image by greefus groinks

Yesterday we discussed how many of humans’ economic activities tie profit to suffering, and how the difference between economic or dollar value and real value makes that possible. But what if we could change the economic rules to encourage good design, zero waste, and human health and happiness? If helpful activities result in profit and harmful activities result in loss, then making the leap we need to make will become a no-brainer. Ordinary human greed becomes a force for creation instead of destruction.

How to Transform Money into a Force for Good?

Carbon taxing is one viable option to achieve this new orientation: instead of taxing income, the government would tax the level of greenhouse gases emitted by activities and products in order to shift currently externalized costs to their origins. The less you drive, the less you consume, the less tax you would pay. Local, organic foods would cost less than highly-processed ones. Wasteful or toxic products would cost more than their eco-friendly counterparts.

Providing a tangible economic incentive to clean up our behavior as individuals and as businesses would actually get us to do it! It would also drive innovation to develop cleaner and less wasteful technologies across all industries.

Another way to link up real and economic value is to shift from a products-based to a services-based consumer culture. An example: currently, if I buy a TV and then a few years later it breaks, or I decide I want a newer one, it is my responsibility to dispose of my old TV set. This doesn’t make a lot of sense, because the path of least resistance (which most of us are most likely to take) is the path to the curb and ultimately the landfill.

But what if, instead of buying a television, I buy TV services? When I want a new TV, I simply call up the company I lease my TV services from, and they come to my home, bring me a new one, and take the old one away. My services are uninterrupted and I have no giant box of toxic waste to get rid of. The externalized cost of disposal is taken on by the manufacturers, who have the skills and equipment necessary to take apart an old set in safe and useful ways.

In fact, the TV company could actually benefit by internalizing this externality. If products were designed with the end of their useful lifespan in mind—Cradle to Cradle design—old sets could be taken apart and their parts retooled to make new ones. This would not only minimize the waste in the production cycle—it would also simplify the supply chain. Instead of having to mine and move metals all around the world, they would simply be reused.

This idea also gives the TV company a reason to provide a product that works well and will continue to work well for a long time. That is, it eliminates the idea of “planned obsolescence” or built-in faults that manufacturers currently rely on to get us to buy new TVs more often than we should have to. Instead, it would behoove the company to provide the best TVs they possibly can, to minimize house visits and repair costs.

Perhaps most importantly, a services-based economy makes things easy on the consumer. Rather than having to either coordinate recycling for the dozens of different items in our homes, or send them to landfills, we would simply call the number on the back and leave the heavy lifting to those who are equipped to do it.

These are only a few of the brilliant ideas for transforming our economic models. For a thorough discussion, I recommend Natural Capitalism. Prepare to have your mind blown in the best possible way by this book!

The Courage to Look Money in the Eye

From one perspective, the economic system by which we run our lives works wonderfully—it gets us what we need and want with remarkable speed. But looked at another way, the economic engine merely rewards us for destroying our environment and each other as quickly and as thoroughly as we can.

In our society, money is everything, which makes it almost impossible for us to see it clearly. We have so much wrapped up in it—our security, our perceived value as people, our futures, our families.

But if we are to create a future that we want to live in, then it’s imperative to develop the courage and the knowledge to look at the economic engine without fear and with objectivity. We must pick apart the threads and discern which serve us and which merely serve the engine itself (and those who operate it).

Knowing that, then we can redesign the engine to run like nature does—efficiently, elegantly, without waste, in a way that encourages community, diversity, and beauty.

If money is to be a placeholder for value, then let us make sure it holds the place of real value. Otherwise, we will continue to consume and waste, often needlessly, simply because our out-of-date economic rules encourage it.

Instead let’s take this opportunity to thoroughly think through the money issue so we can transform it from a collection of vexing contradictions into the most powerful and fundamental building block of the clean future we want to create.