THURSDAY, JAN 3, 2019: NOTE TO FILE
Bigenuff Homes
Because enough is enough
Eric Lee, A-SOCIATED PRESS
TOPICS: SERVING THE SYSTEM, FROM THE WIRES, RULES OF THE GAME
Abstract: The concept of equality, what is equitable, may be hopelessly politicized, but the adaptive may consider the question of what is enough with a focus on housing needs as distinct from housing wants as manufactured by decades of overselling. How much space a person needs to occupy can be quantified. Somehow our predecessors perceived what was room enough differently.
COOS BAY (A-P) —Alternative to the unsustainable economy of evermore is the economy of enough, which was the norm for non-growth societies (e.g. prior 300,000 years of hunter-gatherer society and some agrarian societies). In steady-state economies powered by solar energy in the form of food and biomass fuels, egalitarian norms selected for a narrow range of inequality. Consuming enough is also selected for as is maintaining population within sustainable environmental resources. Understanding and managing egalitarian biophysical economies of enough requires that the concepts of 'equality' and 'enough' be quantified.
The Measure of Enough and the Inequitable
What is enough is rarely a single value or amount. Enough apples to make two dozen apples is 24; no other value works, though if selling two dozen eggs, putting 25 in someone's basket works. To shelter humans, how many square feet of shelter is enough? Or calories of food per day? Size varies from newborn to adult and size and activity level varies within any subgroup that may be defined. Still, a range is implied and can be measured/defined. For 95 percent of adults living in New York City, a range of caloric intake could be determined empirically and would plot out as a bell curve. That 70 percent are overweight and 34 percent are clinically obese indicates that the distribution is on the overconsumption side of enough. Most are being harmed by the SAD (Standard American Diet). Subgroups such as the homeless and upper one percenters in monetary wealth may show some tenancy to be on one side or the other of the curve, but free food is abundant (currently in USA) and elite consumers are more likely to diet, so any assumptions are likely to be disconfirmed.
In terms of square footage of residential space, however, clear differences are apparent. When 'jungling out' a homeless adult and their stuff may occupy 15 to 25 sq ft. Only about one percent of moneyed Americans (in USA) will buy a home with less than 1,000 sq ft. Households average 2.6 people, so 99% of Americans 'think' that a mere 384 sq ft/person, a mere 1,000 sq ft house, is unable to meet the 'needs' of a civilized human such as themselves.
Actually the average new home size is about 2,400 sq ft, so 1,000 sq ft per civilized human is minimally acceptable to average Americans. So a range for average homeless and average American is 20 to 1,000 sq ft/person. McManions for the hyper-elites range from 5,000 to 10,000 sq ft, so for elites 2,400 sq ft/elite person seems minimal. Actually home size in America has doubled in the past 40 years, so soon less than 3,000 sq ft per truly civilized human will be considered slumming.
The size of one's domicile as wanted, however, can be manufactured without apparent limit assuming ever increasing wealth times aggressive overselling as usual. But how much space does a person actually need? Assume each person has as much stuff as they can carry. The question can be answered without taking a preference poll or asking Americans to vote on it. How much space is needed can be answered by 'asking' our ancestors of the last 100,000 years. They could build large shelters, limited in size only by their ability to harvest materials (e.g. cut snow blocks, branches, mix mud...) and amount of work/time/energy they had to build houses (e.g. igloos, huts, wickiups, teepees, pit houses, longhouses). Building a shelter that wasn't big enough, or was too big, was selected against, so 'big enough' was selected for as the millennia passed. It turns out that everywhere, from jungles to the Arctic, humans built homes that were big enough and the range in size, sq ft/person, was the same.
Average Inuit igloo size was about 11.5 feet (3-4 meters) in diameter housing 5 people, though igloos up to 30 feet in diameter were built, but only to house multiple families totaling perhaps an entire band of 50. Still, if 64-93 sq ft for five (13-20 sq ft/person) was too little, each household of five could have built and lived in a 700 sq ft igloo (140 sq ft/person), but didn't, ergo about 20 sq ft was pushing what would have been universally perceived as too much space. Longhouses had a series of fire pits down the middle with a family living on each side, but square footage per person: about the same. Teepees were about 10 feet in diameter or 15 sq ft per person, but as nomads, stuff, including the sticks and hides, had to be drug by humans and dogs using travois, so 15 sq ft/person may be 'just enough'. When the plains Indians acquired horses that could help move stuff, the teepees got bigger (and empire-building began), providing up to 35 sq ft per person. The agrarian Kogi live in huts that provide 19 to 27 sq ft per person. When humans are not empowered by horses, steam engines or other non-human power sources, enough can be defined as being in the 18 to 27 sq ft range with 18 being Just Enough (JE) and 27+ being More than Enough (ME). Enough (E) can be defined as an average of the range, e.g. 22.5 sq ft per person.
An 8' x 8' home, 64 sq ft outside footprint, with 1 foot thick light straw-clay insulated walls gives 32 sq ft per person inside space, clearly more than enough. A 6' x 8' size with 24 sq ft inside space would be enough. How big is Bignenuff? For mobile Bignenuff homes, a maximum 6' x 8' is to consider. Sailing ships and roadways would assume that size, so the cost of a too-big home would be limited mobility. Techno-industrialized humans need to set limits and live within them.
Hunter-gatherer society was, by comparison to empire-building societies (aka 'civilizations'), very egalitarian, or rather, egalitarian enough. The hunter-gatherer egalitarian norm is evidenced-based, not a matter of assertion. We only need to collect data, not argue about how many sq ft a person needs. The Kogi are agrarian, but not empire-builders, and have evolved a sustainable system whose society is (therefore?) close to hunter-gatherer norms (that are what has worked long-term) unlike those of all prior civilizations (complex societies that collapse or 'fade away').
As 'there is nothing desirable in consumption per se', and over consumption is, long-term, strongly selected against, how wide the range is of consumption is best minimized to what is actually needed, and not maximized as is temporarily selected for to maximize growth in the short term (tumors select for growth but are selected against long-term as they act as if they were not the host—tumor cells are a pathological form of soma cells that live within limits). As what a human needs varies over a relatively narrow range, egalitarian consumption of enough is selected for. A society where some persons have an income that enables consumption 10,000 times more than enough, will be selected against.
 It is possible to believe in equality (or inequality) and to talk endlessly about the value of equality (aka political prattle), but without numbers being involved, all such politicized opinion mongering means whatever the one shaking their fist or yelling (or writing) believes their indubitably true words mean (e.g. Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, Tom Hartmann, Chris Hedges). |
So let's do the numeracy thing. Inequality is, is any deviation from 'perfect', therefore non-existent equality, so 'believe' it or not, it doesn't matter because what-is is. The principle, again, is a narrow range of inequality is selected for as it maximizes eMpower (eMergy/time). Determine values for JE, E and ME. An adaptive policy is to minimize the range of inequality.
JE = Just Enough, below which measurable harm is evident at, say, P≤0.05.
E = Enough
ME = More than Enough, above which consumption is more than should be acceptable for long-term persistence.
To normalize values for a range of inequalities, so E = 1:
IJ=JE/E
IE=E/E=1
IM=ME/E
Range=IM:IJ
The range of inequality is measured by the inequality index (II) or ME/JE.
II=ME/JE or IM/IJ
Example 1: In USA 'needed' square footage in housing as perceived is about 1,000 sq ft to 4,200 sq ft per household, 2,600 sq ft average, with one percent of those buying new houses accepting less or demanding more. So given 2.6 persons per household:
JE=384 sq ft/person
E=1,000 sq ft/person
ME=1,615 sq ft/person
IJ=384/1000, IJ=0.38
IM=1615/1,000, MJ=1.6
Range 1.6:0.38 or
II=1.6/0.38=1615/384, II=4.25:1
But some people 'need' 3,800 sq ft per person, so II = 3800/384 for an II of 10:1
Example 2: Non-empire-building agrarian society home area needed per person is 19 to 27 sq ft, so:
JE=19
E=23 ((19+27)/2)
ME=27
IJ=19/23, IJ=0.83
IM=27/23, IM=1.17
Range=1.17:0.83
II=27/19, II=1.42:1
The II (inequality index) value measures the range of inequality that is socially acceptable or characteristic of a society. Values of 1.5:1 or less are characteristic of sustainable, relatively equitable societies, while 5:1 are characteristic of hierarchical empire-building societies that tend to collapse at high inequality ratios.
In terms of overconsumption of environmental resources, also characteristic of unsustainable complex societies, the II value calculated using the actual estimated value of what is needed per person instead of perceived value of enough better indicates the degree of overconsumption. So given:
JE=20 sq ft/person (actual)
E=25 sq ft/person (actual)
ME=1,000 sq ft/person (perceived by average American)
II=ME/JE, 1,000/20, II=50:1
If II=1.6:1 is maximum inequality that is sustainable, then the average American thinks they need 50 times more than their ancestors or 50/1.6 is 31:1 times too inequitable to work long-term.
Elites perceive 5,000 to 10,000 square feet per household as needed or up to 3,800 sq ft per person, so II=3,800/20 or up to 192 times more than enough, and 120:1 times too inequitable. Is 12:1 times too inequitable to be sustainable? Is 2:1 times?
Nature determines what works. Humans don't get a vote. Maybe II=2:1 could be made to work, but optimal may be 1.4:1, which is what worked for our ancestors for several hundred thousand years. Humans need to manage their numbers and per capita consumption, or Nature will, and humans will think that Nature is unkind. Nature is unkind, however, and there are limits to denial among other things. We need to impose limits on ourselves, embrace the what-works now that will come anyway, or the nature of things will do so for us. Denial, distraction, and obfuscation hasn't worked for empire-builders yet, nor has error, ignorance and illusion, and there is no reason or evidence to think it will this time around.
Example 3: Proposed policy for a sustainable and prosperous society of enough:
A range of 0.8 to 1.2 may be equitable enough. Assume personal living space needed is less than 100 sq ft per person. This would be a transitional value for former members of industrial society. So ME=100 sq ft would be an upper acceptable value. So 100/1.2 suggests that 83 sq ft per person is 'enough' in a transitional society of enough, and 83 times 0.8, or 67 sq ft per person, is JE as 'just enough' for the maladapted refugees from industrial society, which would look like extreme overconsumption to 99 percent of their ancestors. The II, however, is 1.5:1, which is perhaps close enough to the equitable ancestor range. For the society to become more adaptive, space per person would decrease as would the range of inequality over several generations when the prosperous way down was fully realized.
