Statement of Purpose

This document puts in perspective the problem of research for a Phd.

Apart from the three biophysical laws of sustainability cite:ss that talk about usage rate of renewables, alternatives to non renewables and the rate of pollution emission and absorption; the socially sustainable law is stated as:

To be socially sustainable, capital stocks and resource flows must be equitably distributed and sufficient to provide a good life for every one cite:ss-social.

In a capitalist society, according to Marx, the genealogy of one's labor is lost in producing a commodity, resulting in objectification of labor. Because of this objectification and the relentless exercises to maximize the profits, the wages for the labor are kept at a minimum. In the longer run, this process results in an imbalance of excessive production and waning purchasing capacity resulting in cyclical crises. How do we overcome this inherent contradiction of the current capital and market driven economic model?

Let us first define what a sustainable end is. We can define this end where there is no alienation from one's own labor; where groups of consumers and producers interact, co-ordinate, collaborate with trust to build communities that are socially, economically and environmentally sustainable; where economic and political structures allow the majority to own the means of production to ensure an equitable distribution of the created wealth.

The intelligent direction of effort toward the achievement of an end is equifinality cite:equifinality.

If we can envisage our current society as a denouement of the relationship between production and consumption, we build models of these systems that are involved in production and consumption to capture the dynamics, constraints, conditions and the purposes under which these systems work cite:systemstheory.

These principles that are gleaned from the models are then applied to the real working systems of commerce organized as cooperatives. The software that puts in operation these cooperatives ensure the application of the principles derived from the models. The models provide a scaffolding for these real systems while these in operation provide feedback to the models. These cycles determine equifinality or a path to social equilibrium.

What should be the defining features of each cooperative? How should these cooperatives of producers and consumers interact with each other? How should they be organized?

One of the key ingredients of these systems will be transparency. The members of a cooperative should have access to information of all the transactions that either happen within the organization or with other organizations. This is not an afterthought but a default. The other is what level of information should be made available to other systems (cooperatives) for collaboration.

Let us take a concrete example to explain this. A group of farmers come together to form a cooperative to organize themselves to effectively farm, add value to their produce and sell value added products. Since the members are equal partners, each member has a right to go through every transaction that happens within the cooperative. The transactions could include purchase of farm inputs, setting up of the processing units, managing these units, sale of either produce or processed products, etc. Likewise, the consumers who buy from this co-operative would demand such a transparency from the farmers' co-operative to know how the food is grown; what were the inputs; what were the farming methods employed; for him or her to make a knowledgeable decision. Both these cooperatives might want to utilize the services of another cooperative that collaborates in moving the farm produce from the producer to the consumer.

What comes across from the above scenario is the necessity to capture different types of information and make it available at different levels for different users. At one level there is information that is necessary for the members of an organization and at another level is the information that is necessary for the consumers of a service. The information flow becomes a conduit to transparency.

The supposed invisible hand cite:invisiblehand that keeps the overall market economy in equilibrium even though the elements within it act in their own self interest can be made visible where each system is acting and collaborating with others towards the end.

One aspect of the work ahead is how do we model the systems and their interactions with other systems or define the equifinality to reach the end.

The other aspect to research is how do we quickly build the software systems that bear the attributes derived from the models to put into operation the real systems.