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Humanity’s Conflicting Value Systems: Circumstantial and Arbitrary Value

©Icarus Phaethon 2004

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Humanity’s Conflicting Value Systems: Circumstantial and Arbitrary Value

The Zeitgeist is flooded with theories and ideas for explaining and solving the

social and economic problems that face the global community. Globalisation of trade

and markets, the resulting rapid destruction of the environment and the increasing

power of international corporate policy over national government regulation have

brought issues of conflicting value to the forefront of social conscience the world

over. This is reflected in the glut of popular non-fiction titles dealing with a complex

mass of interrelated issues.

Noam Chomsky attacks neoliberal policies in Profit Over People1; Nobel-prize

winning economist Joseph Stiglitz highlights the destructive effects of IMF and World

Bank decisions in Globalisation and its Discontents2; Joan Smith documents how to

end the abuse of money and power in Moralities3; Amy Chua explains how exporting

free market democracy breeds ethnic hatred and global instability in World on Fire4;

John Ralston Saul argues that the acceptance of corporatism causes a denial of our

identity as citizens in a democracy in The Unconscious Civilization5; environmentalist

David Suzuki admonishes us to re-evaluate our basic needs for an ecologically

sustainable future in The Sacred Balance6 and Erich Fromm postulates that we

should live in a ‘being’ mode of existence rather than the greedy, possessive ‘having’

mode that dominates society in To Have or to Be7.

Causally, it has been theorised that ‘economic behaviour…separat(ing) from

ethics and human values’8, could be the protagonist of these pandemic dilemmas

and that fundamental changes in the values and attitudes of man are necessary to

‘avoid major…global catastrophe’9. Is it possible for economic behaviour and human

values to coexist without conflict, or are these two spheres immiscible? Does any

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attempt to find a solution lie in a thorough understanding of how we assign value in

the context of our everyday motivations and actions, rather that what we value? In

other words should our focus be on value complexity as opposed to value pluralism?

The word value derives from the Latin word valere, which literally means to be

strong, be worth. In the context of this essay, the meaning of value is taken to be as

‘worth in usefulness or importance to the possessor’, a standard noun definition of

value found in most dictionaries. In other words it is the subjectively-attributed worth

of a thing: the ‘thing’ in question being either physical or metaphysical in nature. The

majority of philosophical definitions and debates on value have centred around the

object of value’s attention and not on the systematic evaluation of how value is

assigned by an agent. The number of papers submitted to the World Congress of

Philosophy in 1998 that dealt with value, highlight this bias towards value pluralism10.

Douglas Magendanz argues that value complexity can provide insight into the nature

of value and that this avenue has been largely ignored11. The complexity of how

value is assigned could be described as a method or a system. So, how do we

subjectively attribute worth to a thing? How do we value?

For example, if I am hungry and there is an apple tree nearby, I will pluck an

apple and eat it. I subjectively attribute the worth of the apple dependent on my

circumstances, which at that moment was simply a desire to satiate my hunger, due

to a physiological need. However, if I am hungry and pluck an apple then see a

poisonous snake nearby, I might throw the apple at the snake to ward it away

because I placed more worth on my personal safety than I did on my hunger. To the

tree itself, the apple does not have a subjectified existence, only functionalities

shaped by the process of natural selection. In such a case, the tree is the possessor

of the apple, the absolute worth (i.e. functionality) of which, in terms of the tree’s

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existence, is that of a seed-bearing, reproductive agent. So value or worth is strictly

dependent on the circumstance relevant to the agent that attributes worth. The

functionality of the valued object also changes, i.e. the apple is either an edible

object, a weapon or a reproductive agent dependent upon the context of the

valuation. This is the natural value system, which I will refer to as the Circumstantial

Value System. It is not a value system that is restricted to the human realm. For

example, instinctive motivators (or physiological requirements) such as the need for

survival, nourishment and reproduction exist in all living organisms. An organism

such as a soldier ant will protect the queen at all costs as it instinctively places a

worth on the survival of the queen to protect the colony12. A dusky leaf-monkey

places a worth on the leaves it desires as its diet consists of nothing else. If a

biologically mechanical act such as phototropism is a basic survival instruction for a

plant to gather light for photosynthesis, then we could rephrase this, by stating that

the plant places worth (biological survival instruction) on gathering light for

photosynthesis (phototropic response). Viewing circumstantial value in this way, one

could say that it is a natural system of placing worth according to circumstance: it is

a response of biological survival instruction reacting to internal (physiological) or

external (environmental) factors. In other words, it is a natural effect of environmental

cause.

At this stage it would be prudent to mention the term ‘mixed goods’. When

different evaluative standards are applied to objects, the term ‘mixed goods’ has

been used to describe them, albeit in a limited scope dependent on the nature of the

object13. However, subjective valuation does not distinguish the nature of an object.

Subjective valuation only responds to the functionality of the object within the context

of the circumstances of the object’s agent. In this regard, any and all objects are

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‘mixed goods’ as their subjectified functionality, as with the apple, can change

according to the agent’s circumstances.

In the natural world, trade is an activity which lacks premeditation. A leaf-

monkey will trade its faeces to nourish the root system of the tree whose leaves it

eats without a priori knowledge of the transaction. A soldier ant will trade its life in

protecting the queen, allowing her to breed more soldier ants. Trade in nature is not

consciously monitored and traded objects tend towards equilibrium within their

ecosystems; as much as natural equilibrium could be defined as a world prior to

man. Thus a specific tree does not produce poisonous leaves for the dusky leaf-

monkey but trades its leaves for nourishing its root with primate faeces, within that

particular ecosystem.

Early human trade was a conscious activity designed at exchanging

commodities of worth to each party and thus subject to motivation. The worth of the

commodities for each party were still assigned circumstantially. Bartering left the

circumstantial worth of the traded objects intact as the temporal distance between

subjective valuation and realisation of goods was minimised. However, at some point

in time, tokens or symbolic objects were chosen to represent the worth of traded

objects. It is thought that the cowrie shells from the Shang Dynasty of 1200 BC and

from ancient Africa were the first tokens used to trade for the circumstantially-valued

objects. The use of the cowrie as an exchange token was initiated by an indigenous

religious belief of the Dogon of west Africa. Because the cowrie had such an

important spiritual meaning for the Dogon, they traded their goods over vast

distances in exchange for cowries. To the Dogon the cowrie symbolised one of the

four elements of life: water. They were in effect valuing cowries circumstantially for

religious purposes14. Over time this religious meaning of the cowrie was lost but it is

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possibly the first appearance of what is now known as fiat money, i.e. legal tender.

The number of cowrie shells chosen to represent the worth of an object was an

entirely arbitrary decision. For example, up until the 18th century a cow was worth

2,500 shells, a goat was 500 shells and a chicken just 25 shells15. The cowrie was

also used extensively in the African slave trade. This way of measuring worth was

not dependent upon direct circumstance and the subjective valuation process was

separated from the valued objects, with the arbitrary value of token quantity as the

intermediary. For example, a man ten days’ travelling time from other trading

partners could be suffering from hunger and dehydration because all the fish had

died in his salinated lake, but his savings of two hundred cowrie shells would be

useless given his circumstances. The cowrie shells only had worth as an object of

exchange within the context of this arbitrary system. Also, this arbitrary system of

assigning a cardinal number as representative of value paid no heed to cultural

differences. For example, in India the worth of a cow is invaluable within the context

of the dominant religion, Hinduism, so assigning a cardinal number as the value of a

cow means nothing to the majority of the population. This synthetic system, which

operates on a plane of existence entirely dependent upon mankind’s imagination and

complicity, is what I will refer to as the Arbitrary Value System. It is arbitrary because

of the use of a cardinal number to represent worth, which bears no relation to the

actions of an agent subjectively attributing worth circumstantially. It also reduces the

number of agents to one (man) and simplifies the functionality to a single use. In the

example of the apple, the tree is also an agent relative to the reproductive value of

the seeds contained in the apple. For example, let us say that the value of an apple

is ‘five’. Firstly, the value judgement reduces the number of agents to one, man,

because only man understands what ‘five’ is in the context of the system. Other

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agents’ needs for the object are ignored completely. Secondly, it simplifies the

functionality because the cardinal number ‘five’ was attributed in reference to the

edible function of the apple, which in the context of exchange is its fixed use. Thirdly,

the cardinal value of the apple can increase or decrease as a function of the

complexities of the arbitrary system, meaning an apple can have varying cardinal

value dependent upon, for example, geographical location and cultural context.

The cowrie shell has been used as fiat money for over two thousand years

and in effect, as an arbitrary value system, it is no different from the coin, paper or

electronic money more commonly used in today’s societies. The arbitrary value

system of money is what is known as a form of collective intentionality. As John R.

Searle puts it, this is where ‘humans…impose functions on phenomena where the

function cannot be achieved solely in virtue of physics and chemistry but requires

continued human cooperation.’16 It can be said that this is a radical departure from

circumstantial value, as there is no collective intentionality in assigning circumstantial

worth. The value of an apple relative to its agent is solely achieved in virtue of

physics and chemistry.

With the collective intentionality of an arbitrary value system, power can be

derived and distributed by hoarding this synthetic system. The creation of an

arbitrary value system changed the natural flow dynamic of accessing the things that

had worth subjectively assigned to them. Before the arbitrary value system, a hunger

pang would lead to placing worth on food and then directly accessing food by killing

prey or plucking fruit. Once the arbitrary value system became more commonplace,

with the introduction of paper currency, trade ceased to be the exchange of

equilibrium it had been since time immemorial. Instead of initially placing worth

circumstantially on the object desired, societies that adopted arbitrary value started

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to circumstantially assign worth to the arbitrary value system itself. The arbitrary

value system became the desired and needed thing in human society. It is an ironic

twist of fate that humans started to assign circumstantial value itself to the arbitrary

value system. The objects that were desired to be obtained, could only then be

obtained, i.e. that’s when worth was assigned to the objects. But the worth was

entirely dependent upon the arbitrary value and how much was available. The

circumstantial value system became a slave to the arbitrary value system – it was

totally dependent upon it. In other words money had power over worth. A man-made

system had power over how humans assigned value, which up until that moment

had been entirely dependent upon circumstance. The arbitrary value system also

forced the notion of a singular agent: man. As collective intentionality is a human

quality, and the superimposition of a cardinal number as representative of the value

of an object is only understood by humankind, the multiple agents of the

circumstantial value system and their direct attributions of worth are superseded by

humanity’s presence.

It would seem that no critique was applied or has since been applied to the

fact that worth is dependent upon circumstance, and so how can worth have an

arbitrary cardinal number attached as it measure? This critical flaw has concentrated

humanity’s collective intentionality towards individual accumulation of fiat money in

order to survive.

In 1993, President Clinton acknowledged that environmental values needed to

be incorporated into economic and political decision-making. It was recognised that

social accounting reforms should embody the concept of natural capital, whereby

economics would finally factor in Earth’s finite resources. One of the processes for

this is the monetisation (assignment of dollar values) of natural resource and

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environmental quantities. However, it was seen that ‘in numerous cases, there

remains widespread disagreement, even among scholars…about the feasibility and

desirability of imposing market-like valuation to environmental assets and

processes’17.

There is inconsistency in placing a finite, numerical amount on anything. In

the circumstantial value system no ‘thing’ is worth more than any other ‘thing’, only

the subjectified usefulness of the ‘thing’ in question is judged relative to the

circumstances of the agent. The definition of value hinges on the possessor or

agent’s relationship with the object. What arbitrary value does is define the value of

the object as a cardinal number. The agent’s function then changes from that of an

active valuing possessor having a relationship with the object, to that of a passive

comparing unpossessor. Effectively, there is no more relationship between the agent

and the object, which, prior to the arbitrary value system, was the very essence of

value. In the circumstantial value system nothing is measured as a finite, numerical

amount because this has no meaning in the context of how an agent in that system

attributes worth.

If we are to presume that the natural world’s functional base is that of a

circumstantial value system and that mankind, through collective intentionality, has

superimposed an arbitrary value system upon it, then what are the consequential

dynamics of these conflicting value systems? How do these systems interact with

our motivations and actions?

In order to attempt to answer that question, it is necessary to view value as a

motivation amongst other temporally-located motivations: it cannot stand alone as a

means and an end in itself. To make a value judgement we must be motivated to do

so and it would be expected that this in effect would have other motivational

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consequences and indeed precedents. In terms of the circumstantial value

discussed, an agent’s motivation to value is a need to obtain the physical or

metaphysical thing of subjectively-attributed worth that has value according to the

agent’s circumstance. A practical schema that could encapsulate this motivation to

value and show its relationship to other motivators could be sequentially applied over

any temporal continuum. We are not concerned with the psychological complexity of

motivation with regards to agents’ emotional states, but rather a broad-based

appraisal of what the sequential motivators are in relation to an agents’ action:

cognitive or physical. A schema of this nature would also permit overlapping with

multiple identical schemas on different timeframes (different temporal continua).

So we can make the presumption that to make a value judgement an agent

must have a motivation to value. What was the antecedent motivation? We have

stated that it is because there is a need to obtain the physical or metaphysical thing

of subjectively-attributed worth. Therefore the antecedent motivation must be a

motivation to obtain. And what is the succeeding motivation? In other words, if we

are motivated to value, how do we obtain what we value? We must work for what we

value. The motivation to work succeeds the motivation to value. By ‘work’ this is not

just defined as vocation or a physical act, but also as an act of cognition. The need

to obtain what we value determines the need to work for what we value. How does

an agent ‘work’ in this context? For example, an agent is in the process of ‘valuing’

the worth of an apple due to a physiological need. The agent needs to obtain the

apple from the tree. This is achieved by ‘working’ to obtain the apple. Let us say that

from here on there are two scenarios for the agent to account for in their desire to

obtain the apple. In the first scenario, S1, the apple is within reaching distance of the

agent and there are no mitigating factors preventing the agent from immediately

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obtaining the apple. In the second scenario, S2, the apple is not within reaching

distance and the agent is faced with making a decision as to how they will retrieve

the apple to satisfy their needs. We postulate that the agent in S2 has a choice of

two methods to retrieve the apple: x and y. Although in reality, the agent could have

no theoretical limit on the choices available.

The agent in both S1 and S2 has a motivation to work. In order to ‘work’, the

agent employs cognition: they imagine, they create. In S1 it appears as though the

agent has a single choice: to reach up and obtain the apple. However, the agent

does have another choice: to not reach up and obtain the apple. The utility of this

‘choice’ will become clearer as we work through the motivations. The agent in S2 is

also in the same motivational position, in that they engage in cognitive processes to

devise methods of retrieving the apple. I have denoted this cognitive goal-desire as

the motivation to create. The agent is thinking, imagining and creating at this stage.

Both agents in S1 and S2 are creating hypotheses to solve the ‘problem’ of retrieving

the apple. S1’s predicament is obviously not a difficult ‘problem’ to solve. S2 at this

stage hypothesises methods x and y to retrieve the apple. So, both agents have a

motivation to hypothesise. The agent in S1 has a simple evaluation of their

hypotheses: they evaluate a hypothesis to reach up and retrieve the apple as

opposed to a hypothesis not to retrieve the apple. The agent in S2 evaluates

hypotheses x and y. This is where the motivation to evaluate is the goal in both

scenarios.

Evaluating hypotheses involves competing one hypothesis against another. In

S2 the agent can cognitively or physically compete x against y. It would appear that

there is no competition to evaluate in S1, but as there is a hidden hypothesis to ‘not’

retrieve the apple, the agent will not necessarily be aware that they are competing

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hypotheses, when in fact they are. This is the motivation to compete. Competing is

normally an energy-intensive exercise, whether cognitive or physical: the aim

ultimately being to succeed or win. This motivation to succeed is a function of the

singular ego-desire, which stands in contrast to the motivation to compete, which

involves dualistic (or multiplistic) comparison as in the case of hypotheses x and y in

S2.

So, the agent in S2 has evaluated their hypotheses by competing x against y,

during which one hypothesis was determined to be successful. This desire to

succeed was itself motivated by ego-demands. There is thus a motivation to satisfy

ego. These ego-demands in turn materialise because of the desire for happiness.

We want to satisfy our egos in order to pursue happiness and so, the motivation to

be happy is the next sequential motivator. If we ask the question as to why any agent

pursues happiness, we must conclude that it is a survival mechanism, as being

motivated to malcontentedness would undoubtedly negate survival. So the goal of

happiness, at this stage, drives the motivation to survive. We desire happiness

(motivation to be happy) because we want to live (motivation to survive), but we also

want to survive because we desire love and happiness. The motivation to survive in

effect ‘bookends’ two sequentially separated goal-desires for the pursuit of

happiness. This is the point at which this sequential schema of motivations comes

full circle, because for an agent to achieve their subjective ideals of happiness they

are motivated to obtain what they value according to their circumstances. The

motivation to be happy leads us back to the antecedent of the motivation to value,

namely the motivation to obtain. It must be emphasised that happiness is a relative

and subjective term. It is the satiation of desire and indeed the motivation to be

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happy, could just as equally be defined in the schema as the motivation to satiate

motivation.

I will refer to this flow of motivators as the Schema of Subconscious

Motivators. We are not necessarily conscious of the things that motivate each of us

unless we specifically question why we do things. If we are to imagine any activity

engaged in, either physical or cognitive (or both) and sequentially order the

motivators, we end up with a schema closely resembling, if not identical to the

Schema of Subconscious Motivators. Each motivation is arrived at by querying the

previous motivator.

I regard these motivators as universal in two broad categories. Firstly, any

cognitive or physical process, or even a combination of the two, will flow sequentially

through all these motivators, regardless of temporal limits. Although, each motivation

has individual meaning, in the scope of this schema the motivations have relative

and universal meaning. The schema is applicable to an event as a universal whole,

yet is relatively bounded by antecedent and succeeding motivations. This relativity of

motivation forces the schema to be treated as a cyclical, universal whole, which I will

refer to as intrinsically universal.

Secondly, I perceive these as taxonomically non-specific motivators. As the

application of circumstantial value appears to be a universal function of organisms, it

would appear that these motivators could be generically applicable across taxa. In

this respect the schema is externally applicable to natural processes, which I will

refer to as extrinsically universal. Although in its current semantic form, it is viewed

as a schema applicable to human motivation. There would obviously need to be

empirical testing of this hypothesis. The schema is illustrated below.

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This schema flows down from the motivation to survive. The motivation to

survive is both a cause and an effect of itself and a cause and effect of the

motivation to be happy. The motivation to survive, the desire to live, is at the top of

the diagram because the schema has a logical flow from this dominant motivator.

The motivation to be happy appears twice in the cycle, but it is a cause and effect of

different motivators. It is a cause and effect of the motivation to survive, a cause of

the motivation to obtain and an effect of the motivation to satisfy ego. The schema is

therefore a flow of cause and effect motivators that have a temporal continuum. You

will see that one of the motivators is the motivation to value, in particular to place a

circumstantial value on the thing we want to obtain. This schema offers no

judgement on what makes one happy or what should be obtained or valued: these

are individual, subjective decisions.

Motivations, however, are not an end in themselves. They require action. If

motivators are the engines of subconscious purpose, then actions are the engines of

conscious purpose. Actions can be physical or cognitive, but they are purposeful and

conscious. Ludwig von Mises in his magnum opus Human Action says that ‘The

ultimate goal of human action is always the satisfaction of the acting man’s desire.’18

As motive is defined as the cause of action, then we can presume that each

motivation in the schema has a resulting action that is the same. Also, just as motive

is the cause of action, action is the effect of motive. Actions also have cause and

effect within their own flow cycle. For example, happiness would be an effect of

obtaining what one wants, therefore in a flow of actions, obtaining would logically

come before happiness.

The actions to create, hypothesise, evaluate, compete and succeed have the

same flow as their motivations. These are primarily cognitive actions although,

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depending on circumstance, they can have requisite physical reactions. To recap, a

food object has been valued circumstantially, but it is at the top of a tree. In order to

retrieve the food object, creative thought is required, which would result in

hypotheses (methods of retrieving the food). As the thought process continues, an

evaluation of the hypotheses is attempted by competing hypotheses against one

another. One hypothesis will ‘succeed’ in this thought process and the physical work

will then proceed to retrieve the food object according to this hypothesis.

So, our temporal flow of motivations and actions can be said to have some

important, consistent factors. We want to be happy to survive and in order to survive

we need to be happy. We attain this state by obtaining what we value according to

our circumstances. Although our species is co-operative, these basic desires are

individual in their nature. To quote Ludwig von Mises once more, ‘what makes a man

feel…is established by him from the standard of his own will and judgement, from his

personal and subjective valuation. Nobody is in a position to decree what should

make a fellow man happier.’19

Now that we have a schematic approach to how man’s motivations and

actions shape the things he or she does on a daily basis, we can see that value is a

crucial cog in man’s individual pursuits. We need to magnify this point once more: in

order to survive we need to be happy by obtaining what we value according to our

circumstances.

To put it simply, we do not have a natural motivation or action to value things

arbitrarily via cardinal numbers. Natural value is entirely based on individual,

personal, subjective, agent-specific circumstance. For mankind to live in a world

where everything has a price, which is an arbitrary value, is at odds with how man or

any other agent, values things naturally. It could be argued that even though the

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assignment of cardinal values is arbitrary, the assignment of ‘prices’ to all things is

not. However, prices are cardinal values and the arbitrariness of the system is

encapsulated by the lack of a relationship between these cardinal values and

subjective valuation. This point needs re-emphasis as it is easily missed, yet is the

crux of the conflict issue. The essence of subjective valuation is the subjective and

spacio-temporal relationship between the agent making the valuation and the

subject of the agent’s valuation. Man finds himself and herself in continuous conflict

with this natural, circumstantial method of valuation and the framework or arbitrary

valuation (the money-system) that modern life requires to survive. In order to be

successful within the context of an arbitrary value system, hoarding the arbitrary

value is deemed a necessity. In order to be successful within the context of a

circumstantial value system one only needs to obtain the naturally-valued object.

These two conflicting systems cause mankind continuous microsocial and

macrosocial ethical conflict. Being disempowered by the arbitrary value system

because of the budget constraint forces many individuals to make decisions they

would not otherwise make. For example, a microsocial conflict would arise if the

death of a loved one would force an agent into making a decision as to whether to

bury or cremate the remains. A belief system based on burial would engender the

agent to value that method based on circumstance and yet the conflicting budget

constraints of the arbitrary value system could make the agent choose cremation.

From a macrosocial point of view the arbitrary system places excessive power in the

hands of corporations, which are incapable of ethical decisions as these are at odds

with the corporations’ modus operandi: competitive self-interest. John Ralston Saul

magnifies this conflict when he states that the ethics of ‘the individuals who work for

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these corporations…will be more or less limited by other individuals for whom they in

turn work.’20

It becomes easy to see how hoarding becomes a requisite of this arbitrary

value system. This free-standing system of collective intentionality, which is

detached from the subjectively-valued objects, needs to be hoarded otherwise

survival is jeopardised. Arbitrary value places unnecessary complications upon the

acts required for one’s motivations.

In reality these problems with the arbitrary value system are continually being

assessed and counteracted by economic theory. The success of economic theory is,

however, continuously in doubt. As John Ralston Saul also points out, ‘economics as

a prescriptive science is actually a minor area of speculative investigation…

econometrics, the statistical, unthinking, lower form of economics, is passive

tinkering, less reliable and less useful than car mechanics.’ He goes on to point out

that, ‘economics has been spectacularly unsuccessful in its attempts to apply its

models and theories to the reality of our civilisation…it has failed.’21

Problems that the arbitrary value system create that are universal and social

familiarities are inflation, recession, poverty, excessive wealth, bankruptcy,

downsizing and unemployment, to name but a few.

The crux of the matter is that there will never be common ground between the

voice of humanity’s ethical conscience, evolved from a world of circumstantial value,

and the requirements of the collective intentionality of imagined arbitrary value. The

two are mutually exclusive phenomena. A corporation, for example, that lays off

10,000 workers because it cannot compete with a rival company in a cheaper market

can rationalise the decision economically, because arbitrary value is the system, but

ethically there is no justifiable reason for its actions. It is quite common these days

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for banks operating with annual billion-dollar profit margins to close branches and lay

off staff in order to increase the ‘value’ of shareholder’s stock. The lack of reaction to

such events is an indication of just how conditioned modern society is in accepting

economic rationalisation over ethical consideration, of arbitrary value over

circumstantial.

Erich Fromm, in his book ‘To Have or to Be’, in applying Freudian analysis

broadly to society’s perceived ills said that, ‘it would follow that the society in which

most of the members are hoarding characters is a sick society.’22

Do we live in a sick society? The main requirement of our ubiquitous value

system, the arbitrary value system of money, is that to survive one must hoard. We

must save, hoard money and obtain material things. This appears to be the tenet of

the influential Western socio-political mind-set. This is the ‘dream’ we are to pursue

to achieve ‘happiness’. Capitalism has resulted in consumerism on a massive scale

that is cyclical and self-perpetuating in nature. It has, however, been noted that if

every one on the planet achieved this ‘dream’ and were to consume at the rate of the

average citizen of the USA, that we would require five or six world’s worth of

resources to keep up. This is based on what is known as an ecological footprint. It is

a per person measure of the amount of biologically productive areas necessary to

continuously provide resource supplies and absorb wastes using prevailing

technology. America’s footprint in this sense is 10.3 hectares per person which

compares to the average global availability of land of 1.7 hectares per person23.

Thus it is obviously not currently feasible for every person on Earth to consume at

the same rate as an average American and this fact in itself is a fatal flaw in the

marketing and pursuit of the global consumer ‘dream’.

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Ludwig von Mises in his masterwork on capitalism and the market economy,

Human Action, states that ‘Profit…is an increase in acting man’s happiness’ and ‘it is

vain to speak of any calculation of values. Calculation is only possible with cardinal

numbers.’24 Yet arbitrary value, the money-system, does exactly that. It calculates

value by assigning a cardinal number. The higher the cardinal number, the greater

the value…the more the profit, supposedly the more the happiness. This is the

orthodox thinking within our modern societies. But profit does not increase

happiness. Happiness is achieved by obtaining the things we value according to our

circumstances. Profit is not valued according to our circumstances. It has only been

‘agreed’ as a function of collective intentionality that we require the hoarded arbitrary

value (profit) within the functional context of society in order to obtain the things we

actually do value.

The multitude of economic problems and social malaises alluded to in the

beginning of this paper have an equal multitude of solutions. The core issue, that of

how we as motivated, acting organisms assign natural, circumstantial value, but are

existing in a conflicting system of arbitrary value, is not seen to be one of the primary

causes of humanity’s difficulties. We are constantly trying to fix something that

cannot be fixed because the ethical aims of humanity and the arbitrary system those

aims exist in, are mutually exclusive.

Now we can see more clearly the mechanisms behind Erich Fromm’s

contention that in the eighteenth century ‘economic behaviour became separate from

ethics and human values.’ We have simply distanced ourselves from nature and in

doing so, we have distanced ourselves from a natural way of valuing. We cannot see

the wood for the trees, because the trees are making us money. But when all the

trees go, all of us will be poor in both senses of the word. The thing that is changing

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is our motivation to value depending on our circumstances. We have superimposed

this with a motivation to value arbitrarily. We are losing touch with the real value of

things and forcing ourselves into ethical conflict due to a budget constraint that is

entirely a fiction of our own collective intentionality. We either cannot or do not want

to see the real value of things because the arbitrary system forces us to value

something else. However, as an intelligent species, we should be able to use our

collective intentionality to develop a circumstantial value system to replace the

arbitrary value system. We imagined the arbitrary value system into existence and

we can also imagine a better system that compliments rather than conflicts with

circumstantial value.

Replacing the arbitrary value system is not a new idea25, but has generally

been frowned upon as an unrealistic utopian dream. To abrogate these utopian

conotations requires a truer understanding of the value mechanism underlying an

agent’s value-making process.

1 Profit Over People, Noam Chomsky. Seven Stories Press, 1999.

2 Globalisation and its Discontents, Joseph Stiglitz. WW Norton & Co, 2003.

3 Moralities, Joan Smith. Penguin, 2002.

4 World on Fire, Amy Chua. Doubleday, 2002.

5 The Unconscious Civilization, John Ralston Saul. Penguin, 1997.

6 The Sacred Balance, David Suzuki. Allen & Unwin, 1997.

7 To Have or to Be, Erich Fromm. Abacus, 1978.

8 To Have or to Be, Erich Fromm. Abacus, 1978, p.16.

9 Mankind at the Turning Point, Mihajlo Mesarovic and Eduard Pestel. E.P. Dutton, 1974.

10 Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy, Boston, 1998; http://www.bu.edu/wcp/MainValu.htm

11 Conflict and Complexity in Value Theory, Douglas Magendanz; The Journal of Value Inquiry 37,

2004, p.443.

12 The Ants, Edward O. Wilson. Springer Verlag, 1998.

22

13 Creating the Kingdom of Ends, Christine Korsgaard. Cambridge University Press, 1996, p.263.

14 The Gift of Cowrie, Latranai Gaibole. The Rising Firefly Magazine, 45, 2003.

15 Africa Counts: Number and Pattern in African Culture, Cladia Zaslavsky. Lawrence Hill Books,

1999.

16 The Construction of Social Reality, John R. Searle. Penguin, 1996, p.40.

17 Assigning Economic Value to Natural Resources, The National Academy of Sciences, 1994, 2000.

18 Human Action, Ludwig von Mises. Fox & Wilkes, 1963, p.14.

19 Human Action, Ludwig von Mises. Fox & Wilkes, 1963, p.14.

20 On Equilibrium, John Ralston Saul. Penguin, 2001, p.300.

21 The Unconscious Civilisation, John Ralston Saul. Penguin, 1997, p.4.

22 To Have or to Be, Erich Fromm. Abacus, 1978, p.87, 88.

23 Growth Fetish, Clive Hamilton. Allen & Unwin, 2003, p.184.

24 Human Action, Ludwig von Mises. Fox & Wilkes, 1963, p.97.

25 Fixing Capitalism: Toward the Next Step in the Evolution of Economics, Jonathan Carr. Xlibris,

2002.