money and machines - corwin · money and machines—— 59 notes, certain forms of economic growth,...

CHAPTER 3

Money and Machines

We are becoming the servants in thought, as in action, of the machine we have created to serve us.

—John Kenneth Galbraith, 1958

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58——THE MATERIAL

An ordinary day, nothing special. You getup, glare at the clock, flick on the radiofor a weather forecast. A fatuously

excited announcer is exclaiming about the fabu-lous once-in-a-lifetime sale this weekend atLoony Lucy’s, a local computer discount store.Hit the switch. Maybe the weather channel oncable would be better. Where’s the remote? Thescreen comes to life just as the forecaster finisheswith the segment on world weather, and the pic-ture fades to a shot of a lush tropical beach,empty except for a lone sun umbrella embla-zoned with a commercial logo you don’t recog-nize. “Have you ever . . . ?” the voice-over begins.Who cares? Click. You look out the window togauge for yourself if it’s going to rain today, andyou notice the company van from your neigh-bor’s carpet cleaning business in her driveway.Her car must still be in the shop. “Our machinesmean clean,” the van’s side panel promises. Jeansare fine for today, you decide. You reach for theunfolded pair from the pile of clean clothes youhaven’t put away yet. “Levi’s” reads the label onthe right rear pocket. (Nice jeans.) Four adsalready, and you haven’t even made it out of thebedroom.

The previous chapter described how thematerialism of modern life is propelled by social-psychological desires for status and social con-nection. But these desires are not fixed, and theycan be manifested in many different ways. Theorganization of social life shapes the desires weexperience in daily living and their manifesta-tions. This chapter explores the economic andtechnologic basis of social organization and how,through interaction with culture and social-psychology, economic and technologic factorshelp create the material motivations of modernlife.

The inescapable presence of advertising, evenin our bedrooms, is an obvious example of howtechnology and economics shape our motiva-tions. Yet there is a need here for dialogical cau-tion. Economics and technology are oftenconstrued as imperatives. As Stephen Hill haswritten, “The experience of technology is the

experience of apparent inevitability,” a statementthat applies equally well to the experience of theeconomy.1 With both, their materiality gives usthe feeling that there is little we can do aboutthem. Contrary to that material experience, aconstant theme of this chapter is that technologyand the economy are not imperatives. We dohave control over them, even as they have controlover us. We can resist their influence and fre-quently do. We can resist the economics andtechnologies of advertising.2 We can switch offthe radio and the TV. We can lobby for socialcontrols on the amount and form of advertisingon them. We can buy something else, or evennothing at all. But simply by being present assomething to resist or to succumb to, ads—andtechnology and the economy more generally—nevertheless unavoidably shape the conditions inwhich we form our desires and motivations.

The shaping of motivation by economics andtechnology is of particular importance in under-standing why we consume so much more thanwe need. The current arrangement of the econ-omy and the current use to which we put ourtechnologies tend to encourage not only con-sumption but growth in consumption and thusin the economy. Economic growth, as many haveobserved, has become the most widely consid-ered thermometer of economic health and eventhe social and political health of nations. AsDavid Korten has written, “Perhaps no singleidea is more deeply embedded in modern politi-cal culture than the belief that economic growthis the key to meeting most important humanneeds.”3 A rise or fall in economic growth isalways headline news, and politicians constantlygear their efforts toward encouraging growth—in part because growth serves many powerfuleconomic and technologic interests, but also inpart because growth has become a central cul-tural value. Economic growth is a dialogical mat-ter of both material interests and cultural ideals.

It is important to recognize that economicgrowth (and consumption too, for that matter)does not in itself lead to environmental damage.As the environmental economist Michael Jacobs


Money and Machines——59

notes, certain forms of economic growth, such asinvestment in companies that promote the use ofgreen technologies, may in fact be beneficial tothe environment.4 However, the structure of eco-nomic interests does tend to overwhelm effortsto direct economic growth in ways that do notdamage the environment. The pressure for eco-nomic growth tends to shift environmentalconsiderations off our collective and individualagendas. Economic growth can take such a holdover our lives that issues of sustainability, envi-ronmental justice, and the rights and beauty ofhabitat fade from concern. As well, economicand technologic conditions may shove us into amotivational hole, consciously digging deeperinto the firmament of ecology, even when weknow we should not.

Large among those conditions is economicinequality. Without economic inequality, motiva-tions for keeping up with the Joneses throughconspicuous consumption disappear, because weare already all equal to the Joneses. Understandingthe origins of economic inequality is thus a—andperhaps the—central problem of social organiza-tion for environmental sociology to consider.

The Needs of Money

In most of the world, money is now the principalmeans of arranging for one’s material needs andwants, and in much of the world it is virtually theonly means. Thus, the prudent person maintainsa good supply of money, if possible. Money isuseful stuff. Money is power. Because money is sopowerfully useful, most of us wish for more of itrather than less.

In order to have money, though, you have tokeep it moving—to keep it mobile through theeconomy. Stuffing it in a mattress, even a verysecure one, is a rather shortsighted practice.Because of inflation, money left by itself decreasesin value. Also, the uncertainties of the market leadus to nurture our money so that we are not leftshort. For instance, the possibility that employersmay decide to downsize keeps nearly everyone at

some degree of economic risk. Another source ofrisk is the business cycle, the seemingly inevitabletendency of any nation’s economy to take a peri-odic downturn, increasing unemployment andother forms of economic stress. Consequently,almost everyone with any accumulation ofmoney seeks to build with it a cushion that will atthe very least retain, if not increase, its size andcomfort. For these reasons—putting aside for themoment the common desire for simply havingmore—those with money invest it, preferably in away that offers high returns.

The inclination to seek high returns resonatesthroughout the economy. A bank can offer goodinterest rates only because of its own success ininvesting its depositors’ money in loans, stocks,bonds, and other monetary instruments withstrong returns. If the bank fails to offer competi-tive interest rates, it will lose depositors and pos-sibly be forced to close. We often choose toimprove on the rate of return banks offer us byinvesting (if we have the time and sufficient cap-ital) in stocks, bonds, and other financial mar-kets. Managers of mutual funds and individualinvestors, like banks, seek a high rate of return forthese investments. Mutual fund managers wantto keep customers, and individual investors wantto make it worth their time to play the marketthemselves. Even if an individual invests insocially and environmentally responsible stocks,bonds, and mutual funds, the tendency is to seekthe highest rate of return possible from thoseopportunities.

Those of us with no savings—perhaps mostespecially those of us—also usually look toincrease our stock of money. We sell our laborpower, auctioning it to the highest bidder.We seek to purchase goods—even positionalgoods—at low prices. And sometimes we tradework and goods informally to avoid depletingour scarce cash stocks.

In other words, nearly all of us find ourselvescontinually seeking more money—even to holdour economic place—which almost unavoidablyleads us to assume the motives of the market:Seek the highest returns for labor and capital,



and minimize costs. Sell high, buy low. The needsof money become our needs, too.

This generalization of the market has theimportant consequence of promoting politicalinterest in economic growth. If everyone is tohave more wealth at the end of the year than atthe beginning of the year, the economy mustgrow. This is simple math. Most politicians there-fore see economic growth as a potential way tomaximize the number of people who have beenmade wealthier—and thus, they hope, to maxi-mize votes. Consequently, virtually all moderngovernments try to promote economic growth.

But there are no guarantees that growth willincrease everyone’s wealth or that it will increaseeveryone’s wealth equally. Either way, growth inoverall wealth may be accompanied by growth ininequality. Indeed, without mechanisms for con-tinually releveling the playing field, an increase ininequality is probably an unavoidable conse-quence of economic growth. Even if everyonegains at least some wealth, the trend towardinequality will persist, since the wealthy canalmost always take better advantage of invest-ments, labor auctions, and other economicopportunities—an economic version of what thesociologist Robert Merton once called the “accu-mulation of advantage.”5 Thus, although in theshort term economic growth may help resolvepolitical conflict, as many politicians hope, inthe long term economic growth may only exacer-bate it.

Nevertheless, country after country continuesto seek political salvation in economic growth.Environmental concern usually remains on thepolitical sidelines, bumped aside by the politicalmomentum for economic growth, and economicinequality compounds as countries increasinglybump releveling mechanisms to the sidelines aswell.

The Treadmill of Production

The momentum toward economic growth, eco-nomic inequality, and environmental sidelining

is greatly heightened by the competitive pres-sure for production faced by firms and bythe disadvantaged position of workers in thiscompetition.

To maximize profits—a common desire and,because investors have to be repaid and retained,a common need of business—each firm tries toproduce more goods more cheaply than the oth-ers. Merely making a profit isn’t good enough. Afirm continually needs to maximize its profits orinvestors will withdraw their support and puttheir resources in a firm that does. As the envi-ronmental economist Richard Douthwaite haswritten, “It is not just that firms like growthbecause it makes them more profitable: theypositively need it if they are to survive.”6

Employee-owned and privately owned firms canoften shelter themselves from the maximizingpressures of investors. But even they will some-times have to go looking for outside capital.Repaying and retaining investors requires eco-nomic success on a scale of months and quar-ters, diverting attention from longer-run issueslike the environment.

Firms are interested in more than just repay-ing and holding on to their investors, however.They are also interested in profit for themselves.Owners and management usually decide to putas much profit as they can in their own pockets,after paying their debts, paying for needed rein-vestment in the business, and paying employeesenough to keep them coming to work. Thus, itis a virtually universal pattern, although by nomeans economically necessary, that employerstake more home than employees. (Indeed, it is avirtually universal pattern in both nonprofitand for-profit institutions that those who havethe most control over budgets are generally thehighest paid. The best predictor of pay is nothow hard you work—the hardest work, such asmanual labor, is often the worst paid—but thepower of your organizational position.)

In sum, the tendency of unfettered marketforces is for increased growth, increased produc-tion, increased environmental consequences, andincreased inequality.



A Widget Treadmill

Say I’m a widget maker. To set myself up inwidget making, I probably had to borrow quite abit of money. Machinery, land, buildings, labor—all these have to be paid for, often before the busi-ness is generating sufficient returns to cover thesecosts. Over time, the loans have to be repaid,which requires paying back more than the valueof the loan. (Creditors want their profit, too.) IfI raised capital through selling stock, thoseinvestors have to be repaid as well, and at a levelof return that attracts their investment in the firstplace. In short, I’m under a lot of pressure tomake a profit.

Let’s say I am a good widget maker, though,and I have managed to figure out a way to keepmy production high enough, my costs lowenough, and my market big enough that thebooks are balanced. And let’s say that I am doingwell enough to take home a good profit formyself, not just for my creditors and investors.

But I am not the only widget maker. You makewidgets, too. Like me, you are also interested inprofit, perhaps even a bit more interested in it.Maybe your house is not as big as mine and yourcar is not as fancy. Maybe your workers haveasked for a raise and you do not want to take itout of your own paycheck, however large it maybe. Maybe your suppliers have just raised theirprices. Maybe your shareholders are puttingpressure on you, threatening to dump your stockin favor of a more profitable enterprise. Maybeall of these things. So you try a bold move. Youagree to pay your workers a bit more, but only ifthey agree to a new kind of widget-makingmachine that requires fewer workers to run it andyet increases your factory’s output considerably.You work out a deal whereby the workforceshrinks over time through retirement. No cur-rent employees lose their jobs, you are payinghigher wages, and still your labor bills fall overtime. Prices drop as your new widgets flood themarket, but because your output is now so high,your profits go up nevertheless. Sounds great foryour company.

Meanwhile, I’ve got to find a way to deal withthese lower prices. My investors are increasinglydissatisfied, but I’m stuck with my old widget-making machine and my old rate of output. Yournew widget-making machine is patented, andyou’ve put a very high price on the rights to thetechnology.

So I call up some local government officialsand politicians and ask to have some labor andenvironmental laws relaxed. Otherwise, I tellthem, I will have to close my plant or move itelsewhere. I have always been a good contributorto the political party in power. Besides, the regionneeds jobs. The politicians agree and relax thelaws. Meanwhile, I pressure my workers intoaccepting a pay cut in order to keep the plantopen. Because the new labor laws have under-mined their bargaining position, they accept.

This solution works fine until the governmentin your area also relaxes the labor and environ-mental laws affecting your company. (You are agood campaign contributor as well.) Now I haveto try something else. I have already pinched myworkers as far as they will go, and they are ready tostrike. The government is cracking down on illegalforeign workers, and I can’t find cheaper laboranywhere else. I have also pinched my creditors asfar as they are willing to go before they call in theirloans and shut me down. My mood is grim.

Then one of my engineers calls to say that shethinks she has a way to increase production evenmore, if I can just acquire the capital to put intoplace the even better widget-making machinethat she has just dreamed up. Although the newmachine will use a toxic chemical, that should beokay under the newly loosened environmentallaws. The idea is intriguing, but I fear that thisplan will so flood the market with cheap widgetsthat prices will drop even further. I still will notclimb out on top.

Then I hear that the national government ismounting a summit on free trade with a formerlyhostile power, and I sign on as an industry repre-sentative. The deal concludes favorably, and Isuddenly have a new market for widgets. I installmy engineer’s new widget makers in all the



production lines, having used the promise of anew market to attract the necessary capital, andthings are looking great. Pollution has increasedquite a bit, and the workers are still upset abouttheir low pay, but I am turning a profit once again.

Then the widget makers in that formerly hos-tile country start feeling pinched, and they passthe pinch on to their own national governmentand their own engineers and their own laborers.They also send industrial spies into my plant tofigure out what I am doing. Since free trade worksboth ways (if it really is free trade), pretty soontheir widgets are coming over here. My profitdrops, but I am still alright because I was able topay off some loans before the foreign widgetsstarted coming in. I consider reinvesting in a still-faster version of my new widget-making machine,but I decide to sit tight to see what you do.

You are desperate. You threaten your workerswith a pay cut, and they counterthreaten with astrike. You try boosting prices and mounting anad campaign that promotes the supposedlyhigher quality of your widgets. But the campaignis a bust, orders drop, and some of the backlog ofwidgets in your warehouse develops rust. Yourreputation for quality, in fact, goes down.

So you are faced with two general choices. Oneis to cut your losses and shut down your factory.This move would lower the overall output of wid-gets and raise prices, to the benefit of your com-petitors—like me—who are still making widgets.This would be emotionally hard for you to take,though. The other choice is to try to attract newcreditors, to come up with a new invention, towin more concessions from your workers, to dis-cover another new market, to talk to your localgovernment about loosening more laws or aboutgiving you a tax break, or to find some othermeans of keeping the money coming in and theproducts going out. But if you choose the lattercourse, the foreign competitors and I will proba-bly try to respond in kind, which will increaseoverall production, lower prices, and raise eco-nomic pressures once again—all the while divert-ing attention from environmental considerations.

In broad outline, this is a familiar and end-lessly repeated story in industry after industry.

Through competition and increased production,returns to capital—profit—decline over time,creating what the environmental sociologist AlanSchnaiberg and others have termed the “tread-mill of production.”7 (See Figure 3.1.) It’s aprocess of mutual economic pinching that getseveryone running faster but advancing only a lit-tle, if at all, and always tending to increase pro-duction and to sideline the environment.

The Struggle to Stay on the Treadmill

And yet there are limits to how fast people—and competing companies—can run. You canonly work so hard. One adjustment mechanismis for someone to be forced off the treadmill—to choose the first option—lowering produc-tion to some kind of equilibrium with costs andprices. This is an outcome that everyone on thetreadmill resists, however. The second option,making competitive adjustments, tends to befavored, at least initially. Eventually, someonedoes get forced off the treadmill, though. Whichdoes not necessarily lower overall production.The struggle to find new customers that goes onbefore someone gets forced off usually meansthat the market expands in the process. Thecommon result is fewer, bigger businesses—monopolization—and a higher level of overallproduction, often much higher. Meanwhile,those who are forced out of the market oftenswitch to making different products or deliver-ing different services, increasing the overall levelof production of the economy by creating newtreadmills.

As firms struggle to stay on the treadmill, theycut back where they can. The usual results are joblosses and increased economic inequality as wellas further disregard for environmental conse-quences. The social conditions of industrialismhave generally given workers less control thanmanagement, owners, and shareholders over cut-backs. The worldwide democratic revolution ofthe past couple of centuries still pretty muchstops at the boardroom door. By constantlypointing to the threats posed by the treadmill of

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production, and by pointing to the hungry poolof unemployed people, management is able towin the consent of workers to take home lessthan an equal division of a company’s profits.

Not only do firms struggle to stay on thetreadmill, people do, too. Those who lose theirjobs may one day find new employment, but theyare often forced to accept positions lower on theeconomic ladder than they previously enjoyed, ifthey are to have a position at all. The unemploy-ment caused by the treadmill of production maybe temporary (or may not be), but it also pro-vides another opportunity for maintainingunequal distribution of income across a corpora-tion, and thus across society at large.

In recent years, the ability of workers to bar-gain for more of the treadmill’s proceeds hasslipped even further, leading to decliningincomes despite overall economic growth.8

Consequently, rates of corporate profit have reg-ularly exceeded the economic growth rate.Typical rates of corporate profit are currently inthe range of 2 to 12 percent, while typical rates ofeconomic growth are in the range of 1 to 3 per-cent.9 This differential is possible only if some aregetting less than others. It is thus a measure ofthe extent to which the pressures of the produc-tion treadmill have been turned into an opportu-nity for the rich to get richer.

Meanwhile, the environment continues to belargely ignored.

Development and theGrowth Machine

The dynamics of the treadmill also have animportant spatial dimension, which leads to the

Figure 3.1 The treadmill of production: Mutual economic striving keeps us always strugglingto increase production, often with little regard for social and environmentalconsequences.

Source: Matthew Robinson and the author.



constant conflicts over development that arefamiliar to local communities everywhere.

As the sociologists Harvey Molotch and JohnLogan have observed, local businesses have aninterest in local economic growth: Investment isoften relatively fixed in space. Buildings, land,machines, and a well-trained workforce arehard to move around, and firms try to create asmuch economic activity as possible for thesefixed investments. Consequently, business lead-ers almost universally advocate pro-growthpolicies that increase the circulation of capitalthrough their local areas. Although local busi-ness leaders are often in competition with oneanother, one thing they can usually agree on isincreasing the size of the local economic pie.They band together into a variety of alliancesthat Molotch and Logan call “local growthcoalitions.” And to the extent that these coali-tions can persuade local government of theimportance of increasing local economic activ-ity, growth becomes a leading cause of politicalleaders as well, making them a part of coalitionsfor growth.10

The result is that a city or a town acts as whatLogan and Molotch termed a growth machine,dedicated to encouraging almost any kind of eco-nomic development—frequently with littleregard for environmental consequences or thewishes of affected neighborhoods. Local peoplehave spatially fixed investments of a differentsort, and because of them, conflicts with growthcoalitions often arise. Logan and Molotch termthese local investments the use values of a place:homes, strong neighborhoods, supportive net-works of friends and family, feelings of identifi-cation with the local landscape, aesthetic appeal,a clean and secure environment. Business, on theother hand, is interested in the exchange values ofplaces, the ways that places can be used to makemoney. The use values that local people gainfrom a place are often incompatible with theexchange values business can gain. Maintainingopen land for a park versus using that land fora housing development is an example from arecent conflict in my own community.11

And when there is conflict, the pro-growthbusiness interests typically win. Neighborhoodgroups tend to be far less organized than localgrowth coalitions and are usually less able toinfluence the political process. Moreover, neigh-borhoods may feel divided allegiances betweenwhat is happening in some other neighborhoodand their own economic interests, sometimesleading to not-in-my-backyard politics asopposed to not-in-anybody’s-backyard politics.In the face of such divided interests, local gov-ernments tend to follow the pro-growth policiesof the more united, better-organized businesscommunity.

A further result of the politics of the growthmachine is an environmental conflict in the taskswe set for local government. On the one hand,government is expected to promote economicgrowth; on the other hand, it is expected to mon-itor and regulate environmental impacts.12

Sometimes this dual role results in well-thought-out development projects that promote eco-nomic growth without compromising the localenvironment. Depending on the outcome of thepolitical process, it can also turn governmentinto an economic fox that guards the environ-mental chicken coop.

The “Invisible Elbow”

Adam Smith, the eighteenth-century founderof modern economic theory, envisioned thatindividual competitive decisions would guide usall toward prosperity by increasing productionand efficiency. He suggested the famous image ofthe “invisible hand” to describe this process. Thetreadmill of production, however, makes theeconomy act like what Michael Jacobs hasdescribed as the “invisible elbow.” Even if the goalis merely to hold one’s place on the treadmill,economic actors are involved in a constant jostle.Although this jostling is often unintentional—Jacobs says it is usually unintentional—bothpeople and the environment get compromised inthe process. “Elbows are sometimes used to push



people aside in the desire to get ahead,” Jacobswrites.

But more often elbows are not used deliber-ately at all; they knock things over inadver-tently. Market forces cause environmentaldegradation by both methods. Sometimesthere is deliberate and intended destruction,the foreseen cost of ruthless consumption.But more usually degradation occurs bymistake, the unwitting result of other,smaller decisions.13

The elbowing effect that Jacobs describes ismore technically described by economists asexternalities, economic effects not taken intoaccount in the decision making in a market.Externalities may be divided into two broadtypes. Increased inequality and pollution areexamples of negative externalities, costs notincluded in economic decision making and gen-erally borne by those who did not make the deci-sion. There may also be positive externalities,benefits that were not taken into account in aneconomic decision and may have wide utility,such as more-efficient production or, conceiv-ably, an economic arrangement in which individ-ual economic choices promote greater equalityand less pollution. The problem with Smith’simage of the invisible hand is its rosy suggestionthat the treadmill’s market competition leadsonly to positive externalities. Jacobs’s invisibleelbow points out that negative externalities arealso common consequences of the treadmill.

Externalities are not necessarily invisible,though, as Jacobs also points out. As we rushalong the treadmill, we may be well aware ofsome of the consequences of flying elbows. Thevisibility of externalities is enormously significantfor our social decision making. The ability to seeand appreciate an externality, whether positive ornegative, is the first step toward creating thesocial conditions that promote the former overthe latter. If we are unaware of something, we arecertainly unlikely to direct our actions with thatsomething in mind. Creating this visibility is a

political act of considerable social and environ-mental importance.

The Politics of Treadmills

Visibly and invisibly, the elbows really fly aspeople come to recognize the unequal outcomesof life on the treadmill and the unequal outcomesfor life. To be caught on a treadmill, or to becaught up on one, is to be caught in struggle.

Take the expansion of “factory farms” for live-stock across the landscape, what the governmentregulators call CAFOs, for “confined animal feed-ing operations.” The livestock may be confined,but the consequences are not. Next time you sticka fork into a succulent slice of pork roast, considerthe red-meat political conflict that it took for acorporation like Premium Standard or SmithfieldFoods to establish a 10,000-head facility in somerural community. (See Figure 3.2.) 10,000 hogsmeans a lot of hog food, a lot of hog manure, anda lot of hog manure stink. Hogs are large animals,and they do little but eat and excrete in these facil-ities. But the consumer in the city doesn’t smellthe sometimes overpowering stench that driveslongtime rural people from their homes andmakes selling their properties sometimes impos-sible. The consumer doesn’t see the manure spillsfrom the often-leaky manure “lagoons” compa-nies erect to contain the hog effluent—spills thatkilled 5.7 million fish in 152 incidents in Iowaalone between 1996 and 2002.14

These elbows are plenty visible to local ruralpeople, however, and across the country manyrural communities have fought hard to keepCAFOs away. They have tried to make the elbowsof the treadmill more visible, building coalitionswith environmental groups concerned about thewater and fish, animal welfare groups concernedthat the hogs are too packed in and never see thelight of day, and economic justice groups con-cerned about the pay and conditions for themostly immigrant workers, as well as the waysCAFOs knock family farms off the treadmill. Andthey have joined together to lobby regulators and



politicians. Meanwhile, the CAFOs have puttogether their own coalitions of interests eager tokeep the exchange valves flowing. The grain farm-ers eager for a little boost in price and sales. Themeat processors (who often own the CAFOs tobegin with) happy to expand their trade. Thepoliticians anxious to generate tax revenue, andperhaps a few donations for their reelection funds.

Most decisive, of course, is which side thepoliticians come down on in a treadmill strug-gle. In the case of CAFOs, few readers will besurprised to hear that in most states—whetherthe facility produces hogs, cattle (includingdairy), or poultry—industrial interests havemainly won. The bigger the coop, the happierthe fox usually is, at least thus far in the politicaldebate. Consequently, states have often takenaway the right of localities to enact anti-CAFOzoning, and banned “nuisance lawsuits” againstthem. Plus, they have put into place generallymild environmental regulations, often hand in

hand with special government funds to pay thenew costs associated with the regulations, suchas money to build stronger manure lagoons.Which is a good thing, say advocates, but mainlya bit of political window dressing, say the critics.And as the treadmill continues, so does thepolitical debate.

The Treadmill of Underproduction

Even with political interests lined up tosmooth laws, quell opposition, and build mar-kets, producers still have their challenges. Theenvironmental sociologist James O’Connorargues that two of these challenges are especiallyfundamental.15 The first is what O’Connor callsthe “crisis of overproduction,” which is prettymuch what the treadmill of production theorydescribes. O’Connor argues that this crisis stemsfrom a “contradiction” in the structure of the

Figure 3.2 Inside a large-scale hog confinement facility or CAFO, near Waucoma, Iowa. Such“factory farms” for livestock are becoming increasingly common throughout theindustrialized world, despite concerns about their implications for human health, ani-mal health, economic justice, and the environment.

Source: Corbis, used by permission.



economy that producers never truly resolve,despite any current success they may haveachieved in technology, markets, labor costs, andpolitics. The pinching and elbowing still go on, asoverproduction lowers profit margins and spinsthe treadmill of production ever faster.

The second challenge is what O’Connor callsthe “crisis of underproduction,” and it stemsfrom another “contradiction”—that sometimesproducers find themselves undermining thesame social and environmental relations thatmake their production possible. The crisis ofoverproduction points to social and environ-mental consequences that are mainly external toeach producer, such as the negative externalitiesof CAFOs: air and water pollution, economicinequality, and flooded markets. For the adeptproducer, with big elbows, these are otherpeople’s problems. But the crisis of underpro-duction is a more direct and fundamental threat,as the declining capacity of environment andlabor to keep output going undermines the verypossibility of production.

I like to think of it as another treadmill, the“treadmill of underproduction,” in which theefforts of producers to respond to declining pro-duction leads to even greater production declinesthrough the destruction of overworked produc-tive capacity. Fishing is a vivid example. In fish-ery after fishery around the world, fish harvestshave been so complete that insufficient spawningstock remained to repopulate the fish, which inturn led to more harvesting that cut further intothe spawning stock, until the stocks collapsed,making further production impossible. The codstocks of the Grand Banks, once considered inex-haustible, are virtually gone now, compelling theCanadian government in 1992 to declare a mora-torium on further cod fishing there. Cod lingerson in the Georges Bank, where the fisheryremains legal, but stocks are dangerouslydepleted. The total harvest in 2005 was 3,000metric tons—a mere tenth of the 1986 to 1995average—and the spawning stock has beendeclining since 2001, after a few years of slightrecovery.16 The situation is no better in the North

Sea, where the International Council for theExploration of the Seas has been calling for a banon cod fishing.17 Meanwhile, the orange roughy,one of the species the world turned to in the1970s when cod landings started dropping, hasnow in many places (especially New Zealand andAustralia) already collapsed as well.18 Swordfish,toothfish, Atlantic bluefin tuna, plaice, anchovy,sandeel, sole, blue whiting, and more: The list offully exploited, overexploited, or depleted fishnow totals some 77 percent of world marine fishstocks.19 And did I mention whales?

It is not uncommon, though, for a producer tobe found with one foot on both treadmills, facingdeclining profit margins through productionincreases at the same time that it takes greater andgreater effort even to maintain the same level ofproduction. In fishing, this scrambling dance oftwo treadmills has often led to a few huge andhighly mechanized boats that harvest way morefish per vessel and yet fewer overall. Our ordinaryunderstanding of economics would tell us that atleast the price of the fish should rise, due to thelower supply, reversing the problem of decliningprofits. But the Jevons paradox, named afterWilliam Stanley Jevons, the nineteenth-centuryBritish economist who first observed it with regardto coal, points out a dilemma.20 The implementa-tion of more efficient means of production canlower costs so much that people demand the prod-uct more. Let’s hear from Jevons on the subject:

It is the very economy of [coal’s] use whichleads to its extensive consumption. . . .Economy multiples the value and efficiencyof our chief material; it indefinitely increasesour wealth and means of subsistence, andleads to an extension of our population,works, and commerce, which is gratifying inthe present, but must lead to an earlier end.Economical inventions are what I shouldlook forward to as likely to continue ourrate of increasing consumption. . . . But theend would only thus be hastened—theexhaustion of our seams more rapidly car-ried out.21



In other words, more efficient production canactually increase resource use until in the endthere is simply nothing left.

The Social Creationof Treadmills

These kinds of arguments can make for prettygloomy reading. Purely materialist and organiza-tional explanations like the treadmills of produc-tion and underproduction, and economictheories in general, tend to give off an air ofinevitability that makes one just want to go backto bed, with a pillow over the head. It all feels soexternal, out of our control.

So here’s some good news—at least sort ofgood news. The environmental sociologistsWilliam Freudenburg, Peter Nowak, Dana Fisher,and their colleagues point out that the environ-mental impact of different economic actors ishighly variable.22 Some industries are far morepolluting than others. Think of oil refiners versussoftware developers. And some companieswithin the same industry are far more pollutingthan others. Think of big hog confinements ver-sus organic farmers that raise small numbers ofhogs outdoors on pasture. In fact, it turns outthat most of damage comes from a relativelysmall number of economic actors. Freudenburgfound, for example, that 46 percent of toxicreleases in the United States come from thechemical industry, and yet the chemical industryis only 2.9 percent of the GNP of the UnitedStates.23 He then looked within one industry, theprimary nonferrous metals sector—processors ofprimary ores (i.e., not recycled) other than iron.Here Freudenburg found that a single company,the Magnesium Corporation of America,accounted for 95 percent of all toxic releases inthis industrial category, according to governmentrecords.

Disproportionality is what environmental soci-ologists have come to call this finding that a few“bad apples” are mainly responsible for spoilingthe whole barrel of ecology.24 The next question,

then, is how do those bad apples get away with it?Freudenburg argues that this privilege to pollutemainly comes about by political arguments thatdivert attention from disproportionality.25 Forexample, a common argument against regulatingpolluters is that it would drive an industry eitherout of business or out of the country to a nationthat doesn’t regulate it. This claim implies that allcompanies in that industry would be affected thesame by the regulation. But if most of the pollu-tion is coming from only a few companies in anindustry, that means the rest of them shouldn’t bebothered much by regulations that force them toclean up. Why? Because they are already prettyclean.

It also means that it is possible to be prettyclean—that alternatives are achievable. Whichdoesn’t mean that all economic actors will utilizethose alternatives, though. Economics is funda-mentally a social process—the outcome of theinterests of various social actors, the power thatthose actors have, and the level of their concernfor the interests of others. How an actor respondsto the treadmills of the economy is a peoplething, not just a money thing.

The Treadmills Inside

In other words, how we respond to economictreadmills also depends upon how we under-stand our interests—that is, upon the ideas andsentiments we bring to bear on our lives. There isan important ideal dimension to treadmills ofproduction and underproduction.

For example, our productivist mentalitydepends in part on our sense that hard work is amoral virtue—a historically recent notion ofvirtue, in fact. (Chapter 6 considers the origin ofthis notion of virtue in some detail when weexplore the theories of the sociologist MaxWeber.) We usually regard laziness as somehowimmoral, even when working harder will onlysecure far more wealth than we physically need.In other words, we work hard not only to main-tain our footing on economic treadmills but also



because we have internalized the notion thathard work is virtuous.

The idea that hard work is virtuous is partic-ularly pronounced in the United States andJapan, as many have commented. (See Figure 2.2,in Chapter 2) The prevalence of this attitude islikely part of the reason vacation time is typicallyabout two weeks a year in these two countries.Japanese and American workers have not foughtharder for longer vacations in part because doingso would seem culturally inappropriate, which inturn perpetuates the cultural inappropriatenessof long vacations. Meanwhile, both countries fallever deeper into the cycle of “work-and-spend”discussed in Chapter 2.

In other words, economic treadmills are notjust external pressures that we must conform to;they are also due to pressures that come fromwithin. At some level, most of us actually want towork hard—which we think reflects well on us—although probably not as hard as economictreadmills often require.

Given the speed increasingly required to stayon the production and underproduction tread-mills, it is probably materially advantageous thatmost of us are committed to the idea that hardwork is a virtue. This advantage does not mean,however, that external forces determine internalones. The relationship between external forcesand internal forces is a dialogical one. True, hardwork helps one stay on a treadmill, buthard work also leads to an acceleration of atreadmill—thereby creating conditions thatencourage people to work even harder. Internalsocial factors such as a person’s values thus sup-port and are supported by external social factorslike the economic speed of a treadmill. Thetreadmill within and the treadmills outside createeach other.

Also, the environmental sociologist JohnBellamy Foster points out that the goal of an eco-nomic treadmill isn’t production (and it certainlyisn’t underproduction, either).26 Rather, whatkeeps people going on it is the desire for accumu-lation—more money, more stuff, and the sense ofgreater environmental and social power that

comes with more of both. It’s about more, stupid.Production is just the way to get it. And asChapter 2 discussed, the desire for more is notsome kind of unchanging and universal innerhunger, even though it often appears that wayfrom the perspective of our own time and place.The treadmills of production and underproduc-tion are as much cultural matters as economicmatters, as much effects of our ideas as of ourmaterial conditions. They are dialogically cre-ated, even as they present themselves to us withmonological force.

The Dialogue of Productionand Consumption

In other words, the twin treadmills of produc-tion and underproduction interlock theirwhizzing movements with the treadmill of con-sumption. Increasing the pace of the consump-tion treadmill increases the pace of theproduction twins, and vice versa. But also, thedesire to increase the pace of one treadmilldepends in part upon the social conditions cre-ated by another. (See Figure 3.3.)

For example, the desire for more is propelledby both the treadmill of consumption and thetwin production treadmills through the relation-ship between more and profit. Because you needprofit to survive on the production and under-production treadmills, they encourage people toregard profit as a virtue. But in order to demon-strate your success in attaining the virtue ofprofit, you need to consume more. You need tobuy a BMW or its equally conspicuous equiva-lent. Of course, consuming more is a desire that,because of the consumption treadmill, you likelyalready had. We want profit to consume, just aswe consume to demonstrate profit. This too is adialogue—although perhaps not one well calcu-lated to support sustainability, environmentaljustice, or the rights and beauty of habitat.

Hard work is another internal treadmill that ispropelled by both production and consumption.Hard work keeps us going on the twin production



treadmills, as the previous section describes. Butit also keeps us going on the consumption tread-mill by helping us to rationalize inequalities inconsumption. “God helps those who help them-selves,” we often hear. Perhaps the real theologicalhelp is moral: relieving guilty consciencesthrough the message that it’s alright to consumemore as long as you worked hard for it.

The internal treadmills of more and of hardwork, then, dialogically connect the treadmills ofproduction and consumption. Of course, youcannot have production without consumption,and vice versa—at least not for long—as classicaleconomics readily recognizes. But classical eco-nomics typically treats production and con-sumption as if they were separately generated

phenomena, balanced by price. That balancing isoften the only acknowledgment of dialogicalinterconnections. But what a fully dialogicalapproach suggests is that production and con-sumption do not merely balance each other; theycreate each other.

Moreover, the treadmills of production andconsumption do not just mutually conditioninternal values like hard work and the desire formore. They also dialogically organize the externalcircumstances in which we have these values.Here is where economic inequality plays its mostimportant dialogical role. The inequality createdby the treadmills of production and underpro-duction helps create the conditions under whichthe Joneses are constantly rising above us, fueling

Figure 3.3 Interconnected treadmills: The treadmills of production and consumption eachpropel the other along, and their social and environmental effects.




0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010

Tri

llio

n 2

006

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llars

Figure 3.4 Accelerating treadmills: Rising gross world product, 1950–2006.

Sources: Based on Worldwatch Institute. (2003). Vital Signs 2003, New York and London: Norton; WorldwatchInstitute. (2007). Vital Signs 2007–2008. New York and London: Norton.

the treadmill of consumption. That fueling, inturn, creates the opportunity for further acceler-ation of the twin production treadmills and theirfrequently unequal economic outcomes. It’s avicious dialogical circle: Production treadmillscreate inequality, which creates the consumptiontreadmill, which creates more inequality and afurther speeding of the twin production tread-mills, thus keeping the whole cycle whirling everfaster. (See Figure 3.4.)

But because this circle is dialogical, its viciousoutcome is not inevitable. For one thing, there isalso a potential twin to the treadmill of con-sumption: a treadmill of underconsumption. Idon’t mean competitive starvation here. Rather,I mean what Veblen called “conspicuous non-consumption,” and its moral siblings: “conspicu-ous non-leisure” and “conspicuous non-waste.”If your goal is to show off—and why not, at leasta little—a reversal of the now-common veble-nesque logic will sometimes do very nicely.Consider the monk or nun, sworn to a life ofsimplicity and poverty. Or the plain clothing ofthe Amish—or of your friend the eco-freak,decked out in patched and recycled garb fromthe thrift shop. Their dress may not be high fash-ion, but it usually stands out just the same,

affording a sense of confident identity. For theseand other forms of conspicuous non-consumptiondefinitely come with a strong statement of envi-ronmental power: I am so secure in my self andstatus that I don’t have to overconsume to demon -strate my worthiness. There can even be a littlecompetitiveness at work here, both with con-spicuous consumers and with other conspicuousnon-consumers, with ever-new standards of whatcounts as conspicuous non-consumption, ever-new fashions of non-fashion.

Of course, we don’t see a lot of conspicuousnon-consumption among the wealthy countriesand wealthy classes today. But it is certainly imag-inable, and within our powers to bring about.And why not—at least a little?

The Dialogue of State and Market

Economics, in other words, is not somethingthat, like some force of nature, just happens.Economics is something we do. A vital place torecognize the social origin of economic forces isin the generally misunderstood dialogic relation-ship between the state and the market. Marketsfunction best when the state intervenes least, we



are often told. The glory of the West is its “freemarket” economy, as opposed to the failed cen-trally planned economies of the old Soviet bloc.Here’s the classic definition of that glory, from anintroductory economics textbook of a few yearsago: “Markets in which governments do notintervene are called free markets.”27

But recall the way government is hooked onthe treadmill, too. Western politicians know thattheir political futures hang from the thread ofeconomic growth, as this chapter has discussed.And recall the way that businesses encouragepoliticians to keep their focus here through lob-bying and political contributions. That’s becauseboth politicians and businesses recognize thatstate intervention is, in fact, as central to capital-ist “free market” economies as it is to a “centrallyplanned” economy. A heck of a lot of centralplanning, and central control, goes on in both.Where would a market economy be without apolice force and a court system to enforce con-tracts, limit fraud, regulate trade, and establishproduct standards? Where would it be without atrustworthy money supply? Or without tradeagreements with other nations and the politicalmuscle (and sometimes military muscle) to backthem up? Or without an independent body toenforce property rights? Otherwise you might tryto steal from me, and I from you, without fear ofretribution from anyone but each other. And nomarket society could last long today if it ran soroughshod over workers and the environmentthat its political legitimacy was undermined.Plus, there are all the other “free” services thatgovernment provides the market—like roads,an educated workforce, and a healthy and pro-ductive ecosystem. Moreover, in terms of sheerdollars spent, government is about a half to athird of the total economy in most Westernnations—including the United States, thatparagon of the free market. In other words, thetreadmill is hooked on government as much asthe other way around.

But isn’t this heavy role of government themain problem facing Western economies today?Sure, maybe we can’t get rid of government

entirely, but can’t we get rid of all the red tapeand regulations, or at least most of it? Can’t we atleast have a freer market?

The answer to this question is to ask anotherquestion: Freer for whom?28 Let’s take a typicalcase of government intervention to enhance a“free market,” like the banning of nuisance lawsuits against CAFOs and the prevention of localcontrol over where CAFOs can be placed. Is thereany less regulation as a result? It is true thatCAFO owners are freer to do what they want,without fear of retribution, but those who objectto CAFOs are now a lot less free. It’s much harderto sue CAFOs now in states that have passed suchlaws. If you meet an unsympathetic judge whodeems your suit a “nuisance,” you’ll have to paythe legal fees of the other side—a strong restrainton advancing any suit at all, no matter howstrong you think your case is. And local people inthese states can’t use local zoning ordinances tocontrol CAFOs either. Or take the “clear skies”initiative advanced by the U.S. government in theearly years of George W. Bush’s administration.Under it, industrial facilities would not have hadto upgrade pollution equipment when theyupgraded plants, unless the upgrade was morethan 20 percent of the cost of that aspect of thefacility. Factories would have been freer to dowhat they wanted to do, but everyone else wouldhave been a lot less free to pressure factories toclean up their pollution.

Freedom is like that. Freedom for one personentails constraint for someone else. As an oldEnglish proverb put it, “Freedom for the pike isdeath for the minnow.” This is why the philoso-pher Isaiah Berlin, from whom I get thisproverb, used to speak of two kinds of freedom:freedom-from and freedom-to, the freedom fromothers stopping you from doing what you wantand the freedom to take agency over the condi-tions of your life, which is to say other people.Berlin liked to call freedom-from negative lib-erty and freedom-from positive liberty. The pikeeating minnows experiences negative liberty fromanyone stopping it from gorging at the minnows’expense. If minnows could stop the pike, perhaps



by enlisting the help of some piscine police force,they would experience positive liberty to takeaction against being gorged on.29

Which makes it sound like free markets areabout negative liberty and the absence of regula-tions while positive liberty is what we get throughregulation. So if you want more freedom-from—more negative liberty—you need deregulation.Many have read the implications of Berlin’s argu-ment this way.30

But that is to see negative liberty in purelyindividualistic terms. For you to have freedom-from, someone else will probably have to bedenied it. For CAFOs to have freedom from com-plaint, others must be denied freedom to com-plain. In other words, freedom-from requires asmuch reg ulation as freedom-to. It’s just a differ-ent kind of regulation. The “deregulation” thatmany call for in support of the negative freedomof the “free mar ket” or a “freer market” is what wemight call nega tive regulation, regulation-from—that is, regulation from interference. The kind ofregulation we are used to calling regulation ispositive regulation, regulation-to—that is, regula-tion to interfere.31

And both forms of regulation require copiouslines of legal code in the statute books of everygovernment. Take the U.S. Code of FederalRegulations. In 1980, it took 164 volumes to holdits 102,195 pages. By 2002, it had risen to 207 vol-umes and 145,099 pages—a 42 percent increasein pages—despite years of efforts at “deregula-tion” and “reinventing government.”32 But therewas no deregulation here. Rather, it was mainlyre-regulation of the negative sort. In other words,a “free market” is certainly no freer of politicsthan any other form of market.

The Social Creation of Economics

We can summarize the usual results of thesedialogues as follows:

• Decline in rates of economic return• Bargaining with labor

• Bargaining with the state• Search for new markets• Fewer workers and more investment per

unit of production• Monopolization• Increased production• Increased undermining of productive

capacity• Increased state intervention and regulation• Social inequality• Reinforcement of the desire for more and

the virtue of hard work• Reinforcement of the treadmill of

consumption• Conflicts over development• Sidelining of environmental concerns

None of these outcomes is inevitable. As AlanSchnaiberg, John Logan, Harvey Molotch, andWilliam Freudenburg have reminded us, and as Ihave tried to, treadmills are political. It all comesback to politics—to what sociologists often callpolitical economy, the interplay of politics andeconomics, another dialogue. That is, treadmillsresult from the actions of human agents pursu-ing what they take to be their interests and senti-ments. If we do not like the result, it must bebecause we have not fully understood what ourinterests and sentiments are or because the cur-rent distribution of power has prevented us fromattaining our true interests and sentiments.

To achieve the outcomes we desire, we mustfirst recognize the social creation of economics.The pinching pressures of treadmills encourageus to think of the economy as something outsideof us, over which we have little control, as anexternal structure to which we must submit. Andtrue, the economy has power over us. But we alsohave power over it. The economy is a result ofcountless individual decisions, as classical eco-nomics has long taught, with effects that presentthemselves as external structures. Yet it is preciselythe fact that the economy begins with real humanagents that makes it dialogically possible to directthe economy—by changing the circumstances inwhich we make our individual decisions.



Those economic circumstances are the resultof bargaining among social actors such as thestate, labor, and management. They are the resultof legal precedents, of moral judgments, andof power relations within society. They are theresult of the invisibility of externalities andthe current limits to our imagination. They arethe result of negative regulation and positive reg-ulation, as well as negative liberty and positiveliberty. Economies create societies, but societiescreate economies. Through bargaining betweencompeting interests, through the selectiveinvolvement of the state, through the dynamicsof the distribution of social power, through themoral visions of those involved, we shape theeconomic structures that shape us.

The Needs of Technology

“Not another call! I’ll never get this lecture writ-ten!” I groaned as I reached for my ringing officephone. “Hello. This is Mike Bell,” I said, hoping myimpatience wouldn’t show in the tone of my voice.

“I’m glad I reached you, Professor Bell,” camea pleasant middle-aged male voice.

“Well, I hope I can be of some help,” I replied,trying to sound interested.

“I hope so too,” he quipped, and we bothlaughed. “You were recommended to me as aspeaker for a conference I’m organizing on howlocal communities can adapt to technologicalchange.”

I was warming up to him. Still, he said “canadapt,” I noted to myself. I wonder if what hereally means is should adapt.

“That sounds interesting,” I cautiouslyreplied. “Who is sponsoring the conference andwhom do you expect to attend?”

“I’m the development coordinator for severaltowns in the northern part of the state, and we’retrying to put together an evening program forlocal people about hog lots. Are you familiar withthe issue?”

“Oh sure,” I said. “Of course.” Hog lots areCAFOs for pigs. At the time, I lived in Iowa, the

leading U.S. pork producer, and you’d have tohave been a complete recluse to avoid hearingabout the controversy.

“Then you’ll appreciate the importance of theconference,” my caller continued. “The problemis, people don’t like change. But hog lots are com-ing, and coming fast. So we’d like you to talkabout how communities can adapt to them.”

I thought for a moment. It did sound like hemeant should, not can. Finally, I replied, “Thissounds like an important conference. I’d behappy to speak. But I’d like to speak not justabout how communities can adapt to technolog-ical change. I’d also want to discuss how tech-nologies can adapt to people. After all, it is peoplethat invent technology.”

Now it was his turn to say, “That sounds inter-esting.” Then he added, “I’ll have to discuss itwith our planning board, though. I’ll get back toyou.”

A week later he called again, a bit more curt.“The board decided that it would like to keep thefocus on how communities should adapt,” hesaid. “Thanks very much for your willingness toparticipate, but . . .”

Can adapt had indeed become should adapt.He said it himself.

Technology as a Dialogue

I tell this story to introduce another of thecentral dialogues of environmental sociology, thedialogue of technology.33 People often point totechnology as one of the great motors of socialchange. One of the truisms of modern life is howmuch we have been changed by our technologies.The automobile, the tractor, the airplane, elec-tronic media, birth control, the computer, theatomic bomb—these are all frequently citedexamples of the role of technology as a socialactor, as an independent agent of social change.Technology is also often seen as central to thepinching demands of the twin production tread-mills. Indeed, we are often asked to accept thefact that more change will be coming in our lives



because of technology. As my caller suggested, wehad better be prepared for it, like it or not.

Our cultural training as Western modernistsmay make it particularly hard to see technology asan ecological dialogue, as an interplay betweenthe material and the ideal, the external and theinternal—as something that conditions our lives atthe same time that we condition it. The metaphorof the machine, with its vision of sequential andlinear causality, has become our master metaphorof technology. The word technology itself immedi-ately conjures up images of machines. But a dia-logical conception more accurately describes whattechnology is and does. A dialogical conceptionhelps us to see that, like the economy, technology isnot a mechanical imperative—unless we allow it tobecome one. Technology, too, is a social creation aswell as a force that shapes the forms our social cre-ativity takes.

For critics and supporters alike, there is greatrhetorical attractiveness in a deterministic viewof technology. In an attempt to energize us intoaction against a form of technology, critics some-times portray it as a grim juggernaut that isrolling over our lives.34 On the other hand, sup-porters like my phone caller often claim thatthere is little we can do once the Pandora’s box oftechnology has been opened and that we had bet-ter make way for the changes that are bound toresult. “Get big or get out” was the dictum of U.S.Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz in the 1970s,explaining why American farmers had no choicebut to buy bigger tractors and bigger farms.

Thus, fear mongering is used by both sides.The logic of neither argument holds up, however.If technology is an uncontrollable juggernaut,then there is no point in asking us to try to resistit: We can’t. If technology is an unclosablePandora’s box, then there is no need to ask us tomake way for it: It is coming anyhow. Both argu-ments, in fact, logically depend on our having atleast some control over technology.

As sociologists Keith Warner and LynnEngland argue, technology is more than meremachines: Technology is all the techniques wehave for gaining our desired ends. The knowledge

of how to work a computer is just as much tech-nology as the computer itself. Technology is the“how-to” of life, Warner and England write.35 Assuch it is not the sole product of external forces:of juggernauts and Pandora’s boxes. Technology issomething that human agents create. Plenty ofhuman choice is involved.

But once we have made those choices, we willfind that our future options have gained not onlynew possibilities but new limits. In other words,technology is not only a how-to, it is also a have-to. Humans make technology, and technologymakes humans. Technology shapes the condi-tions of our lives and thereby helps direct thekind of choices we will feel compelled or inclinedto make in the future. Technology does indeedstructure our lives, but we are the ones who makethat structure and pattern our lives accordingly.Technology is political. Technology is thus not amechanical structure, but a social structure, aform of social organization that we control as itcontrols us, and that sometimes we use to controleach other.

Technology as a Social Structure

The automobile is an increasingly prevalentexample of technology as a social structure. Theautomobile industry produces 45.6 million carsevery year, and the world fleet of passenger carsnow stands at some 603 million, with an addi-tional 223 million commercial vehicles.36 Nearlyevery household in Canada, the United States,and Australia has at least one, and the average forthe United States is almost two (1.9, to be pre-cise).37 The United States now has more vehiclesfor personal use than it has drivers (204 millionvehicles for 191 million drivers, as of 2001).38

Vehicle-to-people ratios are lower in other coun-tries, but rising rapidly. Only 20 percent ofJapanese households had cars in 1970, but 72percent did in 1988. Comparable figures apply tomost of Europe. In France, over 30 percent ofhouseholds now have two or more cars.39 Manypoorer countries are also seeing big increases. In



1979, the roughly 1 billion people of China hadonly 150,000 private cars; by 1996, they had 2.7million; by 2003, more than 10 million.40 Carsales in India increased by 40 percent in 1994alone, and annual sales in 2001 were more than700,000 per year.41 While the number of cars inChina and India combined has now reached 39.2million vehicles, the combined population ofthese two countries is 2.3 billion, or about 59people per vehicle. In comparison, the UnitedStates, Canada, Japan, and Western Europe have552 million cars for 850 million people, or 1.5people per car.42

The consequences are truly catastrophic. (SeeFigure 3.5.) More than 40,000 people die in traf-fic accidents each year in the United States, nearlyas many Americans as died during the entire

Vietnam War and far more than die of AIDS eachyear. For those over the age of 1 and under theage of 35, traffic accidents are the leading causeof death in the United States. Some 59 percent ofall deaths for this age group are from traffic acci-dents, more than 20,000 young lives each year—more than seven times the number of peoplewho died in the September 11, 2001, attacks onthe World Trade Center.43 The 6 million annualcar crashes in the United States injure 2.5 millionpeople, meaning that almost 1 out of 100 peoplewill be injured in any given year.44 There is thus avery high likelihood that lifelong residents of theUnited States will be injured in an automobileaccident at some point in their lives.

The death rate per capita from automobileaccidents is even higher in Portugal, Greece,

Figure 3.5 “Cross With Caution” is right. Some 5,000 pedestrians die in automobile accidentsin the United States each year, and some 60,000 are injured (NHTSA, 2007).Worldwide, likely hundreds of thousands of pedestrians die each year (WHO,2004). Speed is a major factor, as the probability of pedestrian death from a motorvehicle impact rises rapidly above 20 miles an hour—from about a 1 in 10 chanceto about a 9 in 10 chance at 35 miles an hour (WHO, 2004).

Source: Author.



Estonia, and Latvia. But U.S. figures are amongthe highest in the developed world—mainlybecause Americans drive so much, as U.S. deathrates per mile driven are relatively low.45

Worldwide, about 1.2 million people die eachyear in traffic accidents, and 50 million more areinjured.46 Most of these are in the less developednations, where road conditions are often verypoor, despite fewer cars. And the trend is up. TheWorld Health Organization (WHO) reports thatin 1998, road accidents were the ninth leadingcause of death injury worldwide, and projectsthat if current trends hold it will be the thirdleading cause by 2020.47

Millions of other animals also die each yearbecause of traffic. In Britain, one study foundthat roads claim the lives of tens of millions ofbirds a year.48 Comparable losses no doubt occurin all automobile-dominated countries.

Cars and trucks remain serious polluters,despite efforts to clean up emissions. Growth inthe use of cars and trucks has wiped out muchof the gain from emission controls, fulfilling theJevons paradox, and most large cities remainenveloped in smog and fine particulates. InBritain, according to a government study, auto-mobile exhaust kills 10,000 people a year.49 A2000 study published in the leading Britishmedical journal, Lancet, found that in France,Switzerland, and Austria, 40,000 people dieevery year from causes that can be linked backto air pollution, about half of it from cars.50 Thefigure for the United States is 64,000 per year,according to a 1996 study, and likely half of thatalso from cars.51 The figure for the world,according to the WHO, is 865,000 per year,again with perhaps half due to vehicle exhaust.52

So the worst damage that cars and trucks domay be effects that we rarely think about andconnect to them.

Cars and trucks are also important contribu-tors to global warming and acid rain. In theUnited States, 27 percent of carbon dioxideemissions come from motor vehicle tailpipes.53

Motor vehicles also have substantial indirect

environmental impacts through the miningrequired to supply vehicle manufacturers withraw materials, the oil spills and other toxic wastedisasters associated with keeping the fuel com-ing, and the consumptive patterns of land usewith which cars and trucks are associated. Roadnoise can also affect the reproductive success ofmany wildlife species.54

Traffic has a huge impact on the quality ofplaces—on the rights and beauty of habitat.Traffic is noisy and dirty and turns even quietstreets into potential sources of death for us andour children. Cars bring out the worst emotionsin drivers. Inside their wheeled cocoons, driverscommonly experience fury over slight infringe-ments on the social decorum of traffic. “Roadrage” is what the media call it. Drivers cut eachother off, zoom close past bicycles, and acceler-ate right up to jaywalking pedestrians, routinelythreatening all with death and maiming. Streetsare a major means by which we encounter thewider community. Through their danger, noise,and dirt, automobiles have made our dailyencounters with one another hazardous andunpleasant. By terrorizing public life in theseways, cars contribute to the erosion of socialcommitment.

Why, then, are cars so popular? The standardanswer is because cars are so convenient. Carsvastly increase our personal mobility, it is oftensaid. They are an incredibly flexible and rela-tively inexpensive form of transportation. Theyprotect travelers from inclement weather. Theyreduce physical labor. Cars, people oftenobserve, are simply a better way of gettingaround. To be sure, traffic is sometimes a prob-lem, and so is parking; but, goes the standardanswer, bigger roads and parking lots can takecare of these annoyances. And of course, we alsogain a certain amount of personal pride andromance from owning an automobile, leading towhat Americans term their “love affair” with the“dream machine.” The pride and romance areunderstandable when one considers the superi-ority of automotive transport. Right?



The Social Organizationof Convenience

At the center of this familiar argument aboutthe benefits of cars is the image of technologicalchoice, of opportunity, of convenience, and ofcars as a better how-to. Taking a bus or a train isso inconvenient. It is no wonder that peopleacross the world are adopting the car as soon asthey have the opportunity, we often hear.

But the convenience of cars is not a mere mat-ter of a machine that makes our lives easier. A dia-logical understanding of technology points to thesocial organization of convenience—the way weoften set up our lives around a particular way ofdoing things so that it becomes difficult to dothings any other way. (See Figure 3.6.) A dialogicalunderstanding of technology thus points to thecommon transformation of a “how-to” into a

“have-to.” If we allow the alternatives to disap-pear, it indeed becomes hard to do things anyother way—which is precisely what has hap-pened with cars.

However, the transformation of a how-to intoa have-to is by no means inevitable, as cars alsoshow. It depends on how we spend our moneyand allocate our resources. Supporters of the caroften point to the substantial government subsi-dies given to public transportation. Private trans-portation, the argument goes, pays its own waythrough gasoline taxes and highway tolls. Butmany studies have challenged this view by point-ing to the hidden subsidies that cars receive—costs that are paid out of general revenues, notautomobile-specific taxes.55 In the United Statesalone, according to a study by the WorldResources Institute, such subsidies total $300billion every year.56

Figure 3.6 The social organization of convenience.




Some $68 billion of the hidden subsidies forcars goes to road and highway services. Highwaypatrols, parking enforcement, police work intracking down stolen vehicles and responding toaccidents, and street maintenance—these arevery expensive car-related services. Another $13billion goes to road and bridge construction andrepair not covered by gas taxes and other userfees. Road maintenance—snow removal, patch-ing, pavement marking, litter removal, grass cut-ting on the sides of highways—adds another $12billion not covered by user fees.

One of the largest hidden subsidies is for park-ing. Approximately 87 percent of trips in theUnited States are by car, and 90 percent of thesetravelers find a free parking space when they getthere.57 The average annual cost to business of onefree parking space is $1,000 per year, taking intoaccount what it costs to build and maintain aparking lot and the lost opportunity of developingthat land for something else. The same is true forthe “free” parking spaces provided by shops. Thesecosts are passed along to customers throughhigher prices. Of course, drivers help pay for thoseprices when they shop, and all of a company’semployees who drive to work get the same subsidyfor parking. But anyone who arrives at work or ata store by some other means is also paying forthose spaces and is being denied what amounts toa salary bonus and a price discount for the car drivers—to the tune of $85 billion per year.

Motor vehicle accidents cost the United States$358 billion a year. Most of this cost is borne bydrivers through their own insurance. But some$55 billion is not, largely because of the medicalcosts incurred by the pedestrians and bicyclistswho are involved in accidents.

Additional hidden costs include the price ofmilitary intervention to keep oil flowing fromplaces like the Middle East and the cost of air pol-lution on health, crops, and buildings. These fig-ures are hard to pin down, but the WorldResources Institute study estimated them atroughly $60 billion a year. Some other studies putthese numbers far higher.58 Certainly, the U.S.’stab for the Iraq War alone is running around$200 billion a year, as I write—although the

extent to which the Iraq War is about oil is a mat-ter of political judgment.

The $300 billion in hidden subsidies for carsand trucks works out to 15 cents for each of the2 trillion miles Americans drive each year. If avehicle gets 25 miles to the gallon, the annualsubsidy works out to $3.75 per gallon. Per vehi-cle, the subsidy is $1,579 a year.59 Anotherstudy—which included higher figures for thehealth costs of air pollution, pollution cleanup,and a figure for the economic inefficiencies ofautomobile dependence—came up with a whop-ping nine bucks a gallon and $5,000 per car peryear.60 No wonder Americans drive so much.

The hidden subsidies for the automobile areclassic examples of negative externalities, costs thatthe actor does not directly bear. Hidden subsidiesare more than economic matters, though. Theyare also political matters. Powerful lobbies—suchas the American Automobile ManufacturersAssociation, American Automobile Association,the American Petroleum Institute, and the vari-ous road-building associations—do what theycan to keep these subsidies flowing in ways thatbenefit their industries.

During the 1930s and 1940s, General Motors(GM) went one step further. Using a companycalled National City Lines (NCL), a firm it set up forthis purpose, GM went around the United Statesbuying up the country’s vast network of electricstreetcar lines. GM then proceeded to convert theselines to buses, figuring that buses would not be aseffective as streetcars at countering demand forautomobiles and that GM could sell buses in themeantime. Firestone Tire and Rubber, PhillipsPetroleum, Standard Oil, and Mack Truck agreedwith this strategy. These companies purchasedmuch of the stock of NCL and helped finance itsbus lines with sweetheart supplier contracts.61

In the 1970s, the U.S. government success-fully brought suit against NCL for antitrust vio-lations. But the damage had been done. Thestreetcar rails had been ripped up, and roadwayshad been expanded in their place. As a lawyerrepresenting NCL at the trial put it, “This wasall part of a very reasonable corporate strategyto develop a market.”62



The history of cars thus shows how we oftensocially organize (and sometimes socially manip-ulate) the convenience of a technology so that itcomes to seem the most appropriate way to dothings. The pattern of our lives, from where welive and work and shop to how we organize ourfamilies, from the kinds of things we expect fromgovernment to the kinds of things we expect ofour neighbors, all come to revolve around andthus reinforce the convenience of the car. In thisway, the convenience of a car comes to be whatRobert K. Merton termed a “self-fulfillingprophecy.”63 As Merton observed, if we decide athing is true and plan accordingly, very often itturns out just that way.

The Constraints of Convenience

But convenience also constrains. To say some-thing is convenient is to say that we find our livesconstrained so that some other thing is not convenient.

Again consider the car. We drive because wehave allowed the location of common destina-tions to become decentralized, on the assump-tion that most people own cars. We drive becausethe bus now comes only every 30 minutes andthe train once an hour, and maybe not at all. Wedrive because even if the schedules for the bus orthe train fit our own, they probably do not gowhere we need to go, given that land use hasbecome decentralized. We drive because littleprovision for bicycles has been built into thestreets, because sidewalks are nonexistent orunpleasantly close to a thundering stream of traf-fic, and because the places we now have to go areso far away. There is no freedom in a car. We drivebecause this how-to really has become a have-to.

My point is not that we would have morefreedom with more buses and trains, trams andlight rail, bicycle lanes and sidewalks. Freedomalways exists in a dialogue with constraint. If wewere to organize our lives so that these technolo-gies were the most convenient ways to get places(as they in fact still are in parts of some cities,even in the United States), we would still find

our lives constrained. We would, for example,find it most inconvenient to use a car. Roadswould be narrower, far less parking would beavailable, and land use would reflect the denserand more centralized patterns that make walk-ing and public transport “convenient.”

But although such a reorganization might notbring us any more freedom and convenience, itwould not necessarily bring us any less, either.And the pattern of convenience that public trans-portation, walking, and traditional town plan-ning brings could in fact cost far, far less—lesspollution, less land and energy consumption, lesscommunity alienation, and less loss of life.

Technological Somnambulism

Why, then, do we accept the increasing domi-nance of cars, despite their considerable socialand environmental impacts, when more benignalternatives are readily at hand? The same ques-tion could be asked of other technologies andhabits of doing things. “The interesting puzzle inour times,” Langdon Winner has written, “is thatwe so willingly sleepwalk through the processof reconstituting the conditions of humanexistence”—a phenomenon Winner called “tech-nological somnambulism.”64

In this section, I briefly take up three answersto this puzzle: the phenomenology of technology,the culture of technology, and the politics oftechnology.

Phenomenology

Phenomenology means the manner in whichwe experience the phenomena of everyday life,and one of the central experiences that phenom-enologists have long emphasized is routinization.If you stop to think about it, even the simplesttasks of everyday life are extraordinarily com-plex. We need ways to simplify what we do, andmaking routines is a common way.

Alfred Schutz, the founding figure in this areaof sociological research, liked to use the example



of walking out to the street corner to place a let-ter in a mailbox. This simple task is filled withpresumptions about how the world works. Thepostal service will pick up the letter. Postal work-ers know how to read in the language I have used.The person I am sending the letter to knows howto read this language. There is such a thing as let-ter writing, and the post office and the person towhom I am writing understand that. There issuch a thing as a postal service. There is such athing as a mailbox, and there is no hungry mon-ster at the bottom of the mailbox, waiting to eatthe letter. In order to get to the mailbox, I need toget up, put my feet forward, cross the room, openthe door, walk down the hallway, get my coat, putit on, open the outer door, step outside before Iclose it, close it, walk to the street, and so on.

If one did stop to think about all the presump-tions involved every step of the way, one wouldlikely never reach the door. Instead, through accu-mulated experience, we establish a series of littleroutines—recipes of understanding—that we cancall upon without having to think the whole thingthrough each time.

The metaphor of recipes is quite appropriate;routinization is exactly what a cook’s recipe allows.Say I have just found out that a friend is having abirthday and I decide to bake a cake as a surprise.It is four in the afternoon and the cake needs to beready by seven if the surprise is going to work out.But how do I bake a chocolate cake, and what kindof chocolate cake should I bake? I certainly do nothave time to experiment much, so I reach for myfamily’s favorite recipe for chocolate cake, a recipeI have followed many times before and I know islikely to please. I bake the cake in time, and it is abig hit—because, through my use of a recipe ofunderstanding, I had routinized the process ofbaking a chocolate cake.

Making use of any form of technology—andmailing letters and baking cakes are both formsof technology—requires a similar process. Iknow a little bit about how my computer works,although far from everything. But if I stop tothink about all that I know every time I urge myfingers to strike the keyboard, it would take meall day to write this sentence, if not longer. I know

that my computer works and, given the timeconstraints I have, I must usually be contentto proceed with no more than that tacitconfidence—technological sleepwalking.

But suppose a lightning bolt were to strike thebuilding I’m in and send a charge through theelectric lines that melts some essential bit of mycomputer’s innards? (In fact, that happened tome once.) How could I keep on writing? I’mquite good about backing up computer files, butmany of my files are stored only electronically.Until I got my own machine working again, orbought a new one, I would have to borrow acomputer from someone else to read my backupfiles. If one were available, I might have to con-tend with software I’m not quite used to. Still,despite these annoyances and economic barriers,I would only reluctantly resort to pen and paper,because doing so would force a major reorgani-zation of my work habits.

The point I’m trying to establish is that ourtechnological routines tend to lock us into con-tinuing those routines and into trying only newroutines that mesh well with our older ones. Ifsomething disturbs our technological sleepwalk-ing, we will likely do all we can to walk aroundthe disturbance, reclose our eyes, and return topleasant walking slumber. And if this tactic fails,we may suddenly awake in a startled panic, hav-ing lost our confidence in the secure ordering ofour experience.

The threat of broken technological routinewas widely experienced in the United Statesduring the gasoline shortages of the 1970s. TheArab oil-producing states of the time instituted acartel to limit production, resulting in muchhigher prices and widespread gasoline shortages.Local governments instituted various rationingstrategies, such as alternating “odd” and “even”days for buying gas, depending on whether a car’slicense plate ended in an odd or even number. Inthe Washington, D.C., area, motorists were pro-hibited from buying less than five gallons of gas,to prevent hoarding through topping off tanks. Ina car-dominated society, this rule produced nearhysteria. A neighbor of my mother-in-law, wholives near Washington, D.C., drove around the



block for an hour one day, trying to empty hertank enough to be able to buy five gallons of gas.

The result of this panic attack in the middle ofthe technological night was not a United Stateswith more public transportation and more cen-tralized land use. Rather, the result was a UnitedStates that, critics contend, will go to war to keepthe oil flowing and the cars rolling, as the twoGulf Wars later demonstrated. Routinization fol-lows the patterns of technology we have sociallyorganized as the convenient way to do things.And once these routines are in place, they rein-force the same patterns of social organizationthat gave rise to them in the first place.

Culture

The same kind of dialogical momentumunderlies the relationship between technologyand culture.

We perceive all technological knowledgethrough the cultural lenses we use to make sense ofour world. These lenses provide our technologicalmeans with technological meaning. Without cul-ture, without meaning, we would not know whatto do with our technological means. Yet technolog-ical means help shape technological meaning. Themeans available to us mold our contours of choiceand thus our sense of the possible. By structuringthe character of experience, means affect andsometimes even justify our cultural ends. We lovecars in part because cars are now the main way wehave to get around. Means become meaning.

Not only does technology shape culture, how-ever; culture also shapes technology. Should wecome to believe that cars are ugly, dangerous, andenvironmentally and socially destructive (achange I think may finally be under way), we maydecide to reorganize our lives so that cars are lessnecessary. We may invent new technology to fitour new cultural aims. Meaning becomes means.Should we maintain a cultural commitment towhat we see as the beauty, freedom, and pleasureof cars, we will be unlikely to seek alternatives—an outcome that equally represents the culturalshaping of technology.

Technological progress is one widespreadexample of the dialogue of means and meaning.On the one hand is our cultural faith in progress:We have gained so much in organizing our livesaround technological change, who could disputeits value? We therefore ask for more new andwondrous technological means. On the otherhand is our continuing effort to discover suchnew and wondrous means: We have given up somuch in organizing our lives around technologi-cal change, how could we go back now? We there-fore find ourselves compelled to entrust our livesto the future benefits of further technologicalchange. To do otherwise would take an enormousrealignment of our cultural commitments, a rudeawaking from our technological sleepwalk.

Signs of such a realignment of meaning are,however, increasingly apparent—in part becauseof problems with the means. Pollution, danger,increasing social inequality, and the loss of tradi-tional forms of beauty were never mentioned inthe technological promise, and yet they have alloccurred. But as long as technology keeps deliv-ering on its promise of ever more wonders . . .

Fears that technology might not even do thatmay have been behind the quasi-religious reactionsto the infamous “Y2K bug.” Remember that night?Hardly anyone mentions it now, perhaps out ofembarrassment. But the predictions of what wouldhappen when computers cashed in their chips atmidnight on New Year’s Eve, 2000, are just aston-ishing to recall. In case you don’t remember whatall the fuss was about, computer engineers haddesigned the calendars inside most computers,particularly big mainframe ones, to count only thelast two digits in the number of a year and toassume the 1 and the 9. Consequently, when theyear 2000 (2K in computer-speak) came around,all these computers were expected to reset theirclocks to 1900, tangling the subtle dynamics ofprogramming. Normally sober publications likethe New York Times and Scientific American pub-lished astoundingly dire predictions of what mighthappen. Phone lines and electric transmission lineswould go dead. Computer-controlled factory production lines wouldn’t function. Air traffic control computers would have to be shut down.



Automobiles with computerized Engine Manage -ment Systems wouldn’t start. Some fire engineswouldn’t start. Automotive air bags would be spon-taneously activated. Land mines would explode.Digital watches would go blank. Medical equip-ment would lose calibration and give faulty read-ings. Pharmacies wouldn’t dole out refills becauseprescriptions would show up on the screen asexpired for a century. Elevators would stop.Pacemakers would stop. Fire sprinklers would turnon and wouldn’t turn off. Nuclear power plantswould explode. Nuclear weapons would be auto-matically launched. Stores would run out of foodas refrigeration equipment switched off, processedfood production lines shut down, oil refineries stopproducing fuel for transporting produce, crops failbecause of fertilizer shortages, and people every-where strip store shelves bare in a massive spree ofpanic buying. Lawless looting would take over ourcities as desperate people struggled to survive.Vigilantism would become the only form of lawand order as police forces and the military becameincapacitated by the collapse of communicationand transportation systems.

Talk about waking up the sleepwalkers.Millions of people took this very seriously. TheWeb was full of sites advising people how best tostock up for the collapse of commerce and how todefend their homes from looters. Probably mostpeople in the computer-dependent countries atleast had a look in their kitchen cupboards tomake sure there was plenty of canned food andpasta on hand, as well as making sure their walletswere full in case ATM machines really did stopworking, as many predicted would be the case forat least a few days. A friend of a friend of mineeven flew down to Fiji for the coming of Y2K, in case of Armageddon in the United States—“bugging out,” as it was called at the time.

Government and industry took it all very seri-ously, too. “Y2K readiness” and “Y2K disclosure”became significant factors in investors’ evaluationof stock values. In October 1998, PresidentClinton signed into law the Year 2000 Infor mationand Readiness Disclosure Act during the midst ofNational Y2K Action Week, and he told govern-ment agencies to spend whatever was necessary to

set their computers right. Other wealthy nationsfollowed suit, and the World Bank set up the Year2000 Initiative to help poorer nations debug theircomputers. According to some estimates, hun-dreds of billions of dollars were spent worldwide.65

And then virtually nothing happened, even inplaces like Russia, where computers were old andmore likely to have the bug, and where almostnothing was spent on “Y2K readiness,” due to thepost-Soviet disarray of its government and econ-omy. Y2K quickly became “Yawn2K,” and theY2K bug became the “Y2K bust,” as the mediasmugly put it afterward. But as smug as sometried to be, it was but a thin mask over a red-faced industrial world.

How could we have gotten it so wrong? Probablybecause of the threat Y2K presented to the quasi-religious character of what is rightly called our“technological faith.” As Lewis Mumford, probablythe greatest critical scholar of technology, put it, “Ifanything was unconditionally believed in and wor-shipped during the last two centuries, at least by theleaders and masters of society, it was themachine.”66 The computer is undoubtedly the cen-tral contemporary icon in the religion of themachine. And to have this religious machine pro-claim that the end is nigh, precisely on the date thatsome Christian traditions had long warned of, wasto touch deeply into our most ancient fears.

Yet after that moment of worldwide collectivedoubt, faith was restored, and the computer tookup once again its continual advance into the net-work of our dependencies.

Sure, computers really are amazing. Amaze -ment is the essence of the miracle. But my pointis that cultural faith in technological progressdialogically propels us to reorganize ourselvesaround the computer as much as the existence ofthe computer alerts us to the possibility of suchreorganization and cultivates our faith. And whospeaks of Y2K now?

Politics

Technology is also political, as I earlier noted.The political character of technology is made



plain both by instances of active manipulation ofthe market through lobbying for subsidies and byinstances of popular resistance to technologicalstructures such as the environmental justicemovement. Technological politics can also bepassive and tacit, though. Technology is politicaleven when we are sleepwalking. Because of rou-tinization and romance—because of the phe-nomenology and culture of technology—wetend to uncritically promote particular techno-logical structures and their social interests, sleep-walking a political order into place.

A decision to organize your life around a cer-tain technology draws you into becoming one ofits political supporters. Once you have boughtyour house in the car-dependent and car-wor-shipping suburbs, you have organized your life insuch a way that you are likely to promote contin-ued car use. If gas prices rise or your car becomesold and unreliable, you cannot easily switch toanother means of transport. You will likely findyourself paying the higher gas prices and buyinga new car—as well as clamoring for better park-ing and new highways to bypass the traffic causedby all your neighbors’ cars. (Your own car nevercauses traffic and parking problems.) You willlikely find yourself maintaining a place in the lineof social interests that leads to the subsidies forthe automobile, as well as the automobile’s socialand environmental consequences, a line thatstretches from you to the local garage to the auto-mobile manufacturers to the road builders to theoil companies to, say some, the troops patrollingthe streets of far away cities.

Technological somnambulism is technologi-cal politics. Because of it, we may ironically findourselves in the frequent position of promotingtechnological interests we wish we did not have.

The Needs of Neither

People have a common tendency to externalizethe economy and technology—to treat themboth almost as forces of nature. We speak ofeconomic and technical changes as being driven

by efficiency, subtly implying that these changesfollow the thermodynamic laws of physicsregarding the conservation of energy. It wouldbe unnatural to reject them, we seem to betelling ourselves. In a parallel way, we speak ofthese changes as being driven by convenience,suggesting again a kind of external objectivity tothe course of technical and economic develop-ment. We must therefore adapt to these impera-tives, we probably all find ourselves thinking atleast occasionally, and live as best we can withtheir social and environmental consequences.

But neither the economy nor technology is animperative. Neither has needs. They often appearto us as external structures, as forces over whichwe have little control, as ends to which we mustgive way. But for all their objective status as factsof the market and of science, money andmachines are our own creations, a part of humanculture. It is we who have the needs. What LewisMumford said of technology applies equally to theeconomy: “The machine itself makes no demandsand keeps no promises: it is the human spiritthat makes demands and keeps promises.”67

Technology and the economy take the shape thatthey do only in response to human demands,promises, and broken promises. There are noimperatives but our own.

Once set into motion, however, the mills oftechnology and the treadmills of production andconsumption become social structures that shapeour needs and interests, just as those needs andinterests dialogically shape the mills and tread-mills to begin with. We are quickly lulled into theroutines and cultural desires organized by thesestructures. We find ourselves dropping off intoboth technological and economic somnambulism.

Yet the dialogical influence that the economyand technology have over us should not be acause for despair. In fact, in that influence lieshope. By changing the conditions under whichwe find ourselves making the decisions that wedo, we can reinforce our movement toward theends we truly desire. All we need to do is wake upand decide where we really want to go.


money and machines - corwin · money and machines—— 59 notes, certain forms of economic growth,...

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