[vc_row][vc_column width=”1/6″][/vc_column][vc_column width=”2/3″][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1517251346366{margin-bottom: 0px !important;}”]Metaphor Evolution
Ecosystems are not conceived of as a set of similar elements, they are modeled as a set of functional niches, a set of elements including climate, landscape, plants, animals or fungi, set within a complex whole. The pieces all fit together. There are not a large enough number of niches to enable the use of statistical methods. The largest aggregation of niches in an ecosystem are called trophic levels, which is a fancy way of saying that plants produce the main biomass of an ecosystem; herbivores (mainly) consume what the plants produce; and carnivores consume the herbivores (sometimes called secondary consumers). Finally, there are the detrivores such as worms, fungi and bacteria that break down the dead plant and animal life, and make the released resources available to the producers in the form of soil. Within each level there may be greater detail, such as the various parts of a tree, or depths in a lake or ocean, and these are considered separate niches.
The species within a niche may change in the process of evolution, but the niche endures; the niches may eventually be reconfigured, but the ecosystem is sustained. Scientists studying the dynamics of ecosystems and species change do not dismiss change as in neoclassical economics, they spend most of their time trying to understand it.
The sustainable mode of production
Karl Marx famously predicted that a socialist mode of production would follow a capitalist mode of production. He based his historical progression on the relations of production, basically from slavery to capitalism to socialism.
Why a Democratic Economy would be a more efficient economy’, an essential characteristic of an efficient economy would be to create a society in which firms were operated and owned by their employees. But this would be one part of a wider transformation to a sustainable mode of production.
There is a long history of the discussion of the ideas of man vs. nature, or man outside of nature, or man in nature. The first and second views (held by Marx, by the way), are breathtakingly ignorant (the more polite label is ‘cornucopian’). Obviously, if you run out of something, you can’t make anything that depends on that something. Or if you destroy the ecosystems that you depend on for your agriculture and cities, you can’t survive.
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