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Two
authors I have read recently have
included a call for “enough” in their
books: John Lanchester in I.O.U. (2011)
in a concerned ending, and Thomas
King, contemplating the Alberta Tar
Sands development in a section of The
Inconvenient Indian (2013). King’s
thoughts come in an account of the
history of relationships between
natives and whites. His concern is
with land being considered only a
commodity to be exploited rather than
something to be respected and enjoyed
in and of itself. While
King concedes natives have been
engaged in some nasty uranium mining
and coal-burning power plants on their
reservations he argues natives could
not have conceived of the Tar Sands
project. King also tells us there is a
sacred dimension to some locations,
like the shore in Gwaii Haanas. He is
thankful for the remarkable
(miraculous?) designation of the Gwaii
Haanas National Park Reserve and Haida
Heritage Site which may buy time for
the rest of us to appreciate the land. When
Lanchester is concluding his book’s
account of the 2008 banking crisis, he
notes that no significant action to
oversee the banking world was taken
from the lessons of the crisis. He
wants changes so that the financial
community serves the rest of society
rather than preying on it. He then
adds that our individual response
matters too: “We
have to start thinking about when we
have sufficient – sufficient money,
sufficient stuff – and whether we
really need the things we think we do,
beyond what we have. In a world
running out of resources, the most
ethical, political and ecological idea
can be summed up in one simple word:
‘enough’.” That
brought to mind similar thoughts
from 40 years earlier,1974, when
E.F. Schumacher published the
paperback edition of his book Small
is Beautiful. He
lamented a world dependent on growth
which in turn was dependent on using
up “environmental capital” and the
finite capacity of the ecosystems.
That thought remains highly
relevant. So what is enough? How can
we get into the enough mindset? How
might one encourage the enough
mindset in a world dominated by
corporate election donations, the
growth mindset institutionalised
greed and a dependence on common
finite resources like oil? First,
there has been some calm thinking
about what is “enough.” Thomas Piketty
in his Capital (2013) refers
to 18th
century novelists Jane Austin and
Henri Balzac who wrote about the
financial needs of their characters in
a stable non-inflationary financial
period. He shows that on the large
longer term view, economic growth is
such as to allow converging of wealth
among countries and that growth will
stabilize at a low level for all
countries in the very long term. Then
there is the challenging call to give
up everything. The prophet Jesus of
Nazareth is reported as telling his
followers to give up all they had and
to join him. Those in the Christian
religious tradition find their own
compromise with this instruction. But
the accounts of life in the earliest
period of the church indicate that
people pooled their resources.
Christian religious orders have found
ways to continue to do that, even to
the present. So it can be said that
within religious movements alternative
more egalitarian economic systems can
be tried and have succeeded. It is
also possible within larger units of
the church to take positions against
excess. The religions offer an
alternative frame of reference. Yet
challenging the mainstream thinking
and normal human foibles has never
been easy. Greed, or “avarice,” and
envy were named by Christians
centuries ago as two of the seven
“deadly sins” which sap the life force
moving within the human community. Greed
and envy make us want more. The
religious movements have promoted
forms of giving up less than
“everything.” Thoughtful giving can
help move towards an “enough” mindset.
In my student days, the UK Methodist
church made its own compromise with
the founder's injunction to give all
you have to the poor. It asked its
members to give 3% of their income to
overseas aid, in order to give moral
weight to its own call to the UK
government to respond to an
international request to give 3% of
the GNP overseas as aid. I
worked at 2% as I began work and
married and had a family. It has been
possible to do this through gaps in
jobs, with bigger pay and smaller pay.
Not that this is ideal or adequate
giving. Yet intentional giving helps
us think past greed. Are all forms of
giving helpful at breaking the
pressure for more? What of the huge
donations given with additional tax
breaks and the aggrandizement which
comes from having one’s name on a
building “eternally” (to be replaced
by the name of another huge donor in
20 years or so)? Considering that some
rich citizens give nothing, even the
giving by the rich with tax breaks and
aggrandizement is a step towards the
“enough” mindset for some. Beyond
giving it away, there is the matter of
what level of income is enough in the
first place. Schumacher tackled this
in Small is Beautiful by
suggesting that no member of a
corporation should be paid more than 7
times the pay of any other. He is on
the right track. Human rights aim at
equal treatment or non-discrimination
so that how we are treated viz-a-viz
others is the correct approach. In the
new corporate world the idea reigns
that the leading manager can
manipulate the books and the board so
as to name his own fair pay compared
to his or her view of similarly
situated persons. (The shareholders,
which can include our pension funds,
may not fare too well on this diet!)
Schumacher is correct – the comparison
must be with the rest of your team or
corporation or community who share in
this win or production or living
place, not with external groups.
Following this logic, in 2013 some
Swiss attempted to limit executives’
pay in a referendum to be no more than
12 times that of junior employees.
However the measure was opposed by 65
percent of voters. And something like
this has been implemented by a private
company. Tavia Grant reported in the
Globe & Mail 16 November 2013 that
at Lee Valley Tools, the lowest-paid
cleaner gets the same amount in
profit-sharing as the CEO. The highest
paid worker can be paid no more than
10 times the lowest paid. But that is
not the same as the community dealing
with a community problem of widely
diverging incomes. It might be argued
that some indirect approach by
taxation might be used, but the
clarity of the Swiss proposal and the
Lee Valley policy is compelling. An
executive can always give herself a
raise by increasing the pay of junior
employees! Simply listing of Ontario
public service pay levels over
$100,000 has caused some downward
pressure – but only on the public
service. No. Schumacher is right. Some
law which at least exposes pay greater
than 7 times that of one’s lowest paid
colleague in the organization is
called for to push towards an enough
mindset. There
are situations where people just don’t
have “enough”, and for them thinking
about limiting income would be
offensive. Enough
need not be as low as the minimum
income necessary to survive in a
society. While Schumacher rightly
questions whether anyone can be worth
seven times the salary of a co-worker
in the same enterprise, it doesn’t
help us get a sense of the size of an
“enough” salary. If one can choose,
“enough” income should be around the
average in the society where one
lives. This has the effect of moving
incomes closer rather than the present
tendency to press incomes to the
extreme lows and extreme highs. Some
might feel that even average is too
large and that it would be better to
live with the poor and outcasts and
share their lot. Yet the power to
choose to do that already makes one in
some sense “rich.” Note that the idea
that enough income is an average
salary or wage differs from the enough
income of the Jane Austin and Henri
Balzac characters. They lived in a
stratified society in which living
with enough implied being in the
land-owner class and collecting enough
to live comfortably from rents – hence
the relevance to the 2013 book on Capital.
Nonetheless, the enough mindset is
there in the Austin and Balzac
characters as opposed to the “more and
more” mindset. Perhaps
the most important aspect of saying
“enough” is not so much how it is
defined, but rather getting rid of the
two destructive desires - greed and
envy – and arriving in a place where
one is choosing something one has
named “enough” and no longer seeking
more. How this is done varies from
person to person. It seems to be
linked to some alternative desire –
like the rich donor getting her name
on a building. Finding meaningful work
which matters in mid-life has been a
draw for a number of people who have
moved from the system which pushes for
more money making. Beyond
the “enough” income, and whether it is
earned or whether it is a rent from
inherited capital, there is the
question of what one acquires with the
modest income. What is “enough” in
possessions – houses, cars, clothes
and beyond? There is no hard and fast
rule. Rather the goal is having the
enough mindset rather than the more
mindset. Our family had two cars while
the children were going through late
adolescence and university. It was a
big help. The children enjoyed some
maturity and freedom which came with
the responsibility of driving. As soon
as my wife and I were alone, we
decided that a shared car was enough. Some
friends bought and updated a large
house which they now share by hosting
lots of community get-togethers. Other
friends have a very small house in a
nice part of town plus a large rural
cottage (house) to allow all-family
get-togethers. Are these too much? We
have a cottage in a cottage co-op –
which is in the “more” mindset. During
stressful work years pottering at jobs
at the cottage was restorative relief.
It was a luxury. But it was part of
our workable compromise for “enough.” There
is currently a tendency to go with the
times into larger and larger houses
and to replace rural cottages with
large rural houses both because it can
be done and because builders suggest
bigger. Maybe the answer to “enough”
size in houses and cottages (if any)
lies partly with overcoming greed and
envy but also with a need for more
ethically responsible builders and
renovators who might offer small and
beautiful options?
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