Economics, which is the subject of how we exchange energy (trade) with one another in order to live better, is something that we all have attention on - in fact, it can consume our lives. To a great degree, it seems that the general subject is not something that’s under our control.
As designers, we can ask, how can we navigate the economic system in a more healthy (regenerative) way? How can we align our hopes, dreams, and values with the economic system? We feel it's important to look at the purpose and goals of economic systems as part of the design process.
The word “Economics” comes from ancient Greece and originally meant “management of a household.” The entire subject was created to help us manage our lives. How well does it do that? What if we used that as a benchmark for how well an economic system is designed or is doing?
From a permaculture perspective, we could ask the design question: how can we manage our household and our extended family’s resources in a way that creates resilience, abundance and long term survival for us? This would include care of the ecosystems, soil and water that provides us with sustenance.
We have more choices when it comes to money than many of us have been led to believe. By approaching this subject as conscientious designers rather than simply cogs in the machine, we can access more of these choices to increase abundance and quality in our lives.
In this section, we’ll share some tools with you that can help you design a better (more regenerative) economic system for yourself, and maybe for others as well. But first, we’d like to share some context that we feel may help you understand the wide range of options that you do have. Please be aware that this may lead to new horizons and vistas you never even thought of!
Economics has become a subject that has become so complex, you can get a degree in it and still be confused. Economic theories and “isms” abound, and people spend good portions of their lives arguing about which one is better.
We feel that the thing that is missing in most of those discussions are the basic goals - the original reason that we even created economic relationships with one another. It’s impossible to create a workable system if one loses sight of the goals.
Instead of being a way to trade with one another, and a way to manage our lives and households, it has become a complex system of currency manipulation, debt, passive income, rip-off, fraud, and confusion.
Returning to the idea of management of a household, what elements in life provide value for a family or community? Some basic things that are present in just about every culture throughout history are:
Food
Water
Energy
Shelter
Medicine or wellness care
Culture
Spirit
A sense of safety or security
Community - trust, cooperation, support
A healthy ecosystem that provides abundance
The feeling one can continue to access these things
In today’s world, economics still includes trade, but has also come to mean a complex practice of manipulation of value which can include things like currency speculation, derivatives, subprime mortgages, speculative instruments, gambling on commodities, massive debt, fraud, etc. If you don’t know what some of those terms mean, just know this: They have nothing to do with the management of a household.
Traders on the stock market.
Industrial zone.
So, what is wealth? Again, digging into the derivation of the word, we find an Old English word, “weal, wela,” or “well-being.” From this came concepts like “commonweal” or “commonwealth.”
What would modern society look like if we defined wealth as well-being, rather than defining it by how much money one has? We’ll look at how cultures that have done that looked like in a minute.
But let’s take these two original meanings in this topic, and let’s define finance and economics from a permaculture perspective as “the management of a household and community in a way that supports well-being for its members and for future generations.”
Well-being has two major components, physical and emotional (or spiritual). If you have enough food and water to survive, you have more well being than if you do not, for instance. If you feel cared for, that can provide emotional well-being.
Food forest abundance.
The resources for physical needs come from the natural world, sometimes altered or designed by humans to enhance well-being (like buildings with passive cooling). Emotional needs might be met by other humans, or the beauty of the natural world.
The natural world is an intrinsic part of our well-being, thus the well-being of the natural world is also a part of our economic system and concepts of wealth.
What contributes to well-being? Ultimately that is a very personal question that each of us can answer for ourselves. And that is a great question to ask, and to review periodically too! There are a few elements that may have broad agreement however, from the categories above.
What if we were to design an economic system that was aimed at achieving that? With what we know now, what elements would it include? We’d need to care about ecological well-being, since that is one source of wealth for us. And we’d need to care about human well-being as that is another source of wealth.
Within this context, let’s talk about some laws or maxims that may apply to economic systems.