“In his quest for
attaining well-being man has overlooked ecology. We are on such a turn of
history that today we can say that the moral we have derived from our study of
sciences, of arts, and of religion is that we should be fair with our ecology.
The question is not a single issue, it encompasses the pollution of water, of
air, in towns, in cities, everywhere, and drawbacks of using technology and
most importantly the phenomenon of global warming has put ourselves at a place
from where there is possibly no way back, as far as we can see today. We are in
a dire need to develop a consciousness that can take ecology in its purview to
reap maximum benefit in the long-run coming generations. We need environment
optimum scales of production, a size conducive to ecological well-being. The
whole production pattern and distancing between should be eco-friendly. This
will not only help us in preserving our environment but will also help in
spreading the fruits of development everywhere. Production should be according
to the size of local along with global needs of prosperity and development,
often and appropriately described as optimal-one.
The idea of an
egalitarian society, society that is based on some sort of equality ranging
from economic, social, political, religious, and/or cultural, has been central
to the notion of Social-Justice. The word egal is French in its origin and
means equal. The term social justice and its modern concept were first used by
a Jesuit, Luigi Taparelli in 1840. The egalitarian approach postulates that,
fundamentally, all human-beings are same, and, therefore, an institution or
society should be based on the principle of equality and unity, that values and
support human-rights to maintain a level of dignity, for all. Antonio Rosmini
Serbati, John A. Ryan, John Rawls, and John Stuart Mill further refined and expanded
the term. John Stuart Mill has discussed the connection between justice and
utility. He said that the most powerful obstacle of the doctrine of happiness
or utility has been the criterion of right and wrong, and it is drawn from the
idea of justice. These strong sentiments, with their easy concepts, and the
frequency with which they are recalled and considered has made writers and
thinkers to pin-point the inherent quality of things to explain that justice is
something absolutely different from other measures in its scheme. The concepts
of human rights and equality form the core of the design of social-justice and
economic-egalitarianism, income redistribution, even property redistribution,
by progressive taxation forms the core of the core. Equality of opportunity,
one of the basic human-rights, in any society has been the main objective of
economic-egalitarianism as propounded by developmental economists. More
recently, Paul Krugman in his paper Increasing Returns and Economic Geography
(year) explains a simple model to show that how a country can develop an
“industrialized core” and an “agricultural periphery”. Krugman says, in order
to realize economies of scale and to minimize transportation cost,
manufacturing firms prefer to locate in regions with higher demand; however,
the demand-location depends on manufacturing distribution. Appearance of the
peripheral and core industries depend on economies of scale, transport-costs,
and the share of manufacturing in national income. The early period of the British
school dates back to the English Classical economists, who believed in
decreasing returns to agriculture: a cornerstone on which Ricardo founded his
theory of income distribution. For Ricardo, explaining the income distribution
is the main objective of economics and because of decreasing returns to scale
in agriculture, the income distribution would move in favor of landlords,
population would increase and will keep the wage at a subsistence level; the
capitalists would be squeezed, and landlords will reap a rising land rent and
will live forever in leisure at the expense of the others. Ricardo’s theory is
primitive, but in an odd way it is complete.
Economic egalitarianism
applies in both cases, in case of nations and in case of its citizens, too,
means nation vs. nation and man vs. man. Decentralization of production and
manufacturing from few developed regions of the WORLD at a time, when technology
is almost stagnant, would reduce inequalities of income and wealth. Paul
Krugman’s assumption of industrial-core and agricultural-periphery can not be
generalized to a major part of the world, it is not evident, and is only
partially true. Moreover, assuming industrialization at core and agriculture at
periphery is also far away from reality and is good for word games, alone. We
know, while deciding for interest rate inflation is a major concern before the
central-banks, and, high inflation rates can not be ignored and high
unemployment is not acceptable. Therefore, reconciling Ricardo’s diminishing
returns in agriculture and Krugman’s increasing returns in industry, the idea
is, that, if agriculture is backbone/heart of an economy then industry is its
heart/backbone of the body and the body can not function properly with
imbalances and they would always increase uncertainty for growth and
development. Balanced-growth of/for, both, agriculture and industry is
advisable.
Equality of opportunity
as suggested by economic egalitarianism is true for both individuals and
nations. In case of individuals equality of opportunity is not difficult to
understand, nevertheless, to clear the point, for individual equality of
opportunity means “equal opportunity to grow and develop” and if we generalize
the argument it is true for nations, as well, equal opportunity to grow and
develop. Production concentrated to a few developed regions is not likely to
solve our problems of poverty and unemployment, but, the spread of production
function gives nations an equal opportunity to grow and develop in order to
address the problems of poverty and unemployment. Shift in production-functions
mainly imply the shift of technology from developed to under-developed or
developing regions; the capital-labour ratio employed by a certain technology.
And, the ratio of cost of labour and capital at a time when we are experiencing
bottle-necks, a kind of stationary-state or lack of innovation, in case of
technology, we can reduce the long-run cost of production by cutting and moving
production from the developed to under-developed countries/regions, because
labour is cheap in the under-developed world. The idea is to set-up
environment-optimum scales of production, more manageable sizes of manufacturing-firm
from the point-of-view of environment, is the core of sustainable development.
The problem of diminishing returns in agriculture, as put by Ricardo, can also
be solved by a just distribution of production over the globe that would spread
technology, boost employment and national incomes, and would reduce the
exploitation of environment. Equitable distribution of income/wealth depends
upon equitable distribution of jobs and production-functions, and, as Ricardo
said that the centralization of production in few developed regions would
deteriorate the terms of trade with economies based on agriculture. But
maintaining a just distribution of production is crucial to maintain a just
terms of trade between two countries. We live in a “DEMOCRATIC-WORLD” and we
all should have equal chances/opportunity to grow and develop. What it suggests
is minimum exploitation of all, by all, and for all. Means we need a democratic
kind of thinking here, too.
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