Recursos materiales e infraestructuras:

The scarcity multiplier is one form of the tertiary democratic dysfunction of under provision of public goods. It has the capacity to transform economic benefits into costs so that the greater the benefit the bigger the cost it produces. This effect could make cost-benefit analyses (CBA) of development projects totally misleading. To avoid this, CBA must be based on competent political decisions on preferred limits to the IWIS feedbacks that drive the multiplier - those of population, status rivalry, adaptation and sales promotion. The primary democratic dysfunctions that foster the multiplier indicate that such political decisions require competent strategic

directorship by the people; so deliberative participatory institutions are required to provide them with the incentive and assistance they need to perform in this way.

To choose their preferred limits for population, citizens need information about the costs and benefits of high and low ratios of population to natural capital.

Research and public debate on this is neglected. Indeed, as noted under ‘Size of population’ in Chapter 4, scholars note that a striking aversion to discussing human carrying capacity has developed over the last few decades, following initial

widespread public debate on the problem that was largely initiated in 1968 by Paul Erhlich’s The Population Bomb. This state of denial frustrates attempts to develop sustainability and appears to be a learned response to the inability of democracies to rationally deliberate population size, as discussed in Chapter 4. The quality of life that we sustain depends not only on the quantity and quality of natural capital, but on limits to both the size of the population using it and the wants of each individual.

IWIS is offered as a better understanding of the response to supply than the conventional one, which is that increasing a supply will satisfy wants. The latter view justifies the supplying of goods and services that are wanted and the IWIS concept does not dispute its accuracy but takes a slightly longer term view by asking: ‘and what is the effect of this satisfaction?’ The answer is often the opposite to conventional understanding, as explained above by descriptions of IWIS systems and their combination to form the scarcity multiplier IWIS. The concept of IWIS should replace the current concept of the response to supply because, by taking a longer view, it takes more evidence into account. For example the history of

economic growth in developed economies over the last half century has shown that despite doubling and tripling of real incomes, the percentage of citizens reporting themselves as ‘very happy’ has hardly altered and in the US and the UK, has declined (Jackson 2009, 40). A survey of 61 countries has shown that above an

average annual income of US$15,000, life-satisfaction hardly responds to increases in income (Jackson 2009, 40-2). As noted in Chapter 2/ Ambiguous delegation/ Ignorant directors/ Relatively dynamic</ ‘Distraction by adaptation’, the level of income that citizens regard as what they require closely follows real increases in their income.

The prediction of the scarcity multiplier is an analysis in ecological economics because this discipline recognizes that decisions on macro-allocating natural capital from the ecological system to the economic subsystem must be done by government (Costanza and Daly 1992, 41). It cannot be done by the market as this depends on market prices for its decisions, which restrict them to marketed or excluded goods,

that is, to private goods. As public natural capital is a public good it has no market price, so some non-market institution such as government is required to attempt rational choices on whether to macro-allocate it to the economic subsystem. The description of the scarcity multiplier is significant for ecological economics not only as a prediction, but also because it re-emphasizes that ecological economics must be based on political science. As choices indicated by ecological economics depend on competent choices by governments, ecological economics should be regarded as a research program of political science. It is governments who decide, or neglect to decide, whether to macro-allocate public natural capital from the ecosystem to the economic subsystem.

The scarcity multiplier describes democracies as having a long term tendency to destroy their citizens’ quality of life. Eventually this may stress citizens so much that they abandon concerns for equality and dispense with democracy. There is strong evidence from studies of per capita income and political stability that ‚poor

democracies are fragile, exceedingly so when per capita incomes fall below US$2000 (in 1975 dollars). When per capita incomes fall below this threshold, democracies have a one in ten chance of collapsing within a year‛ (Shapiro 2005, 192).

The pervasiveness of IWIS indicates that governments must be aware that if they increase a supply, they must not allow it to destroy satisfaction by escalating wants. This awareness is essential if governments are to achieve sustainable development but it is counter intuitive. As noted above, it involves not only thinking ‘if we do this we will be better off’ and then relaxing, but it requires a little more thinking: ‘and what will happen when we are better off?’ As Richard Dawkins (2001) has observed: ‚Sustainability does not come naturally‛, so governments must be very competent if they are to face and control the scarcity multiplier.