Page 158 - Cultural Studies and Political Economy

Environment and Pecuniary Culture 147

existence, there can be no market for biodiversity because all markets exist
within, and are maintained by, interactions among all living beings; there is
simply nothing to exchange for biodiversity, nor can anyone “own” it. Since
markets are unable to account for biodiversity, it is omitted from the value
calculations of maximizing individuals, which is to say that in monetary
terms biodiversity is worthless.
Julian Simon, an apostle of private exchange as the preferred mode of eco-
nomic governance, completely missed the boat when he remarked with satis-
faction that over the course of human history the trend has been to make the
20
Earth “ever more livable for human beings.” Simon failed to mention that
in “civilizing the wilderness,” massive extinctions of plant and animal species
ensued, 21 and this loss of biodiversity ultimately serves to make the planet
less livable for human beings.
We would expect societies driven by the logic of money to be “leaders” in
species extinctions; to experience escalating contamination of water, air, and
soil; to foster detrimental climate and weather changes; and to be instrumen-
tal in ozone depletion. Money does not carry information concerning the
value of such collective goods and services, and so they are not considered in
the maximizing calculations of individual buyers and sellers. Nor are they im-
puted into calculations of Gross National Product. Through taxes and subsi-
dies it is often suggested that prices can be made more reflective of ecologi-
cal realities, but this is a delusion since the price system, whether adjusted by
taxes and subsidies or not, is still and will always be premised on individual-
ism and quid pro quo, as opposed to radical interdependence, ecosystem, and
the common good.

MONEY AND MONOPOLIES OF KNOWLEDGE

Money has its own internal logic, which in turn has significant cultural im-
plications. Here I have hinted at some ecological aspects of money use, and
as well at existential, democratic, and community concerns that arise from the
predominance of money as medium of communication in our society. Mar-
shall McLuhan was one of the few media/communication writers to have ad-
dressed money as a mode of communication. But in the context of the fore-
going concerns, McLuhan’s analyses are quite trivial. 22
Perhaps critical political economy can help us understand why there is such
a paucity of critical treatments of the cultural consequences of money as a
medium of communication. While on the one hand the increasing predomi-
nance of money as it further penetrates the interstices of our society is devas-
tating in terms of democracy, community, and indeed prospects of survival. 23