Cultural sustainability Vs. Functional sustainability, in Manchester

My joint lecture with Prof. Cooper in June 2006, to discuss about the future of Manchester as the financial core of North-west of the UK, tried to address this fact that in people eyes these two types of activities towards a sustainable urban community, in some notions, have so much of undeniable controversy. And it is true!

However the lecture was more detailed and studied the issue from different point of view from what you presented in here.

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Second, you’re misusing the term “sustainability.” Sustainability really only refers to whether or not hte business practice can be continued indefinitely or not. Even slash-and-burn agriculture and clear-cut forestry are sustainable within certain limits–but this is not a model or metaphor that anyone would want business to apply to human societies, I don’t think. You could completely decimate a local culture or society as long as you could argue that eventually it would repair itself. That’s not good. I know this point might seem a tad pedantic, but it’s an important distinction: when it comes to culture and business we’re not looking for sustainability so much as health.

If you’re interested in looking up more on this subject, there are some good organizations doing work on the subject of sustainability (including ways to measure cultural and societal health).

IISD–International Institute for Sustainable Development, at iisd.org, is one of the better ones.

Once again, I’ll play the economist — sorry about that, I can assure you that there are amazing professors in any of the universities that dwell, could explain that to you with better examples; one thing is sure: you are ready to take a class, Microeconomics, but maybe go for Institutional economics, or Historical economics rather then the more common Neo-classical school; or maybe the usual tour, through the eccentricities of the religion of the market would suit you.

First of all, there are three ways to model environment: as externalities, a “Nature-player” and capital.

Externalities are everything that you don’t put in a contract (or a market transaction): parenting, violence, pollution. This approach compares how bad is the pollution with how good. The default, usual solution with this view has been offered by Coase, first in a paper about radio waves, then more specifically: give the asset an owner–he will contract it to interested parties and know what is best (most profitable) to do. That owner could normally be anyone, from the general public to local authority to a private company. Funny thing is: most of the arguments against that apparent neutrality rely on the few other works by the same Coase (a genius: the best training in economics is to read everything he did — the whole five papers). The elevator pitch: ownership by a private company is a good idea for short-term regulation.

The Nature-player is a Game theory bootstrap to consider the consequences of someone’s action that are not decided by someone else. Al Gore is all into that: we have to change how behaviour, or something that looks a lot like an angry polar bear is going to surf to our shores on a melting iceberg and you don’t want to kwon the end of the film. Apart from the efficient but annoying anthropomorphism, a great way to hide the over-simplification behind a curtain of eco-psycho-fit — that can easily be used by semi-religious fanatics. Main real problems: integrations, measurements. The elevator pitch: some threshold cannot be crossed back.

The capital approach shows where humans are very bad at, and where economics aren’t helping: what we have is an asset. Understanding how much is worth is an impossible task, pioneered by Pr. Henry (someone wanted to cut a forest that was planted by Louis XIV hoping to give masts to the the French Navy of the year 2000); impossible because understanding risks on what is valuable in the far-away future is like asking Cory Doctorrow if the accounting in his book is accurate: it almost doesn’t make sense. The elevator pitch: Creation is an amazing gift.

Second thing: your post is actually about social concerns, namely the externalities of layoff. The problem seems to be that someone’s expertise, his knowledge of the company is lost. Given how fast companies change, I actually thing that the main value lost is the aknowledgement of the worker’s qualities: the trust his boss could have in him vanishes, and he might become depressed.

Recommendations might sweeten that — but it doesn’t seem enough. Policies in Europe have tried to encourage the company laying off to take part into his conversion, generally not so successfully: the unemployment is still high. One reason is obviously that it is long-term unemployment; other developed economies like the USA have more short-term unemployment that might benefit from it. A reason you cannot see in the figures is that these programs tend to be absolute jokes, leading either to nowhere or declassing people: your empirical, interview-based, person-to-person approach would be great to understand that, danah.

What you ask for is to have the companies interested in that: namely, that could mean to have them pay the laid-off employees until they have found something. That would be very efficient to have them help look for something. To concerns in such an approach: who controls whether a new job offer is “worth it”? There is more then a risk of declassification, relocation, etc. I’ve heard about having the company pay for the difference, but how could you repay the children for a mother having to drive two hours away?

More concerning is the history of such a system: this existed between the XVIIth and the XIXth century in Europe (at least in France), as the Workers’ notebook: a professional passport. Talk about a Big Brother nightmare. Having a company directly pay for someone’s job search is implying it: HR managers will ask to have some control over it — and no SciFi writer seems to be paranoid enough to imagine the Leninist situation this would become. Leaving voluntarily a company means to face alone an army of HR managers that are trying to get rid of they own.

Do I think that companies should be implied, and pay for the workers it laid off? Yes; actually it seems to be the consensus: this paper would be great on the subject, if it was in English.
http://www.cairn.info/revue-economique-2007-6-p-1221.htm

Some people are not good, motivated; should we force to HR managers to thing about what or where he could be helpful? Would it be a better use of their time then to have them check lists of cold, pseudo-scientific criterion?

Understanding, measuring, implementing mechanisms to make the best of the little we know. . . all that seems very much available to the young, wide-eyed student that I am.

The only reason these sounds arguments have not been heard for the past decades is nothing but lobbying — and you best action would be to support Lessig on this one. My father and all the marine biologists have been warning about pelagic desertification, and calling for a moratoria on the most destructive fishing techniques for years. Try to talk to fishermen and you’ll understand that even at gunpoint, he wouldn’t get it; sad thing is: now, their jobs are really at gunpoint now. I’m afraid HR and managers are not more aware about how much their workers crave consideration. Denial.

This is in effect what formerly good companies do when they sell crappy products. They can fool their loyal customers and liquidate as undeserved profits the good will those customers had.

There is an ice cream place in Cambridge, Toscanini’s

http://www.tosci.com/

They were being forced to close because of non-payment of taxes, and an appeal to their customers brought in $31,000 and brought them back from the brink. This is a case of “good will” of the customers being used under an extraordinary circumstance. An ice cream place with no good will would be unable to do such a thing. In “it’s a wonderful life”, it was the good will that Jimmy Stewart had accumulated that saved the bank and the town.