Dear friends
I apologize in Bob's and my name for our delay in wraping-up this exciting
session. Here it is:
We started with the assumption that economies have two basic dimensions
of internal order: one is organic/organizational and relates to
functional and structural properties, which are closely related to
autocatalytic processes. The other is cognitive/informational, meaning
that the broad perspective that human agents hold on the world
streamlines collective human behavior and economic activities. Both
dimensions of order are maintained at the cost of dissipating the
fabric of the natural environment.
Those social beliefs and shared values of the North lie behind welfare
liberalism. Not only do they drive economic globalization, but they
also promote economic efficiency as the supreme, universal social goal.
While it is true that autocatalysis promotes efficiency, without which
an economic community is liable to being displaced, the lesson from the
biological realm is that efficiency is not what sustains communities in
the long run. Diversity of processes and sectors implies the
co-existence of various degrees of efficiency and therefore various
modes of socioeconomic organization. Through the process of
globalization, welfare liberalism has been endangering biological and
cultural diversity, as well as the integrity of world ecosystems. We
identify this as a "sustainability" problem at the global level.
In the past decade mainstream economics has proposed the idea of a
transition from a resource-based economy to a knowledge-based economy,
arguing that this process has already started in the most advanced
market economies. This transition has been related, among other things,
to a trend in increasing economic efficiency (measured as GDP per unit
of energy or materials used) among the advanced market economies.
Overall consumption of energy and natural resources continues, however,
to increase in all "developed" economies, as well as in some
"developing" nations, like China and India, with increasingly
deleterious effects on regional ecosystems and possibly the global
climate.
Stanley Salthe claimed that information transactions are superimposed
upon resource utilization, and that this raises a question as to the
appropriateness of the distinction between resource-based and
knowledge-based systems. It appears that the solution to the
sustainability problem is not in the transition from a resource to a
knowledge based economy, because both types are subject to
thermodynamic constraints (a point on which most of us agreed.) Rather,
the problem of sustainability, or of remaining within the economic
"window of vitality", may lie in achieving a balance between efficiency
and diversity, which implies the necessity for allowing a certain
degree of "overhead" and performance sub-optimality to persist. As Loet
Leydesdorf remarked, neither the Western, nor any other economic
system, is sustainable in the long run, because it is always five
minutes before twelve ("the edge of crisis") in any system that is in
full-swing operation.
Gearing economic dynamics permanently below the "full-swing operation",
while at the same time preserving the cohesinevess of the social
fabric, may point national economies and the global economic system in
the direction of susainability. This recapitulates our initial proposal
that it is necessary to reduce the intensity of autocatalytic processes
within the world economy to release the current pressure on ecosystem
sinks and sources as well as to diminish the pressure on cultural
diversity. In order for this process to begin, however, requires
drastic changes in the values, beliefs and institutions that dominate
Western societies. We do not know if, how or when the transition might
happen, but we all agree that information networks are likely to play
an important role in the process. The fact is that the internet is
enabling unprecedented exchange of information and knowledge across the
connected part of the globe, and it is bringing together like-minded
people from different cultural and economic environments.
We agree that the details of the answer to what "sustainability" is and
how best it might be pursued lie in the realm of political options for
individual societies. These political opitions are, however,
illuminated by scientific knowledge and the hope for achieving greater
sustainability is nourished by the ability of scientific community to
work together on complex transdisiplinary issues. We would like to
think that our FIS discussion was a step in that direction, and we
thank you for your thoughts and time.
Bob & Igor
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Received on Mon Jul 18 18:03:57 2005
