Identify and explain the reasons why some societies make “disastrous decisions,” according to Diamond.
Nadege1990
8-Lecture8-TheState26Policy.pptx
The State & Policy:
Imperialism, Exclusion, and Ecological Violence as State Poliy
Introduction
One of the most enduring views of the state (the government and its various administrative arms, agencies, and structures) is of pluralism .
Pluralism is the idea that politics in a democracy is a process in which various associations (eg trade unions, business groups, churches) engage in a competition for access to state resources and governmental control. Pluralism involves groups sharing power with the state , thus avoiding dominance by government or by any particular interest group. Interest groups strive to influence state policy making through this process, thus allowing citizens multiple paths for voicing their concerns and gaining access to the political system.
In practice, however, we are often less pluralist than we might imagine.
The Treadmill of Production
Schnaiberg and Gould (2000) developed a theoretical framework that captures the dynamis of how market forces and political institutions interact to produce ecological disorganization while creating wealth and power for a minority of persons and lower wages and less power for the majority.
The Treadmill of Production is a system in which we can see the increasing accumulation of wealth and investments into capital intensive technologies, rising social inequalities, and greater “ecological withdrawals” (Gould and Lewis,, 2009), or natural resource extraction, and “additions” (ibid) or pollution, all of which are encouraged and facilitated by the nation state.
One of the best ways to increase profits is not only to ignore pollution but to also reduce labor costs. Most businesses do this by introducing automation, cutting wages, downsizing employment rolls, and reducing workers’ benefits—increasing levels of economic inequality and instability both nationally and globally.
Examples of this include: the number of temporary workers has increased dramatically in the past 3 decades; the richest 2,500 people on earth possess as much wealth as do the poorest 2.5 billion; 1% of the US population owns 40% of the nation’s wealth, real wages have declines precipitously since the 1970s.
This leads to a workforce that is increasingly non-unionized, hold temporary jobs, receive low wages, and are at risk of experiencing under/un-employment. While the other end of the spectrum exists a much smaller elite class of white collar “knowledge workers” with higher pay, higher education levels, higher social status, greater career mobility options, and safer jobs.
Furthermore, we have greater pollution levels,, social instability, social conflict, and pressures on the state to take up the slack for people who have been downsized and have no childcare or healthcare.
The State has been offering billions of dollars in subsidies to corporations in hopes of keeping them within national borders and therefore has fewer funds to pay out to citizens/consumers/workers in social benefits.
As the ideology of economic growth at all costs becomes a dominant theme, there is less political will or sympathy for downsized workers.
According to Schnaiberg and Gould, the modern treadmill of production really grew in scope beginning in the post-WWII era—good economic times. But as economic globalization intensified, the industrial and governmental belts began to tighten. As early as the 1960s, the US treadmill had already begun to undergo significant changes from its post-1945 structure.
As global economic competition increased, industry felt the need to cut costs in order to remain solvent and/or to continue offering high rates of return to investors and shareholders.
They did this by weakening the labor movement, reducing workers’ wages, and downsizing many positions in firms. These actions, combined with the movement of companies to lower-cost regions of the country or to other nations, created massive unemployment in urban areas and a national crisis in the form of chronic economic downturns.
Before and during this time, there was also an exponential increase in the use of chamicals and toxins in industrial production, with a weak or non-existent environmental regulatory system—producing urban and rural wastelands across the world.
So many in urban areas now have extensive unemployment, hundreds of square miles of abandoned factories, and toxic hotspots. Ecological disruption and social disruption exist side-by-side and go hand-in-hand. These dynamics form the essence of the treadmill of production. The treadmill of production produces and reinforces social and economic inequalities,-- locally, nationally, globally.
References
Goulder, Kenneth A. and Tammy L. Lewis (2009) “Twenty Lessons in Environmental Sociology.” Oxford University Press: NY.
Schnailberg, Allan and Kenneth Gould (2000) “Environment and Society: The Enduring Conflict.” Blackburn Press: Caldwell, NJ.
