May 1979 RAIN Page 11 .. . The alternative here recommended is the long-run view of stewardship for the indefinite future; that is, let us try to .. take good enough care of the ecosphere (keep our consumption demands well below the ecosphere's maximum capacity) so that it will last a long time.. . . A second ethical proposition is that there is or should be such a thing as enuugh. ... ~~ethical principle is that the claims on resources of those who are well above the minimum and certainly over thc claims of those who are above the maximum and whose tastes have become so jaded that they must be artfully cajoled into further consumption. ... A fourth ethical proposition is that the minimum requirements of people already born should take precedence over the population's reproductive desires in excess of replacement. . . . For the traditional religious atti tude, there is such a thing as material sufficiency, and beyond that admittedly vaguc and historically changing amount, the goal of life becomes wis dom, enjoyment, cultivation of the mind and soul, and com munity. It may even be that community requires a certain degree of scarcity, without which cooperation, sharing, and friendship would have no organic reason to be, and hence community would atrophy. Witness the isolated self-sufficien cy of households and the lack of community in affluent middle-class suburbs. The kinds of institutions required follow directly from the definition of a steady-state economy: constant stocks of people and artifacts maintained at some chosen, sufficient level by a low rate of throughput. We need (1) an institution for stabilizing population (transferable birth licenses); (2) an institu tion for stabilizing the stock of physical artifacts and keeping throughput below ecological limits (depletion quotas auctioned by the government) ; and (3) a distributist institution limiting the degree of inequality in the distribution of constant stocks among the constant population (maximum and minimum limits to personal income and a maximum limit to personal wealth). The idea that technology accounts for half or more of the observed increase in output in recent times is a finding about which econometricians themselves disagree. For exampic, . D. W. Jorgenson and Z. Grilliches found that "if real product and real factor input are accurately accounted for, the observed growth in total factor productivity is ncgligible." In other words, the increment in real output from 1945 to 1965 is almost totally explained (96.7 percent) by increments in real inputs, with very little residual (3.3 percent) left to impute to technical change.... Maddala found that for the bituminous coal industry "growth in labor productivity can be explained almost totally by a rise in the horsepower per worker. Thus what formerly was considered as technical change now appears as a process of factor substitutions." "By your works may you be known . Your triumphs in the mechanical arts are the obverse of your failure in all that calls for spiritual insight. Machines of every kind you can make and use to perfection; but you cannot build a house or writc a poem, or paint a picture; still less can you worship or aspire. . . . Your outer man as well as your inner is dead; you are blind and deaf. Ratiocination has taken the place of perception; and your whole life is an infinite syllogism from premises you have not examined to conclusions you have not anticipated or willed. Everywhere means, nowhere an end. Society is a huge engine and that engine itself out of gear. Such is the picture your civilization presents to my imagination ." from Dickinson's Letters ofJUhl1 Cbinaman Jill Stapleton
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