The Crisis Before Us

John Darvill

1996

Published in:

Technocracy Digest, 1st quarter 1996, No. 319

This is an abridged copy of a lecture given October 15, 1995, at Technocracy Headquarters in Aldergrove, British Columbia, by our Director, John Darvill.

Today, it is fairly obvious to most people that there is something badly wrong with our social system, inasmuch as there seems to be so many problems that are not being solved, and so many things happening today that people tolerate, but feel things could be done better.

Unfortunately, today, almost everybody has a pet theory about what is, or is not, wrong with our society. Depending on what group of people you talk to, the problems attached to society today will have different meanings and, therefore, different solutions. If you talk to people who consider themselves fairly wealthy, they will tell you that the problems confronting our society today are that we should be paying less taxes; that we should cut welfare rolls; grants to education, and grants to health should be cut back, and everybody should take care of themselves and depend less upon society in general.

Then, of course, there is the class of people who would like to be rich, and are striving in that direction, and they, likewise, will tell you very much the same story: taxes are too high, too many people are being looked after; too many people are leaching off the system, and, generally, that is why we have so many problems.

If you talk to people who do not have enough money to get by, they will tell you almost the exact opposite. They will tell you that to solve the problems we should tax the rich more; they should pay a bigger share of the expenses of society, and welfare rolls should be increased. They would probably suggest there should be low-rent housing, or subsidized rentals, or many things that people have to go without today because they don't have sufficient income to allow themselves to live according to the standards which are considered acceptable in North America.

At the same time, there are various groups and various organizations that view the problems of society in very different ways. If you talk to fisher people (as they are called today) they, depending upon which branch of the fishing industry they are in, will give you a variety of reasons why there are so many problems with the fishing industry, and why fish-stocks are being so badly depleted. A sports fisherman will tell you the commercial fisheries are taking a far greater share of the fish than they should be. A commercial fisherman will say there are far more sports fishermen on the waters today than there should be, and they, and the Indians, are taking a far greater share of the catch than they are allowed to do.

The loggers will tell you that the big problem today, in provinces such as British Columbia, who rely, to a great extent, on logging to maintain a reasonably healthy economy, that they should be allowed to cut more trees; that the more trees they cut, the more jobs will be saved, and the more society in general will prosper. And, of course, on the other end of that scale, you have the environmentalists who will tell you the exact opposite -- that the fishing industry and the logging industry are taking far more fish than they should; they are cutting down far more trees than should be allowed and, as a result of this, they are spoiling the environment, and they are depleting the fish stocks, at a very rapid rate.

And so it goes. No matter what problem you attach yourself to today, there will be somebody with a vested interest in that particular segment of society who will give you all kinds of reasons why we should, or should not, be doing what we are doing.

All of these things that we are so concerned about today, are only symptoms of the general malaise of the system we live under, and that is: the inability of our governments to administer our society to the benefit of everybody. In a society such as ours, what accrues to the benefit of one group of people will, of course be a detriment to another, and they are all symptoms of the main problem.

The main problem is what Technocracy has been pointing out for many years: the fact that the Price System is incapable of operating a high energy technical society.

Now, you must understand what we mean by a Price System before you can begin to understand what Technocracy is talking about. A definition of a Price System is: any social system that effects the distribution of goods and services by means of commodity evaluation. And that is, of course, any form of debt token or money.

How does the Price System work in today's society? How it has always worked: by a medium of exchange called money or debt token. In order to obtain these debt tokens or money, you must exchange your hours of labour in some form, in order to get back the necessary purchasing power or money to buy back the goods and the services which are provided. The unfortunate part about this, is that the value of these commodities, and the value of man hours of labour, fluctuate according to the economy. In times of prosperity, when there is, or was -- we should use the past tense -- when there was a high demand for labour, people could command high wages but, as is now the case, when labour is no longer a premium, when there are far more people looking for work than there are jobs available, there is a tendency to decrease the amount of money that you will get in exchange for the labour you provide.

Now, at the basis of this inability to buy back that which we did not consume, is the time rate of doing work. The time rate of doing work has greatly accelerated in the last ten to fifteen years. Most people don't realize that the average person today carries more computer equipment on his or her wrist than actually existed prior to 1967. That is how much the world has changed in the last twenty or thirty years.

As the time rate of doing work increases; as our ability to do more work in less time, and take up less space, it means that the amount of hours of labour that can be exchanged for the goods that are produced, is out of all context with the ability to maintain a full employment situation. It means that, as more and more technological -- or extraneous -- energy is used in the work force, fewer and fewer people are needed in order to operate our society in today's economy. That means, that we are employing less hours of labour and, at the same time, our productive capacity is increasing at a tremendous rate. We can produce far more now with far fewer people than we could even twenty years ago, and that rate is accelerating.

This means that those people who talk about raising taxes or lowering taxes, do not take into consideration the effect this would have upon society in general, and the ability of our governments to administer the affairs of our social administration. It means that as hours of labour decrease -- in other words, as more and more people become dis-employed -- the tax base on which the country relies in order to provide things, such as welfare, health maintenance, education, unemployment insurance -- this kind of thing -- declines with it. It also means: as the tax base declines, as the number of people employed in our society declines, their purchasing power -- their consuming power -- to buy back that which is now produced, also declines at a very rapid rate. So, we are rapidly reaching that stage in society where we are producing an ever-increasing amount of goods and providing an ever greater amount of services, and there will be fewer and fewer people with the ability to buy back that production because of the declining rate of person hours.

On the other hand, there are those people who say that we should lower taxes; that if we lower taxes we will be doing more because we will be encouraging more people to invest in our economy, and we will encourage more people to start new businesses. But, what happens if you lower taxes? The moment that you start to lower taxes, the government gets less revenue, and the government is therefore unable to provide many of the things which we take for granted today. It means that there will be less government services than we have today. It means things, such as health, education, infrastructure in general -- the roads and docks, the airports, the schools -- all of these things, which make up the infrastructure of our society today, would likewise decline. It means that there would be high unemployment, as the government would be forced to cut back on the number of people it employs. There will be more poverty. There are far more people employed in service industries today than in any production form. There will be more demand for assistance from a government with a declining tax base, because more people will become unemployed. There will then be more poverty, and that, in turn, will lead to more social unrest. The violence, which we are witnessing today, both in the United States and Canada, reflects the inability of the law enforcement agencies to keep pace with the rising crime rate.

Once again, let us repeat what we are talking about tonight: the Price System. It is any social system that effects distribution of goods and services by means of commodity evaluation, employing any form of debt token or money, and is the only form of social administration in existence in the world today. It is a system which is based upon scarcity, and it must have scarcity in order to continue to exist.

Now, you can say that we have an increased production capacity -- and we do. We have the ability to produce goods at a phenomenal rate but, at the same time, there is enforced scarcity, inasmuch as goods are made in a very shoddy manner; goods are kept in low supply; the amount of goods in supply is controlled, and the prices are kept high in order to maintain artificial scarcity conditions. It is an artificial society in which we find ourselves today.

As opposed to that, we have the technological society which, by and large, takes care of all of our wants today, and is based on science, and should be an extension of, science, applied to social administration. On the other hand, we have the technological capacity to produce more goods in a less period of time, employing fewer and fewer hours of labour.

It is a Technocracy postulate that: all the products and services concerned with the functional operation of our society can be measured in terms of energy. Everything that takes place today -- that is produced -- or any services required -- the amount of energy needed to supply these goods, or to provide these services, is metrical and can be measured. You could have a very exact knowledge of the amount of energy available, at any given time -- the amount of energy it takes to produce any form of goods, and the amount of energy it takes to provide any type of service. This is the kind of accurate measurement we must have today, if we are to take advantage of the ability of science and technology to produce the goods and supply the services to all citizens of this Continent.

Now, let's look at some of the problems we mentioned, to compare how they will be dealt with by the Price System as it exists today, and how they would be handled if we had a functional form of government -- the kind of thing Technocracy has been talking about for the past sixty years.

Technocracy is a functional form of government. We mentioned fishing. Obviously we are in a situation here in North America, as well as in many other areas in the world, where fish stocks are declining at a very rapid rate. For all practical purposes, the stock has disappeared. Whether or not it will recover remains to be seen.

The Price System supports what is done. On the one hand, we realize that fish stocks are declining, and we realize that something must be done in order to arrest this decline. But if you take the kind of drastic measures that are necessary, and if you stop all fishing for a period of x number of years, to allow the stocks to recover, what then? You will have large fishing fleets, and all of the industry dependent upon the fishing industry, come to a standstill. And it would mean that the price, and the number of unemployed would be increased alarmingly; all the people employed in fishing would be unemployed. It would place a further strain upon government, and it needs the government to supply these people with an income.

This has already happened on the East Coast, where the fishing industry has been completely decimated. A few years ago, prior to the disappearance of stocks, it was pointed out that this was happening; that if it did not cut back very drastically on the amount of fish allowed to be taken from the seas, that they would disappear. Of course, the government, for political reasons, did not follow through, and it wasn't long before the fish all but disappeared, and everybody was out of work as a consequence. And this, of course, is what would also happen here on the West Coast.

Politicians worry about jobs disappearing, and worry about how it would affect the economy. They worry about how it will affect the next election. They diddle and doodle around while the fish are virtually disappearing. If we think in terms of function, what is necessary to maintain fishing stock; what is necessary to keep these fish in a healthy balance with nature; what would we do? If we dismiss the idea of money, and think only in terms of function -- the ability to distribute goods and services to the population -- the amount of fish which needs to be taken out, without waste, would be drastically reduced. In fact, they would be taking out absolutely zero, if necessary, to allow fish stocks to come back. In a non-monetary society -- a non-Price System -- it wouldn't affect the ability of people to be supplied with goods and services, because these would be supplied on the basis of citizenship -- that is, every citizen is entitled to be cared for -- but it would allow the fish stocks to replenish.

The same thing applies to logging. Most of you realize today that trees are being logged at a far greater rate than can be replaced. Most people realize that if this is kept up for many more years, that there won't be a sufficient number of logs in order to employ the people presently employed. But, of course, if you talk in terms of cutting back on logging to the extent necessary to allow the trees to replenish themselves, it would mean tremendous job losses. And, of course, the same thing applies: when you have tremendous job losses there is a greater strain placed upon society in the form of government, as these people have to be supplied with some form of minimal assistance in order to survive. But, there is a lack of solution -- in a monetary economy.

But, if in a functional society, where you only produce the goods necessary on the basis of need, the amount of logging necessary to supply people on a day-to-day basis would be a very small percentage of what it is today. You only need to think about the amount of waste paper that pours into your letter box on a daily basis; the amount of waste that goes on in packaging; the amount of waste that goes on in all kinds of ridiculous plans and campaigning. The amount of paper necessary to advertise goods you probably don't need, and probably would be better off without, is on a tremendous scale. If the amount of logging necessary to maintain the operations of a society, based on function, was carried out today, it would be just a small percentage of what it is.

The same thing applies to the environment. People get concerned about what is being done to the environment. They talk about climatic modification; they talk about the fact that the earth is warming up; they talk about in how many years the world will be flooded if the present rise of temperature on this planet continues. What can we do about it? As we know, the increased temperature of the earth is brought about, mainly, by the increased use of carbon. The greatest user of carbon, and the worst pollutant is your private automobile. Now, one would think that if the biggest problem facing our society, today, is the fact that in ten or fifteen years from now, the climatic build-up will be of such proportion that many low-lying areas of the world would be flooded, it would seem a fairly simple act to cut back, very drastically, on the number of automobiles used on a day-to-day basis, which would automatically cut back very drastically on the amount of carbon dioxide being poured into the atmosphere.

But, again, in a monetary economy, what would this mean? Now, bear in mind, that (BEN CAN YOU HIGHLIGHT THESE THREE WORDS one in six) of all jobs in North America are dependent upon the automobile, in one way or another. Many people rely upon them to get to work; to get to places where they get supplies; to get to entertainment centres; and it has become necessary in today's society, due to the fact that this is the way our society has been built up over the years.

But, take away the dependence of money; take away the dependence upon jobs; take away the need to keep people employed in order to buy back what is being produced, and the problem then becomes one of: how do we build housing; how do we organize our society in such a manner that the degree of dependence upon the automobile would be diminished?

If we were to think in terms of building houses, using the best knowledge available in building technology today; if these houses were built in areas upon which the things we need on a day-to-day basis -- the areas where we work, areas of entertainment, areas of education, health needs, recreation -- were within proximity to the area in which we live, then the need for the automobile on a daily basis would be diminished, and could become practically non-existent.

But that, of course, would take a tremendous amount of new building, a tremendous amount of re-organization, and the cost, from a monetary point of view, would be astronomical. But again, thinking only in terms of function -- what is necessary to bring about sufficient housing and the most efficient means of transportation; the most efficient means of providing the people with the things that they need on a day-to-day basis -- then that becomes a functional problem, and could be solved relatively easily within the framework of the technology available to us today.

The political parties are now in the midst of an election, or are preparing for an election here in British Columbia. Next year there will be preparations for an election in the United States, and in a year or so, there will be a federal election in Canada. What are the things they are going to discuss? They are going to talk about the same things we started out with in this lecture this evening. They are going to talk, depending upon which side of the political spectrum they are on, about raising taxes, or they are going to talk about lowering taxes. They are going to talk about cutting back. They are going to talk about providing more jobs -- all the things which this economy, today -- a Price System -- is no longer capable of achieving. Because, as we pointed out earlier, you cannot provide man-hours of labour in a society which depends on extraneous energy for 98% of all goods and services produced .

Under those circumstances, given the rapid advance which is now taking place, from a technological point of view, the ideas of more jobs; the ideas of raising or lowering taxes, belong in a bygone age. This is the kind of problem they faced in 1929, and it was as a result of these problems, that the depression of the 1930s occurred. And, of course, remember the depression of the 1930s was as nothing compared to what we face today. In the 1930s they were concerned primarily with putting people to work. They were very concerned with jobs -- where would they create enough jobs to provide enough consuming power to buy back the goods and services being produced, even at that time.

It was a problem which remained insoluble until 1939, when the War started in Europe and the American productive capacity was geared up to a wartime level. It ended in 1941, of course, when the United States entered the war and, once again, its ability to produce, and provide goods and purchasing power to a sufficient number of people to keep our economy operating, clicked in.

As a result of this, we have kept this Price System operating from that time until the present day, but it is becoming increasingly more difficult to provide enough person-power in the form of person-hours of labour, and money and debt tokens, to keep our society operating with any semblance of order, or ability, to provide minimum goods and services to people.

All problems today are approached on exactly the same basis: where is the money? You can talk about any problem you wish to discuss, no matter to which side of the political spectrum you belong; no matter what you may be concerned about; no matter what particular problem you think is the most serious, but if you analyze all these problems, what do you come up with?

MONEY! The one thing you could do without is MONEY. To provide any services and products, you must have the expert knowledge; you have got to have the resources; you've got to have the trained personnel. But MONEY is a figment of our imagination. It is something that has come to be accepted over the years as being part and parcel of our lives. Money worked very well in an age of scarcity, and still works in many areas of the world where there are scarcity conditions.

In order for a Price System to function correctly, you must have (a) the scarcity conditions. You must have (b) the ability to employ man-hours of labour in great enough quantities to buy back that which you produce. In a hand-tool economy, it is relatively easy to keep enough people employed to buy back the very small amount of goods which can be produced by human muscle power (with some help from animals.) But, in a technological society, such as we have in North America, over 98 per cent of everything we produce is done outside the human body. It becomes an impossible task to continue to employ enough people to buy back the amount of goods which are produced.

Our infrastructures are falling apart; our waterways systems are breaking down; our sewer systems are breaking down; soil pollution is becoming a problem; the amount of potable water available is becoming a problem. All of these things are increasing at a very rapid rate, and will increase at a more rapid rate, because of the inability of the Price System -- a monetary economy -- to provide the kind of lifestyle to which we have become accustomed.

And this, of course, is done for expediency. It is done to build houses at a more rapid rate, and at the least expensive rate -- and you may laugh at this at the present time -- at the most affordable rate, so that they can still be purchased by a fairly large number of people in order to keep the building industry operating.

But we could stand here all evening talking about examples; talking about how things don't work, why they don't work and, in the majority of cases; it is because they don't have the money, or aren't prepared to raise the money necessary, to supply the goods and services necessary for today's society. Remember, we have become accustomed to the standard of living we now have. Any sharp decline in the standard of living most of us now experience, will bring about severe social chaos, severe social dislocation, and all the things that go with it.

We are already concerned about violence in the streets; we are already concerned about the rising crime rate; we are already concerned about the amount of abuse that goes on. These things will only get worse if more and more people find themselves dislocated; as more people find themselves unable to find a job. There is a crisis before us that will only get worse, and it can only become more serious, and it can become more chaotic. It will increase both in complexity and magnitude as time goes by, and as we find it increasingly more difficult to provide sufficient purchasing power to take care of the needs of society, and the services which are required in a modern-day society, you can look forward to the time when chaos and social breakdown will become inevitable.

Or, you can recognize the problem. You can realize that trying to operate a highly industrial technological society with the kind of social conditions and the kind of social administration which have been used, almost from the dawn of time, is impossible. And still trying to exchange goods and services by means of commodity evaluation and employing any form of debt token or money -- even though, today, it has very little relationship to the kind of society in which we find ourselves -- is also impossible.

We find ourselves, today, living in a society where most of the goods are produced by technological equipment at a very rapid rate, but most of the goods are lying useless in some warehouse or other place because there is not sufficient consuming power to buy them back, to be used.

Now, we can either continue to do as we have been doing, and muddle through, hoping somewhere, or someone, or something, along the line, will happen to bring about change. Or we can wake up to the fact that we are living in a society which is now obsolescent. It has outlived its usefulness, and we should be thinking, very seriously, in terms of what is necessary to bring us into the 21st century, and to make sure that civilization will continue to flourish for many years to come.

It will not do this within the restraints of a Price System. It can only do this if we think in terms of a government of function, based upon the very things which keep us all alive -- the use of extraneous energy -- and basing our society upon the exchange of energy, and basing our distribution system on the energy it takes to produce goods and provide services.