Ecological Reformation in Consumption: Commodity Ecology and Other Points on Markets and Balanced Property Regimes Per Region

Ecological Reformation in Consumption

This is the first post of three on details toward the wider Ecological Reformation discussed previously.

The Ecological Reformation of the world has four parts: state, science/education, consumption, and finance. I've already published about one of these four parts, the state part about green constitutional engineering in Toward a Bioregional State (2005), so these three linked posts update the topic toward the wider Ecological Reformation required for sustainability.

Unsustainability is a form of corruption that denies us choices and represses upon us unrepresentative and unregionally sound arrangements in many areas of life--material, ideological, cultural, and institutional. Therefore, only institutional and material additions reflecting greater regionalized desires for wider sustainable choices, that fit many different particular situations and priorities (instead of a 'one size fits all arrangement'), will get us to sustainability. These additions are forms of checks and balances in many areas of our lives against those unrepresentative corrupt 'one size doesn't fit all' arrangements of gatekeepting and repressive arrangements in state politics, in material relations, in regional cultural durability, in education, and in financial relations (a post to come). Such more regionalized additions--balanced with larger conflict resolution in larger frameworks--will lead us innately to sustainability as a series of more well organized frameworks of greater ecological self-interest to have a plurality of more choices of regionally sound arrangements in materials, institutions, and cultures.

For background before talking about the other three parts in general, the book Toward a Bioregional State describes the green constitutional engineering issues: the required additional checks and balances against informal gatekeeping and against the political corruption that causes environmental degradation in poorly aligned formal institutions, districting [2], voting laws [2], and apportionment frameworks of districts to get to sustainability.

These suggestions for additions to formal democratic institutions throughout the world are all mentioned in the book. The book mentions over 60 different additional checks and balances in formal green constitutional engineering.

First, the bioregional state argues that what causes environmental degradation is political corruption, gatekeeping, and its interrelated bad institutional design created by such informal corruption and gatekeeping. Environmental degradation is caused by strategic, corrupt, informal uses of state institutions and policy in attempts to gatekeep and even repress against an already existing green majority in the world and some groups' attempt to have you accept the same degradative elites as the leaders of sustainability.

Second, materially and technologically speaking, environmental degradation is caused by other strategic gatekeeping against the many already existing complete solutions for sustainability in materials/technologies that already exist.

It is a "bait and switch" for people to insist that waiting is required for sustainability for the applications to "mature." Well, they have already matured and are lying ripe on the ground while they are being ignored. Removing political gatekeeping is thus the priority instead of simply material or technological introductions. It matters little if you spend your lives getting better technologies and materials to be in place when they can quickly be destroyed by unrepresentative, degradative crony politics in the pre-existing material relations. So politics is unavoidable. We have degradation because of gatekept unrepresentative politics that repress the already existing sustainable options, instead of because of a lack of sustainable materials and technologies.

This means there is a dual informal corruption creating environmental degradation: one in political/ideological gatekeeping and the other in gatekeeping against sustainable material/technological choices. This informal corruption overall has one formal element that maintains it: it requires a lack of democratically required additional checks and balances. Otherwise it would cease to exist and such dual informal corruptions would be solved. All three corruptions create degradation both humanly and environmentally:

Toward A Bioregional State is a novel approach to development and to sustainability. The book proposes that instead of sustainability being an issue of population scale, managerial economics, or technocratic planning, an overhaul of formal democratic institutions is required. This is because environmental degradation has more to do with the biased interactions of formal institutions and informal corruption. Because of corruption, we have environmental degradation. Current formal democratic institutions of states are forms of informal gatekeeping, and as such, intentionally maintain democracy as ecologically “out of sync”. The book argues that we are unable to reach sustainability without a host of additional ecological checks and balances. These ecological checks and balances would demote corrupt uses of formal institutions by removing capacities for gatekeeping against democratic feedback. Sustainability is a politics that is already here seen in global green majorities—only waiting to be formally organized.

The Fourth Ring of Environmentalism in the Bioregional State is Different than the 'Four Kills'

Elsewhere I have argued the bioregional state solutions are a 'fourth ring' of sustainability strategies distinct from the claims aired in the regular 'three ring circus' of environmentalism. These 'rings' are different ways--some more distracting entertainments than others--that people claim they can get us to sustainability that compete for the world's attention.

Distinct from the bioregional state, these three rings are the other ways some people offer to 'help the environment' via support of one of 'the four kills':

1. kill people (the Malthusian view on policy and land--that doesn't work),
   


2. kill 'capitalism' for either purist decentralized leftist anarchy (that has its own degradation potential in history ignored by these people) or for purist leftist totalitarian states (that have their own even worse examples of human and environmental degradation ignored by these people as well). Decentralized frameworks by themselves are unable to handle cross-regional pollution or have conflict resolution of it. On the other hand, centralized frameworks when poorly designed are just as worse. The totalitarian USSR, by intentionally destroying most bioregional jurisdictional arenas inherited from an (accidentally) more bioregionally specific Russian Czardom (I'll post on that someday), demoted all regional and historically situated cultural feedback into its politics. Thus the USSR degraded its landscape and ignored citizen feedback in a far more unrepresentative development across its multiple regions, and had one gatekeeping party as well. There was far more environmental degradation in the USSR despite the assumption that it removed 'degrading capitalism' [sic]. To the contrary, the USSR created a degrading corrupt statism and degrading state economy. There was far more degradation in the USSR than the democratic United States ever politically created (even with the U.S.'s partial if gatekept democratic arrangements).
   
   In other words, greening Marxist-Leninism or greening (Marxist-inspired) anarchism is the old wine in new bottles ploy as Marxists attempt to go green--the 'eco-Marxist' view--even though green is a completely different issue. Many eco-Marxists (particularly Eckersley) ignore how they plan repeat the mistakes of history by erecting another tyrannical equally degradative state (some want a global state like Eckersley!) through ignoring this state's own corruption in the solutions they proffer. Eco-marxists ignore as well as it's hardly all capitalism that is causing the issue of environmental degradation [Freudenberg] and it's only certain market actors and their institutions (instead of all market institutions) that choose to degrade and are politically protected in their degradation all out of "proportionality" to other more sustainable markets. Eco-Marxists by mystifying that all markets have difficulties (instead of just some of them) ignore that corrupted states themselves degrade the environment as political entities for their own rationales twisting the economy to their corrupt degradative designs (instead of being only victimized or pressured by economic forces) all out of proportion to markets as well.
   
   However, it's hardly the other simplism that "all states degrade" that is the difficulty either. It's certain orientations of them that degrade--the same with markets. And poorly oriented states can destroy markets via their crony corruption in this way or via their militarism--the latter state militarism which is a massive direct cause of degradation in the world that is forced politically instead of merely economically.
   
   So I disbelieve that abstract nouns like 'capitalism' or 'all states' are really the cause or even an issue in environmental degradation, when empirically particular raw material regimes cause environmental degradation. This is done via the two informal corruptions mentioned above, and then sealed in the third corruption of uses of formal institutions and formal policy against market competition and against consumer choice.
   
   Therefore, I equally disbelieve that abstract nouns like 'the state' are categorically the cause either. It is all about particular market and particular orientations of states that are the issue: thus institutional changes are solutions--instead of totalizing ideologies are the solution that blame whole categories of human experience.
   
   Wedding the particular bad markets and bad states, thus it is only the political primacy of some choices of materials--and the many interests connected to them (instead of just all economic interests)--that cause environmental degradation. The greater political primacy in particular bad choices of politicized materials/interests can do four things politically that mere 'capitalists' are unable to do: cause degradation, stop or hamper political feedback against it, politically remove other market material/technological sustainable options in the same material categories through corrupt legal and subsidization methods, and thus demote actual markets.
   
   In short, an informal/formal raw material regime's particular politics violently imposes degradation from the level of politics across four multiple potentially independent areas of social relations instead of only the economics, in other words.
   
   However, there is a great flaw in assuming that all orientations of markets can move toward sustainability as well. This is the supply versus demand issue, discussed below in its own section. It's an internal a difficulty to particular markets that cause environmental degradation--instead of categorically a problem in all markets.


3. kill one's own wider material and social relationships ('voluntary depoliticized simplicity'; 'voluntary zero population growth;' and much of 'single region bioregionalism'; voluntarily separating oneself by reducing any feedback politically to corrupt institutions. However, that only let's them be more corrupt in endangering you. Many in this ring support only a personally changed ethic of consumption and/or reduced consumption of bad things they still want--very different from some bioregionalists out in Gaviotas (more) wanting to expand wider material and social relationships in more socially shared consumption of sustainable good things. That is a different Gaviotan plan I prefer to this one of withdrawal. However, I see the motivation of this voluntary adopted solution as starting something toward this latter goal though it many end before it gets there, stillborn, if it is conceived as a mere personal solution to sustainability. Such individualized or mere single-regionalized solutions to sustainability is fine for a beginning for those who are trapped or who still choose to remain in wider degradative systems or are unable or unwilling to leave. However, it is a false idea to expect that that this by itself will lead anywhere beyond yourself or your region, automatically, without a wider plan for a multi-regional bioregionalism--i.e., how to join with others. Much about the bioregional state encourages both single-region bioregionalism combined with (instead of removing) multiple-region bioregionalism--like in the North American Bioregional Congress for example. Thus I feel that some in this ring are starting their group journey to sustainability though some people treat it as the end of their journey to sustainability--which leaves degradative frameworks to continue all around them, flowing into them.
   
   
4. kill regulation: this is a right-wing view of sustainability, seen in much Ecological Modernization. Such right-wing interpretations of Ecological Modernization only want to exclusively deals with reinterpreting neoliberalism with a green coat of paint instead of how Ecological Modernization was really meant to be an entirely transformative toward material flow arrangement instead of just being used as an privatized enticement for sustainable material uses. As only policy change however, it merely allows ongoing degradative entities of businesses to continue to use degradative materials/technologies voluntarily, to adapt (or do nothing) toward sustainability at the pace they want. This reintepreted neoliberalism under right-wing greens includes many current ideas for private 'global carbon markets/credits' as well. Both are views of most 'ecological modernization.'
   
   Flame on: However wonderful and however much I support this idea in some part, I object to global carbon credit markets as a huge sham in ecological modernization non-regulation policies because [1] it does nothing for the environment while it makes billions of dollars for its dirty investors in fraudulently claimed pro-environment derivatives [2] while enshrining a globalist Malthusian police state, and [3] because any CO2 changes, up or down, are now known to be entirely unmoored to similar or recent temperature changes. In fact, the planet and the oceans (thanks to the knowledge from the JASON satellite) are cooling instead of heating up since the 1990s. Other readings of the actual climate record (instead of mere humanly (mis)programmed computer models) indicate that real temperature changes lead CO2 changes instead of visa versa, i.e., it's hard to find examples anywhere in the real historical record where CO2 changes directly cause the temperature changes instead of the temperature changes being merely associated with CO2 rises that has been twisted to sell carbon taxes. [4] Research Climategate and wake up: our compromised scientific establishment has to answer for its intentionally aired climatological lies for 20 years, exposed in part by tranches of their own emails that say the climate researchers themselves don't really see any global warming in their data, though their funding, their ideologies, and their political allies pushing for globalized jurisdictions make them want to believe something they are unable to find: planetary warming connected to anthropogenic CO2. [5] Moreover some governments like the U.K. are just turning the carbon scare into a means to sugar-coat and to legitimate the raising of taxes for themselves (as they scoff and deny sometimes or later, oops, actually admit such publicly claimed/legitimated 'green taxes' on second look are without any connection to improving the environment. The 'emperor always has no clothes' and particularly so "the carbon emperor has no clothes." Globalist state elites (like Al Gore) team with private globalists like bankers and corporations involved in oil companies (like Ken Lay of ENRON and like Goldman Sachs) to attempt to co-opt greenist thought to justify tightening their own group tyrannous jurisdictions over us that is perhaps nearing its scandalous conclusion. (on Al Gore, Ken Lay of ENRON, and Goldman Sachs CEOs as the ones writing up the globalized carbon credits/taxes/trading plans see: [1] [2]) If you are unaware of all this that has been in the public realm for years, smarten up please because your future depends on more knowledgeable green supports than artificial green supports being manipulated to sell the same old degradative purposes. Flame off.
   
   Anyway, in other words to allow ecological modernization's two major wings--mere non-regulatory markets, combined with mere voluntarily applied material/technological changes 'at the pace' degraders want (or in the marketized unregulated mechanisms they want)--means typically self-maintaining or even enhancing the legal jurisdictions of certain degradative arrangements instead of solving them. It means passing the leadership to the corrupt degraders themselves. Most governments are giving degradative suppliers carte blanche and the right to pollute, with their unfulfilled promise that they 'might' improve.
   
   Meanwhile, on state versions of policies of ecological modernization, it is being justified to ramp up huge taxation on people in general. This is bad because instead of people in general as to blame for environmental degradation, it is the governmentally protected degradative raw material regimes that no one chooses in the market--oil, coal, nuclear, bio-toxic versions of plastics, GMO crops, etc.--perhaps an enemy in all 92 categories--that are [1] causing much biodiveristy loss, degradation and corruption, [2] at the same time they are gatekeeping many alternative materials and technologies already available and [3] gatekeeping political feedback against them that already exists. In other words, they [4] sell you artificial non-regulatory strategies for some supply-side degraders and call it ecological modernization; meanwhile, they additionally sell you mass taxation strategies of regulation for others and call it environmental degradation as well. Thus most supporters here enshrine the (clear lack of) principles to offer entirely voluntary corporate self-regulation on the one hand while offering increasingly tyrannous state regulation of masses of individuals. So on these four points I am skeptical that a voluntary privately introduced ecological modernization by itself will be allowed to create sustainability instead it will in these two policies only give more money and power to the economic supply-side degraders and the state-based degraders as well. It will be unable to create a materials revolution in ecological modernization--unlike how the commodity ecology frameworks can.

You notice that these other 'four kills' views are rather, um, negative and tyrannical? The bioregional state on the contrary is a positive addition of checks and balances on corruption, materials, culture, and finance--additions to the present to set up more regionalized and wider choices of sustainable cultures and institutions for our sustainability that subsequently work together as well.

I've previously posted at length why Malthusianism fails to work as a solution. I plan to write other posts on comparing the bioregional state to solutions found elsewhere though the above short summary may suffice for now. At length, already somewhat complete is the Malthusian critique, the critique of complete decentralization in (somewhat) eco-Marxist Bookchin and the critique of total centralization in (totalitarian) eco-Marxist Eckersley, and the critique of much 'voluntary simplicity' as having a anti-humanist Malthusian tinge and eco-Marxist totalizing 'anti-capitalist' tinge that are both unable to construct sustainability by themselves because they are unable to address pollution flows from outside their little utopian desired compounds intruding upon themselves. That still requires participation in a wider politics. There later will be more critiques of eco-Marxists and (some) ecological modernizationists policy recommendations for sustainability.

Ecological Reformation: Featuring the Consumptive Issues



However back to the main point. In the foreword of Toward a Bioregional State, a wider Ecological Reformation was suggested as a requirement for sustainability, of which the bioregional state is just a part. The Ecological Reformation is the required changes beyond statist green constitutional engineering to get to sustainability.

This was conceived via three other mixed cultural and institutional areas--i.e., institutional suggestions for maintaining cultural sustainability in the professions/sciences/education, consumption, and finance.

In other words, what would sustainability look like in a wider cultural sense--materially, educationally, and financially--instead of only as a framework of green constitutional engineering? What institutions would encourage feedback from the ecological self-interests of sustainable multi-regional culture with greater regional self-determination on priorities of sustainability along with common interactions across their regions? To summarize:

1. Toward a Bioregional State is the green constitutional engineering issues;

2. Toward an Ecological Reformation is the other three nodes of cultural/institutional interactions with this green constitutional engineering in Toward a Bioregional State.

When in connection with the state institutions, these areas of the wider Ecological Reformation would be a four-fold network of sustainable democratic changes of institutions and multiple choices. Within them, people could grow up from youth to old age in a sustainable society (instead of grow up in this). They can additionally choose different cultural arenas across multiple bioregions in which to act out our very different desires for subjective quality of life (that might change over time) each though within a regionally-aware, different ecological orientation of the same kind of desired,  sustainable, objective quality of life. In order for sustainability to be adapted to different regions and different cultures' ecological self-interest worldwide, it is unlikely to ever have 'one great technology or material solution' as much as it is unlikely to have 'one great global ideology' that is suitable for all ecoregions equally, in other words. Why? Because such material or ideological consolidations promise sustainability in their mystification when all they historically have ever delivered is an even larger unadapted ecological tyranny.

Instead, sustainability requires ongoing integration into commodity ecology employing as a resource pre-existing regional cultural variations--or with the design of creating them if they have been destroyed. So it is best to set up arrangements and institutions in which already regionally embedded people can decide on an open-future of sustainability and ongoing adaptation for themselves as a learning process--sustainability adapted materially/technologically to different regions and adapted to their changing subjective cultural qualities of life in making these decisions and in the changing material/technological knowledge options.

Just as there will be multiple bioregionally-sensitive material/technological choices, why should people cling to the idea that there is only one ideologically or cultural possible form or version of sustainable culture?


This post is about the 'state-consumption' and material aspects of Ecological Reformation, described elsewhere. In this section of Ecological Reformation, the bioregional state recommends:

1. The Commodity Ecology. I have written a three part post on this topic extensively elsewhere. One in all watersheds of the world.

2. Within this institution, two forms of major corruptions of markets and politics are removed. This institution builds a culture of expectations and a material arrangement where [1] particular categories of suppliers are shall be unable to purchase and destroy their own market competition (like oil companies buying up electric car technologies and refusing to use it, etc.--watch the documentary Who Killed the Electric Car?) and [2] particular categories of suppliers are unable to cross-own in other material categories and thus bias the markets in other venues. All suppliers would have to establish a separate business for different applications. Only in that way are their material choices and offerings open to competition in that material category. This would be like oil companies in the energy category broken up from having any other applications in other material categories, so that they would more autonomously compete with other energy choices instead of drawing upon their financial capacities shifted from other material markets to force shakeout and monopolization and less choices and more supply side bias against consumers--all of which lead to human and environmental degradation. Another example would be how separate oil companies would have to compete in the ambient heat category as autonomous companies selling heating oil against other more sustainable options, so that they would be unable to draw upon their financial arrangements in other areas to destroy market choices and to lessen consumer options--forcing their products upon people simply because the corrupt supplier has been successful in repressively removing market competition yet not through market competition at all as how they do it. [3] With suppliers in a region more intentionally divided instead of consolidated against demand, markets, and democracy, all materials in the region would thus be more open to consumer feedback per application and per the choice, i.e., more likely to be under regionalized consumer and democratic pressures to be interlinked for sustainability in material and waste flows with each other in various categories in the Commodity Ecology (see the post above) or subject to being de-licensed if they persist in unsustainable behaviors. No business can be an island: it has to fit within a particularly regionally sound sustainable series of other business relations. A business that pollutes its fellow regional businesses is thus easily replaced with other options that are more sustainable for the region. Regions as a democratic pressure and a demand pressure can thus facilitate the material choices they want for sustainability without being gatekept by powerfully corrupt supply-side interests which is the main difficulty currently in any sustainable development of materials and technologies in attempting to fit a particular region.

3. At least one sustainably made green, community building in all watersheds of the world, built and maintained in local materials only (or sustainably produced materials in other regions that are attempting to be made in the current region). The building is for the following purposes: [1] demonstration of ongoing experimental or regional approaches to architecture; [2] housing meetings of the CEI and CDI, for generating accurate, regional knowledge via regional scientific monitoring and testing of the area's ecology and pollution; [3] cultural affairs (rent other parts of the building for events), [4] annual or bi-annual marketplace festival of regionally labeled sustainable materials and products of the region.

3. At least one each of Permacultural, Agroforestry, Silvopasture, and Food Forest demonstration for-profit and (for-education) projects in each watershed of the world.

4. Avoid worrying about the jurisdiction or territory of the bioregion at first. After the first one in a bioregion is established, there will be a natural political process where one version of the above will serve as a mother house for other daughter house versions of the other in time.

5. There are other points I will add later--like issues of assuring a lack of domination in any singular hegemonic form of land tenure property relations in any regional land ownership/leases/rents in particular watersheds. This means a check in balance between different kinds of property relations: meaning simultaneously having [1] forms of 'bio'nationalization (regional collective ownership of a natural good or aspect of their economics--instead of a nationalization and removal of regional oversight); [2] forms of private property; and [3] forms of co-operative owned property. A major form of corruption and degradation (human and environmental) is distant unrepresentative state political primacy over the material relations of a region. To the contrary, a background of a thirded choice in property relations (to be maintained or adjusted based on ongoing regional issues) maintains a consumptive check and balance on material and cultural politics as well so that open ongoing choice and capacity to change with cultural, technological, and ecological changes can more readily remain the open-ended hegemonic force in a regions culture, materials, and politics. If it gets corrupted itself, there is appeal to a higher level outside of the bioregion/watershed to move toward some form of conflict resolution over it only if there is a bioregional commonwealth form of bioregional state. (Most people's ideas of secession for instance ignores the fact that secession may fail to make a moral environment either, environmentally or culturally. It it best to have the local people have a choice of regions to live within to avoid failing corrupt ones, as well as to have other jurisdictional frameworks that can check and balance their own regional corruption if it so occurs. For example, redisribution can take place when a particular category of the above any category becomes more than 49%-50% of a watershed. Thus a ration of 33/33/33 is the ideal, though there is an allowance for the real pragmatic world of different watersheds simply keeping any category from being 50% of a watershed. For example, if private property, 'bionationalized' property (regional oversight of common goods/property), and cooperative owned property were at the ratio of 45/25/30, this would be within the window of allowances. However, if one section became closer to 50/30/20, then redistribution of property would take place to balance out giving the watershed greater choices of property once more so that no singular form of property ever dominates the human and ecolgoical open future of the watershed. Only in this context will the people in a region be capable of making optimal decisions for themselves on ongoing changes instead of being gatekept in a certain direction by supply side or systemic interests in their region. Equally if there is "too much" bionationalization or co-operative ownership, then the forced sales go toward private property as well to balance it out back toward 33/33/33.

6. "Other Points": Markets Have 'Supply Versus Demand' Principles at Larger Scales That Damn Equally Large Scale State or Large Scale Market Solutions to Environmental Degradation:

Other Points: the Bioregional State on Markets

Markets don't create degradation categorically as an ideology. Degradation is something to do with particular materials, in particular markets, and in particular political relations. However, one issue that all the many particular cases of degradation have is a common supply-side gatekept arrangement creating degradation--whether from supply-side managerial states or supply-side managerial material suppliers. The corollary of this is that the many cases of sustainability have a common balanced supply, demand, and representative political arrangement. Thus more representative states and more balanced market relations of supply and demand (i.e., where demand has multiple choices of materials supplied instead of being locked into monoposonies or monopolies) can be conditions under more sustainable commodity relationships in a representative, open-ended system of ongoing adaptations, multiple consumer choices, and political choices.

In other words, if you see human or environmental degradation in materials in other words, expand other consumer choices in the category of material use of the degradative material. Or, if you have degradation due to corrupt politics, expand citizen choices for better forms of representation. You would be surprised how much corrupt politicans and the corrupt degradative material suppliers hate these simple options that widen your choices more than anything--because the base origin of their corruption is to cut out consumer/citizen choice so that consumer/citizens are 'forced' into their clientelsitic, degradative relationships against their will.

To begin this posts's "other points", I wanted to say something more on the similarities and differences between the bioregional state's view of the place of markets and Bookchin's views on the same. Only some of this has been already discussed elsewhere.

On the one hand, as Michael Sandel promotes, we might differentiate markets in material items (commodities, physical items) and markets in 'non-material' items (education, voting, human health). On the other hand, since we live in a world of interscientific mixtures, even in so called 'non-material' areas (for instance 'medicine/health' is a material relation; voting is a material relation to particular methods of counting votes; and education is a particular relation to particular educational materials), markets may have more material human/environmental degradation effects depending on their supply-biased relationships regardless of whether we semantically construct an artificial dichtomy between 'material' and 'non-material' markets. Moreover, this supply-side effect of coruption on markets can both delimit market choices and can damage the quality of the 'non-material' issues delivered as well.

So I am skeptical that it's fine to categorically promote totalizing markets "only in materials" as Sandel does and to merely to avoid them in non-material issues as he recommends, because his whole arguement is just a semantic one instead of a real world division, and second, because markets both categories can turn out bad outcomes--though only in certain supply-sided biased orientations.

This section describes what bad orientations of markets or states to avoid: the ones that encourage wider supply versus demand dynamics, where suppliers have greater powers over the consumers in the material or non-material goods provisioning dynamics.

These bad supply side biased situations damage a state's politics with corruption, and damage a people's health, ecologies, whole economies, the availability of alternative choices, and thus damage the capacity of open markets themselves.

I want instead to differentiate totalizing market reliance with politically regulated market reliance.

On the one hand then, totalizing markets are bad because they are mechanisms that create cultural and civic and political feudalism and corruption--turning out out bad material outcomes and bad non-material outcomes because of their supply-side bias against consumers and citizens. In such totalizing markets, the poor have all the risk and are more desperate to sell themselves while getting substandard material and non-material goods, while the people who already have everything are just given all the benefits.

On the other hand, markets are good if totalizing supply-side biased and corrupt situations can be avoided because markets may potentially set the elite against each other (instead of coordinating with each other) to fulfill public goods in materials supply.

However, these totalizing market 'solutions' are bad jurisdictions in your life to promote because any "market" fulfillment of public material goods or public non-material goods rarely happens. Instead it is merely postponed and promised over and over without delivery. Instead, totalizing market jurisdictions leads toward [1] totalizing markets of corrupt oligarchic cartels and [2] conspiracies of the bigger suppliers to set the prices and [3] to reduce the quality of what they provide against consumer wishes, [4] while corruptly politically removing other options materially from markets, forcing people to buy their substandard supply-side biased materials. In other words, [5] all supply-side relationships in 'material' or 'non-material' items create social triage instead of create a situation of supply equals demand. They promise and lie it will be "supply equals demand" though what happens is their triage of supply versus demand.

The larger the entities doing this, the more they defraud the consumers with bad supply-side versions of what they are selling (whether material or non-material goods) and they attempt more the political removal of other alternatives that consumers are more naturally seeking out. These supply-side challenging options are removed by corruption [1] whether by having their bought politicians overprice or overregulate alternatives to keep them out [2] while lowering regulation on the supply-side biased materials and by giving them more exclusive subsidies to allow them to perform 'market' (really a politically crony) economic shakeout,  [3] or by simply banning consumer and citizen options of materials or other political parties from participation. In this way the corruption of supply-side materials and corruption of supply-side politicians work together.

Totalizing market jurisdiction is a vast way of saying "give the powerful private groups complete jurisdiction and triage over what comes to market, and let them set the politically manipulated prices to maintain this arrangement, and let them purchase all the politicians available to maintain their corruption." Totalizing market jurisdiction in the fake ideological world relies on their claims that it removes corruption and the 'supply equals demand' mantra. Both of these mantras are false and totalizing market jurisdiction instead only encourages even larger supply-side corruption as well as a greater 'supply versus demand' framework.

Therefore because of supply versus demand dynamics, such totalizing markets can be bad though when these supply-side dynamics are reduced in less totalizing circumstances at smaller scales, markets can be good and even useful in providing both material and non-material goods though only on the more power-equalized, regionalized smaller scales where suppliers and demand/consumers can get together and influence each other as equals and in conditions where there are multiple material and political choices so any supply-side clientelism of corruption can be checked against as well.

Market totalizing jurisdiction or state totalizing monopoly are basically the same supply-side biased arrangement. None of these are ever justifiable in totalizing frameworks, only in justifiable frameworks of supply under small scale frameworks of materials and non-material goods and under conditions of greater represeentative states where the political elites are actually competitive as well. This means that when they work on the local level, markets are both integrated into ecology and integrated into wider differentiated and stronger demand-side feedback over decisions of material supply and technology. This means that states as well can be integrated into ecology and wider differentiated multi-regional demand-side feedback over decisiosn of politics. This double regional integration is a regulation on totalizing suppliers in markets or in state power. It removes the supply versus demand corruptions of market dynamics that come with larger scales of their market mechanisms--the same supply-side bias in in state politics from larger jurisdictional scales that maintain this issue as well instead of this only being a market/economic issue. Totalizing markets are political policies and thus are biased state issues as much as biased material supplier issues.

Any larger supply-side dominated totalizing markets, instead of opposed to state frameworks are a state framework themselves for feudalism processes to start in society based on the supply versus demand contexts of markets in how triages begin in both material and non-material goods, how corruption in punishment and policy begins to reflect supply side consolidating issues whether public or private, and how wealth thus begins to politically flow to the top and be siphoned off from the multiple regions of the increasingly triaged poor and their ecological situations alike. Totalizing markets are a politically feudalist regime and should be analyzed as such.

In such a supply-side dominated context, markets allocate and only create health, ecological, and economic risks with (as?) their products by desiring to have their profits based partially on their externalities that are being politically allowed to be created and heaped upon consumers that cost them in other ways.

Markets as well if used as a totalizing mechanism only in state policy encourages supply-side biased policy. This tends to cheapen and to make shallow the result of markets when applied to human (non-material) issues or material issues alike. If they are totalizing and thus without competition, markets make a feudal process creating shallow products and shallow people and degraded environments, reducing the quality of all three and holding it together with corruption and violence.

The bioregional state believes there should be competition between 'state supply' (subsidizing the most desperate and private supply--though only on the regional level of accommodation of this). The actual 'market competition' is on the level of frameworks that are competing: totalizing supply versus regional state support in the same markets competing. To only have 'competition in [only] markets' is an oxymoron because it leads toward supply side triage, greater political economic feudalism, and a lack of competition.

If you rely on totalizing markets alone, you give people the right of triage over what you want and thus you give them the right to avoid supplying it to you. If you rely on a totalizing state, you give the sate the same powers to coordinate its triage with the supply side gatekeeping instead of against it. So a 'big state' is hardly a solution to 'big suppliers.' Instead, they are a team of triage against you. That is why there should be both market and multiple more regional state accommodations in balance.

Markets as policy in material goods and in non-material goods is thus only allowed if suppliers are politically required to internalize all their externalities, i.e., to produce it cleanly and to produce it to satisfy particular regional markets instead of triage across multiple regions. Markets without this dual political requirement are a recipe for human and environmental degradation and are markets without even supplying the consumers with what they want in the first place due to ever growing supply-side triage being allowed and kept in place by their corruptions of the state itself.

Totalizing markets thus by themselves over time reduce the quality of items within them, unless they are integrated into political feedback loops so they are required to integrate their externalities.

Markets only work in material goods or in non-material goods when they have actual competition on the level of systems of political preference that can provide the same materials in other ways that make up for their potential supply side biases and triage desires of suppliers that get so large as to demote the consumer interests.

Thus what works is a more 'bioregionalized' welfare state as a filler of the market triage and a reduction of equally 'totalizing state' welfare from that equally delocalized level: the reduction of totalizing market arrangements politically introduced means avoiding introducing states that do the same totalizing triage. Particularly for non-material goods, this more multi-regionalized decisions about material/non-material goods supply in a welfare state arrangement means greater regional jurisdictional issues on materials as well as non-material goods arrangements. This can work against the triage against common universal civil rights issues in elements that raise human quality--education, military, sports, voting--by keeping totalizing markets as 'payers only' games out of these areas and out of materials as well.

In real life degradative societies now, with their totalizing market political regimes, "markets" (really supply side triage decisions) do influence and buy people and other services of non-material goods, though it reduces the quality of the humans, yielding a rich class of empty people and psychopaths without redeeming qualities at all running the political economies that markets run as the outcome, since it allows the richer to buy everything and to be without any socially redeeming qualities entirely. There is equally a reduction in the quality of those who are made more poor and desperate as well. This dual reduction of human quality is part of the feudalism of culture that totalizing markets or totalizing state jurisdictions create when they are the only mechanism for material/non-material goods by putting empty rich people on top without virtuous qualities and only violence that keeps them there.

So What Can People Do?




First, to grow away from this dead tree, I encourage people to establish the roots of a fresh growth in commodity ecology. I encourage people to buy and to create all of their 92 materials without externalities and sustainable in their creation, with sustainable materials as well. Only under these conditions are markets morally justifiable. Otherwise, they crate environmental and human degradation from their biased corrupt decisions on materials and non-material goods respectively.

Second, connected with this, I encourage greater regional control on welfare state budget decisions [2] [3], political funding, and market regulations.

Michael Sandel likes to argue that:

'Economists often assume that markets are inert, that they do not affect the goods they exchange. But this is untrue. Markets leave their mark. Sometimes, market values crowd out nonmarket values worth caring about.'

He goes on to argue that there is something that 'money can't buy'--which is his claimed difference between non-material goods that are unable to be bought or delivered well by markets and material goods that he sees as perhaps more equitably working in the environment. To the contrary, I say that totalizing markets both make materials qualitatively bad as well as making people qualitatively bad when left to only market devices. Totalizing markets by themselves turn out terrible societies just as totalizing states do the same by themselves. This is because instead of being run by 'markets' they are run by the largest market players--larger states and massive supply-side interests--both of which have the same principles of supply-side triage enshrined in political, material, and cultural form. Totalizing markets and totalizing states together perhaps turn out to be the worst dystopia imaginable--and this 'model' has been the enforced policy ideal of many U.S. state elites for over 100 years at least since Teddy Roosevelt, and that is why the U.S. is perhaps the most degradative political economic regime ever created on planet earth: it's so dominated by supply-side interests of state and massive economic suppliers that demand's politics and material interests (and its built in ecological concerns) get demoted.


Ecological Hubris Comes Before the Fall: "Our country is surrounded by more dead zones than any other country? Hey, it's just the rotting smell of success! Willie, stop tickling my pinkie! Someone will see this two party system is a degraders' one party club!"





To the contrary, in integrating materials and non-material goods into more regionalized ecological relationships we solve the human degradation issue (from market-only externalities that only the rich can pay for adding quality to their lives) as well as the ecological degradation issue (that is the same externalities issue, and we solve the political corruption issue that everyone suffers from combined with the shared externalities materially, though some regionally suffer more than others:).

The [History of the] Quest for Environmental Justice: Human Rights
(Dr. Bullard, Father of Environmental Racism Research)
52:01 min.

Uploaded by UCtelevision on Feb 7, 2008: Robert D. Bullard has been described as the nation's leading authority on race [ethnic based underclasses] and the environment. In this presentation from UC Santa Barbara, Bullard takes a look at the connection between human rights and the politics of pollution. Series: Voices [8/2006] [Public Affairs] [Show ID: 11878]

And when markets make materials of bad and low quality on the level of removing our sustainable choices, they are simultaneously creating inequitable feudal social frameworks out of that as well by building our material choices on massive forms of gatekept, violent clientlism that encourages only the 'three degradations' (human, ecological, and economic--combined). So it is unlikely, analytically or in praxis, to separate in the real world the drive for sustainability and the drive for less inequality, just as it is unlikely to separate totalizing supplier's desires for reduction of (sustainable) choices and their hatred of actual market competition with causing as well the creation of environmental degradation and the creation of greater inequality.

So we require in the 'science' category, less professions, universities, and education in general caught up in totalizing marketized frameworks or totalizing state frameworks. I have suggestions for this, forthcoming.

So we require in the 'finance' category, financial frameworks that avoid contributing to the feudalism mentioned above, since finance can be a supply side gatekeeping on investment as well. I have suggestions for this, forthcoming.


Conclusion

In other words, all these claims of totalizing markets as the only policy, that claims to "remove politics from materials and non-material goods" and go to markets is just the mystification of a politics that is feudalistic.

There is nothing called an autonomous market equilibrium or that markets somehow 'get everything right.' These are mystification of supply side interests particular political ideology to arrange markets and states to suit them feudalistically--for their particular political supply side interests to dominate and feudalize whole societies with greater and greater supply-side political domination and lesser and lesser quality and virtue, and greater and greater corruption all the while and greater degradation and greater externalities, both human and environmental.

In other words, the bioregional state's critique is on the political corruption of markets, whether by larger suppliers or larger states. There is nothing 'wrong' with markets themselves or private property per se as long as it is within political checks and balances of regional communities capable of having input on the material and social organizational frameworks of the externalities and triages of suppliers--likely by a combination of the commodity ecology and the licensing issues of particular commodity ecology frameworks themselves. Read more about that elsewhere.