Preface

The bulk of this issue of We the People is dedicated to the executive summary of a report issued by the Corporation for Enterprize Development (CfED) for the year 1988. Their logo heads this column. The summary describes a system by which the CfED analyzed economic and other data from the 50 states and gave each state grades on a number of categories—essentially writing the states an economic report card. We print the executive report in its entirety because we think it demonstrates ecological and system principles. If society and the business and economics that goes with it can be described in ecological terms, as this report shows it can, then we are armed with analytical tools with which to think about the problems and do something about them.

The CfED erected a system—a set principles—by which it judged the various states. The report in a number of places relates one index to another and indicates that when a state is high in one index it will be high in another related one. Of course, in an ecological system all factors are related to each other and a change in one changes them all. I suspect that if the authors of "Making the Grade" were to look at their Indices—they would also conclude that all the indexes are related and changes in anyone will result in changes in the others as well.

It is also interesting to look at the actual words used to describe these indexes and to see how closely related they are to the vocabulary we use to describe the unalienable rights and ecological equity.

The Performance Index is composed of such ideas as: employment, earning and job quality, equity, and environmental health and safety.

Employment relates to "participation in free enterprise." Earnings and Job Quality also relates to "participation in free enterprise," but it also determines "right of movement and residence," "humane habitation," "humane nutrition," etc.

Equity is a big one since "ecological equity" is the full expression of the unalienable rights.

Environmental Health and Safety—not only on the job but in the home and at play is another unalienable right.

The Business Vitality Index uses concepts like competitiveness, entrepreneurial energy, and structural diversity.

Competitiveness is at the heart of ecological systems. Together with cooperation, competitiveness describes the major interactions of ecological systems. As we know, the major interactions are symbiotic, commensalistic, and parasitic or predatory, all of which are aspects of competitiveness and cooperation.

Entrepreneurial Energy has its counterpart in ecological systems in agencies that give rise to innovation—in the invention and fabrication of new tools to solve old problems in organisms like the coyote that can occupy new niches in Eastern United States and the suburbs of Los Angeles. Entrepreneuralism is intelligent innovation—the actions that establish new starting conditions in ecological systems.

Structural diversity is a mainline ecological concept. Diversity is the secret to the richness of life — all biological life — and is at the heart of the stability of systems. We need only to compare monoculture in agriculture with diversity in nature to see which system is susceptible to catastrophic failure. We can look at the single industry mining town and compare it to a highly diversified urban industrial complex (Pittsburgh has 800 industries) to see which will have the bust and booms of employment and which will have stabilized employment. Perhaps the most important biological enterprise on the face of the Earth is fostering biological diversity — the future of the planet depends upon it. We could do well indeed to imitate nature in our manufacturing and industrial communities.

The Capacity Index uses concepts such as human resource capacity, technological resource capacity, financial resource capacity and physical infrastructure and amenity resource capacity.

Education—the production of human resource capacity—is the basis of transferring the cultural genetic information of the society. Successful children in school are engaged in productive work which will pay off in profits for corporations and earnings for themselves. Successful students represent exploitable capital assets that will repay the cost of the education manyfold and will sustain not only the corporate structure that employs but the social structure in which the corporation is embedded. Education is an unalienable right.

The technological resource capacity is closely related to the human resource capacity since it is through human ingenuity that technological resources become available. When we as a nation pursue a technology and exploit its fruits, we do so by actively engaging in research and development on the new improvements and innovations in that technological field. When we abandon a technology as we have abandoned consumer electronics to the Japanese we lose our ability to compete because we allow our technology base to erode. Technology capacity is a use or lose proposition. It represents systems concepts and ideas related to specific applications—like avionics or electronics, steel manufacture, or the manufacture of automobiles. When we slow down or stop the processes pass us by. Since information increase is—generally speaking—logarithmic in nature, catching up is difficult. The only practical recourse is leap-frogging to a higher state of technological resource.

Physical infrastructure and amenities are the matrix of human ecology. Whether urban or rural, the physical aspects of our being and those things that make our lives worthwhile and interesting determine our satisfaction with our lives. Man does not live by bread alone, nor by hard work alone, nor by single minded monotonous tasks. The physical infrastructure has to provide the environment and the means for business and industry to operate. The woof and warp of human communities is the physical infrastructure. The physical infrastructure must provide the means for people to communicate, electronically and physically and the amenities must exist to convert human business, industrial, agricultural, and manufacturing ecosystems to humane systems. But the physical infrastructure is also the environment in which the bulk of us live and it therefore must meet the requirement of the humane environment—an unalienable right.

The Policy Index generally relates to what government does: governance and regulation; tax and fiscal environment; investing in education, infrastructure and amenities; promoting enterprise — i.e. a favorable business climate, investing in the disadvantaged individual and community and where applicable, promoting agricultural development.

The items of the policy index would seem to be the province of government—local, state and Federal. Ecologically, however, the place where government ends and business begins is uncertain. Take the area of regulation. Government at all levels can and should regulate. The movie industry, baseball, football, and basketball, regulate themselves. The airlines had better get their act together and start cleaning up some of the deficiencies of their operation or the Federal government will step in and regulate them again.

Taxation and fiscal regulation are normally the function of government, however, in an exception to this rule the wheat growers of Oklahoma have voluntarily taxed themselves 10/bushel of wheat—the money earmarked for research on wheat.

Investing in education. It is normal to think of education as a purely governmental function and the bulk of it is. The amount business and industry spends directly on its own employees to increase their skills is another factor that is becoming increasingly important.

Promoting enterprise is an important function of government. The city of Chicago gave the Sears and Roebuck Company fabulous incentives to stay in the Chicago area. Mobil moved to Alexandria because of the amenities already in the Washington area.

Investment in disadvantaged individuals and communities, simply addresses the ecological problem of self-sufficiency. Disadvantages inhibit the ability of these ecological entities to carry their own weight. Providing advantages for them reduces the tax burden and increases the likelihood that they will be positive contributors to the community and the workforce.

The ecological role of agriculture is basic to the survival of modern society. In the past, before one-man-one-vote, the politics of agriculture was distorted to favor a small number of people. Ecologically we seem to have gone the other way and in the time when American agriculture could materially assist our international trade position our national position on agriculture seems to indicate it is a drag, not an asset to our economy. It is short sighted. We need to look for the renaissance of local agriculture. Locally produced fresh vegetables and staples as well as industrial farming and if it is not too late we need to save family farming as a means of maintaining the natural environment close to our cities. Ecologically agriculture is food, feed and fiber production and it is green space.

What government must provide is justice, tranquility, security, and it must promote the general welfare. It must provide for the common good—the product of humane ecosystems; the common right—the unalienable rights; and the common just—ecological equity. In one way or another "Making the Grade" points and alludes to all these processes and principles and merits our attention.

. . . Ted Sudia . . .

© Copyright 1989
Institute for domestic Tranquility