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Rural System? Just Dreaming …
A For-Profit Conglomerate for
Meaningful Jobs
Healthful Communities
and Improved Natural Resource Management
by Robert H. Giles, Jr., Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus
Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia
2007
Chapter 9. Quality of Human Life
Dreaming: More than living … why add living life? There's something more here. Longer life expectancy as an index to social system success … but is it for the individual? What was life for the tribal who could only expect 40 years? How high? Best get it now for that's all there is. How high after the pains set in and hope for healing and improvements fly? How are you doing? …Compared to what? How are we doing? How can we be doing? Should we be doing … what? Just dreaming …
| Profits can only be sustained within a context. A Quality-of-life score can help clarify that context for rural communities, the betterment of which is one objective of Rural System. |
In most descriptions of Rural System, the objective of producing or maintaining a high quality of life is not mentioned. Usually only employment, community stability, and improved natural resource management are listed. I've assumed for ease of communicating and a bit of brevity that higher quality of life can result in rural regions if these three are achieved. I've known that assumption was poor because I knew that quality of life is a very complex topic with many conflicting opinions, definitions, moral issues, and levels of practicality. Just "any old life" will not be sufficient. The individual's life may be of interest but each of us is more social that some will admit. Quality of life has to be addressed for some purposes as a group phenomenon. The number and length of discussions about it suggest that it is an imprecise idea and that most of us are trying to figure out what it might mean, at least for use personally. Thus an index, an approximation to it, may be sufficient to inform discussions about profits and types of objectives
Profits are widely reported of secondary interest for the small industrial private forest land owner. We have described in Chapter 7objectives and means for each owner to quantify the many dimensions of such objectives. A non-linear parametric procedure is used to match expected land productivity over time (a transition production function approach) to desired owner objectives. It too, like the work discussed in this chapter, minimizes the squared deviation of the actual from the desired conditions. The effective manager with knowledge and resources is in control of that difference.
The quality of life of a community is a singular approximate expression of a group condition. Life of high quality seems to be a large set of criteria having benefits that satisfy objectives well. Thus an index to how well human objectives are satisfied and likely to be satisfied over time will be worth developing and being used. Q Works, the centering group of Rural System, can develop it and report on it. It will be very efficient if the same index can be used within The Trevey (for the dynamic plan is for the quality of life of the land owner), or for quality of life expressions for communities (proof for achieving one of the major stated objectives. A computational system may be marketable to counties by Q Works, and a concept that might some day thwart the injustices and harmful effects on rural areas of land use zoning. From studies we know that a thoughtful private landowner (or for example a family group) can select from within a short period a list of over 150 quantifiable objectives from the 28 categories of known classical owner objectives already listed and discussed (Chapter 7). Each of these can be expressed in terms of single units of presence or production. Each such unit then can then be weighted by them in terms of their relative importance, then a demand or minimum needs for each such unit stated. This work by them is combined with an estimated risk likely to be encountered if the demand is not met within the year. This risk is also estimated by the decision maker. These estimates are difficult and time consuming but absolutely essential for any claims by the owners of fully-informed, highly-accountable, and rational decision making about the land. The same estimates can be made by citizens or their representatives.
The quality of life index which accompanies the M score (described in Chapter 7) for analyses of alternatives for decisions is Q*(called "q-star"). It expresses the objective of maximizing utility. The M score is greatest when, within limits, a complex unconventional benefit-to-cost (B/C) ratio is greatest. The benefits (B) have a value composed of weighted achieved demand for a set of objectives, each objective having an expected occurrence and substitutability. Costs (C) are total estimated present-discounted dollars over 150 years. This is a devised B/C ratio and the units of measure in the numerator are different than the other.
Q* is an expression of, a score for the quality of life of people of the region. Citizens, groups, and their government take steps to improve the Q* index or "score" for an area. Computer-selected alternatives show possible ways to reach the maximum or Q*. We have some level of Q as a result of natural occurrences, the native resources of the region. We try to retain these and increase them to maximize a score, to reach a value of 100. Q cannot be compared with other regions or other owners because it is based on the stated and valued objectives of the people of each region. Because of the area selected and the rich natural and historical conditions, the score, without investments, may be high. Achieving a higher score or maintaining the present score usually takes investments of time, money, and other resources. The score, 100 being maximum, is simply:
Qt = (1.0 - (Q* - At)/ Q*) x 100
where Qt is the estimated quality of life score for the people of a region in some specified year. Q* is the estimated score when all citizens' objectives are met within 90% or more within an acceptable period, potentially related to the time of Qt . As with conditions (A), citizen objectives may change, but such changes should be made carefully and slowly. At is the estimated computed score of actual achievement of objectives, the actual conditions, at the present time or other specified time t. Studies may be made of how present-discounted costs (C*) of projects may influence At, thus the score, Qt . Citizens and managers may then decide how to reduce the difference between Q* and At, i.e., minimizing the deviation.
Fluctuations are expected; control is expected and required for the effective manager. Diverse objectives, changing markets, and natural catastrophe suggest modest bounds (here assigned 90%) on stating the "perfect score," Q*. At has the same dimensions. These two expressions exist for each objective, having a named benefit such as listed in Chapter 1and 7.
The dimensions of At and Qt are:
P - A relatively uniform socioeconomic group of people. There may be a hundred such populations with efforts made to reduce the numbers to expedite the process and reduce costs. Over grouping, however, may imply exclusion and produce special conflicts and separate responses.
I - the named and numbered benefits (e.g., rich landscape views, hours of big game hunting, tons of hay, cubic feet of pulpwood)
T - Time - with results in each year and cumulatively. In the Trevey, time is computed from a starting environment (e.g., primary succession conditions or purchase) in one-year intervals for the first five years, then in 5- year increments.
D - Numbers of units of each I that are perceived to be needed per capita. When this number, the "economic demand," exceeds natural capabilities of the present system (e.g., more water than the rainfall total in the region), an "infeasible condition" statement results. The Q Works staff then explores various options and explores the limits of the infeasible in a hands-on procedure. Such demand (greater than zero) that is expressed by citizen evaluators is re-expressed as a proportion of the regional potential. For example, expressing a regional demand for harvesting 200 wild deer (where the population is only 90 animals of a capacity population estimated to be 110 animals) can be done, but the demand is set to the ecological limit of 110, i.e. 1.000.
V - The relative value, with one unit of benefit item with the greatest value being assigned a value of 100 and others compared to it. Computer aids assist in this laborious and difficult task, one that is essential to deciding between the different levels of importance held by different people, even groups of people.
Z - Expected Value - In one area in the Virginia coalfield, the range in annual precipitation has been from 40 to 51 inches. This annual difference in an 8000 acre watershed is 2.4 billion gallons of water. In the low-rainfall year there may have been an intense storm that caused more erosion than all of that produced gradually in the high precipitation year. To try to be very accurate in the face of such unpredictable difference is unwise. Herein we include these uncertainties, the risks related to most decisions. We are playing a reasoned game against nature so as to win most over the long run (e.g., in reduced erosion or reduced flood crests). The concept is one of looking at the costs of using the land and the numbered benefit in some reasonably long planning or investment period (e.g., 150 years) and dealing with expected returns.
Computationally:
Z = (1.0 - risk of failure)
Expected returns include the element of risk that can be quantified, options presented, and analyzed by decision makers. The reports are intended to assist in sizing up the risk, a number fully as important to the decision maker as acres in a cover type, inches of snow fall, or depth of soil to bedrock.
S - Substitutability - a simple triangular matrix, of what number of items of one benefit (if any) that may substitute for another (e.g., perhaps for a person or group a rich trail landscape view from a trail may substitute equally for a view of a deer).
R - A variety (diversity) constraint, one requiring minimum achievement (one practical unit of items) of every objective.
In the Chapter 7 was presented the two major objectives, I being profits, II being quality of life. We use part of the profits (Objective I) as a cost of achieving the quality of life objective (II). The evaluation is of Qt and we attempt to maximize it (minimizing the difference between the actual and the desired condition as discussed above. We try to achieve Q* which is a proportionate scoring device, the sums for all objectives, for all groups of people in a region, over the planning period of the product of all of the units of demand, D; each unit having been assigned a value of relative importance, V; the probability of success (1.0 - the risk of failure) of achieving the expected value if each, Z; (or an acceptable substitute for a unit of demand (from a paired matrix), S), all subject to a variety constraint. This is symbolized, approximately, as:
Q PIT = 
D PIT V PITZ S PIT., R
It has similar elements in the work of Harvey (1979) who developed a concept of a "land use issue" expressed relative to place, population, services, and time. Q Works (Chapter 11) works with this formulation, gathers citizen inputs, and reports regularly the local values of Q. It progressively shows citizens and their government decision makers how to maximize the score for the lowest cost investments toward achieving the most prized objectives. This is evidently a type of a well-known B / C approach to the problem. Costs are accumulated (for the above stated reasons) and the benefits are made site- and owner-specific. The worth of the benefit is what the owner says it is. The costs are best estimates of real local financial costs. The role of Q Works is that of modern planning, and assisting in cost-effective government. The enterprise works for the local landowners and their Rural System Tracts but uses the same software and technology in a package sold for Rural System profits to local governments.
We realize we cannot achieve our objectives alone. We also believe our list of objectives is similar, perhaps identical, to that of people in other rural communities. We also know that while the long list of objectives may be the same, the importance and perceived risks and ease of making substitutions is very different among communities. Each community or village will be unique and the system is available to respond to that condition … which is probably dynamic due to leadership, factory labor changes, wildfires, etc.
Profits are widely reported to be of only secondary interest for the small industrial private forest land owner. We think they are, in reality, most important for the rational investor. We think that for most people, if adequate profits were not made, then most of the benefits possible from the land would not exist due to sale or land disposal. If land has been inherited or if land use and management and taxes are subsidized from other financial resources, then profits may not be important and other benefits from the land (profit being one in the list) can be given very high weights of importance. Owners assign these weights, both as demand and as value (see above).
A quality of life score is a minimum expression and a standard for discussion and comparisons over time. Next is presented the parts of Rural System, the enterprises or groups, Chapter 10.
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