Page 157 - Cultural Studies and Political Economy

146 Chapter Five

exceptions, not the rule. They believe, furthermore, that to improve economic
efficiency, externalities should be enfolded into the logic of the price system,
which is to say into the logic of individualism and quid pro quo. From an eco-
logical perspective, however, internalizing externalities, and thereby giving
the price system even further sway is, to say the least, counterproductive. It
is to force-fit the logic of money onto a rich array of ecosystem interactions,
further endangering the vitality of ecosystems.
There are many other implications of the logics of quid pro quo and indi-
vidualism. Consider, for example, the rise of homelessness. At one time, hu-
man life was thought to have intrinsic value, and there was very little home-
lessness in our society. Given an ethic of quid pro quo and rugged
individualism, however, as poor people have nothing or little to exchange,
they are valued accordingly. The same logic transfers to the old, the ill, the
handicapped, and we see it worked out through decreased funding of social
programs and tax cuts for the rich. Culture is very much a part of the politi-
cal economy, and money as a medium of communication is a transmitter of
culture and affects culture.
Furthermore, the logic of quid pro quo instills in people’s minds the idea
that everything of value has a price, a position fundamentally at odds with
such vital concepts as uniqueness, sacredness, and intrinsic value. Unique-
ness and sacredness, of course, imply an incapacity for, or inappropriateness
of, substitutions, which is to say an absence or inappropriateness of price. But
the absence of price, according to the logic of the market, means an absence
of value. The pressure is always, for example, to “develop” land hitherto re-
siding outside the bounds of commodity exchange, irrespective of the intrin-
sic value some may accord it, as when the Aborigines in the Kakadu Conser-
vation Zone in Australia were asked how much they would require for the use
of their burial grounds for mineral exploration, or, in the case of the Mohawks
near Oka, Quebec, to permit construction of a golf course. 18
Furthermore, money is unable to carry information concerning the com-
mon good: money mediates exchanges between individuals, including corpo-
rate bodies as fictitious individuals, and in commodity trade no one is ex-
pected to consider the good of others. Hence, as John Kenneth Galbraith
noted, the bias in money-mediated societies is toward those goods and ser-
vices consumed privately. Galbraith concluded that in market-driven
economies there is inevitably an undersupply of collective goods (parks, ed-
ucation, aesthetically pleasing architecture) because there is no market for
these public goods. 19
Ecosystems, of course, are rife with “public goods”: the beauty of a ver-
dant hillside and of a pristine lake, the glory of a sunset, the uplifting song of
birds. Biodiversity, too, is a public good. Although biodiversity is vital to our