The Dragon Economy
And the Futility of Moral Appeals

People are kept working in dragon economies, and as the underlying idleness of the economy rises, they progressively shift from making and selling useful tools to making and selling luxuries and amusements. Either way, they are kept working.

Rising idleness translates into rising productivity. If one luxury can be made in a day in a low idleness economy, then in a high idleness economy ten or one hundred such luxuries can be made in a day. And in a dragon economy, where everyone is kept working, rather than one luxury being made in 100th of a day, 100 luxuries are made. The result is that ever larger quantities of goods are produced. And since ever larger quantities of goods are produced, ever larger quantities of raw materials are consumed in their production. And since the production of such goods entails physical work (not necessarily by humans) more and more energy is expended in the production of goods. And since most physical work is performed by burning carbon fuels - wood, coal, oil, etc. -, the result is increasingly large rates of release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. And since all goods have a lifetime after which they become broken or damged or otherwise useless, the rising production of goods results in a rising quantitiy of waste material that need to be disposed of.

One projected result of rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is global warming. The theory is that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere traps solar energy in the atmosphere, raising global temperatures, melting glaciers and ice caps, raising sea levels, increasing desertification, and changing climatic behaviour. These outcomes are potentially disastrous. But such projected future scenarios have been produced by climate scientists, in a new science, barely 50 years old, using computer simulation models of uncertain accuracy. They may be being unnecessarily alarmist. However, at the time of writing, the growing public perception is that theoretically predicted global warming is a fact rather than a theory.

The result is a call to reduce carbon emissions. People are asked to change their behaviour. To stop taking holidays on jet aircraft. To walk or ride bicycles rather than drive cars. And to engage in other 'environmentally friendly' behaviour. No calls, however, are made for people to work less. The threat of global warming is regarded as a political or moral problem, which can be solved by individual people choosing to behave in different ways.

But underlying this is the supposition that economic behaviour is driven by individual human choice, and that humans can choose to reduce their carbon emissions. Such a view of economic activity is built upon deeply held beliefs that ours are 'free' societies, living a 'chosen way of life', and that accordingly we can choose to live some other less carbon-intensive way of life, and all that is needed is to change human morality. These are suppositions about the nature of human societies which are fully embedded in contemporary economic neoclassical theories, which begin with an assumption of an existing human leisure (and consequently freedom), and proceed to reason from there. The same suppositions are to be found in books like Milton Friedman's Free To Choose and the like.

However, if economies are dragon economies which are forcing people to make increasing amounts of goods of one sort or other, regardless of whether they want to or not, then it is not actually human choice which determines the behaviour of the economy. If we are generating too much carbon dioxide, it is because we are all working too hard. In a dragon economy, people are helplessly enmeshed in a system which is forcing them to work. If global warming really is a problem, then changes in individual human behaviour - e.g. not going on cheap holiday flights - is only going to have a minute effect on carbon emissions. If global warming is a real problem, then the root cause of it is not individual human choice, but a choiceless dragon economy which chews through more and more resources, and spews out more and more waste. If global warming is a real problem, then the dragon economy which keeps people working needs to be shut down. And to do this entails understanding the nature of dragon economies, and then using very carefully considered economic measures to shut them down. Such measures will almost certainly not entail moral appeals to supposedly free individuals, or changes in their behaviour.

The difference between the two approaches might be made clearer by pointing out the fundamental differences between them. The conventional wisdom is that humans are free agents, and human society and human economic systems have been freely created by humans, and consequently that they are free to change them at will, and it is through moral enlightment that change comes. Idle Theory's view is that humans are deeply unfree, and at best part-time free agents, and for much of their time they are engaged in necessary and inescapable and choiceless work within societies and economic systems which have an internal logic which is entirely indifferent to human aspirations or wishes. It isn't human choice that changes economic conditions, but economic conditions which determine human choice.

In the conventional wisdom, humans are regarded as being free agents. It follows from this that their behaviour can be changed by moral argument or entreaty. In Idle Theory, humans are regarded as being almost completely unfree, and it follows that no amount of moral injunctions will change their behaviour.

One example of the difference in approach is that it is widely conventionally believed that the institution of slavery was ended because humans gradually became morally enlightened enough to see the evil of slavery, and to consequently ban the practice. Inherent in this view is a notion that morally enlightened modern humans are 'better people' than ancient Romans or Greeks. In this view, we don't have slaves because we choose not to have them, while barbaric and immoral Romans and Greeks did choose to have them. From the point of view of Idle Theory, however, the institution of slavery died out because rising human idleness rendered slavery increasingly unnecessary and impractical, and the ending of the institution of slavery was a consequence of underlying economic changes, and not the result of changing morality. If anything, human morality changed because economic circumstances changed. And from the point of view of Idle Theory, should economic circumstances decline substantially, and idleness fall, the institution of slavery will reappear, regardless of prevailing morality.

Much the same applies to our enslavement of animals to plough our fields and carry our goods. In one view, if animals have largely been liberated from such work, it is because of human moral progress. From Idle Theory's point of view, animals were liberated because it became cheaper and more efficient to use coal or petrol powered machines, and changing attitudes to animals were a consequence of this, not a cause.

Returning to global warming, if it really is a problem, then it is not a moral problem, but a structural problem with our economic systems that keep more or less everyone busy working and generating wastes, including carbon dioxide. We will not get anywhere by moral appeals and crusades. We will only get anywhere when we understand the nature and behaviour of our economic systems, and use that understanding to make changes which reduce the rate at which people work, and consequently the rate at which they consume resources and generate wastes.

If global warming is a consequence of human hyperactivity within dragon economies, then so also is the resource depletion that accompanies it. If humans are chewing through reserves of coal and oil, hacking down entire forests, hunting whales and fishes to extinction, clubbing fur seals to death, this another consequence of a hyperactive dragon economy which keeps everybody busy. Such resource depletion will only end when dragon economies are shut down. It will not end by making moral appeals to largely helpless and unfree humans to stop wearing fur coats, or buying mahogany furniture.