We’ve become a nation of bean counters

There is a huge difference between making beans and counting beans.

Over the past thirty years we have become a nation of bean counters. This has compromised the creative genius of America: We are making fewer beans. To compensate, we import more than we export. To distract ourselves, we delude ourselves with pseudo cleverness. Rather than reverting to making beans the bean counters invent hypothetical beans so they won’t run out of things to count.

The complex financial derivatives that have pushed this country into the deepest recession since the 1930s are examples of such self-serving, delusional and counterproductive inventions.

Counting beans is not the only problem. The problem also has to do with what we choose to count.

In a very real sense, we owe our wealth as a nation to the black dirt of our heartland. And yet we treat that dirt as if there were no tomorrow. In a few short generations we have converted the grassland of the Great Plains into an 80-million-acre agribusiness machine. In the process of plowing the soil, we have also exposed it to erosion.

Untold tons of fertile Great Plains topsoil have been lost as runoff down the Mississippi. In the southern Mississippi Valley alone, including parts of five states, the annual soil loss on much of the land reaches 20 tons per acre. In addition, chemical herbicides and fertilizers including nitrogen have also run off the crops all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico where it has created a 12,000-square mile “dead zone.”

It apparently made short-term economic sense to apply those chemical herbicides and fertilizers. But it did not make economic sense to destroy the fisheries at the mouth of the Mississippi. We need to account for the costs to the downstream fisherman as well as for the profits of the upstream farmer.

We also need to account for the long-term costs to the environment. Too often our accounting system externalizes the true costs of our actions in order to maximize short-term profits. There is a disconnect between how the world works ecologically and how we pretend it works economically.

Aldo Leopold, most famous for his “Land Ethic” which was influenced by his fifteen years (1909-1924) working in and around New Mexico, understood this disconnect:

Just as the far-western bankers had to learn by bitter experience that an adequate area of productive range was just as important to the safety of a livestock loan as the number of cattle or sheep offered as security, so do the bankers of forest regions have to learn that an assured supply of raw material is just as important to the safety of an investment in a wood-using plant as is the plant itself, its product, and its market.

We need a new system of accounting that does not distort our understanding of our economic self-interest by emphasizing short-term profits while ignoring long-term environmental consequences. Such a system would help us to reconcile our short-term economic aspirations with the earth’s long-term environmental necessities.

It would enable us to make the necessary corrections and long-term investments that would create a more resilient economy and contribute to the true wealth of our nation.

Einstein observed that not everything that can be counted actually counts. This is just as true for our social resources as it is for our natural resources.

What is the value of a company like Bank of America whose management is more motivated by a compensation system based on quarterly profits than it is by the long-term financial health of our country?

What is the value of a company like General Motors that insists on producing SUVs for the sake of higher short-term profit margins — at the expense of our country’s profligate consumption of oil?

What is the value of a company like Blue Cross Blue Shield whose management prefers to capitalize on soaring healthcare costs rather than to honestly contribute to our country’s productivity by seeking ways to lower those costs?

And what is the value of the highly-paid corporate lobbyists who finance the campaigns of our elected representatives to protect their own special interests rather than to find real solutions to the very real problems our country faces?

Einstein also observed that not everything that counts can be counted.

What is the value of providing an educational system that allows our children to realize their fullest potential in a system of social justice based on merit?

What is the value of expanding our understanding of the universe through scientific inquiry or of enhancing our perception of the sublime through the arts?

What is the value of succeeding in free enterprise by satisfying real social needs rather than artificially-induced social wants?

What is the value of securing a healthy environment for our grandchildren by leaving the earth a little better off than when we found it?

And what is the value of going to bed each night with the satisfaction of knowing that we are making beans rather than merely counting them?

Anthony Anella is co-chair of the Aldo Leopold Centennial Celebration 2009.