This document provides a critique of modern American society and its economic system. It argues that current economic theories are flawed because they treat natural resources as having monetary value and assume unlimited growth and resources, which is not realistic. As a result, American culture has become overly focused on consumption, greed, and the acquisition of material goods, which has not led to increased quality of life and has contributed to societal problems like crime, pollution, and the breakdown of communities. The document calls for adopting a new economic system based on permanence and sustainability that does not treat the environment as a consumable resource.

1. WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?
A Reflection on Modern American Society
Spencer M. Robinson
The so-called economic thought (a rather charitable use of the word in this
case) that has guided the cultural evolution of modern society, and which is
the very basis of our social structure and social institutions, is flawed to the
core by its very premise. At the heart of current economic theories is the
premise that a monetary value may be placed on anything used in the context
of trade or commerce. This is, of course, a ludicrous and dangerous folly.
Is it realistic or acceptable to place a monetary value on fresh air; clean,
potable water; fertile, noncontaminated soil and a nurturing climate
conducive to the development and sustainment of a viable biosphere — in
short, the very sustainability of life itself? Is it realistic to place a monetary
value on imagination and creativity; intellectual, spiritual and emotional
fulfilment; the stabilizing forces of social order, continuity, community, and
the sense of belonging and self-image and self-worth? All of these play an
indispensable role in every trade or commercial endeavor — indeed, these are
the very building blocks of all human endeavor.
Is it realistic to place a monetary value on a human life or the quality of a
human life? The patently obvious and undisputed answer is a resounding
"No!" Yet, how is it that modern economic thought, based on such a faulty
premise, has managed to beguile much of humanity into adopting a system of
trade and commerce, erroneous from its inception, that is doomed to failure?
Where Do We Go From Here? page 1

2. The answer is at once simple and complex. The seductive notion promulgated
by capitalistic thought of acquiring personal power and a luxurious and
privileged life-style once considered the exclusive birthright of kings and
aristocracy strikes at the very center of the lowest basal instincts of the
human animal, clouding and perverting higher levels of reason, judgement,
ethics and spiritual values. Greed is a hideously powerful and destructive
force if not held in check by an equally strong prevailing wisdom and spiritual
perspective. Once the notion that an individual can accumulate material
wealth comparable to a king's and attain a position of commensurate social
privilege and power in a market economy is internalized into the mindset, the
mind's logic system adapts to this orientation and directs thought processes
and behavioral patterns accordingly.
This mindset is manifest in the elevation of consumption as the center of
human endeavor in modern Western society, where its ultimate form is found
in America. In our society, an intrinsic component of individual motivation is
to consume and constantly acquire more and more things. Victor Lebrow, an
American retail analyst, proved to be eerily prophetic when he said in the
early post-World-War II period that, "Our enormously productive economy ...
demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the
buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction,
our ego satisfaction, in consumption ... We need things consumed, burned up,
worn out, replaced, and discarded at an ever increasing rate (emphasis
mine)."1
Where Do We Go From Here? page 2

3. In another prophetic statement, this one some 23 centuries earlier, Aristotle
declared, "The avarice of humankind is insatiable." In a world in which fully
75 percent, or 3/4 of the entire human population currently lives in absolute
poverty,2 a ratio that is expected to swell to 5/6 in the early 21st century,3
American children under the age of 13 have more spending money — $230 a
year — than the 300 million poorest people in the world.4 According to Alan
During, in his article How Much Is "Enough”? in the November/December
1990 issue of World Watch magazine, American consumption has soared
since 1950. "Per capita, energy use climbed 60 percent, car travel more than
doubled, plastics use multiplied 20-fold, and air travel jumped 25-fold."5 As
Mr. During states, "We are wealthy beyond the wildest dreams of our
ancestors; the average human living [in the United States] today is four-and-
a-half times richer than his or her great-grandparents ...."6
But where has all this wealth gotten us? Are we any healthier; safer; more
secure; more intellectually, creatively, emotionally and spiritually more
fulfilled? Are we really happier and living better, more rewarding lives than
our ancestors? With the rapidly rising incidence in cancer, AIDs, and other
immune-deficiency diseases, hepatitis-B, cardiovascular disease, and many
troubling new cure-resistant illnesses such as Kawasaki disease, chronic
fatigue syndrome, debilitating allergies, etc., it is evident, that though our
infant mortality rate has continued to decrease and our life expectancy has
continued to increase, the quality of life for much of our population has been
decimated by disease and general malaise. As growing numbers of us require
some form of corrective lenses, hearing aids, false teeth, postural or
locomotive aids, etc., what is that telling us about the robustness of the
human being in modern, industrialized, commercialized American society?
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4. Even though we have been able to buy more health care, we have not been
able to buy better health, and, as economic pressures continue to escalate and
health care costs continue to spiral upward out of control, it is simply a
matter of time before most Americans will not be able to afford minimal
health care that only a few short years ago we took for granted.
What about security and safety? How many of us living in large urban
centers (and more and more of us continue to vacate withering rural
communities to crowd into ever more congested, packed urban centers) feel
threatened by crime or acts of random violence? In an ABC Nightline News
documentary aired about a month ago, the police commissioner of New York
City was quoted as saying "We've lost control of the streets, and the lawless
know it." A similar statement attributed to the Boston Police Department
was reported in the Boston Globe several weeks ago.
The cover story of the August 23, 1993 issue of Time magazine bore the title
America The Violent — Crime is Spreading and Patience is Running Out. As
pointed out in a related article in the same issue entitled Danger in the
Safety Zone — As Violence Spreads into Small Towns, Many Americans
Barricade Themselves, violence and crime are not just problems of the large
urban centers, but are endemic throughout all of American society. Drive-by
shootings, car-jackings, gang wars, gang rape (blatantly perpetrated even by
professional football teams in open contempt of a morally bankrupt public
and a judicial system that long ago sold out to the large, powerful monied
interests) arbitrary mayhem, mass murder, courthouse slayings, etc.— many
of these acts totally unknown just ten or twenty years ago — are now
increasingly commonplace in the landscape of Americana.
Where Do We Go From Here? page 4

5. Other types of security are financial and job security. All around the world,
opportunities to work for decent pay are rapidly disappearing. There are
quite simply far too many people in the world than are needed to make the
goods or to provide the services for the number of customers that can afford to
buy such goods and services. As the world population continues to grow and
the world economy continues to decline, the crises deepens, with ever more
people needing work and ever fewer customers who can afford to purchase
the output of the commercial effort.7
Other than a very few products such as soft drinks and cigarettes, most of the
global production output is consumed by less than two billion of the more
than five billion people inhabiting the earth.8 As a job is needed by most
people just to eat, the vast numbers of the unemployed and underemployed
are not able to sustain the global mass consumption system.9 In rough
estimates, within the next twenty years throughout the underdeveloped
world, more than 750 million men and women will reach the legal working
age and will enter the labor market, adding to the 700 million people
currently unemployed or underemployed in poor countries.10 The worldwide
situation has reached such a state of crisis that not only worldwide economic
recovery, but the very fundamental economic system itself is threatened.11
Continually gloomy long-term economic forecasts have focussed American
corporate strategy on flexibility, downsizing, outsourcing, automation, and
relocation.12 So much so, that in the midst of a rebound from the height of an
economic downturn, the large American corporations are not only continuing
to downsize, but are actually intensifying the effort. Even such companies as
Proctor & Gamble and General Electric, which are still profitable, and
companies that have already been through several staff reductions, are
continuing the downsizing trend.13
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6. In a recent survey reported by the American Management Association of
some 8,000 of its members, 47 percent indicated staff reductions in the 12
months ended last June, slightly higher than cited 1991-92. Overall, the staff
reductions were deeper than in the past, averaging 10.4 percent reductions in
staff compared with 9.3 percent in the previous 12 months. The A.M.A.
survey suggests downsizing will continue at close to current levels for the 12-
month period ending next June.14 After corporate staffing reaches its
optimum level, and the layoffs and early retirements cease, corporations seem
inclined to restructure operations to function with minimum staffing, viewing
outsourcing as a more efficient and profitable strategy.15
With heavy dependence on outsourcing, the corporation can operate as a
tight, efficient contracting center with a relatively small core of employees,
buying goods and services from other companies rather than relying on large
numbers of its own workers to provide the goods and services for day-to-day
operation.16
The work force, both within the cental core of the corporation and in the
companies providing goods and services to the central core, will consist more
and more of individuals who are simply contracted out to work on specific,
temporary assignments without job security, sick leave, insurance, paid
vacations, retirement, or other corporate benefits. Knowledge workers
proficient in computer and telecommunications technology will do all their
work out of their own homes. These "cybercowboys" will ride the information
superhighways, not employed regularly by any firm, but contracting out to
one company after another on designated projects or assignments.17
Where Do We Go From Here? page 6

7. Gone are the days of industrial giants with their paid health care and
pensions and company softball and bowling teams. The job market of the
future will have little in common with that of the past. The job market based
on the model of the 1960s, '70s, or even '80s is a fading memory. The set of
global economic conditions that shaped the job markets in the past no longer
applies. The workplace, as well as every other aspect of life, is changing,
victim of the relentless and accelerating pace of the unholy trinity of runaway
business expansion, mass merchandising, and new technology, combining to
rent gapping wounds in the fabric of society. Job security, and, by extension,
economic security, is a thing of the past, a fond memory of our parents'
generation.18
Along with the fond memories of job security, are the fond memories of a
cohesive society, community spirit and cooperation, a sense of cheerful well-
being that permeated society and expressed itself in friendly smiles on the
faces you met on the street and in the shops you entered. There are the fond
memories of a time when there was less tension and more goodwill in casual
social encounters, of a time when life seemed more fun and full of joyful
spontaneity, of a time when people were less dour, hearts were less heavy
with economic pressures, and less fearful of crime and violence.
There are the fond memories of a time when speech and demeanor were more
elegant and dignified and behavior was less coarse and vulgar, of a time when
people seemed more trusting and trustful, and of a time when the arts and
academia were high priorities in society and well-supported, and where
artistic, creative endeavors and the performing arts were appreciated by a
discerning and knowledgeable public, and when there was a healthy spiritual
vitality and deep spiritual commitment and words like love, honor, and valor
had true meaning and value.
Where Do We Go From Here? page 7

8. Our so-called "wealth" has bought us nothing but more useless things, and
heightened, unmitigated greed — an insatiable thirst to acquire and possess
more and more while the quality of life unravels around us like a falling
chain of dominos. The very notion of our "wealth" is absurd — while as a
nation we continue to consume at an ever greater pace, more and more of us
are finding ourselves in increasing financial hardship. While we have more
things, our actual living conditions are rapidly deteriorating.
As you drive across America, most cities are virtually indistinguishable, part
of the great blur of urban sprawl, parking lots, discount megastores, strip
malls, and endless expanse of concrete and traffic. The great homogenization
of America is just about complete, but there are still some pockets of
unscathed communities left, with their historic buildings, rustic charm, calm
and warm ambiance — a reminder of what life in America used to be like.
There are, in some of those communities, concerned individuals who value
that way of life over the cold, crass commercialism of the consumer ethic. The
strip malls and centers of mass merchandising are seen by such people as the
great evil — the butcher of communities, the destroyer of the American Way
— the symbol of all that is wrong with America.
While the strip mall and the mass-merchandising centers may be doing more
than their fair share of spreading urban blight and creating both long-term
unemployment and underemployment, the problem goes far deeper, it's an
indictment of the economic system itself. The strip mall and mass-
merchandising centers are simply a natural product of our economic system,
and so is the breakdown of law and order, and the deterioration of public
morality and spiritual values, and the pollution of the environment, etc.
Where Do We Go From Here? page 8

9. Our current economic system treats natural resources as profit. Necessary for
every human endeavor, natural resources are therefore necessary for every
commercial endeavor and must be treated as capital. No business can sustain
operation if it consumes its own capital, therefore, any economic theory that
fails to recognize capital as such, and treats it as a consumable item, is
invalid by definition.
Natural resources are limited resources, and beyond a certain rate of
consumption, cannot be renewed. "[The] modern human being does not
experience himself as a part of nature but as an outside force destined to
dominate and conquer it."19 ". . . we are estranged from reality and inclined to
treat as valueless everything that we have not made ourselves."20 We are
currently using up the world's fossil fuels and other natural resources as if
there was no tomorrow, and if we continue our consumption at its present
rate, there will be no tomorrow because once our natural resources are gone,
they are gone forever, and so is the planet's ability to support life.
Current economic theories are based on the concept of unlimited growth,
which implies unlimited resources. Beyond the fact that certain resources are
quite obviously limited, unlimited growth in and of itself is a fallacious
concept. Systems function within a suitable scale or size. Just as a structure
which becomes too top-heavy collapses under its own weight, an organization
breaks down when it expands beyond a workable size.
Where Do We Go From Here? page 9

10. As the size of living organisms in nature is balanced within the framework of
their relation to the ecosystem that supports them, so too must commercial
enterprise be balanced in relation to the market, infrastructure, and
environment which supports it. There is always a finite limit, a point beyond
which the market, infrastructure, and/or environment cannot sustain. If an
economic system is to be truly viable, it must be self-sustaining, based on the
concept of permanence, anything else is a false premise going nowhere.
"Permanence is incompatible with a predatory attitude which rejoices in the
fact that [as Gandhi said,] 'What were luxuries for our fathers have become
necessities for us. Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not
every man's greed.'"20 We must extricate ourselves from the destructive
mentality of greed and consumerism. We must adopt a more gentle, spiritual,
nonviolent approach to life. "If human vices such as greed and envy are
systematically cultivated, the inevitable result is nothing less than a collapse
of intelligence. A man driven by greed or envy loses the power of seeing
things as they really are, of seeing things in their roundness and wholeness,
and his very successes become failures. If whole societies become infected by
these vices, they may indeed achieve astonishing things but they become
increasingly incapable of solving the most elementary problems of everyday
existence. The Gross National Product may rise rapidly; as measured by
statisticians but not as experienced by actual people, who find themselves
oppressed by increasing frustration, alienation, insecurity, and so forth. After
a while, even the Gross National Product refuses to rise any further, not
because of scientific or technological failure, but because of a creeping
paralysis of noncooperation, as expressed in various types of escapism on the
part, not only of the oppressed and exploited, but even of highly privileged
groups."21
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11. "The lack of decently compensated jobs under decent working conditions is a
global deficit so vast as to require fundamental rethinking about the global
economic system itself."23 The entire social ethic of working for money to
acquire wealth instead of working as a creative venture, a form of self-
fulfillment in its own right, should be seriously challenged. We must
eradicate forever soul-destroying, meaningless, monotonous, moronic work
and replace it with challenging jobs which provide decent pay and self-
respect. This can only be done by the total restructuring of our profit-oriented
mass consumption system into a need-oriented mass-cooperation system.
"There is a colossal amount of work waiting to be done by human beings —
building decent places to live, exploring the universe, making cities less
dangerous, teaching one another, raising our children, visiting, comforting,
healing, feeding one another, dancing, making music, telling stories,
inventing things and governing ourselves. Until we rethink work and decide
what human beings are meant to to do in the age of robots and what basic
economic claims on human society human beings have by virtue of being
here, there will never be enough jobs."24
In this paper, we have taken a brief look at a phenomenon that is only a
symptom of the real problems confronting modern society. We have tried to
identify those problems and explain the underlying causes. The creation of
strategies and processes for revamping our economic system and cultural
perspective is an awesome task, but it is an urgent problem demanding
immediate attention and all the resources at our disposal. The field of
anthropology can offer many insights into the search for solutions, and must
take a leading role in this endeavor if it is to justify itself as a discipline truly
applicable to the real world and its problems.
Where Do We Go From Here? page 11

12. 1. During, Alan. How Much Is "Enough"?. World Watch, Nov/Dec 1990,
p. 12
2. Kidron, M. and Segal, R. The New State of the World Atlas. New York:
Simon & Shuster, 1984
3. During, op. cit., p. 12
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Barnet, Richard. The End of Jobs. Harper's Magazine, Sept., 1993, p. 47
8. Ibid., p. 52
9. Ibid., p. 47
10. Ibid., p. 49
11. Ibid., p. 47
12. Ibid., p. 51
13. Church, George J. Jobs in an Age of Insecurity. Time, Nov., 22, 1993,
p. 36
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid., p. 37
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid., p. 39
18. Ibid.
19. Schumacher, E. F. Small is Beautiful. New York: Harper & Row, 1989,
p. 14
20. Ibid., p. 15
21. Ibid., p. 34
22. Ibid., p. 32
23. Barnet, op. cit., p. 52
24. Ibid.
Where Do We Go From Here? page 12