly prolonged economic decline. China, for example, purposefully moderated its economic activity in order to clear the air and see blue sky during Olympics 2008. Other economies based on consumption and perpetual growth are contracting for a variety of reasons, including cultural distortions caused by desperate and blatant corruption. Globalised bailouts of banking systems which have created 660 trillion dollars of unfunded derivatives indicate the impossibility of saving corrupt corporate consumerism.
The trick now is to ride the old economy as it settles to a lower level of resource use and pollution output, while, at the same time, establishing social and economic structures with externalized profits to create and support a sustainable culture characterized in part by complete distributive justice. Externalized profits follow billions of years of natural example, a sustainable culture can be consciously created by sentient beings who observe and implement Nature's successes.
Humanity has been on this planet for a very brief part of Earth's history. The industrial revolution and huge enterprises which devour planetary resources and create ecologically damaging pollution have existed and wreaked havoc in a scant few hundred years. Patient bacteria lived on the earth and worked for billions of years to generate an external profit in the form of atmosphere livable for new and more varied lives unimaginable to the primitive but constantly working bacteria. Now the bacteria have scattered their DNA planet-wide and live comfortably in symbiosis with life forms so numerous as to be uncountable. The bacteria around us provide first-step instruction plus the noble example of just how far one can go with patience. We now live off the externalized profit from the work of billion year-old bacteria colonies and some of those colonies are us.
Modern economic theory has not yet grown to understand the sophisticated cooperation found in biology. In the body are mitochodria which joined with primitive cells to form the modern cells which make up our bodies. Those mitochondria are an entirely different life form living in symbiosis and cooperation in our bodies. Each human body is testament to cooperation being the supreme rule of organization which now we hastily seek to embody in a sustainable social organization.
There is no mystery to establishing socioeconomic structures that are sustainable, examples are everywhere.Ê The continuous growth economies that exist in all nations reflect the primitive survival mode which humans perfected to live as raw and unforgiving wild-life. Now that nature has been tamed and our population of almost seven billion souls is struggling for resource scraps, we must choose between the mindless chaos of never ending war for resources and a more serene future of flamboyant fun; like establishing colonies on first the moon and then mars.
Externalized profits will yield returns as unimaginable to us today as a breathable atmosphere was to the bacteria of yesterday. We do not need to know all the final details in order to aim for a more positive direction. Green Litmus is externalized profits, we can follow that compass confidently.
Although there are activities with greater and lesser externalized profits than a bicycle shop, few are easier to see.
1) Increased health from exercise reduces social costs and lost production while increasing quality of life.
2) Reduced air pollution, especially for short distance trips when cold internal combustion engines operate at low efficiency.
3) Reduced inner city congestion, noise, tension, and parking space requirements.