Guest Editorial: James Becket
Keep on truckin’ NOT!
Our market or capitalist economic system does not take into account social cost of production. An entrepreneur delivering gravel to a construction site calculates the cost of land, machinery, labor, transport, trucks, fuel, etc. and adds some profit to the delivery sales price. The demise of a small town is not taken into account, the destruction of the quality of life of a blessed village.
He does not calculate the decline in real estate values, that is the financial equity of townspeople he doesn’t know or care about, he does not calculate poisoning the air with its resulting ill health and medical bills, nor the loss of the tourist trade essential to local merchants, nor increased road accidents, nor the traffic jams resulting in longer commute times, greater consumption of fuel, deterioration of roads, their repair borne by the taxpayers. Some of these costs can be calculated, some can be estimated, but there are others like frayed nerves, noise pollution, noxious air that are ignored in a conventional economic calculus employed by our triumphant market system. This economic system that takes our pristine beaches, our majestic mountains and valleys and turns them into overbuilt vulgarized destinations where its beauty, the original reason for going, has been destroyed. Alas.
If it is the case that an alternate route exists that would not destroy this small town, but would add forty-five minutes for each trip, then surely that added cost could be calculated. And just as surely it would be less, much less than the cost to Ojai of becoming one more noisy diesel-fumed dangerous truck route.
There is a growing consciousness about the damage our economic system is wreaking on the environment by a misallocation of true costs. Our system and our values are based on money and accumulation, wants rather than needs, yet ironically we fail to calculate the true monetary cost of a project such as the gravel delivery project to show it’s insane, notably when there are sane alternatives. Not to mention the human cost.
What can be done? What remedies are open in this system? Do courts offer a possibility or will we like French farmers have our tractors block the roads to make it uneconomic to destroy a way of life for the residents of Ojai?
Ojai resident James Becket is a writer and director.
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Comments (3)
Excellent diagnosis of our warped system of money accounting which ignores human and nature values. The Bible made a good point: you can't serve God and mammon. Thanks.
Comment #1 Posted by: Dennis Leary | June 25, 2007 10:44 AM
This issue represents how
grass roots people can effect their quality of life being pulled out by these huge operations. For a close look at how to respond effectively to prevent what is happening largely everywhere now, take a look at "Two Square Miles" about a small town in upstate New York taking it back
Comment #2 Posted by: pete lafollette | June 25, 2007 12:37 PM
No man is an island, no village a refuge from rapacious growth. This is just one more example of how our society, our economic system, our planet is reaching a breaking point. How can we make Ojai a leader in green action, that is the challenge and the necessity.
Comment #3 Posted by: Jim Whitney | June 30, 2007 01:54 PM