Welcome to our course on Europe between the two world wars. If you haven’t yet looked to see what our course is and is not going to be about, please check here. Our syllabus will provide even more detail. This will be our base for the course blog posts. Remember that you MUST select the category “HIST 234” for your post to be seen here and for you to thus get credit for it. Please also uncheck the “uncategorized” category. Please tag the blog as necessary, but first check to see if a similar tag has already been used so as to avoid a proliferation of nearly identical tags and thus rendering a useless tag cloud.
Prof. Qualls' Course Blogs
Blogging and Teaching, Teaching and Blogging…but always learning!
“Equitable distribution of resources and opportunities.” (www.sustainablemeasures.com)
This is a good definition of sustainability when applied to a historical and economic context rather than an environmental one. Something that is self sustained should have a perfect balance between the elements which support it, allowing it to be completely self dependent. An ideal economy is one which can create and distribute its own product, and be able to yield more of its own product from distribution. Equity between recourses and opportunities allows for sustainability because it creates a cycle which doesn’t rely on outside sources for progress. Reliability is also imperative in sustainability. A system which is prone to collapse is not sustainable. If you do not have balance between recourses and opportunities internally, in order to be successful the systems sustainability is contingent on an outside system, which by definition is not sustainable. Without opportunities, there will be too much consumption of recourses compared to production of recourses, making it inequitable. For example, the mass consumption of oil worldwide but the inability to replace it.
An example of sustainability would be a subsistence farmer. Subsistence farming is a self sufficient form of agriculture. These farmers grow only the food they need to eat, build their own shelter, and do not need to involve themselves in the market economy due to their own sustainability. Although it is not a perfect definition of sustainability, it is a good real world example. It requires labor, but only enough for the individual to sustain themselves, and not others. The recourses to provide shelter and food are gathered independently of the marketplace, therefore no money is required. Although there is no surplus, and the living conditions compared to developed countries would be considered substandard, it is still an internal system which can reliably support itself.