') ;r · !-_t ·; \./ •'· ... ,··':' ' · ' •.• ' The distribution of the means of production, wealth, farms, or-factories necessarily 6ecomes more unequal as the si?'.e of productive units increases. Anp the distribution of income also becomes more uneven. Not only does this market-induced .tendency toward bigness eliminate the small independent •unit, but the flow of wealth is increasingly modified so that instead of circulating in local economic areas and reinforcing small business, the wealth flows "to oil companies, chemical plants, and especially bankers. In effect, the increasing bigness of productive units in producing an allocation of both wealth and income from the relatively poor to the relatively rich, [is] another very subtle, nearly invisible, positive feedback loop of power." Meadows further states: The market system, as I have described it, is inherently inequitable and unstable. It 1is certainly not consistent with a social ,- system dedicated to sustainability. That does not mean, however, that we need to discard the idea of decentralized economic allocation entirely. What we need to do is understand better the strengths and weaknesses of the market system and look for ways to emphasize the strengths while eliminating the weaknesses. In addition to various social sanctions about the ·way we conduct business, a means exists which could break the feedback loop which allows the vicious circle of big facilitating bigger yet. Meadows concludes, "A ... direct correction, applied to a central and easily measurable part of the system, would be a limit on the size of produc_tive units." ,Another view of the relationships between economics and society is provided by Howard T. Odum. In his latest book, Odum takes economists (and others) to task for not making an effort to understand the effects on society which result from Keynesian tinkering with the money supply without regard to energy: The buying power of money is the amount of real goods and services that it can buy. If the value 0£ money diminishes, so that a dollar buys less, we call this inflation. Inflation can be caused by increasing the amou~t of money circulating without increasing the amount of energy flowing and doing work. Inflation can also be caused by decreasing the amount of work being done without decreasing the amount of money circulating. When energy is scarce, so that it i~ not easy to augment human work by the use of machines, the amount of work decreases while the amount of money circulating remains the same. Consequently, a dollar buys less work and is therefore worth less. , A misunderstood market, inappropriate economics, a lack of knowledge ,about the importance of energy and an over- • whelming reljance on a type of rationa~ity which e_xcludes all non-quantif~able factors in decision making has produced a crisis in industrial societies which some say can only be understood or cured by shifting to a new perception or paradigm. Slater has said, "We define an event as a crisis when our ordinary routin~s cease to make sense. Thus the more meaningless our routines seem in the first place, the mor-e a crisis is likely to occur." C-Fundamental Societal Change In the middle of World War II, Peter Drucker published The Future of Industrial Man, in wh1ch he assertc::d: "This war is being fought for the structure pf industrial society-its basic principles, purposes and institutions. It has one issue, only one: the social ap.d political order of (a society) in which industry is not just pn the periphery of the ... social organization but at its center." The cold war, and its warming up in the Korean and Vietnam. Wars, were even more clearly centered on this issuewhat should be the social organization of industrialized society. I'n the third perception to be examined, the energy dilemma 'and other crises of advanced industrial nations in the 1970s a_re seen as the culmination of this same issue. In 9is -~nalysis, Drucker postulates two criteria for a functioning society: • No society can function as a society unless it gives the individual member social status and function, and·unless the decisive social ·, power is legitimate power. The former establishes the basic frame of social life: the purpose and meaning of society. The latter. shapes the space within the frame: it makes sqciety concrete and creates its institutions. If the individual is not given social status and function, there can be no society Qut only a mass of social - atoms flying through space without aim or purpose. And unless ' power is legitimate there can be no social fabric; there is only a social vac1:1um held together by mere slavery bdnertfa. With regard to the person not having status and function, we can mention such points as the following: • worker discont~nt, that moderr:i woJ;"k (except for those_ posit-ions held by the managerial and technical elite) fails to be satisfying and meaningful; • chronic structural unemployment, even during times of prosperity (except during-wartime), since the Great Depression (though not before); • widespread reports of persons feeling "caught in the system," impotent, victims of institutions that are impersonal and unfeeling; • wid.espread feeling that capital-intensive "big" technology, from assembly lines to cen~nilized computers, is dehumanizing and impoverishing; • popularity of the concept of appropriate or "soft" technology which ·is compatible with a humane environment and which the individual can feel in control of; • women's lib(;ration and related movemen;ts which claim to have "person liberation" goals;. • complaints of the aging that they are culturally isolated, pushed out of productive work by compulsory retirement rules. On the se,cond point of decisive power not being perceived as legitimate, there appear to be two points, namely the accelerating concentration of economic power in large corporations and financial institutions and the conc.entration of intellectual power in a scientific and technical elite. The challenge to the first is evidenced by the student pronouncements of the 1960s against the military-industrial complex; the prevailing mood of distrust of big business and government; Third World and particularly Fourth World protests that they are the victims of "illegitimate" economic power; and recognition that managerial power in corporations, when stockholder interest has shifted almost entirely from control to return on investment, can no longer claim thf legitimation of being based ,in property rights..
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