Is Our Economic Future Limited? W. Brookes

More than a call for conservation, this new economic "doomsdaying" tells us that we must begin to "rethink our whole lifestyle;' and to damp down the fires of our high Mr. Brookes writes regularly for the Boston Herald American and contributes a column, "A Taxpayer Speaks," to the Boston Sunday Herald Advertiser. This article has been reprinted by permission from the Sunday Herald Advertiser of July 18, 1976. powered economy - to accept a more ascetic way of life. A ,fundamental part of this argument is strong pressure for more central govern ment planning and control over our economic resources and decisions and new "bureaucratic structures" to help us "rethink our lifestyles:' These ideas were well summed up in a recent special section dealing with the Energy Crisis prepared by the editors of The Christian Science Monitor. (June 28, 1976) In their words, "The United States' dominant position in the world today is largely due to the historical fact that the potential of oil as a cheap energy source was realized during the nation's industrially formative years and the country has been blessed with large domestic reserves:' With these reserves now seeming 671 672 THE FREEMAN November to decline, the Monitor goes on to purport that, "Americans, as a peo ple, rethink many of their national and personal priorities. It is clear that the consumptive lifestyle which has developed in the U.S. in the last quarter century cannot continue indefinitely;' In short, we are told that Ameri cans must begin to scale down their standard of material livelihood and hold down our economic growth - because our material resources are "limited."

With all due respect to the editors of the Monitor, it is difficult to accept what has become "the poli tics of, poverty" and the "economics of limitation;' Not only do·such concepts grate sharply with America's basic mental posture as the· land of unlimited individual opportunity, but they do not square with historical or economic reality. If, for example, America'sposi tion of economic power and vast distribution of wealth were solely the result of our "vast material resources;' how can we explain the extraordinary economic backward ness of Russia, sitting on even more natural resources than ours? Why The Unused Resources? Why is it, for example, that Russia, with greater agricultural potential even than ours, must now import our wheat? Why is it that Brazil, with some of the richest natural resources in the world, has a standard of living only one-eighth of ours? If our natural resources really were the primary source of our wealth, why is it that native American Indians lived in such abject poverty, frequently in hunger and starvation, sitting on plains that now feed the world? And, why did some early farmers in our great plains grow rich, while their neighbors with the same land fail?

The answer is, of course, wealth is only partly dependent on material resources. It is much more depen dent on the knowledge and ideas that put those material resources to work. In this respect, the greatest source of our energy is not oil but ideas, not the ground, but the mind. Certainly the oil, which we now regard as so precious, was utterly worthless to the American Indians who did not even know it was there-and only a little more valu able to the white men who first discovered it, but had few uses for it. What gave oil its value was the creative genius and resulting tech nology of those who found ways to use it, to make it serve us, to increase our freedom, our mobility? our standard of Iiving, and our economic comfort and well-being. Similarly, uranium was utterly unknown and therefore worthless until Einstein, working alone, and removed from material considera tions or economic necessity, com1976 IS OUR ECONOMIC FUTURE LIMITED? 673 prehended the nature of the materi al universe, and thus released us from bondage to old and limi ted ideas of energy. We can, of course, only imagine what new, untapped resources are still waiting to be discovered and developed.

The Creative Imagination Clearly, the primary reason for America's great wealth today is not its physical assets, but the political, economic, and spiritual freedom which released the greatest source of wealth and energy of all-the individual mind, the creative imagination and the ability to com prehend and to master the material universe around us. Or, as the great scientist philosopher, R. Buckminster Fuller, says, "Wealth is the product of the progressive mastery of matter by mind." He further refines this definition by telling us that "Wealth is our organized ability to cope· effecti vely with the environ ment:' (Operating Manual for Space ship Earth, Pocket Books, 1970) In short, Fuller rejects the notion that wealth is primarily the result of material resources, and says that it is due primarily to our "metaphysical ability" to cope with these resources. He says, in effect, that the greatest source of energy is mind, not matter.