Democratic Forest Trusts (PDF)in Watson, Alan; Dean, Liese; Sproull, Janet, comps. 2006. Science and stewardship to protect and sustain wilderness values: Eighth World Wilderness Congress Symposium; 2005 September 30-October 6; Anchorage, AK.Democratic trusts with leadership elected by citizen-members promise to solve many of the problems afflicting both traditional government and corporate ownership of forestlands. This article explores these issues in some depth.Complexity and the Dream of Human Control of Eco-Systems (PDF)in Watson, Alan; Dean, Liese; Sproull, Janet, comps. 2006. Science and stewardship to protect and sustain wilderness values: Eighth World Wilderness Congress Symposium; 2005 September 30-October 6; Anchorage, AK.The title captures it. I then explore the kinds of institutions compatible with both nature and the modern world that are implied from this analysis.Rethinking the Obvious: Modernity and Living Respectfully With Nature (PDF)The Trumpeter: Journal of Ecosophy, Winter, 1997.Modernity is usually considered a wrong turn in terms of respect for and sustaining the environment. I argue the reality is more complex, for modernity has freed us from personal dependence on agriculture, ended the economic value of children, radically reduced the likelihood of large scale wat, and shifted much production to intellectual rather than material capital. This partially decouples society from nature, which gives us important opportunities as well as problems.Towards an Ecocentric Political Economy (PDF)The Trumpeter, Fall, 1996.This paper begins my effort at showing how liberal modernity can be harmonized with an ecocentric perspective on our relationship with the natural world. It is a corrective to much “free market environmental” literature that sacrifices Nature to money as well as to anti-liberal attacks by well-meaning but economically naïve environmentalists.Unexpected Harmonies: Self-Organization in Liberal Modernity and Ecology (PDF)The Trumpeter, Journal of Ecosophy, 10:1, Winter 1993This is my initial paper exploring how what I term ‘evolutionary liberal’ thought can be an important means by which society and nature can be brought into greater harmony. The other Trumpeter papers build on it.Deep Ecology and Liberalism: The Greener Implications of Evolutionary Liberalism (PDF)Review of Politics, Fall, 1996.Liberal thought and deep ecology are usually regarded as mutually exclusive. But the “evolutionary” tradition offers a way to integrate the two through commonalties in the work of David Hume, Michael Polanyi, Arne Naess, and Aldo Leopold, providing a stronger foundation for liberalism while strengthening the case for an ecocentric ethic.(Related subjects: Ecology)Saving Western Towns: A Jeffersonian Green Proposal (PDF)in Writers on the Range, Karl Hess and John Baden, eds., University Press of Colorado, 1998.Developmental pressures in the rural and small town West involve three groups: long term residents, new arrivals, and environmentalists. Today their interests often conflict. This conflict is in part the outcome of institutions which prevent harmonizing competing interests. The concept of developmental trusts, both for rural regions and for small communities offers a means whereby these interests can be harmonized for the benefit of all concerned.(Related subjects: Politics)Social Ecology, Deep Ecology, and Liberalism (PDF)Critical Review, 6: 2-3, 1992.Murray Bookchin is considered a leading radical environmental theorist. However, his analysis is incapable of leading humankind towards a more respectful and sustainable relationship with the natural world. Criticisms of Bookchin from both the deep ecology and evolutionary liberal perspective complement one another, pointing the way towards a better understanding of how modernity relates to the environment.The paper as a whole offers an early discussion of issues that are more clearly addressed in later papers, particularly Deep Ecology and Liberalism (1996) and the three Trumpeter articles in 1997, 1996, and 1993. However, there are other ideas in the article which have not been developed more thoroughly elsewhere.
Pantheacon coverage will return shortly – I gotta catch a plane.
Markets are wonderful means by which people can make voluntary exchanges. They are indispensable servants. But when they become our masters all values are subordinated to enabling the most ruthless manipulators make as much money as possible. We have seen recently what these corporate parasites are capable of doing, both in robbing their businesses and impoverishing so many of us.
With all the bleating and whining going on about how the executives who helped bankrupt their businesses take so much ‘risk’ and so should be allowed to pay themselves obscenely, it is refreshing to see how real creative businesspeople can act.
Compare our big bankers and auto executives seeking taxpayer handouts with Leonard Abess, jr. The Miama Herald reports
After selling a majority stake in Miami-based City National Bancshares last November, all he did was take $60 million of the proceeds — $60 million out of his own pocket — and hand it to his tellers, bookkeepers, clerks, everyone on the payroll. All 399 workers on the staff received bonuses, and he even tracked down 72 former employees so they could share in the windfall.
For longtime employees, the bonus — based on years of service — amounted to tens of thousands of dollars, and in some cases, more than $100,000.
The story ends
Workers were provided with financial counseling and special high-rate certificates of deposit at City National.
”It was like a lottery, only better,” Virginia C. Dunn, managing senior vice president, said of the gift. “Because it came from someone’s heart.”
A total of $6.6 million is being shared by just 230 employees of Waukegan-based Peer Bearing Co., with facilities in England and the United States. Amounts varied and were based on years of service.
“They treated us like extended family,” said Maria Dima, who works at Peer Bearing along with her husband, Valentin, and received a somewhat smaller check than he did. “We won the lottery.”
With $100 million in sales last year, Peer recently was acquired by a Swedish company for an undisclosed amount. Danny Spungen, whose grandfather founded the company in 1941, said it was a unanimous family decision to thank employees with the bonuses.
Of course sociopaths and greedy hard hearted scoundrels are all too present in these smaller enterprises, as in every other realm of life. But when ownership is concentrated in an individual or a family, they can exercise a sense of moral responsibility. When ownership is scattered among millions of shareholders, a Petri dish for the rise of sociopaths to domination has been prepared.
posted February 18, 2009 at 11:40 pm
Gus,
I agree wholeheartedly with the idea that workers should be family, and your mention of a publicly-held company being a breeding ground for greed is very insightful. If a company’s board of directors was forever banned from holding the CEO or other top positions, they might actually make decisions that helped the company rather than simply preparing themselves for their own future greedy windfall. Another thought is to base CEO pay on a delayed examination of the corporation’s health. Pay them a good basic salary, but defer bonuses and rewards until a year or more later so that a fair examination of the results of their leadership can emerge. This might also serve to keep company-hopping to a minimum and instill a sense of family amongst the higher-ups.
Keep up the wonderful work here. I happily look forward to seeing your thoughts on a regular basis!
posted February 19, 2009 at 12:18 pm
As I recall, some business owners during the early industrial age had some utopian or aristo-paternalistic (I’m not sure which)ideas about how life for workers could be organized and lived around a company. As a kid growing up in California, I saw the last vestiges of this social economic model in a couple North Coast logging-centered company towns in their death throes.
I think that, even when the owner-worker companies turn out, to our surprise, to have benevolent owners, that other models of ownership that do not rely on the values and ethics of a few owners toward workers suit my own Neo-Pagan outlook better. But, honestly, I don’t think of those alternative models as especially Pagan or related to Paganism. They’re just kinda Lefty.
posted February 20, 2009 at 9:09 am
Thanks Darren -
and Pitch-
First, you are right – these comments are not particularly Pagan. But before joining Beliefnet my blog was never just on Paganism as a trip through the archives would show. While I am radically increasing the ratio of Pagan to other content it will never be fully on explicitly Pagan topics, just by a Pagan. I’m also a citizen, a role I feel compatible with being Pagan but focusing on issues which only partially overlap.
I agree with you regarding owner paternalism, no matter how well intentioned. But the examples I gave are not paternalistic. These men gave their employees money, to do with as they will.
By comparison places like Pullman were monuments to the owner’s ego and sense of being the arbiter of other people’s ways of life. Objectionable to its core..
I’m not sure towns like Scotia (I’m in N. CA too most of the time) were really that kind of thing. I got the impression that at their best they were providing good living conditions out in the middle of ‘nowhere’ with Pacific Lumber just the landlord. If they also tried to control workers’ lives, or load the dice in favor of the owners’ values, then that’s another matter and I’d agree with your criticisms.
Having said all that – your alternative is not as benign as libertarians think. The market actively loads the dice in favor of valuing everything in money terms. I personally think that is deeply subversive of values inherent in Paganism. We need markets – they are certainly better than socialist attempts to do without them – but the markets should be subordinated to civil society so that money will not trump all other values when making decisions.
This opens up very complex issues that may be worth a blog. I dunno. I am working on this issue quite a bit in my more academic persona.