Interhuman Equity

Imagine a potluck dinner in which all 6 billion plus people of our planet attend, Jim Merkel invites. You are in line first. How much food do you take? After the meal, you go to gather the supplies you need for the year, again, how much do you take?

Let’s consider two hypothetical scenarios. After you green grass and blue sky dinner, the ten people at your table get a basket of money equal to ten sustainable, equitable shares of the world Gross National Product (GNP). To determine how much is in the basket, we first divide the total world GNP - $29,340 billion – by six billion people for a $4,900 share. But because the total economic activity of humanity overshoots the globe’s carrying capacity by 20 percent we adjust the share to $3,900. At this level of GNP, we still have humanity consuming the entire global bioproductivity. Let’s say we scale back total human impact in terms of GNP by 75 percent to make room for the millions of other species. Each person would now have an annual equitable share of the world GNP equal to $980. You begin to try to imagine living on $980 a year, gulp… and you freeze. Impossible!

The basket has $9,800, or 10 times the $980 equal shares. This money is laid out in bundles of 100 one-dollar bills. Now each draws a number from a hat. You draw first, and can take what you want. Everyone watches in silence. How much to you take?*

Merkel switches scenarios slightly. Now you can approach an ATM machine behind a curtain, with no societal pressures, you could take as much as you want, you’re first after all, and no one will know but you how much you took. Again, how much to you take?*

Merkel again posits these hard questions of global living in a remarkable way. So far we have been touching on the GNP, economics, and later he speaks of how much land is equitable for us humans to use. Not in terms of living on, but in terms of use: CO2 absorption, food production so that we can eat, etc. At the same time, he is asking us hard questions; he also gives us hope from the past. The western understanding of the way of relating to one another and the world hasn’t and isn’t the only way. He also gives inspiration.

Charles Gray, from Eugene, Oregon, author of Toward a Nonviolent Economics, developed the concept of World Equity Wage (WEW) and capped his wage at $3.14 an hour, and worked no more than 20 hours a week. His voluntary “deprivileging” was motivated by a goal of sharing the available work and wealth with humanity and restoring the environment. When we meet in 1995, he had already been living for 17 years on what he calculated to be the World Equity Budget (WEB), and averaged $1,190 in total annual living expenses from 1978 to 1993. He is a delightful, open-minded person and his book is an inspiration.

After 14 years of living on $5,000 per year (placing me amongst the wealthiest 17 percent of humanity), I know it would take a quantum redesign of my life and significantly reduced expectations of services to approach equity. I know it is hard in the context of an unsustainable culture, but every bit of societal level change, be it bike lanes, mixed zoning, or local organic markets will make the whole process easier.**

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* Jim Merkel Radical Simplicity: Small Footprints on the Finite Earth. (New Society Publishers, 2003. 58-60.
**Ibid. 61-2.