The process in which we must engage
to create an ecological society
Thesis
Mankind can live in harmony with Nature
when consumers can deduct, from their taxable income,
the money they spent on products that sustain development.
Introduction
An ecological society could be created in the same way the industrial society has been made ; by the ability to deduct costs from taxable income.
Producers can deduct, from their sales revenues, the production costs they made to earn these revenues, to arrive at the net profits which are used for taxation purposes. They can also deduct costs that sustain income, that develop it, increase it or assure income. Because costs of production are defined, by law, as costs that have a positive effect on income, the only goal producers can pursue, while managing these costs, is to maximise profits.
The capacity to deduct costs from taxable income gives the ability to pursue a goal efficiently, in the free market economy.
There is one other group of costs known : the costs of living. They are not yet managed to achieve a common goal of consumers. They should be managed to sustain development. This need is implicit in the discovery of the definition of the goal of development.
According to the introduction of the programme of a world congress of EADI (European Association of Development Institutes), held in Amsterdam in 1987, the goal of development was not known. From our research, it can be concluded that this goal is the goal with which consumers spend their income. This hypothesis raises the question, what is the goal with which consumers can spend their income today : to consume forever more?
To continue to consume and to pollute more of the limited natural resources, on a global scale, will lead to natural catastrophes and wars over drinkable water, arable land and healthy air, among following generations. To simply sustain growth in development means to encourage the pursuit of the goal to consume more.
The alternative
The costs of living could be managed as costs with a positive effect on income, if income is considered, by law, on a time scale of generations, rather than of a human life. Costs of living that maintain a way of living in harmony with Nature would assure income from the utilisation of the limited natural resources. They should therefore be tax deductible and the law should make this possible. Interpretation of the time dimensions of a law is indeed a way to adapt law to reality.
The challenge
"It may be impossible to recreate a moral consensus in an advanced plural democracy. Nobody has ever done it and there are good reasons for thinking it cannot be done." (Bryan Appleyard, "Independent", 4 February 1993, referred to by Donah Zohar at the beginning of chapter 14 of "The Quantum Society" (1))
When all consumers can deduct from taxable income the money they spent on ecological products, the individual consumer will voluntarily engage himself in a moral consensus, if an ecological product is defined as a good or a service that maintains the integrity of Nature. Integrity implies simultaneously a sound moral state as well as a sound physical state.
Integrity can thus be maintained only with integrity. It would therefore be a logical desire of consumers to be honest when they spend their income on ecological products and to be sincere in their wish to sustain a way of living in harmony with Nature. Both attitudes are characteristics of integrity.
Consumers would moreover be driven by personal, financial and professional interests as well as by pleasure, to satisfy this desire by being ethical when they buy the goods and services that maintain the integrity of human nature. Ethical behaviour thrives on pleasure. It will drive consumers to sustain with passion an ethical current in the free market economy.
The socio-economic power will thus be shared among the two equivalent powers : the social power of income of the producer and the economic power of expense of the consumer.
This equivalence in power in the free market economy will generate the dynamic equilibrium in which consumers maintain integrity with income. This balance will cause a harmonious equilibrium between costs and revenues. Reasonable profits or Morabaha (2) will then be normal profits.
The desire of the producer to maximise profits to improve his well-being will then be focused by the desire of the consumer to maintain the integrity of Nature. Producers will have to maintain Nature in perfect state, in order to maximise profits.
In the synthetic way of thinking practised in the Orient, the balance between the social and economic power might be experienced as a harmonious equilibrium between Yin and Yang, since the social power of income would be Yang.
Bryan Appleyard's vision of the impossibility to achieve a moral consensus in a plural democracy might hence prove to be too pessimistic.
Power at the zenith of society could glow again with wisdom, this time drawn from the research of every consumer for a way of living in harmony with Nature. An equilibrium between mankind and Nature can then be found in which reality is a continuous function of truth. Mankind can then keep contact with the final cause of life, truth being the reality of love.
The present management of the costs of living
In the current version of the free market economy, the costs of living can be managed only centrally. The Central Government has to motivate billions of consumers to sustain development by levying eco-taxes, setting pollution standards and, eventually, by controlling their way of living. The result is comparable to the central management of the costs of production in the former communist regimes. The central management of the costs of living fails, because eco-taxes and other central management measures cannot motivate consumers to live in harmony with Nature. Their only goal, while spending their income, remains to consume always more. In pursuit of this goal, eco-taxes can only make consumers consume less. Consumption will diminish only temporarily as consumers pursue this goal with globally increasing efficiency. For the same reasons, the Central Government can neither use the produce from the eco-taxes they levy to protect Nature nor to assure sustained development.
Optimum place to manage costs
An efficient place to manage costs is at the source of the revenues which these costs sustain. This principle of efficiency of the free market economy is also a result of our research. It implies that the equilibrium between revenues and cost is maintained by the people who earn the revenues. This principle can give a moral base to the economy because it enables the optimum efficiency in the use of natural resources, that all people enjoy compatible levels of well-being, because then a maximum of demands is satisfied.
Moreover, the capacity to deduct costs of living from taxable income enables consumers to assume their productive function in the free market economy : to engage in a way of living that assures sustainable development. They would fulfil their function by accounting for the ecological quality of their way of living in a common accounting of stewards or trustees of human nature.
Benefits of the management of the costs of living for governments
There are three economic reasons that should induce governments to propose laws allowing and encouraging consumers to account for the ecological quality of their way of living. The first and most obvious is that, as a result of this accounting, mankind will eventually live in harmony with Nature. The billions of Euro's and Dollars and Yens, spent in trying to protect Nature, could be employed for other purposes.
Moreover, when consumers have to keep the receipts of their purchases that account for their costs of living, the black market will disappear. Within the mechanism of the black market, producers can compete by lowering their prices, the transaction being accomplished without a receipt or an official document. No taxes can therefore be perceived on income from such transactions.
The third reason is that development will bloom with a demand for a way of living that sustains development. The increase in income from taxes levied on the growing incomes of suppliers of the products that uphold such a way of living has the potential to offset the reduction in the income caused by the deductibility of money spent by consumers on ecological products. This potential is based on a more efficient use of natural resources. History showed that, after the industrial revolution began with Watt's invention of the steam machine, the state lost income from taxes paid by suppliers of non industrial goods and services. However, this loss was eventually offset by the increase in income from taxes paid by suppliers of industrial products, because they made a more efficient use of natural resources.
Viable reactions of producers about the management of the costs of living
As soon as this happens, the laws of competition will force producers to improve the ecological quality of their products. They will begin to define, describe, formulate "ecological", in the results of their research, as they are now developing a safer car.
Global consequences of the management of the costs of living
Producers will then have launched a human and ethical development of a global ecological industry. All countries can participate in this development with equal resources, as this industry is undoubtedly nascent everywhere. World-wide participation is moreover an efficient way to develop a global industry from little.
Other arguments for managing the costs of living
Recent events demonstrated that the system of controls in Europe made by the scientific world, the European Commission and the food industry does not assure safe food (3). The result is still trying to prevent the latest crisis, at an accelerating rate. Germany was recently able to stop pollution by dioxin in milk, just before it became a crisis. The German government was not able to prevent it. The aim was to create a system that would assure safe food for everyone by the year 2000. Something was missing to achieve this and the faith to find the missing link by then, was expressed. The need to inform, to educate, nay, to imply the consumer in a process of assuring safe food was felt at all levels. A latest effort of the food industry consists in establishing lists with positive specifications which food products should satisfy.
The inability of the European Union to assure safe food by means of its present control systems confirms that no assurance can be given about its quality or state by controlling respect for or adherence to minimum standards. The laws of competition force producers to manufacture as close as they can to these minimum levels of pollution beyond which crises occur.
Consumers' ability to deduct, from their taxable income, the money they spent on ecological products, will generate the force that will pull producers away from the limits implied in each control. Consumers' demand will thus prevent other crises.
The inability of the European Union to assure safe food makes the introduction of the management of the costs of living even more urgent. If the European Union cannot assure safe food, which country, state or nation could?
Should mankind maintain the integrity of human nature?
According to the director of research in life sciences of DB, there does not seem to be a clear demarcation line between industrial chemistry and the chemistry of Nature. Eventually, industrial chemistry could therefore pollute, integrate, substitute the chemistry of Nature with industrial chemical processes. The integrity of Nature might therefore be lost and thus the integrity of human nature.
The ability of the consumer to deduct costs from taxable income creates also the demand to define the parameters of chemical processes that determine the integrity of human nature and to establish the values of these parameters that sustain it.
Brussels, 21 December 2001, Revised, August 12, 2002
Willem Adrianus de Bruijn
Notes
(1) "The Quantum Society, Mind, Physics and a new social vision", Donah Zohar & Ian Marshall, Flamingo, London, 1994
(2) Morabaha is a term of Islamic Fiqh (Jurisprudence) and refers to a particular kind of sale. If a Seller agrees with his purchaser to provide him a specific commodity on a certain profit added to his costs, it is called a Morabaha transaction. The basic ingredient of a Morabaha is that the Seller discloses the actual cost he has incurred in acquiring the commodity and then adds up some profits thereon. This profit may be lump sum or may be based on a percentage. (http://www.alfaysal.net/public/murabaha.htm)
(3) "European Union control system does not assure safe food", Willem Adrianus de Bruijn Analysis and comments about the conference : "La securité alimentaire", held on Thursday, 21 October 1999, by the Cercle de pharmacie, ULB, Brussels, presented at the DB web site : http://www.oocities.org/zero_association/