What Would Nature Do?: A Guide for Our Uncertain Times by DeFries Ruth

Author:DeFries, Ruth
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: NAT010000, Nature/Ecology, SCI092000, Science/Global Warming & Climate Change
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2020-01-12T00:00:00+00:00

Despite what one might think of power grabbing and greed enabled by raw capitalism, Adam Smith saw the utility of a system driven by bottom-up, self-organizing individual decisions. His infamous “invisible hand” echoes evolution’s insight that a central authority cannot replace local information perceived by individuals in the closest position to have accurate intelligence. Like shimmering fish schools, V-shaped formations, termite castles, and single-file ant marches that emerge unplanned from individuals following simple rules, economies grow from individual capitalists seeking profits for themselves. An individual “neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it … he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention … By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it.” Adam Smith’s “end” is not protection against predators or a royal chamber for a queen termite, rather it is the “distribution of the necessaries of life.” Shopkeepers adjust their wares to what people buy. No central authority pre-plans how much flour, salt, or milk each shopkeeper should stock. The system runs itself.

One can question whether unfettered capitalism results in the most desirable distribution of basic necessities to the world’s population. But indeed, the truth of Adam Smith’s marketplace—and evolution’s experience that bottom-up self-organization wins out over top-down command and control—has proven itself out over time as centrally planned economies mire in outdated technologies, waste, and inefficiencies.

Comparisons of ant colonies, flocks of geese, termite societies, and zebra stripes with capitalist economies and the communities of Torbël herders, Alanya fishers, and Nepali farmers cannot go too far. People do not follow instincts like pheromone-following ants or wing-flapping Canada Geese. Human-made rules and norms take the place of instincts in other species. Rules and norms are more fluid than genetically programmed rule-following behavior. Human societies devise their own rules about who can use how much of which resource. Every rule, regulation, law, or policy is an experiment in humanity’s task to collectively organize ourselves.

Nature’s rules provide a guide for civilization’s experiments. Decentralized rules tailored to the ecology and culture of the place, developed and enforced by the users, tested over time, adaptable to changing conditions, and locally perceived as beneficial rather than punitive are more likely to endure than top-down directives. One-size-fits-all rules and scalable blueprints are less likely to ward off free riders and avoid tragedies. Top-down directives enable clockwork solutions. A central authority can deploy sensors in homes to cut down energy use, for example, or install detectors to keep people from speeding. In complex systems of interacting parts where the resource and the user continually change and adapt to each other, Ostrom’s observations of successful self-organized communities ring true with nature’s experience.

Ostrom studied small, mostly self-contained communities of fishers, herders, farmers, and forest-dwellers where local people could confront free riders in the coffeehouse. In

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