Partisan electoral debate leads me to articulate more deeply the very direct analogy I see between Gaian water flow and “Gaian economics.” Only a fraction of the water that is solar distilled from the salty sea makes it to land. Most of it falls back into the sea. Fresh water is a precious gift to the land. Life husbands that gift by slowing the runoff, keeping fresh water high in the drainage as long as possible where it can be recycled as dew and rain more easily over and over again.
A wise economy should do the same with money flow. Money is a tool that helps people prioritize their dreams and organize to achieve them—helping them work together to build something greater than individuals could achieve on their own. Money, like water, can cycle and eddy around and around. It doesn’t matter to a plant whether the water it transpires just fell from the sea or has been transpired by ten other plants and re-rained since it came from the sea, and it doesn’t matter whether a dollar bill is brand new or old and wrinkled to softness. Money, like water, has a tendency to converge as it flows. Life has evolved ways to slow water’s convergence and recycle the moisture back onto the headwaters. I think of government as an invention of people that can create a similar slowing and recycling with money.
Liberals are right in opposing current governmental policies that concentrate the flow of money onto the wealthy. Conservatives are likewise right in opposing governmental policies where taxes, like pavement and storm drains, take money out of the local economy and lead it far downstream (Washington) so that less is left to recycle locally. The fields suggest that the ideal solution is to recycle the money flow just as it begins to concentrate and spread it back up on the slopes. It’s confusing because money flows in two ways. The goal is not to slow the movement of money. We want money to go quickly around and around within a local economy. What we want to slow down is the rate at which the flowing money converges downslope. We want to slow that rate down so that inflow becomes greater than outflow and the water table rises throughout all local economies.
Here is another water image that might help. If you wanted to have lots of water, far more than anyone else, then you could pave the area upslope so that all the runoff flows to you. Not only does that give you lots of water, it also depletes the water available to others which makes you, by comparison, even waterier. On the other hand, if your desire is for there to be more water on an absolute scale within the entire system (which creates more water for you also), then the best thing is to increase the capability of the slopes above to absorb the rain and bring forth more life to transpire and recycle the water more often.
It is a fascinating dance between convergence and recycling. A culture wants some convergence. The water should not flow evenly over every square inch. It is constructive to have economic feedback of diminished flows to horrible behavior and increased flows converging upon exemplary behavior. When we speak of water like this, we need to look beyond the amount of water one has to the vastness of the network that the water sustains. Similarly, a culture needs to look beyond the amount of money it has to the nature of the network it sustains.
Thinking about how government can help recycle money flow led me to think of the ways that teachers act like governmental “springs” with the money emerging as a salary within the local economy. Such money is distributed somewhat uniformly (every twenty kids or so) with little directive on how the money should be spent so it is free to move in a way shaped by the local economy. However, the funding of a teacher’s work additionally enhances both the local and national economy by increasing the education level of that local economy.
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