The Institutional Origins of Crises for Economy and Ecology
All species share a common denominator in the struggle for survival: they must extract a constant flow of energy and materials from the environment to maintain the self-organized state of low entropy called life [Schr6dinger 1967, 74-5]. Recognition of this fact reveals that all life forms are intimately dependent upon an external environment. This continuous flow of energy and materials taken from and eventually returned to the external environment is throughput. Human systems, like all other living systems, confront and must solve two fundamental problems. The first is "the imperious first rule of continued existence . . . [which stipulates that] . . . the human being must eat" [Heilbroner 1962, 1]. People solve this problem through provisioning, which parallels Karl Polanyi's "substantive concept [which can] be defined as an instituted process of interaction between man and his environment which results in a continuous supply of want-satisfying material means" [Polanyi 1968, 146]. Provisioning involves the identification, extraction, and processing of throughput, which is ultimately discharged as waste in the environment. Exchange and exchange relationships determine, channel, and direct throughput, thereby performing a fundamental social integration/coordination function [Boulding 1981, 163-82]. Exchange facilitates and retards access to throughput, the fundamental substance of life support. Ideally, the outcome of this process is "betterment" of the human condition. 1 The second fundamental problem is that behavior of the environment is uncertain-unpredictable-and any solution to the provisioning problem must respond-