Conservation Economy: The Architecture of Statism
“Although quality of life is partially correlated with income, it is possible for Household Economies to make decisions that lead to lives of comfortable sufficiency rather than stressful accumulation. Quality of life is highly idiosyncratic, and each household can determine a balance of social, financial, and ecological returns which is most fulfilling. From this perspective, Social Equity includes universal fulfillment of the most fundamental human needs along with broad access to meaningful work, while respecting the enormous range of life circumstances and personal goals which may drive people to seek different kinds of livelihood.” - Mission Statement of the Conservation Economic Model on Social Equity
Sustainable Design
Going Green. Just what does it mean? To contemporary Architects, it is the infant left on the porch – like it or not, once the door is open it dare not be ignored; and for good reason. From a professional standpoint, clients demand Green designs. From a legal perspective, revised codes and ordinances require attention to Green concepts. And fashionably speaking, Green is keen. Morally, however, it is appropriate to manifest a sense of balance throughout the built environment and sustain systems to the benefit of all parts… to a degree. Ideally speaking, a Green system is, in essence, a mechanism of relationships that can be sustained indefinitely. Sustainable design, as the name implies, promotes such a relationship among associated elements in order to achieved and maintain balance in a closed system. For the Architect, charged with the task of designing human environments, the responsibility is especially profound.
Architecture is the product of necessity, tempered by economy, unleashed through the creative spirit of Man’s limitless mind. Traditionally defined, the profession is the art and science of erecting buildings. Today, it is more widely considered to be the conception of place where the structures themselves are only a part of an assemblage that re-defines space to enhance human experience. The profession has thus evolved to a religion of sorts, with its own set of ethics filtered by surrogates through individual moral interpretations applied to each design effort. Sustainability being a concept increasingly inherent to the ethic, it is fitting therefore that Architecture and its clerics encompass a broader concern that includes resource conservation, environmental impact, human health, and social benefit, in addition to functionality, appropriateness, aesthetics, and cultural significance… with the inevitable degree of creative prowess. Where the built environment meets the natural realm, there is a tendency toward deference now emerging from an age of defiance. Man’s mind tempers the ability to do a thing, against the rectitude of its accomplishment. Ego has not been abandoned; it has merely been challenged by higher bars of excellence.
The Capital of the Mind
On the face of it, Sustainability is a just and noble achievement. One should strive, after all, to act responsibly in all manners of personal conduct, including consumption. Human history contains numerous missteps as lessons to be learned in this regard. The natural world contains its own. More illustrative still, has been the history of Man’s progress toward an increasing respect for the human relationship with the Earth’s environment. Early in Man’s development, balance was achieved by necessity; primitive efforts toward survival being at the mercy of the Earth’s nature. The capacity to think ultimately provided the means to transcend limitations. Eventually, given the opportunity, early cultures rendered tremendous negative impacts on their environment. Paleo-Humans hunted megafauna to extinction. Mayans decimated their valleys with agrarian overproduction. European peoples deforested entire regions. The propensity for maintaining sustainable relationships tended to diminish with progressive technological advancements. Atlatles, chinampa farming techniques, bronze tools, and internal combustion engines act similarly to create immediate challenges to the balance between Man and the environment. Abuse followed advancement, to be certain. It is a pattern that continued well into the industrial era: Landscapes stripped; skies burnt; rivers tarnished; and oceans raped. The built environment likewise grew for reasons seemingly without rhyme. Yet, even in the over-analyzed Modern Era missteps were ultimately tempered by introspective re-assessment. Throughout the 19th Century and into the 20th, a voracious trend of industrial progress seemed to overwhelm any sense of dependence, for the conceit of hubris in an age of human enlightenment. Man nevertheless strived toward improvement.
Ultimately, the capacity for the mind to comprehend it’s place in it’s universe restores the balance. By the later half of the 20th Century, Man’s enlightenment extended to an assessment of place and impact. Values were refined, adjusting focus to the quality of life and sustained existence. Mistakes that were made needed to be remedied. Liberty had initially cultivated the quality of excelled purpose. It now inspired the mechanism for flourishing a sense of thoughtful conversion. A new environmental consciousness encouraged change so that by the end of the last century, tremendous improvements had been realized; if only barely recognized.
The Third recorded millenium of civilization arrived with the dawn of sustained promise. The previous had demonstrated that a mind driven increasingly by choice over instinct, once unleashed within a rational universe, transcended limitations to excel far beyond expectation. This next promised to extend even those expectations. In the process of technological development, Man’s identity transformed congruently. The mind recognized a respect for self, and existence was realized independent of group and state. The shackles of tyrannies were removed and discarded for codified relationships understood on the basis of individual significance. Ethics and values replaced blood and station and a new worth extended to brethren and nature alike. A mind fed first on self-respect, can only then lend respect accordingly. Ownership replaced stewardship and feudal dependency. Capitalism was born. Systems could be sustained by means of effort and trade devoid of mandate and sanction. The will afforded currency to each according to one’s enterprise, while worth became the manifestation of ethics reflecting the value of each according to one’s desire to exist. The individual grasped power under constitutional recognition of self-evident authority and legitimacy by nature of existence alone. And ownership of self and effort provided the capital of liberty. A revolution delivered Man from the boot heel of thugs and tyrants…
…the very place to which a Conservation Economy threatens a return.
Conservation Economy
Conservation Economy in theory is a means to encourage Sustainability through Man’s social and professional endeavors. According to this model, the health of ecosystems and communities alike suffer when choices remain unregulated. Economic dependence on so-called ‘destructive’ activities creates stresses in the system components that threaten its very existence. The model therefore seeks to create an economy that focuses on human needs while protecting natural systems. Growth is to be maintained ‘organically’ filling new niches and enriching 'human capacities.' Economic arrangements are ‘designed’ to include abstract considerations of value ordained according to dictated models for idealized conditions of preferred balance. They include, but are not limited to Natural and Social assets, the Fundamental Needs of people and the Ecosystems which sustain them. Additionally, desirable characteristics are given notable consideration, including Social Justice, Fairness, and Cultural Diversity, to name a few. This is thought to be the starting point for an alternative economic prosperity; a sustainable conception transcending the trivialities of consumption, production, and wealth.
In fact, the Conservation Economy model risks a substituting of the moral concept of liberty with an indefinable abstract called fairness. It seeks to replace systemic equilibrium with a proscribe definition of balance; exchanging the emancipating mechanism of the dollar with the coercive submission to regulation, and the demoralizing capital of obedience. Personal desires are surrendered to authoritarian whim. Property rights, likewise and by necessity, must be severely limited and ultimately abolished altogether; forfeited to collective stewardship. Choice is likewise relinquished by finite sets of mandated alternatives dictated by collective consensus on ‘poorly understood’, ‘loosely measured’ variables oddly deemed to be ‘chronically undervalued.’ But, undervalued by whom? The market is not a hypothetical, after all. It is the moral representation of the exercised liberty of productive people recognizing, achieving and enjoying their own individual existence. In a free nation, moral decisions are encouraged. Philosophy and religion provide ethical guidance. Government is the manifestation of these values and operates from that basis in accordance with a set of ideal principles. But, ultimately all choices are left to the individual as the primary benefactor of the dividends and consequences. The shift to a Conservation Economy will scrap that concept nearly entirely, alternatively imposing the experimental bridle of Behavior Economics onto a dynamic system of Capitalist mechanisms with the reigns pulled tight by powerful government oversight.
While it is true that all economic models recognize a government’s role in the market (enforcing legality of transaction, protecting property rights, and imposing limited regulation, for instance ) they general agree that individuals are better able to act in accordance with their values and preferences than an officer of the state. Behavioralists do not. While some (perhaps most) people in the community will exercise ‘preferable’ choices, many will not. The founders of this Constitutional Republic, understood that inevitability as a necessary subordinate to the primacy of liberty. Behaviorist systems, on the other hand, require absolute adherence to doctrine and seek, therefore, to dictate accordingly to a minority of deficiency. It thus surrenders common liberty to the potential – indeed the presumption – of human failure. Dictating the values of the market is akin to restricting freedom. Benign and benevolent as the model may appear, a Conservation Economy transforms the relationship between individual and government from one of symbiotic participation, to that of reverent submission. Where such models have been applied, standards of living have suffered, unemployment rates multiply, industrial production slips. The value of life diminishes as a whole. Esteem becomes a rare luxury. Dependency replaces productive ambition as a default state of the human condition in a contemporary revival of medieval feudalism. It is a model for degenerative Statism … a condition that is, in no way moral, nor sustainable.
The Architecture of Sustainable Liberty
The Architect has been recognized throughout history as the master builder; a unique creator who renders culture in form and space, in time. As a unique cultural entity, architecture exist at once as both monument and machine; artifact and icon. The designer is charged with a profound duty to understand and integrate the values of Man into the built environment, momentarily to serve its function, to be recorded as history and interpreted accordingly. It is no wonder that the Architect is now charged with the ultimate challenge of manifesting Man’s renewed conviction for a sustainable existence. Sustainability and its Green principles are influencing many industries, professions, and institutions with a renewed sense of obligation and optimism. Many localities are now adopting the principles into their charters as with State and Federal governments. Yet, Sustainable Design is the means to effect cultural transformations with profound consequence. It is the primary mechanism with which to unify efforts for the sake of change and to manifest reform on the people… for better or for worse. Few issues afford the means to unite individuals to a common purpose with collective effort. Likewise, few concerns encourage some to forfeit sovereignty for the sake of parity. The Earth being the isolated receptacle on which Man currently resides, resources seem limited in light of an expansive civilization. Opportunity appears disproportionate considering economic disparity. And outcomes seem further disparate in light of unequal distribution of liberty; or rather a notable tolerance for tyranny. Yet, while Man’s vessel is finite, the capacity for achievement is limitless. Resources evolve, efficiencies improve, and Man’s sense of self-respect continues to encourage more thoughtful consideration of everything. Man has the unique capacity of virtue among a rational universe that can be both known and developed. It merely awaits the grasp. At times, individuals will fall short, whilst others achieve. It is the nature of a sustainable process. Yet Mankind is its own mentor and ultimately must be trusted to act by the blue print of history, in accordance with virtue, and through the liberty to engage all endeavors accordingly… both individually and collectively. Caution is warranted with regard to experimental panaceas offering solutions that overreach the problem and promise nothing more than ‘comfortable sufficiency’ in the place of sustainable prosperity. Responsible action does not require the sale of Man back into the confines of serfdom where meaningful work of the able is extracted for the ‘alternative livelihood’ of the few and elite. The Architect’s benefactors are neither the tyrants of history nor the aristocracy of dogmatic sensibility. It is the client of Man; each according to one’s desires and the will to make them real. Too often, the proclivity for reverence becomes a narcotic of good sense. Principles that are not in line with rational precepts of liberty can infect the sensibility of the cleric, replacing a dedication to reason and respect for choice, with the seduction of an egocentric autocracy. History is replete with the minions of tyranny, erecting the prisons of authoritarian servitude… and moral bankruptcy. Sustainability is a cultural hydra – one head promising tranquility, the other damnation. The profession should be careful to sever its formidable body from the damned head. It must embrace the virtue of Sustainability while rejecting the authoritarian monstrosity that is the Conservation Economic model. As seductive as its principles may seem, the model is an insidious attempt to exploit professional virtue for political malfeasance. The bureaucracy of patronage must not seduce the culture’s Master Builder into becoming the builder for the Masters of men.
Sustainable Design
Going Green. Just what does it mean? To contemporary Architects, it is the infant left on the porch – like it or not, once the door is open it dare not be ignored; and for good reason. From a professional standpoint, clients demand Green designs. From a legal perspective, revised codes and ordinances require attention to Green concepts. And fashionably speaking, Green is keen. Morally, however, it is appropriate to manifest a sense of balance throughout the built environment and sustain systems to the benefit of all parts… to a degree. Ideally speaking, a Green system is, in essence, a mechanism of relationships that can be sustained indefinitely. Sustainable design, as the name implies, promotes such a relationship among associated elements in order to achieved and maintain balance in a closed system. For the Architect, charged with the task of designing human environments, the responsibility is especially profound.
Architecture is the product of necessity, tempered by economy, unleashed through the creative spirit of Man’s limitless mind. Traditionally defined, the profession is the art and science of erecting buildings. Today, it is more widely considered to be the conception of place where the structures themselves are only a part of an assemblage that re-defines space to enhance human experience. The profession has thus evolved to a religion of sorts, with its own set of ethics filtered by surrogates through individual moral interpretations applied to each design effort. Sustainability being a concept increasingly inherent to the ethic, it is fitting therefore that Architecture and its clerics encompass a broader concern that includes resource conservation, environmental impact, human health, and social benefit, in addition to functionality, appropriateness, aesthetics, and cultural significance… with the inevitable degree of creative prowess. Where the built environment meets the natural realm, there is a tendency toward deference now emerging from an age of defiance. Man’s mind tempers the ability to do a thing, against the rectitude of its accomplishment. Ego has not been abandoned; it has merely been challenged by higher bars of excellence.
The Capital of the Mind
On the face of it, Sustainability is a just and noble achievement. One should strive, after all, to act responsibly in all manners of personal conduct, including consumption. Human history contains numerous missteps as lessons to be learned in this regard. The natural world contains its own. More illustrative still, has been the history of Man’s progress toward an increasing respect for the human relationship with the Earth’s environment. Early in Man’s development, balance was achieved by necessity; primitive efforts toward survival being at the mercy of the Earth’s nature. The capacity to think ultimately provided the means to transcend limitations. Eventually, given the opportunity, early cultures rendered tremendous negative impacts on their environment. Paleo-Humans hunted megafauna to extinction. Mayans decimated their valleys with agrarian overproduction. European peoples deforested entire regions. The propensity for maintaining sustainable relationships tended to diminish with progressive technological advancements. Atlatles, chinampa farming techniques, bronze tools, and internal combustion engines act similarly to create immediate challenges to the balance between Man and the environment. Abuse followed advancement, to be certain. It is a pattern that continued well into the industrial era: Landscapes stripped; skies burnt; rivers tarnished; and oceans raped. The built environment likewise grew for reasons seemingly without rhyme. Yet, even in the over-analyzed Modern Era missteps were ultimately tempered by introspective re-assessment. Throughout the 19th Century and into the 20th, a voracious trend of industrial progress seemed to overwhelm any sense of dependence, for the conceit of hubris in an age of human enlightenment. Man nevertheless strived toward improvement.
Ultimately, the capacity for the mind to comprehend it’s place in it’s universe restores the balance. By the later half of the 20th Century, Man’s enlightenment extended to an assessment of place and impact. Values were refined, adjusting focus to the quality of life and sustained existence. Mistakes that were made needed to be remedied. Liberty had initially cultivated the quality of excelled purpose. It now inspired the mechanism for flourishing a sense of thoughtful conversion. A new environmental consciousness encouraged change so that by the end of the last century, tremendous improvements had been realized; if only barely recognized.
The Third recorded millenium of civilization arrived with the dawn of sustained promise. The previous had demonstrated that a mind driven increasingly by choice over instinct, once unleashed within a rational universe, transcended limitations to excel far beyond expectation. This next promised to extend even those expectations. In the process of technological development, Man’s identity transformed congruently. The mind recognized a respect for self, and existence was realized independent of group and state. The shackles of tyrannies were removed and discarded for codified relationships understood on the basis of individual significance. Ethics and values replaced blood and station and a new worth extended to brethren and nature alike. A mind fed first on self-respect, can only then lend respect accordingly. Ownership replaced stewardship and feudal dependency. Capitalism was born. Systems could be sustained by means of effort and trade devoid of mandate and sanction. The will afforded currency to each according to one’s enterprise, while worth became the manifestation of ethics reflecting the value of each according to one’s desire to exist. The individual grasped power under constitutional recognition of self-evident authority and legitimacy by nature of existence alone. And ownership of self and effort provided the capital of liberty. A revolution delivered Man from the boot heel of thugs and tyrants…
…the very place to which a Conservation Economy threatens a return.
Conservation Economy
Conservation Economy in theory is a means to encourage Sustainability through Man’s social and professional endeavors. According to this model, the health of ecosystems and communities alike suffer when choices remain unregulated. Economic dependence on so-called ‘destructive’ activities creates stresses in the system components that threaten its very existence. The model therefore seeks to create an economy that focuses on human needs while protecting natural systems. Growth is to be maintained ‘organically’ filling new niches and enriching 'human capacities.' Economic arrangements are ‘designed’ to include abstract considerations of value ordained according to dictated models for idealized conditions of preferred balance. They include, but are not limited to Natural and Social assets, the Fundamental Needs of people and the Ecosystems which sustain them. Additionally, desirable characteristics are given notable consideration, including Social Justice, Fairness, and Cultural Diversity, to name a few. This is thought to be the starting point for an alternative economic prosperity; a sustainable conception transcending the trivialities of consumption, production, and wealth.
In fact, the Conservation Economy model risks a substituting of the moral concept of liberty with an indefinable abstract called fairness. It seeks to replace systemic equilibrium with a proscribe definition of balance; exchanging the emancipating mechanism of the dollar with the coercive submission to regulation, and the demoralizing capital of obedience. Personal desires are surrendered to authoritarian whim. Property rights, likewise and by necessity, must be severely limited and ultimately abolished altogether; forfeited to collective stewardship. Choice is likewise relinquished by finite sets of mandated alternatives dictated by collective consensus on ‘poorly understood’, ‘loosely measured’ variables oddly deemed to be ‘chronically undervalued.’ But, undervalued by whom? The market is not a hypothetical, after all. It is the moral representation of the exercised liberty of productive people recognizing, achieving and enjoying their own individual existence. In a free nation, moral decisions are encouraged. Philosophy and religion provide ethical guidance. Government is the manifestation of these values and operates from that basis in accordance with a set of ideal principles. But, ultimately all choices are left to the individual as the primary benefactor of the dividends and consequences. The shift to a Conservation Economy will scrap that concept nearly entirely, alternatively imposing the experimental bridle of Behavior Economics onto a dynamic system of Capitalist mechanisms with the reigns pulled tight by powerful government oversight.
While it is true that all economic models recognize a government’s role in the market (enforcing legality of transaction, protecting property rights, and imposing limited regulation, for instance ) they general agree that individuals are better able to act in accordance with their values and preferences than an officer of the state. Behavioralists do not. While some (perhaps most) people in the community will exercise ‘preferable’ choices, many will not. The founders of this Constitutional Republic, understood that inevitability as a necessary subordinate to the primacy of liberty. Behaviorist systems, on the other hand, require absolute adherence to doctrine and seek, therefore, to dictate accordingly to a minority of deficiency. It thus surrenders common liberty to the potential – indeed the presumption – of human failure. Dictating the values of the market is akin to restricting freedom. Benign and benevolent as the model may appear, a Conservation Economy transforms the relationship between individual and government from one of symbiotic participation, to that of reverent submission. Where such models have been applied, standards of living have suffered, unemployment rates multiply, industrial production slips. The value of life diminishes as a whole. Esteem becomes a rare luxury. Dependency replaces productive ambition as a default state of the human condition in a contemporary revival of medieval feudalism. It is a model for degenerative Statism … a condition that is, in no way moral, nor sustainable.
The Architecture of Sustainable Liberty
The Architect has been recognized throughout history as the master builder; a unique creator who renders culture in form and space, in time. As a unique cultural entity, architecture exist at once as both monument and machine; artifact and icon. The designer is charged with a profound duty to understand and integrate the values of Man into the built environment, momentarily to serve its function, to be recorded as history and interpreted accordingly. It is no wonder that the Architect is now charged with the ultimate challenge of manifesting Man’s renewed conviction for a sustainable existence. Sustainability and its Green principles are influencing many industries, professions, and institutions with a renewed sense of obligation and optimism. Many localities are now adopting the principles into their charters as with State and Federal governments. Yet, Sustainable Design is the means to effect cultural transformations with profound consequence. It is the primary mechanism with which to unify efforts for the sake of change and to manifest reform on the people… for better or for worse. Few issues afford the means to unite individuals to a common purpose with collective effort. Likewise, few concerns encourage some to forfeit sovereignty for the sake of parity. The Earth being the isolated receptacle on which Man currently resides, resources seem limited in light of an expansive civilization. Opportunity appears disproportionate considering economic disparity. And outcomes seem further disparate in light of unequal distribution of liberty; or rather a notable tolerance for tyranny. Yet, while Man’s vessel is finite, the capacity for achievement is limitless. Resources evolve, efficiencies improve, and Man’s sense of self-respect continues to encourage more thoughtful consideration of everything. Man has the unique capacity of virtue among a rational universe that can be both known and developed. It merely awaits the grasp. At times, individuals will fall short, whilst others achieve. It is the nature of a sustainable process. Yet Mankind is its own mentor and ultimately must be trusted to act by the blue print of history, in accordance with virtue, and through the liberty to engage all endeavors accordingly… both individually and collectively. Caution is warranted with regard to experimental panaceas offering solutions that overreach the problem and promise nothing more than ‘comfortable sufficiency’ in the place of sustainable prosperity. Responsible action does not require the sale of Man back into the confines of serfdom where meaningful work of the able is extracted for the ‘alternative livelihood’ of the few and elite. The Architect’s benefactors are neither the tyrants of history nor the aristocracy of dogmatic sensibility. It is the client of Man; each according to one’s desires and the will to make them real. Too often, the proclivity for reverence becomes a narcotic of good sense. Principles that are not in line with rational precepts of liberty can infect the sensibility of the cleric, replacing a dedication to reason and respect for choice, with the seduction of an egocentric autocracy. History is replete with the minions of tyranny, erecting the prisons of authoritarian servitude… and moral bankruptcy. Sustainability is a cultural hydra – one head promising tranquility, the other damnation. The profession should be careful to sever its formidable body from the damned head. It must embrace the virtue of Sustainability while rejecting the authoritarian monstrosity that is the Conservation Economic model. As seductive as its principles may seem, the model is an insidious attempt to exploit professional virtue for political malfeasance. The bureaucracy of patronage must not seduce the culture’s Master Builder into becoming the builder for the Masters of men.
