Production - Economics and Ecology: United for a Sustainable World - page 68

into home and work. While a hunter-gatherer had intrinsic value as a human
being with respect to the community, a farmer's sense of self-worth became
extrinsic, both personally and with respect to the community as symbolized
by, and permanently attached to, productivity—a measure based primarily
on how hard a person worked and how much that person produced.
These are telling examples, for by adjusting them and examining the vari-
ous ramifications, we gain insights into the evolution of production as a pro-
cess. To illustrate, it may be possible to produce much more of a particular
product than is required by two individuals or families, and thus several
or even many can be served. “I'll make the bow, and arrows. Running Bear,
you and your sons do the hunting. Morning Star can gather edible plants.
Smiles-a-lot can help tan the hides, and her sister can sew moccasin.” With
time, agriculture, and permanent settlement, these early skills evolved into
the farmer, village cobbler, blacksmith, and tailor. Moreover, as the num-
ber and distribution of towns and cities, which focused human interactions,
grew denser, the easier it became to specialize production and trade for
necessities. This division of labor, in the form of relief from having to spend
every waking hour in a mere survival mode, resulted in an ability to develop
increasingly complex cultures.
The foregoing scenario leads to two prominent conclusions. First, the
opportunity to produce and garner more goods than just food and shelter
is clear. Different people could produce clothing, housewares, furniture, or
even specialize within the arenas of food and shelter: “I'll produce chickens,
you raise pigs, John can grow carrots, Sam can get wood, and Sue can do the
cooking.” Thus, the movement away from bare necessities toward a more
sophisticated economy becomes inevitable.
Second, the notion of markets begins to materialize. Up to this point, the
dominant assumptions about the nature of exchange have been primarily a
barter economy. We each produce what the other also needs, and then we
trade. Such exchange becomes cumbersome when a diverse variety of prod-
ucts is produced. The notion of the “middle-age” marketplace will work to a
degree, and certainly has appeal as a community-building activity. But, even
then, market prices, in the form of trading ratios, are virtually required. The
notion of money as a medium of exchange, and in support of a less personal-
ized market process, cannot be far behind.
Modern economists look down their noses at a system of barter compared
to a price-based market exchange. Barter is simply unable to support the
level of economic activity necessary to keep a modern, industrialized econ-
omy healthy. This said, traditional economists, with their single-minded
focus on efficiency, consider losing the interpersonal social capital of com-
munity marketplaces as more than offset by the sheer increase in the volume
of output possible with the completely impersonal, modern market, where
all that matters is the price and the volume of transactions.
As a side note, and perhaps optimistically, we assume that people yearn
for more than impersonal marketplaces. Many people are increasingly