Submitted by zippy on Tue, 2006-08-15 14:42.
The Underlying Premise
Michael,
The underlying premise is good, but I feel that the term "accounting framework" is quite vauge. I'm not sure if you that is a short hand for absolutely all of the metrics used in the economy (including its monetary system), or if you that is meant to reflect standard accounting principles, i.e. the current form companies report their books with balance sheets etc.
If the former, well then I agree, but it's too vauge, if the latter, then I think the underlying principle is not sufficiently defined.
In my opinion, it will never be possible to attain sustainability without a fundamental change in the monetary system that underlies our economy. Our current money system doesn't have the requsite variety necessary to control the system which is the economy. A simple and obvious example of this is that the Fed raises and lowers interest rates to try and match the money supply for the overall economy depending on how "hot" or "slow" it is, but these actions often hurt local regions whose economies are not in sync with the national economy. Jane Jacobs explains this dynamic quite clearly in her book, the Cities and The Wealth of Nations.
But that is only the start. Economic sustainability will not be attainable with out a decentralized monetary system that allows communities (of all sizes and types, geographic as well as communities of practice) to create currencies targetted to solutions of particular problems, only one of which is trade.
This is a very large topic, but is key, in my opinion, to a statement of sustainability principles. The "accounting framework" has to include the monetary system explicitly, and that inclusion is much more of a paradigm shift than might be at first understood.
Best Regards,
-Eric