Conservative doctrines have often marginalized a proportion of the employ-
able population to a near-permanent state of unrelieved despair. Libertarians
would help a proportion of such chronically unemployed into a condition of self-
determination through their individual exercise of enterprise and self-reliance.
The importance, indeed the economic significance, of the green-economy initia-
tives (also known as the twin-economy approach) goes beyond the jobs which are
created; it is a kind of inheritance which can induce commodity exchange, cash
circulation, add economic value andboost human confidence.
The local-community, and household-individual, constructs
given in the Matrix(box 3.7, previous chapter, along with the ‘soft
pathways’ reasoning given in box 3.4) indicate some of the ini-
tiatives which can reduce household expenditure, produce house-
hold income, enhance individual satisfaction, and induce
confidence and respect. Not, of course, that local employment ini-
tiatives compare with conventional job creation, or indeed does
little more than dent the unemployed profile; yet these initiatives
have a role in the context of the growth pattern problematic. In
the absence of full formal employment, and in the context of con-
tinuing unemployment, any community-supported ‘legal’ job
generation – whether in the formal sector or the informal sector
- represents an economic good.
Waste disposal management
A Maoist aphorism has it that the creation of waste – product
residue for which no further use can be identified – reflects soci-
etal failure. Up until World War II ordinary settler society fami-
lies did indeed practice frugality, handing down and extending
the life usage of household items and clothing. But after World
War II, consumer packaging and consumer durables got bound
in with the business-smart practice of programmed obsolescence,
which went on to became a significant part of modern economic
‘success’. And as the ever-growing trash mountains and water-
way waste loadings illustrate, Anglo settler society nations have
not yet found a broadly effective way to ‘recover, recycle and
reuse’ waste, let alone ‘reduce’ its production. The answer lies
mainly in ‘re-education’, and ‘resistance’ (desistance) to the generation of waste.
Partly this can be achieved by giving some effect to the broadly acceptable tenets
of ‘green’ policies. Consumers wish to be enlightened about packaging as a cost-
burden and about waste excesses they can avoid, and want information about the
purchase of consumer durables that will last and which can be
home-serviced. Capitalism will not be threatened by more effi-
cient waste disposal management practices; yet it can indeed be
joined to the cause of waste reduction.
Growth Pattern Management 183‘Living Lightly’ enthusiasts
are mainly rural
lifestylers who
‘downshift’ the
conventional emphasis
on employment; putting
an ‘upshift’ emphasis on
local exchange trading,
co-housing and
permaculture.
In regions of chronic
unemployment this
sectional concept has a
clear function and a
useful role.‘Because economic
consumption doesn’t
create or destroy
matter but only changes
its location form and
value, the same tonnages
that were mined from
the ground as resources,
treated, transported,
made into goods, and
distributed to customers
are then hauled away
again as waste or
emitted as pollution.’
Paul Hawken, Amory
Lovins, Hunter Lovins,
Natural Capitalism, 1999Lean Thinking, James
Womack and Daniel
Jones, 1996