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normal, the industry, having overinvested, appeals to the government for
help because substantial economic capital is at stake. The government typi-
cally responds with direct or indirect subsidies, which only encourage con-
tinual overharvesting.
The ratchet effect is thus caused by unrestrained economic investment
to increase short-term yields in good times and strong opposition to losing
those yields in bad times. This opposition to losing yields means there is
great resistance to using a resource in a biologically sustainable man-
ner, because there is no predictability in yields and no guarantee of yield
increases in the foreseeable future. In addition, our linear economic models
of ever-increasing yield are built on the assumption that we can, in fact, have
an economically sustained yield. This contrived concept fails in the face of
the biological sustainability of a yield.
Then, because there is no mechanism in our linear economic models of
ever-increasing yield, which allows for the uncertainties of ecological cycles
and variability or for the inevitable decreases in yield during bad times, the
long-term outcome is a heavily subsidized industry. Such an industry con-
tinually overharvests the resource on an artificially created, sustained-yield
basis that is not biologically or ecologically sustainable. 6
With the above in mind, American settlers could be likened to an invasive
weed growing in a bare vacant lot. Thus, it is no surprise that American
culture came to emphasize competition, private property (which is progres-
sively extended to the realm of patents for everything imaginable, including
ideas), and initiative, along with an ever-restless search for a new frontier
to exploit.
All indications suggest this time has passed. The future environment, for
the United States as well as all nations of the world, is no long one of super-
abundance for the taking. We have overpopulated the planet and gone to
great lengths to exploit easily available resources. The low-hanging fruit has
long ago been harvested. The world is telling us, in many ways and in no
uncertain terms, that the environment we are in, and will continue to be in,
is one of growing scarcity. Under such circumstances, the broader princi-
ples of evolution suggest that competition must yield to cooperation, growth
must give way to biophysical sustainability, and consumption for its own
sake must be supplanted by careful use of resources to meet basic human
necessities.
These broad, sweeping generalizations deserve both critical examination
and far greater detail. In summary, they suggest that the current economic
crisis is well beyond a temporary malfunction of the dominant, socioeco-
nomic institutions (e.g., the banking system, the housing sector), and rather
underlies a full-blown crisis of culture. If so, the symptomatic thinking that
got us into this calamity must change radically and quickly. The cultural
ethos that spawned the problems cannot effectively get us out. We must there-
fore raise our cultural level of consciousness from symptomatic thinking to
systems thinking if we are to extricate ourselves from our current dilemma
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