Natural designs in a sustainable economy

摘要

The important thing you're doing right now is not reading this paper but breathing. Yet you don't breathe, beat your heart, or digest your food willfully. The most important things you do, you relegate to your autonomic nervous system, freeing your brain to engage in higher pursuits, to read this, or better yet daydream, or paint murals on ceilings, perfect nuclear weapons, or play video games (tastes vary). Just as evolution has liberated the brain to pursue its interests, so has techno-progress freed humanity (some people more than others) to pursue their interests. In the US in the 1990s, inventors and investors joined forces and delivered us the microchip, the internet, and a new way to live our lives. What was enjoyed by the "wired" could be enjoyed even by the millions left behind, if we let the economy run autonomously. Yet out of social habit, we distort the economy's natural patterns ― primarily its feedback loops, both negative and positive, which continually reshape output, the business cycle, and our evaluation of nature. We let private parties externalize their costs and expropriate social values, and conversely let public bodies tax and subsidize. All these bad habits distort price, the signal most laden with information in economies; with price we measure profit, or success at storing energy. We could quit these bad habits and instead model our public revenue policies after an autonomous system. In practice, some jurisdictions have. These localities and nations implemented "geonomics"; they decreased taxes and subsidies and instead increased the sharing of the commonwealth. By sparing and rewarding exertion, they let their economies self-regulate to a greater degree, enabling their citizens to both prosper and converse.