Dematerialism
Degrowth, Decentralization, Demarchy, Delegislation, Deschooling, and Dechrematisticalism
The prevention of competition
for wealth and power is a necessary
and sufficient condition
for Universal Sustainable Happiness. Any method whatever for achieving this is dematerialism.
Any society in which it is possible for one person to
compete for greater material wealth or
a greater share in posterity than others is doomed.
Table of Contents
Additional Web Space: Social Media, Music, and
Model Railroading ............................25
Our Crisis
Our crisis has a physical
component and an imaginary component. The physical component
comes from limitations in the quantities of land, water, consumable energy,
and the environment itself.
The ecological footprint of the human
race exceeds the carrying capacity
of Earth. The imaginary
component is instability in the monetary system caused by excessive debt and
excessive monetary inequality.
To ameliorate the physical crisis we must eliminate
the imaginary one. I do not
mean that indebtedness,
poverty, and wealth
are imaginary; but, rather, that we can eliminate all three with the application of our imaginations
without affecting the physical universe.
Stabilizing our population
and reducing our ecological footprint will ultimately
have a desirable effect upon the universe.
Regardless of what the people want, the owners of the country
want to retain their positions of power, privilege,
and wealth. Naturally, they
despise the idea of government control of the economy and the means of production; however, when a crisis arises that they cannot
handle, they readily accede to crisis socialism
to save them. During World War II,
without adopting socialism completely, they
2
allowed rationing, wage
and price control, and management
of vital industries by
government employees (albeit
members of the traditional ruling class)
even if they were paid only one dollar
per year.
To respond appropriately
to resource and environmental limits, we
need to establish crisis socialism. However,
to eliminate debt, we need
to repudiate the US dollar; and, to eliminate inequality, we need to pay everyone the same
even if no work can be found for
them to replace the inessential
work from which they were furloughed to
reduce our consumption of fossil
fuels and our ecological footprint. After all, the requirement that every citizen
does useful work to get paid
and the requirement that the pay should be
commensurate with the value of the
work are completely imaginary. The idea that everyone should be allowed
to get as much money as he
can is completely
wrong.
But crisis socialism is a long way from
Dematerialism. For example, most
of us still think about money as
the reward for contributing something useful to our community. The amount
of money we acquire is the score in the game of life. Instead, we should think
of money as a way to measure our consumption
of scarce natural capital, which we
can do once again with a
rational monetary system based upon physical quantities which we
now have scientific ways to measure
rather than letting markets set prices.
Belief in the “invisible
hand” of the market is now
quite generally recognized as belief in magic and, as such,
no better than belief in astrology. We
shall show that there is no way to
justify anything but equality in consumption.
Definitions Dematerialism
Dematerialism refers
to any political economy
in which, due to the structure
and arrangement of the institutions, it is not possible for any member of the community to acquire more wealth or material resources than another.
Resource dominance hierarchies cannot
arise. In fact, the
individual's share in the net production of the community
is not in play. The term
may be applied to the belief in or dedication to such a political economy. The
principal justification for this
work is that it corrects the
problems with Marxism that have contributed
to previous attempts to replace
Capitalism, which, as we shall see, is intrinsically unsustainable.
3
Decentralization
Direct Aristotelian democracy is the basis
for the
so-called Fractal Government proposed here so as to ensure that all political power is
retained by the people. Since every citizen must
be a member of a community
council which determines public policy, the village or neighborhood, the basic political molecule, must be small enough to3 be effective. Thus decentralization
must be the ultimate goal regardless of
how the present system has to
be accommodated. In particular, the largest
identifiable political unit
should be the drainage region, i. e., the
contiguous portion of the land that drains
into common reservoirs without any of the neighboring areas draining
into it. This is the fundamental unit of land in ecology.
(Professor Jorge Gabitto, formerly the chairman
of the department of chemical engineering at Prairie View University, pointed out that our maps are drawn in the most regrettable manner
from the viewpoint of ecology. Rivers make convenient
borders for map makers
but not for ecologists.) The
space between the basic molecules and
the governing body of the
entire ecological region is
the fractal-like structure shown in Figure 2.
Additional necessities for decentralization
are well known.
Figure 1. Fractal
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Figure 2. Fractal Political Structure Demarchy
Demarchy is our name for a political economy in
which distinguished members of the government
such as political representatives
are chosen by sortition, the
semirandom method we normally
employ in selecting jurors.
Delegislation
Our vast systems of law
are ridiculous. Laws should be replaced
by a few simple moral axioms from
which right action can be
derived easily. We should
embrace rational morals that anyone can follow as opposed
to religious superstitions and sexual
and pharmacological prudery that no
person of spirit can live by.
Dissent should be tolerated and even those who
do not accept our rational morality
should be accorded the dignity
of sovereign heads of state.
Our system of morals should be derived from a complete, self-consistent,
mutually independent set of first principles that
can be explained to a
six-year-old and upon
which most educated people can agree. If, in addition,
those
who dissent – even after we have employed
our most compelling logical testimony – can be
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accommodated without coercion and without
inconvenience to themselves or
us, we shall have done very
well indeed. – On the Preservation of Species
Laws and morals
should be congruent. Behavior
that the community finds immoral, can be legal only in
an incomplete legal system; whereas, a legal system that prohibits moral acts
is tyrannous. Both laws and morals
are obtained for the convenience of the community, provided the requirements of sustainability
are met. There are
certain aesthetic
and other intuitive principles that
we hope will come into play. I shall
attempt to justify my
otherwise arbitrary choices in the section on axiomatic
morality below.
Degrowth
Population
Degrowth
It makes sense
to enter into the record at this point Professor Al Bartlett's
famous talk, which explains
how man's ignorance of the
exponential function has affected our present population crisis: https://eroei.net/bartlettexp.mp4
As Prof. Bartlett puts it:
Can you think
of any problem in any area of
human endeavor on any scale,
from microscopic to global, whose
long-term solution is in any
demonstrable way aided, assisted,
or advanced by further increases
in population, locally, nationally, or globally? -A.A. Bartlett, January 8, 1996
I can think of no better tribute to Al Bartlett than to emulate his challenge: Can
you think of any social problem on any
scale that is not exacerbated by
the institution of private
profit? In particular, I claim that population
increase is worsened by the institution of private profit. The problem of over-population will not be solved except
by Die-Off in a society that
permits private profit.
If I may be permitted to
widen the meaning of the
term private profit to include (i) the increase of the proportion in
the population of ones race, religion, politics, culture, or point of view and (ii)
the increase in ones own or ones employer's, relative's, colleague's, or ally's accumulation or share of material wealth, then
my challenge to the world is to name a single problem of humanity that is not exacerbated by private profit. It
is the term "material"
in
"material wealth" that supplies the term "material"
in the word "dematerialism".
6
Here are.mp4 and YouTube versions of Albert Bartlett's
famous talk on the exponential function
as it applies to population:
1. https://www.dematerialism.net/bartlettexp.mp4
2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O133ppiVnWY&t=675s
It takes about 10 kilocalories
of primary energy
to supply one kilocalorie
in our diets. Just now, we
have enough conventional and
fracked oil to support an agriculture sector that can support a large
over-population; however, there
are compelling reasons
to abandon fossil fuel
chief among which are the alarmingly
high probability of catastrophic
climate change
and the absolute certainty
that the supply of fossil fuel
is finite and eventually
will cost more
energy to harvest than it will return. Perhaps it is not too soon to
state a fundamental principle
of social planning and forecasting, namely, that
any event in the future of society
that should be expected soon
because of the nature of
the exponential function should be treated as though it will occur
tomorrow.
Economic Degrowth
The Economic
Growth Trap
I tried very hard to prove
that capitalism requires economic growth and ended up
with nothing better than a reasonable plausibility argument. David Delaney, however, provided a completely satisfying explanation in “The Economic Growth Trap” which became the first
step in the physical argument for Dematerialism.
“The Economic Growth Trap” by (the
late) David Delaney. Today (01.23.06) I read
“What to do in a
failing civilization” by David M.
Delaney. It contained
the best explanation of why American-style capitalism
requires growth I have ever seen. With the kind permission of the
author, it is reprinted below. David posted the full paper and his
other essays at http://geocities.com/davidmdelaney/.
David Delaney died
a few years back; and, I no longer know
where to find his excellent work. Someone
should do whatever it takes to
find this storehouse of well-considered thought.
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Economic growth requires
increasing the amount of high quality energy
and materials degraded by the economy each year. Economic
growth on a finite planet will eventually stop. If it does not exhaust the resources needed for its continuation, it will stop
earlier for some other reason. Allowing
resource
depletion and biosphere degradation to terminate
economic growth will produce catastrophe. Unfortunately, our dependence on economic growth makes
it extremely unlikely that we will give it up voluntarily before the catastrophe. Our dependence has at least four aspects: A)
in the need to deal with adverse consequences of labor-reducing
innovations, B) in commercial bank money, C) in the need to maintain tolerance of inequality, and D) in financial markets.
A) The first dependence on
economic growth is in
the need to avoid the adverse
consequences of innovations that reduce the need for labor.1 By definition, each labor-reducing innovation either increases the amount of a good produced or throws some people out of work. Firms that create or exploit a labor-reducing
innovation create new jobs internally by driving other
firms out of business. The new
jobs implementing the innovation
offset
the loss of jobs caused by the
innovation, but the innovating firms don’t necessarily hire all of
the job losers, because the innovation reduced the total
amount of labor needed
to produce the original amount of the
good. In order to re-employ
all job losers, the economy must grow to produce more
of the good with all of
the original workers, or produce more of some other
good with the cheaper labor (the job losers) now available. In either case the economy grows. Much of what we consider progress is due to labor-reducing innovations. In order to live
without economic
growth, we would have to give up this
kind of progress, or introduce arrangements to allow workers who become unproductive
to retain their relative wealth and self-respect, or relegate most people
to a repressed underclass. There is
a powerful incentive to avoid
these
contingencies by encouraging economic growth.
B) The second dependence on economic growth is in the creation of money
by the act of borrowing at interest from commercial banks. Much of the money in each loan by a commercial
bank is created by the loan itself. The bank
collects a fee— the interest—for providing the
service of creating the money. Other ways of creating money have been
explored in theory and practice. Successful local currencies have
been based on some of these alternatives, (see Douthwaite, Short
Circuit, page 61) but all
national money is now created by interest-bearing loans from commercial banks. This way
of creating money contributes instability
to an economy based on it. In order
to keep the money supply from contracting when a loan and its interest are paid, a larger total of new loans must
be created, increasing
the money supply. (This
is not transparently obvious. For a
more detailed explanation, see
Douthwaite, The Ecology of
Money, page 24.) When the
economy grows to match the increasing
money
supply, the value of money is
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relatively stable, and
commercial-bank-created
money is benign. If the rate of economic growth does not match the rate of growth of
the money supply,
the money supply becomes unstable. Given the
use of money created by
interest bearing loans from commercial
banks, an economy can minimize
the resulting instabilities
of the money supply by sustaining moderate growth. Monetary instability
would put significant hazards in
the way of deliberate attempts to contract
our economy unless the creation
of money was radically reformed.
C) The
third dependence on economic
growth is in the political and geopolitical need for tolerance
of inequality. Differences
of wealth are at least as great within the developed
countries as they are between
developed and developing countries. Think of the ratio of the
average income of American CEOs to the average salary of workers in their companies. Domestically and
internationally, the tolerance
of the poor and middle classes for the
existence of wealthier classes
and countries
depends on a belief in economic growth. The poor
struggle, while seeing that others are wealthy and still others are grotesquely wealthy. The poor are told a story: if they keep to their work and to their diversions, and tolerate the rich, they
will be better off in the future
than they are today. They believe
this story, or at
least don’t revolt against it,
because it is supported by propaganda and shared
myths, and has been true for
many. When economic growth disappears forever, the
poor, like everyone else, will
recognize that they will be progressively worse off, with no
future relief possible. The peaceful tolerance by the poor and the middles for the
rich will disappear. A peaceful end of economic growth would require
redistribution of wealth,
with consequent political and geopolitical contention. Desire to
avoid the contention makes it unlikely that
deliberate elimination of economic
growth will be
attempted before economic growth is ended by nature. The
intolerance of differences of
wealth that will then appear
will itself not be tolerated by the rich,
causing additional domestic and
international conflict just at the advent of other adverse
changes. At that time, if
not before, tyrannical repression of the poor will greatly tempt the rich.
D) The fourth dependence on
economic growth is in the financial markets— the
mechanism of capitalization
of public corporations. Public corporations, the main actors in industrial economies, depend on financial markets
not only
for capital for innovation, but
for discipline, valuation, motivation, and a major part of their rationale
for existence. Owners of capital—investors—give
the use of it over to public corporations by
buying equity or debt in
financial markets. They do
so only because they expect
that they will, on average, and over the long term, receive
back more than they gave up. That expectation disappears when most investors understand there
will be no economic growth.
Most of the apparent
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wealth of the world consists of equity
and debt bought and sold in financial markets. Any realistic possibility of the end of growth
would fill investors with something like terror. Political
initiatives to bring an end to growth will be opposed by investors with every
means at their command.
The controversial nature of proposals that would
reduce or eliminate economic
growth will likely prevent the proposals from
reaching even the status of political
contention. When
the onset of sustained economic contraction is generally perceived, investors
will withdraw from financial
markets. The resulting
failure of the markets will
make many necessary developments
impossible to finance and will produce confusion and stasis in public corporations
just when we need them to adapt
to new circumstances.
[end of Economic Growth Trap]
We may assume that,
after all reasonably anticipated energy
conservation technology has been
developed and installed, economic growth
must
be accompanied by growth in energy
consumption, which must result in the rapid onset of Peak Oil in
the sense of Hubbert and, subsequently
- if permitted -exponential growth
in the
number of nuclear installations. We must
assume that, without fusion, some sort
of breeder reactor will replace fission. Even if
we neglect global warming and
the China Syndrome, we must
give
up NIMBY, since
continued economic growth
will place a nuclear plant in every backyard.
It may take only
a few minutes to read
the hyperlinked material; but, it took weeks
to write it after reading the University of
Chicago's and MIT's reports on
the future of nuclear. See The Nuclear
Option https://dematerialism.net/NuclearOption.html from “On the
Conservation-within-Capitalism Scenario”:
In other words, suppose we can visualize a world in
which economic growth is tolerated into the indefinite future. After every reasonable conservation measure
has been taken
by a non-increasing population,
every new quantum of economic growth will result in a corresponding
increase in our total consumption of emergy – not by a constant factor regardless of other
considerations, but by some factor, φ, greater than 1.0. (Actually,
φ > 1 + ϵ, where ϵ is a constant
greater than zero; i. e., φ is
not constant, but ϵ is.) Thus, continued economic growth
must
be met with a corresponding greater capacity
to produce energy. Given
the limitations
on fossil fuel production, we must choose
an energy production technology capable of sustaining perpetual growth. This is impossible as amply demonstrated in the case
of nuclear energy, which
might be the best choice for
the attempt. See “The Nuclear Option”, taken from “On the Conservation-within-Capitalism
Scenario”, where the finite size of the
Earth is the limitation. Although
we know of no exception to this
rule, we would still like to have a mathematical
proof.
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When I embarked upon this project,
it seemed obvious that we would have to abandon fossil fuels in
favor of renewable energy,
provided renewable energy technologies with ERoEI* (“ER over
EI star”) no less than 1.0 could be found or developed. One had
the scientific consensus
regarding Anthropogenic Global Warming,
which had no more than a 49% (for the
sake of argument) chance of being wrong, if
we neglect predictions as to just
when certain temperature
signposts would be reached. We may assume
that such signposts that the theory predicts will be reached eventually should be treated as though they required immediate action,
just
as we assume every gun
is loaded. In addition, we
had the finite supply of oil, the consumption
of which was increasing exponentially, which according to similar reasoning, should be viewed as essentially unavailable.
One wonders, then, if the maximum possible energy
production from renewable energy equals or exceeds the total energy budget for the entire nation. Incidentally, I found it necessary to validate the technique whereby the energy cost
of a highdollar project well-distributed over the sectors of the economy was found by multiplying the E/GDP ratio by the gross cash investment for the project under consideration. This assumption was
corroborated by the analysis
of “Energy in a Mark-II-Economy”. Finally, “Energy
in a Natural Economy” uses Bureau
of Economic Analysis data to determine how much useful work will need
to be performed per unit
of time after we power down
to the Earth as a Garden. Finally, the paper
“On the Conservation-within-Capitalism Scenario” indicates that renewable energy technology is inadequate to support American-style
Capitalism. However, examples of sustainable political economies are given.
Dechrematisticalism
What is to be done with that section of the possessors
of specific talents whose talent
is for moneymaking? History and daily experience teach us that if the world does not devise
some plan of ruling them, they will rule the
world. Now it is not desirable that they should rule
the world; for the secret of moneymaking is to care for
nothing else and to work at nothing else; and as the world’s welfare
depends on operations by which no individual can make money, whilst its ruin ... is
enormously profitable to
moneymakers, the supremacy of the moneymaker is the destruction of the State. A society which depends
on the incentive of private profit is
doomed.– George Bernard Shaw, The Millionairess .
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Here is a case
in which we can do no better
than to quote the Wikipedia, which is permissible under the
applicable rules:
“Aristotle established a difference
between economics and chrematistics that
would be foundational in
medieval thought. For Aristotle,
the accumulation of money itself
is an unnatural activity that dehumanizes those who practice
it. Trade Exchanges, money for goods,
and usury create money
from money, but do not produce useful goods. Hence, Aristotle,
like
Plato, condemns these actions from the standpoint of
their philosophical ethics.
[snip]”
Thus, activities that are performed to obtain a greater share of the net proceeds of
the economy for the worker or his employer but
produce nothing that we need to
live and enjoy life can be
distinguished from genuine economic
activity
by the term “chrematistics”. Inasmuch
as this constitutes a huge
overhead on the economy
that
we can no longer afford
as we approach Peak Oil, we
take the liberty of referring to the
elimination of chrematistics as
dechrematisticalism, partly for the pleasure of coining
a beautiful large
word but mostly because it will postpone the extinction of
the human race for an astronomical period of
time. This analysis was verified in “Energy in a Natural Economy”. Notice that I had
a good notion of the split
between economics, in the
sense of Aristotle, and chrematistics, even though I did not
know the word. Notice, as well,
that the sort of people who
would own the world, as in the game of
monopoly, which likewise is played in
a world that cannot grow, would be stripped of their peculiar power; and, the introduction of a
new monetary system
(acually a system of rationing consumption) would prevent the sort of inequalities that
precede violent revolutions.
Can Resource Dominance
Be Eliminated?
It will, of course, be said that such a scheme
as is
set forth here is quite impractical goes against human
nature. This is perfectly true.
It is impractical and
it goes against human nature. This
is why it is worth carrying out,
and that is why one proposes it. For what is a practical scheme? A practical
scheme
is either
a scheme that is already in
existence, or a scheme that could be carried out under
existing conditions. But it is exactly the existing conditions
that one objects to; and any scheme
that could accept these conditions is
wrong and foolish. The conditions will be
done away with, and human nature will change.
The only thing
that one
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really knows about human nature is that it
changes. Change is the
one quality we can predicate of it. The
systems that fail are those that rely on the permanency of human nature, and not
on its growth and development. — Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man
Under Socialism
Let us set aside, for
a moment, the possibility of a benevolent deity the existence of whom would assure any
reasonable person that
resource dominance has no permanent place in human
nature (theism); or, what amounts to the same thing, that the true nature of Man
is inherently noble (humanism), so that resource dominance is merely
an example of a temporary corrupting influence that will soon be corrected. We are
left with little more than
the choice between Transcendental Idealism represented by the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics and Transcendental Realism
represented by the global-hidden-variables
interpretation of the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen gedankenexperiment as actualized by the experiments of Alain Aspect and
his co-workers. In case of theism,
humanism, or Transcendental Idealism,
resource dominance can be eliminated from human behavior by eliminating the corrupting influence, namely, materialism, or by the
timely intervention of good fortune.
In the case of Transcendental Realism, we may retain hope for Dematerialism in all but the last of the following cases:
1. Resource dominance
is not an intrinsic characteristic
of human nature.
2. Resource dominance is an
intrinsic characteristic of human nature;
however, it can be subverted by
re-directing it toward more realistic ways to achieve
reproductive advantage (i) by manifesting excellence in all
of our activities so as to earn the
admiration of members of both genders or (ii) by manifesting greater
sex appeal than other candidates for the affections of members of the opposite sex. This
redirection can be achieved by
education, indoctrination, legislation, or any combination of these.
3. Our knowledge of human nature is insufficient to make a judgment either way.
4. Finally, it is
possible that resource dominance is
an intrinsic characteristic of human nature that cannot be subverted – even by law backed by certain and severe punishment, in which
case Dematerialism is impossible.
13
For this important subject,
which, perhaps, is the sine-qua-non of the trip to dematerialism for the majority of people, I shall have to rely principally on
the work of others, as I have
done practically nothing myself
except to add
five points to John Gatto's famous list and
to say what must
be said in the argument for the legalization of drugs.
The Higher Education Bubble
Why K–12 Education Does
More Harm than Good
Graduate education in engineering and science
My Personal Viewpoint
Character Education, Anti-Drug
Propaganda, and
Religion
Character Education
Loyalty
Justice
Commitment
Self-Discipline
The Scapegoating of Drugs and
Mass Hysteria Religion
John Gatto’s Seven-Lesson School Teacher
The Role of Materialism
in the Mis-education of Youth
14
The Trip
to Dematerialism
The Defects
of Capitalism: My List (Please click on
this to see list.)
Thus,
we see that I was attracted to the moral
basis of dematerialism; and,
in the beginning, I did not realize
that dematerialism might
be sustainable whereas other political systems were not.
Dematerialism satisfies moral
requirements and is sustainable.
Thus, dematerialism satisfies
moral imperatives that we might adopt because of an inspired reading of the Sermon
on the Mount, a clear appraisal of
the needs of the community, and an
understanding of what convenience
amounts to for an entire community. I, for
my part, test every public
policy against the
three criteria discussed in Toward Axiomatic
Morality in On the Preservation of Species,
namely, reasonableness,
utility, and beauty. Nevertheless, every political economy upon which we hope to build a
lasting civilization must a fortiori be sustainable.
Sustainability
ERoEI*, Energy Returned
over Energy Invested, is the Measure
of Sustainability.
Inasmuch as we are at the
limit to growth or near it, we are now forced
to adjust our lives merely
to survive. Here is a rough list of the minimum that we
must do.
Solve population problem. Population de-growth
is most important.
Economic de-growth
is necessary too as follows:
Put an end
to predatory imperialism and render assistance to those nations that need economic
growth and to which a modicum
of our shrinkage should go to compensate them for our
misdeeds until a new equilibrium is established, after which the entire world should strive for nearly equal
sustainable economic performance globally.
Close stock
markets, which will have become zero-sum
games at best.
Ban fractional
reserve banking.
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Government must cease
telling lies, which means “no more
propaganda” especially in schools. Instead explain
to students why major changes are absolutely necessary.
Solve inequality crisis. Replace fiat currency with resource
credits distributing equal shares of the sustainable community net harvest or production with
proviso about replacing oneself only, transferring that privilege,
or not reproducing. Devise reasonable
way to
discourage cheating.
Establish true
democracy such that all the power is
held by all of the people. Prevent the rise
of demagogues and natural leaders. Sortition and fractal government are
suggested.
Since reaching the
limit to growth means that economy behaves
like
game of Monopoly, one person might own everything. G. B. Shaw explains
why anything approaching this is undesirable.
So eliminate private
profit by mutual coercion mutually agreed upon. Make it easy for addicts of acquisition to quit by
removing mechanisms by which they
could indulge themselves.
Solve energy
problem. Establish steady
state stockpiles of vital resources
and regulate draw down of residuals
from which the stockpiles
are maintained as described in article
on sustainability.
Solve resource scarcity problem. End
consumerism. In particular,
end automobile culture, advertising and marketing.
Prevent pollution. Prevent
waste, including waste of talent and beauty. Prevent wage slavery.
Establish true
renewable energy technology.
Devise methods to achieve the aforementioned.
Sustainability amounts to providing a sustainable
renewable energy technology, a technology that harvests energy (corrected
for
entropy) from the sun in real
time and that returns
more energy than is consumed to manufacture it, install
it, operate it, maintain it,
maintain its storehouses of natural
material capital, prevent or repair environmental damage including aesthetic
damage, uninstall
it when its life cycle ends, restore the plant site, and support the community that
serves the renewable energy installation both directly and indirectly throughout its life cycle. If the technology must pay the energy
cost of a substitute technology in cases where a substitute technology
is necessary to satisfy contractual obligations, this cost must
16
be added to the
energy invested. I reserve the right
and privilege to add to this list if appropriate
or necessary.
The entire section on
sustainability, formerly located
here, can be found at dematerialism.net/Sustainabilitie.htm. https://www.dematerialism.net/Sustainabilitie.htm
Axiomatic Morals There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking
makes it so. – Shakespeare's
Hamlet
Nietzsche came to this sentiment rather late in the day and Mary Baker Eddy gave it second place
on her Frontispiece
in Science and Health;
but, the
authorities are not needed, as one can verify the truth of it with a little reflection.
Laws, then, are made for
the convenience of the community and to discourage nuisances. In my philosophy, I ask
that they be few in number,
readily derivable from a minimal set, and
satisfy the three criteria:
reasonableness, utility, and beauty as discussed ad infinitum in Chapter 3 of On the Preservation of Species.
The not-quite-independent set of minimal principles to
which I subscribe can
be rendered in slang as follows: (1) live and let live,
(2) tell the truth to those who have a right to know
it (Hemingway, Green Hills
of Africa), and (3) protect
the environment. These and their
corollaries deserve
a great deal of elucidation
and they get it in Chapter 3 (above) and throughout my papers
and book. For example, I have tried very hard to
show that precept number one demands economic equality.
Finally, I believe we should avail ourselves of well-defined physical quantities as
much as possible in stating the
requirements of the law. In cases, where no judgment
can be made based on first principles,
we should defer to equality, e. g., the
division of residential property or shares in the sustainable social dividend
(the net production of useful
goods and services by the community).
To walk in money through
the night crowd, protected by money, lulled
by money, dulled by money, the
17
crowd itself a
money,
the breath money, no least single object anywhere that
is not money,
money, money everywhere and
still not enough, and then no money, or a little money or less
money or more money, but money, always money, and if you have money or you don’t have money it
is the money that counts and money makes money, but what makes
money make money? - Henry Miller, Tropic
of Capricorn
Our society is
concerned with (I) money earned,
(ii) other income, (iii)
the cost of living, (iv) discretionary spending,
(v) debt, (vi) net worth.
This obscures the most important aspects
of money. To
elevate the ratio of energy returned
over
energy invested into
renewable energy range, it
is necessary to eliminate private profit
as well as other chrematistical
components of the energy
invested denominator. This goes a long way toward reducing the total energy
budget to less or equal to the production of
renewable energy. In keeping with
our preference for natural law, we agree that there
is no
reasonable way to assign
spendable income to the citizens of our community without a job market. Many of
the workers who have to be furloughed are
among the highest paid people in the economy. If we agree to pay them no more than we pay
others who agree not to engage in
dechrematistic or even economic activities, it should reduce the number of people
who
object to economic equality
to as
few as possible. But, it is not the money
earned that is important. It is the money spent.
We must reduce consumption.
We Need a New Monetary
System: The complete essay as far as I got
https://eroei.blogspot.com/ This is
where I say the most important things
about sustainability – against all odds
and in the face of strong opposition. Sometimes my frustration shows.
https://dematerialism.blogspot.com/ This is where I
write down anything new that occurs
to me. That includes new
ways to explain the parts that
few people understand.
https://sustainabilitymath.blogspot.com/ This has a few documents
that are found elsewhere. It was my protest
regarding the people who grabbed sustainability.blogspot.com
and don’t understand sustainability.
18
https://www.slimwiki.com/wayburn/dematerialism This replaces
dematerialism.wikispaces.com, which
was a practice shot to get into
the Wikipedia. I
now have a better idea of what to say. After
all, dematerialism is a limiting case. It
is on the boundary of the
space of all possible political and economic systems. It should be in the Wikipedia and these
are some its principal characteristics.
https://www.justpassinthru.com/users/home/twayburn/ is supposed to mirror dematerialism.net
but I find it hard to keep
it up-to-date. I have started working on this problem.
https://independent.academia.edu/TomWayburn Duplicates of many of
the principal papers the writing
of which convinced me that
so-called renewable energy technologies cannot support an American-style market economy; but,
can support Earth as a Garden
for a much smaller steady-state
or shrinking population:
On the
Conservation-within-Capitalism Scenario
[Preliminary Version 1.2]
Energy Returned over Energy Invested
ERoEI* as a Measure of
Feasibility
David Delaney's paper "The Economic Growth Trap"
The Demise of Business
as Usual
On the Preservation of Species: A Logical Argument
in Support of a Rational Basis for Community
including Necessary and Sufficient
Conditions for Sustainable Happiness for All
Sentient Beings in a Hypothetical World 1989 -present
We
Need a New Monetary System: The complete essay as far as I got
19
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Does_anyone_still_believe_that_markets_dis tribute_the_social_dividend_efficiently
Other material
sent to Researchgate that I should keep my
eye on.
The website http://www.thesolutionsjournal.com/yoursolutions of Solutions for a Sustainable and
Desirable Future has kindly
posted the contents of my wiki. It is
a very good fit in my opinion, as most
of the contributors understand that
we have reached a limit
to growth that practically guarantees
a die-off somewhere
in the world in the wake of Peak Oil.
Americans are slow
to recognize Overshoot because our government has made it its business to
export the die-off to
foreign shores. Many of
us have
been forced to reduce their expenditures because of unemployment, but
very few are missing meals. At least,
if they are, I am not aware of it. On
the other hand, starvation is
all too common in states where we have used our military strength
to trade ruinous loans for precious natural
resources, particularly in Africa,
which
seems to suffer no matter what else
is going on.
On the Preservation
of Species (full 600-page book in
one file)
On the Preservation
of Species (table of contents hyperlinked to individual chapter files)
Social Problems
and Solutions (many important
ideas from the book – 56 pages)
Useful Concepts from On
the Preservation of Species
Except for “Thermodynamics,
Availability, and
Emergy” the essays in this first group of ancillary essays are
new. Some remarks on the essay, “On the Conservation-within-Capitalism Scenario”, can be found at http://tinyurl.com/7s6aq. The results from “On the Conservation-withinCapitalism Scenario” are summarized in “The Demise of Business
as Usual”, which is
only ten pages long. The
expedient of multiplying cash
flow by the E/GDP ratio is
20
justified numerically in “Energy in a Mark II Economy”
where the well known ratio of energy returned over energy invested (EROEI) is explained and expanded.
The principal
result of the work represented by the first
four essays is that, if an American-style market economy is retained, no amount
of nuclear power
is sufficient; whereas,
if we make the shift to
a Natural Economy, the
economy can be supported completely
by safe, sustainable renewable energy. In this SoftEnergy, Earth-as-a-Garden
scenario, nuclear energy and fossil fuel can be phased out. If you don’t believe
me, check my
arithmetic and the spreadsheets attached to the next three
papers.
Emergy (from Chapter 2 of On the Preservation
of Species)
On Emergy (from “Energy in
a Mark II Economy”)
Availability Balance on Earth Redux
Emergy and Population in a Natural Economy
Thermodynamics, Availability, and Emergy
On the Conservation-within-Capitalism Scenario
The
Demise of Business as Usual
EROI*
as a Measure of Feasibility
EROEI
as a Measure of Feasibility
Energy in a
Natural Economy (8by9w)
In “Energy in a Natural Economy”,
I determined from US government employment and energy statistics roughly how
much energy could be saved by abandoning market economics. This was developed further in the section
on the Natural Economy in
“On the Conservation-within-Capitalism Scenario”.
A Report on My Recent Investigations of Solar Energy Harvested
by Photosynthesis in a Controlled Environment
The Feasibility of a 600 Kilowatt Windpower Installation
21
Danish engineers computed an energy payoff of only three months for a twentyyear wind power installation. (The URL for this study
has been changed. Please search
http://www.windpower.org/.) That seemed
unlikely on the
face of it. Undoubtedly, they neglected the high-energy lifestyles of the contractors who would receive the
cash
payments. My inexact method
results in a minimum payoff period of 36 months – 12 months if
we credit electricity with
three times as much emergy as fossil fuel. [Note (8-25-04). I
believe the reader understands
that the units of GDP are
US dollars/year and the rate of energy consumption
is in
watt-years/year, so the years cancel
out to give watt-years/USD.]
Letter
to John Kaminsky concerning Peak Abiotic Oil
The next sequence
of papers
represents my various attempts to answer the pedestrian argument
that dematerialism is contrary
to human nature. Regrettably, many disciples of Dawkins, Pinker, and
other proponents of evolutionary psychology have used the
overthrow of the standard social science model as
an opportunity to ingratiate themselves with the owners of
the world by writing anticommunist
and anti-anarchist propaganda,
although a handful have
recognized that, if it were
true (that dematerialism is contrary to
human nature), human
society would be
doomed to the massive
culling known as Dieoff –
principally because of the fine work done by
Jay Hansen at http://www.dieoff.com/.
Psychology as a Tool of
Political Repression
“Psychology as a Tool of
Social Repression” is commentary
on the rise of anticommunist propaganda and the horrible effect
it has had on every effort
to build a just society and to prevent a catastrophic
end to this one.
This is a collection of some entries from my
free blog at http://dematerialism.blogspot.com/. The next paper was my
first clumsy attempt to refute an argument
that is intuitively false. It is not so easy to refute logically
what you believe to be true
intuitively. People who discuss the methodology of science do not credit
intuition sufficiently in my
opinion.
22
In some cases,
these essays are too conservative and should
be revised to reflect my latest thinking on
government, foreign war, punishment,
and other forms of direct action. In any case, I wrote what I wrote.
Communism
and Some Idle Thoughts on the Excesses of Capitalism
Computing Crude Birth Rates from Total Fertility Rate
On Designing a Community Currency
Talk to be given
at Schreiner College on Washington
’s Birthday
On “Entrepreneurship and Social Progress” by Lew Rockwell
Is There a Conflict between
Property Rights and the Moral Requirement
to Protect Endangered Species?
On Socialism,
Utopian and Scientific by Frederick Engels
On William Buckley’s ‘Agenda for the
Nineties’
This essay is a
line-by-line criticism of William
Buckley’s plan to make the United States a theocratic plutocracy in the conservative tradition of reaction to all social progress. It may have worked.
American Myths and Higher
Education
23
Some Unintended Effects of Computers
A Brief Outline
of the Harm Done by Improper Religions
On the
Separation of Church and State and
the Case Against Christianity and Other Improper Religions
On the United
Nations Universal Declaration of
Human Rights
How
to Find the Day of the Week in Any Year
Expected Value
of a Texas State Lottery Ticket
This essay belongs to an
earlier period when the number
of numbers from which to choose 6 was 50. However, it
illustrates the essential dishonesty of
the Great State of Texas rather
nicely. Amusingly, when they
added three more numbers, thus reducing the probability of winning drastically, they advertised “Now, with three more numbers to choose from”,
as though three more numbers
for
the same price made it more of a bargain, which
some users probably thought to be the
case. On the other
hand, a large number of players have
been choosing 1-2-3-4-56 because they think no
one else with whom they
would have to share their prize will choose it. They know that this sequence is just as likely
to come up as any other sequence, which shows that some players
may be more numerate
than we had previously
guessed.
Letter
to Time
Magazine in A Concise
Introduction to Logic - Page 12 - Google Books
24
The Case for
Drug Legalization and Decontrol in the United States
Fallacies and
Unstated Assumptions in Prevention
and Treatment
A Review of the 1990 Drug Policy Foundation Conference
A Seven-Point
Post-Prohibition Policy
Can the State Teach
that Drugs are Wrong
and
Harmful?
Despite Recent
Flurry of Anti-Drug Propaganda, Drug Prohibition is Indefensible
Two Crucial
Issues in the Argument for Drug Legalization
Additional Web Space: Social Media, Music, and Model Railroading
I am trying to complete a
few of the projects I began many
years ago when I thought I would live
forever. These projects are
spread across (i) science
and the limitations it places
upon rational political economy, (ii) the
great art of music -especially jazz music, and (iii) the world's
greatest hobby, namely, model railroading, whereby the
strange, deadly beauty
created as a result of industrialization can be preserved in the only
places where it can do no
additional harm, namely,
museums - if we may include among museums the
private miniturizations found in the homes
of hobbyists.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/twayburn/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ThomasLWayburn
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/
Linked
In: https://www.linkedin.com/
25
https://dematerialism.net/jazzandclassical.htm
https://slimwiki.com/wayburn/jazzandclassical
From time to time, YouTube
videos hyperlinked in these
two websites have been taken down ostensively because someone claims to own the copyright on, for example, a Charlie
Parker record, recorded
over 70 years ago by an artist who died in 1955. Although
copyrights were devised originally
so that government could interfere with art, they benefit the artist and consumer by
protecting art
from counterfeiters and imposters. But, this no longer applies to
art and artists that belong to the
world at large and cannot be subsumed under the nonsensical and harmful notion of “intellectual property”, which
we need to fight vigorously.
See https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.en.html and
https://aeon.co/essays/theidea-of-intellectual-property-is-nonsensical-and-pernicious .
Model Railroading
https://slimwiki.com/wayburn/modrr
Energy and Population Hyperlinks
Open People, Open Source, and Public Domain Hyperlinks
26
This website was designed, written, and constructed by me, Thomas Wayburn
of Houston, Texas. I am responsible for its contents. Please address all correspondence to wayburn@dematerialism.net. Corrections,
suggestions, and constructive criticism will
be appreciated. Vituperation
is acceptable too.
Born March 24, 1934,
Detroit, Michigan. • Redford
High School Detroit 1951. • BS chemical engineering Michigan
1956. • MS mathematics NYU 1968. • PhD chemical engineering Utah 1980. • Studied jazz drummig
with Lennie Tristano, Joe Morello, Philly Joe Jones, Cozy Cole, Stanley Specter. • Here is an mp3 version of the record I made
with Lennie Tristano and Peter Ind when I was 22 years old. If you are interested,
copy
https://dematerialism.net/tristano.mp3 and paste into browser.
Hack engineering, chemical process design. • Teaching
chemical engineering at various levels:
thermodynamics, plant design, applied mathematics. • Writing
and reviewing for
the peer-reviewed scientific and engineering
literature, principally numerical analysis.
• Software development, computational chemical engineering.
• Political activism, principally
anti-war and anti-growth, preaching limits
to growth and advent of Peak
Oil. • Computational research in energy and economics. • Internet
publishing: this website • Railroad modeling and model railroad photography:
https://modrr.net/.
View an
earlier resume: https://www.dematerialism.net/Resume97.html
I am trying to complete a few of the projects I began
many years ago when I thought I would
live forever. These projects
are spread across (i) science and the limitations it
places upon rational political
economy, (ii) the great art
of music -especially jazz
music, and (iii) the world's greatest hobby, namely, model railroading, whereby the strange, deadly beauty created as a result of industrialization
can
be preserved in the only
places where it can do no
additional harm, namely, museums - if we may
include among museums the private miniaturizations found in the
homes of hobbyists.
A short interval of
my life around 1960 is described in
“Jimmy and Me”, which enjoyed special
editorial treatment without having
to submit to the phony peerreview system.
(“Jimmy” was Jimmy Stevenson, an aspiring bass player from Detroit, who was ready to play at any time.) https://www.jazzloftproject.org/blog/general/jimmy-and-me-by-tom-wayburn
A
few people who take a special interest in Chet Baker have asked me to tell the
story of the short period in which the deservedly famous musicians Chet Baker
and Philly Joe Jones lived with me in my distinguished ($19.05/month) apartment
on East Twenty-First Street. I am putting this together bit by bit in https://www.dematerialism.net/mystory.htm along with the
description of my experiences with Lennie Tristano, Charlie Parker, Jutta Hipp, Chris Anderson, Karen Dalton, Lin Halliday,
Junior Collins, and others.
Tom Wayburn, drummer,
vibraphonist, recording engineer; computational chemical engineer,
net energy analyst; political economist, philosopher; model railroad planner,
builder, photographer; computer
builder, programmer, operator, and technologist; document writer,
essayist (That is, from time to time I have been some of these
things. I no longer have
the strength to keep up with
much of anything. I shall
be happy to edit my writing, finish my model railroad, write up some of my experiences with
music and musicians, and edit
a few dozen audio tapes. I have some interesting stories to tell – at
least I have been asked to tell them. Also, I still have a great deal to say that I have
not committed to paper
– yet.
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