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The False US Economy Versus Nature's Expansion-Contraction Cycle
While tending berry vines on my small farm this fall and winter, I've observed the sharp decline of the US's artificial economy. Nature has a seasonal cycle of expansion and contraction. Now contracting, the US's manufactured economy has been built on a growth-always fiction.
My main work for the last fifteen years has been on the organic Kokopelli Farm in Northern California. Watching the US economy descend--while caring for boysenberry vines, apple trees, and chickens--I've noticed a sharp contrast between nature's ways of a real economy and the US's false economy. Nature guides my farming, with permaculture being one system that I employ.
The US economy, unfortunately, is not nature-based. In fact, it conflicts harshly with nature's rhythms and is now paying the price. The chickens are coming home to roost, unhappy with the all-growth, no-rest pressure.
"Things change," the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus declared some 2500 years ago. They go up; they come back down. The US has had its ups; it's now on a down cycle. Pump, pump, pump go the corporations, their media and governments, trying to inflate it back up. I don't think so. The well is running dry.
Even a military budget larger than those of all the other nations in the world combined cannot protect our fortress. We are besieged, but more internally by our threatening practices than by terrorists or anything external.
Oh, our rulers may stimulate it back up a little, for a while. Throwing money at something can have a short-term impact. But it will come back down, and may all fall down. Gravity is a basic law of physics. Things go up, then they come back down, sooner or eventually. Sometimes it feels like a crash, unless one is aware of the inevitable downturn. Once things fall apart, they can re-assemble, often in an improved form.
All things carry their opposites, Heraclitus taught. Death is inherent to life. Transitions and impermanence prevail. This is not bad news; it just is. Birth/growth/contraction/death is nature's way. All living things follow this natural cycle. Everything that lives perishes.
The growth-based US economy is contracting. Media economists are alarmed, even panicky. They describe this as a "recession" and wring their hands with woe. They should have expected this downturn and we should accept it. Lets see what will happen. Maybe the Earth will benefit from the declining US economy? Perhaps its pollution and other threats to the global climate and environment will lessen?
There are too many variables to accurately predict what will happen, or when. But I am planning for a radically different future. It is time to "powerdown," to use the word that Richard Heinberg employs in the title of one of his books on Peak Oil. We should expect some chaos. The manufactured US economy is failing.
President Bush has proposed yet another "growth package" of $145 billion to boost the flagging economy by giving each taxpayer up to $800 each. Supported by many Democrats, the plan is to spend our way out of this mess. Go shopping. What a fantasy. This may worsen things, digging the hole deeper, rather than stepping out of it.
The government's so-called "economic stimulus" is a false solution, attempting to further prop up the false economy. Giving people more money to spend-many of whom are already spending beyond their means-will not solve what is becoming our most serious economic crisis since the Great Depression.
Trying to avoid the economic fall seems futile. A better approach would be to roll with the punches and figure out how to even thrive during this transition from a no-longer to a not-yet. Those who do can even benefit from the changing reality.
The US economy has expanded for the last seven years. It's time to contract, in spite of the wailing of economists. Economic growth slowed to barely 1% in the final three months of 2007--a big drop from 4.9% in the third quarter. Growth may now be dipping into negative territory, according to a Jan. 17 Associated Press article.
Mainstream economists do not want to publicly utter words like "depression" or "collapse," which may happen, if the contraction deepens. This will bring great changes, including inconveniences and difficulties. But that is inevitable, as opposed to bad.
As the US goes down, it can be a time for others to be up in the sun. A gracious fall is better than a bitter, ballistic, hostile one. The flexibility of bamboo would be a better model for our fall than rigid, fossilized bones likely to break and shatter. Then we may come back up, though hopefully in a different, more mature way.
The indigenous University of Hawai'i at Hilo professor Manu Meyer, who hails from an ancient culture, describes the US as "adolescent." Since setbacks often help a person mature, perhaps this economic fall will help the US evolve.
"Reinventing Collapse" titles a provocative book by Dmitry Orlov, a Russian living in the US, scheduled by New Society Publishers to appear in April. He compares the evolving US collapse to that of the Soviet Union. Parts of this new book have been posted at www.energybulletin.net and elsewhere. The book's final three chapters are "Collapse Mitigation," "Adaptation," and "Career Opportunities." Orlov draws on his experiences observing the Soviet collapse to help people manage what might happen here in the only remaining superpower.
Now let me root this analysis in two quite different sources: the farming author Wendell Berry and the humorous gardener Chance, played by Peter Sellers in the classic 1979 film "Being There."
For over 50 years now Berry has been publishing farm-based essays, poetry, and fiction. Since at least his 1977 book "The Unsettling of America," published by the Sierra Club, he has been writing about the US economy. His field-based analysis is outside the box-based on farm-fresh wisdom rather than merely book learning or crunching numbers.
"The human household or economy is in conflict at almost every point with the household of nature," Berry writes in his essay "The Total Economy." Humans tend to look to nature as "merely a supply of 'raw materials,'" Berry bemoans. The results are what he describes as "economic oversimplification" and "the folly" of a "foolish economy." We fail to see the larger picture that one can sometimes see when they lift their eyes up from working in a field to see the sky and clouds above, as well as the expanse between the ground and our majestic blue covering.
"The global economy," Berry asserts, "is based upon cheap long-distance transportation, without which it is not possible to move goods from the point of cheapest origin to the point of highest sale." Now that the price for crude oil has surpassed the $100 a barrel ceiling, we are becoming increasingly aware of the decline of cheap oil and the rising price of this black gold that fuels industrialism's food, plastics, transportation, war-making, and much of modern life.
We need what Berry describes as a "real economy," rather than this house of cards (the cover of Heinberg's new "Peak Everything" book) under which we live. Berry suggests that we work "to preserve things other than money" and advances "the idea of a local economy" based on "neighborhood and subsistence."
"Did you see that old Peter Sellers film 'Being There?'" a farm hand recently asked while we lay wool around the base of berry vines as mulch to suppress the weeds and stimulate activity in the soil. While working with our hands Jeff Snook and I had been talking about the litany of economic woes for banks, housing, the dollar, unemployment, retail sales, consumer confidence, etc.
Farmers sometimes talk about such things in fields and elsewhere. My Uncle Dale on his farm in Iowa in the early l950s, before electricity had reached parts of the rural Mid-West, used to talk about the economy. Since I have already lived without electricity-we had an icebox, root cellar, and gas lights-I can imagine doing it again. Instead of TV, we had night-time stories and day-time farm animals to entertain us. It was a good life, even without all the modern conveniences, some of which we may soon have to do without as we powerdown and make a forced transition with less available energy.
Many signs of contraction were visible as Jeff and I recently worked--leaves falling from nearby valley oaks, boysenberry vines shriveling, and beautiful chickens taking their annual break from egg-laying. These things are predictable and happen every year. I plan my yearly cycle accordingly, as do the wise birds and squirrels, putting acorns away.
"Chance in "Being There" is a simple-minded gardener who observed nature's cycles and acted accordingly," Jeff noted. "He knew that things should be planted in the spring and will then grow and die-a basic, natural rhythm."
A fictional US president in the film comes to visit a financial advisor and meets Chance. The president is proposing a temporary economic growth plan. "As long as the roots are not severed, all is well in the garden," Chance responds. "Some things must whither," he adds. The "president" wisely takes Chance's simple advice, which our current real president is unlikely to do. He accepts the seasonal, Earth-based wisdom, realizing that a long-term solution is needed, rather than a band-aid.
Our economy, in fact, has been "severed" from its "roots," the Earth itself. We need a down-to-the-Earth approach to the economy, rather than the sugar pill "economic growth stimulus" that Bush is proposing with his tax break.
We need to get back to basics in the US. Our expectations of being permanently on top, always in control, forever the dominating ruler and evermore the superpower have been excessive. We need to do more than try to shore up a failing economy that requires so much war-making and destruction to keep it growing artificially, at the expense of the environment and other humans, animals, plants, and the elements such as clean water and air that sustain life. We need to accept the natural limits to growth.
Less than 2% of US citizens now farm. This number must increase, if we are to survive. Farming can be fun and educational, as well as put food on our tables and build communities. Agri-culture, after all, is a basis of culture. May ours continue to prosper, but not by being based on a false, foolish economy, like the one that is now falling. R.I.P.
We need to re-align the US economy more around nature's economy.
Dr. Shepherd Bliss, sbliss@hawaii.edu, teaches part-time at Sonoma State University, runs Kokopelli Farm, and has contributed to over 20 books, most recently to "Sustainability" (www.hopedance.org).
38 Comments so far
Show AllRebel Farmer wrote: "... if it comes down to shooting my neighbors or other humans to protect myself, then life just isn't worth it anymore."
What a lovely sentiment! Let's "band together" to make food and energy!
If you want to see the future, look to the past. We shall see a return of debtors' prisons, indentured servitude (already starting, with the change in bankruptcy laws), and fiefdom/serfdom. To prepare for independence in such a future, own land free and clear together with others, and use the same laws the rich will use to protect themselves. Don't know if it will work, but it's my strategy.
Jan: I just sold my 4 acre farm because I could no longer make the payments. I was very selective about who I would sell it to. It was important to me that these soils be well taken care of as I had done. But wonder of wonders, the buyers are letting me lease the house back for 2 years to start. They have also agreed to let me put together a community farm program where they would "lease " the land back to the group for a tax deduction. I'm not sure how I'm going to put this all together. I'm thinking more of a workers co-operative as a business model. It's very exciting actually. I think that an economic crash will truely motivate people to get these kinds of projects off the ground.
I'm goning to try that "Bold" thing. Bold
End test......
I think its a "cutie," clever little piece! To me, its bullshit!
This capitalist economy is collapsing under the massive, top-heavy weight of the greatest re-distrbution of wealth, upwards, from poor, working and middle class families and folks, to the most wealthy top 1 %! Those that are the recipients of this unjust windfall would have us believe that its some sort of "natural cycle."
I can speak from some personal experience here. There was nothing "natural" about the massive theft of worker's pensions that took place over the past 8, (Bush), years. I, and 3,000 other Republic steelworkers had our pensions stolen by that company, with Bush's aid. He appointed the head of the PBGC (Pension Benifit Guarantee Corp.), a right-wing corporate tool, Steven Kandarian. He ruled that corporations could steal worker's pensions. Nothing "natural" there!
Bush's "labor" board has turned labor law into its opposite, and become a tool for the corporations. Millions of workers have been denied the right to join unions, keeping them at the corporation's will. Bush's tax cuts for the rich, and the twisting of the tax structure,has resulted in only working folks paying taxes. Corporations are off the hook! Doesn't seem "natural" to me!
They've pushed those "free trade" pacts that allow them to ship jobs overseas to the lowest wage, non-union nations, destroying jobs, communitites here and entire industries in those nations. All so that they can further and further, to downright obscene levels, enrich themselves even more. The difference between workers and CEO pay was somewhere around 30-1 just 20 years ago. The latest figures I've seen now put that gap at 830-1. Ridiculous, but true! Certainly not "natural!"
There are only so many plants that can close, so many companies to down-size, so many pension plans to be savaged, so many unions to broken and so many social programs to be wiped out, until there just ain't anything left. We're at a point where regular people are just being hurt too much by this ultra-right wing corporate rule.
The foreclorsure crisis, as well, is the result of wealthy financial instituions enriching themselves even further, this time by tricking those, mostly in the minority and working class communities, that need homes. No, this entire collapsing house of cards that can be laid right at the feet of the wealthyist in our society, along with Bush/Cheney and their ilk!
This is where the tone of the article annoyed me. At the mill that I worked at there were 5 suicides after the pensions were stolen. In areas around Cleveland, there are communities that have 60% foreclosures. Vets benefits have been cut. New Orleans hasn't been rebuilt in over 2 years. Hell, Youngstown is a ghost of want it was. We need real emergency action for people in need! This isn't a movie! There are real people suffering in this economic collapse, and its not their fault! It is damn well NOT NATURAL!!
Our technological civilization, including the capitalist economy, is as natural as the author's bucolic arrangements, the great difference being that WE created the technology and superimposed it on the world.
It's not a good fit because unlike Bliss's farm, it isn't sustainable. Undoubtedly it will fail and it must fail, but it is natural just the same because we are part of nature and we created it. It's an experiment and it's going badly.
Nature is extraordinarily broad-minded: she created us and set us loose and we will pay for our mistakes, delusions, and irrational exuberance.
I don't look forward to that, I don't sit at my video terminal like an angry terrorist anticipating the collapse of the West.
We have to try something else and we will be trying something else if we survive, but it is not possible to step in the same river twice, to refer to another of the insights of Heraclitus, and what's more, you can't go home again.
We have to create a sustainable hyper-natural environment for ourselves with a very small foot print that does not insult and degrade Gaia. We do not have an energy crisis. What is actually going on is an identity crisis. We remember who we were to some extent but do not realize who we are and who we can be at this time. We persist in using outmoded technology and in applying false understandings of natural laws because we see ourselves as Mr. Bliss sees himself. ie, as a 19th Century farmer.
Those of you who think working your own little patch of dirt is a satisfying and fulfilling way to live, go for it. You can read your Bibles and Bhagavad Gita's and practice the rhythm method.
But I'm sticking with science, thank you very much and will do all that I can to carry forward what is workable from this failed experiment and continue on the path of eternal growth and expansion, which does not require the infinite manufacture of widgets, by the way. We can look forward to venturing off this planet, provided we don't blow up our own launching pad first.
cruxpuppy:
I'm not looking for a bucolic life of farming. I'm looking for survival and community. And science can help with both things. The problem is that science for the betterment of the planet and its inhabitants has been squelched by the rich filth and their governmental minions for wealth and power. Science has a lot of catching up to do. That means that there needs to be a paradigm shift and some breathing room to get going in the right direction. And your right about about working with Gaia. And I too hope we don't blow up our own launching pad. Oh, and by the way, I'm too old to be making babies, read the Bible once a LONG time ago, but did intend to read the Bhagavad Gita one day.
Cool article. Being There is a great movie, too.
Those who print the money are clinging to the hope that they can print up enough money to keep the economy warm and sunny forever. Never worked before.
Bliss says:
"We are besieged, but more internally by our threatening practices than by terrorists or anything external."
That is so very true: our practices and our ways are indeed our own greatest threat and enemy. That is what Boy George and his base, the super-rich and the military empire they run, don't want us to see.
Now there's a real farmer who knows what he's dealing with. The so-called "US Economy" is only existant because this economy is living entirely off BORROWED MONEY from China, Dubai, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, etc ... most of which are known as the worst human rights violators and the biggest havens of terrorists. There's got to be a breaking point somewhere in all of this since the commoners in those countries are going to stand up to this foul play sooner or later.
a wonderful 'down to earth' article. shame that the 'powers that be' will undoubtedly not pay any attention to the wisdom herein.
Excellent article, full of correct and timely observations.
A continuously growing economy is basically a junkie economy (not to mention a junk economy), and thus a pathological one. The pathology is, however, coming to an end.
This addictive economic behavior and its manifold pathologies have been made possible by the once abundant and thus cheap fossil fuels that the Western economies and now the Eastern economies modelled upon the West have been devouring at a rate unseen in the history of human productivity. Since the sources of the central one of those fuels, i.e. oil, are now gradually reaching depletion, the artificial and ephemeral character of the permanent-growth economy will become ever more visible to an ever greater number of us.
The undoing of the continuous-growth economy is going to be one of the greatest changes we shall undergo in the twenty-first century, up there with climate change and its consequences.
Perpetual growth is the mantra of the untreated Greed Addicts, not the other 90% of "us." As Steinbeck said, "There are some whose appetites cannot be sated by a whole Earth of cake." It's an issue nobody wants to address, as if there's nothing sick and twisted about a person who cannot be satisfied by a million, or 50 million, or 40 billion, to the point where such a person is willing to lie, cheat and steal for more more more without a moment's consideration to the pain wrought.
Let's get over the whole "free market" super-lie and adopt the NFL model - shared revenue, salary caps, hard and fast rules enforced instantly. Is that any more "socialist" than the shifting of hundreds of billions to a small group of "friends," illegal spying, executive orders and signing statements, torture, indefinite imprisonment without charge or legal redress recourse, No Fly Lists, national ID cards, more citizens in jail than any other country, protest cages, zero legal consequences for corporate fraud and malice?
We've not only allowed the clinically Greedy to seize and consolidate power, we "honor" and "respect" them even as they drive their knives deeper into our spines. It's time for a severe, emergency intervention before the Greedily Ill finish dismantling what's left of our country.
It is easy to concede with professor Bliss that the American economy is broken. I think the fix though won't come from the contraction or collapse of the US or even the World economy.
Our use and command of symbols has accelerated change in our information age while the dollar fruits become distributed more and more inequitably. We need a totally new way of thinking perhaps a way of turning off the internal dialogue that pushes us all over the world to engage in competative nest building.
I wonder if the use of language as it relates to our culture is partly to blame.
We also tend to polarize arguments and find it hard to back up from trite truisms like we can't go back to the plow or reverse progress. Well before Orwell language has been used in polarized ways to sway the populace. Language also reflects our way of seeing things sunset today might be spinning from light, (civilization = might decline; economy = shit grows; gravity = go figure; governors = de regulators; stimulate = throw away; pollution = green growth; genocide = patriot pride) and so on....to whit this verse!
Sleep tight sweet Aphrodite
Oh homo erectus ...he wrecked us ...
he wrecked us
So why did he leave us
small brain should have been a select us
Oh homo erectus ...he wrecked us ...
he wrecked us...
should have left that fire alone...
stuck with the raw ...and left dark matter in the dark...
oh pine for homo erectus
when fight or flight didn't need to check a manifest
and destiny was timeless
but hush
Sleep tight sweet Aphrodite
the post human era will be even better than before!
for nature will nurture even more
except for the odd meteorite
The biggest sound won't be a bite
though that may seem a little trite
for finite is just time that said good night
What are you going to do about all the refugees that will invade your farm? Maybe you ought to take Bush's $800 stimulus and buy some guns.
It's true that nature is cyclical, but man thinks that the economy and society can be run in a linear fashion. Man is still part of the natural environment - destroy it and we will perish. We must adopt a cyclical and sustainable way of life.
Also, why do the free market people want the government to step in ? When it comes to giving government money to kids for health insurance - that's socialism. When the govnerment gives money to people to buy crap and "simulate" the economy - that's a stimulus package and is part of capitalism.
ezeflyer this is going to sound mean but I think a lot of people will sit crying on their pile of trash they created and starve.
"Growth for growth's sake is the ideology of the cancer cell." -- Edward Abbey.
ezeflyer writes: "What are you going to do about all the refugees that will invade your farm? Maybe you ought to take Bush's $800 stimulus and buy some guns."
Yea, that will give new meaning to the phrase "eat lead" when those who have learned to produce food are doing it, while you sit in your bunker, waiting for people too weak from starvation to move.
That's one reason I left the US -- their unhealthy obsession with weapons. "He who lives by the sword shall die by the sword." What happens when Blackwater mercenaries come home and take over "security" jobs? A few of them would come in, take your weapons from you, then slowly kill your family, one-by-one, right in front of you, until you tell them which of your neighbors have weapons.
It's the basic Law of Attraction, folks. If you collect guns, you'll have the interest of all the other people who collect guns, and they'll eventually come to collect yours.
One thing we all may have to learn in a future with 6.7+ billion people with the energy for only a tenth as many -- to die with dignity and grace. I think human life is going to get very cheap. I'd rather die with an organic carrot in my mouth than a gun in my hand.
This is one the best articles I have ever read here at CD. Thanks Shepherd.
I totally agree that our false economy MUST be allowed to collapse. Sooner rather than later. Until the majority of Americans feel the pain personally of our unsustainable approach to Mother Earth, they will never be able to honestly look at the fallicy of continual growth. Nothing in nature can grow forever. The earth could not sustain unlimited plant or animal growth. It's all about balance. The resources for all life are limited and must be renewed through the entire cycle of life and death. Even soil is a living organism that must be refreshed and fed so that it may give back in the natural cycle of life.
This quote is my favorite: Berry suggests that we work "to preserve things other than money" and advances "the idea of a local economy" based on "neighborhood and subsistence."
I call this concept Community Sovereignty. By working together in much smaller community groups, becoming self sufficient can become a reality. And of course, learning how to farm is the key to food sovereignty. I'm actually looking forward to the time that this concept will become self evident to all Americans and the peoples of the world.
Maybe the collapse of the American economy is Mother Nature's way of killing the cancer on her earth of never ending growth and living beyond the means of the planet. And if we are lucky, she will use us as an example for the rest of the world of what NOT to do with her resources.
I hope the collapse comes soon so that we can start working together to heal our planet. I know that we can do this. Those that can't will in fact starve.
Jan: Very well said. But leave that carrot in the ground to grow a while longer.
For me, if it comes down to shooting my neighbors or other humans to protect myself, then life just isn't worth it anymore. I'd rather band together with my neighbors to help each other. It seems to me that Blackwater, or gangs, or other thugs can't take us all down. And they aren't going to be after our guns anyway. They are going to be looking for food. And they are all going to starve while they wait for the crops to rippen.
Life on Earth had to adapt to the imposed seasonal cycle. Other cycles are evolved traits, some to ward off predators, pathogens. Cycles are not absolutely required though. Cycles may be a strategy taught in the civics curriculum for the people to use against economic predators that seize public institutions. The institution is abandoned like the Russians abandoned Moscow and denied Napoleon an official victory. After the little despot retreats in frustration, support flows back to the institution.
The business cycle of inflation and growth followed by deflation and contraction is due to a flawed financial system created by private bankers and whom have been given control of the money supply. The flaw in the system creates great wealth for the rich, since it is meant to distribute more income from the middle and lower classes to them. They know when the boom and bust cycles begins and end, since they control it.
This article just perpetuates the hoax that is our current system. You may read the "Web of Debt" to know more about our money. This system has nothing natural about it, it is man made legalized fraud. Like GMO seeds of destruction and control.
First of all, the economy has been growing only in Big Brothers fictitious GDP figures. In fact we have been in recession for most of the last 7 years and since the last quarter of 2005 (see shadow stats GDP figures for confirmation). Meanwhile, the global economy has grown 5% every year, while our currency is worth 40% less than it was at the start of the 21st century. Yet it is we who are just now going into a recession and not those with booming economies. China's government controls their money supply, they seem to be doing fine.
Our money supply has greatly expanded in the last 7 years, this is true. So much so that Greenspan decided to stop reporting M3 before he left in the first quarter of 2006 to hide the fact. Where did the expanded money supply, the product of tax cuts for the wealthy and resulting increasing debt, get invested in?. They got invested in moving more jobs overseas, closing down factories, investing in fancy financial instruments like MBS, CDS derivatives, and the like. While these earn profits for the big money makers in the boom cycle, they do not contribute to the real economy the working class lives in, and the bust cycle steals money from the pension funds and university trust funds and foreign banks that were foolish enough to have invested in them. The losses experienced by the Too Big To Fail Banks and Investment companies get covered by the Fed or our foreign friends who are happy to own more of America, and homes and other assets get foreclosed on and go to the banks to sell when the next boom cycle occurs. It is a wonderful land of oz that the bankers live in.
But the wizard is only powerful so long as people believe in his power, but he owns the MSM too, so that is easy. His power is the product of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 giving him the authority of printing our money from thin air, and charging us interest for it.
This has been allowed only because people are ignorant of money and what life could be. His biggest fear is people will find out we do not need him. OUR government today gives the Fed and private investors interest bearing bonds printed out of nothing but the faith in the credit of America in return for money that was printed out of thin air. WE could instead just print the money instead of the bonds that require the payment of interest.
Both were created out of thin air, backed only by our governments credit.
One way is debt free and controlled by government, and the other is controlled by bankers, some of whom are foreigners, whose main job is to make sure their companies and those in their interlocking directorships, most of them global companies, make profits.
Hah, so says the informed critter, but that would be inflationary, the bankers have told us government can not be trusted because they would print too much of it. But the for profit focused bankers can be trusted more than our elected officials?. The Fed is not elected by voters and most come from the banking industry, and they make decisions in private, and even Congress, who still depend on voters to elect them, can not attend meetings or get minutes to their meetings. Besides, they had their chance to prove they could handle it, and have failed miserably.
Besides, it is the bonds we issue that cause most of the inflation, and usury interest rates on mortgages and credit cards and other loans, because while the private bankers create the money for the principal, they do not do so for the interest. That's why we need the bust cycle, so they can dump the interest bearing loans that were created out of thin air and which could never be paid back, since they do not create the money for it, and we export less than we import so can not get foreigners to pay it for us. They can then seize the assets which were promised as collateral for the loans that defaulted and start a new boom cycle.
Federal Income taxes are so the government can pay interest on their debt. They never pay back the principal. If the government prints their own debt free money, there would be no need for federal income taxes, no debt, and no concern about social security or medicare payments.
If this is so, you ask, why does no one reveal that the Wizard has no clothes and is just a weak little old man hiding behind a curtain. Because unlike Oz, our wizard is a mean SOB and is very powerful. People in power and media who dare challenge this power, are first ridiculed, then warned, and if they persist, meet unpleasant endings (at best they are fired, at worst think JFK and Lincoln). Plus, those let in on the insider information under the current system make a pile of dough.
Ah, but Ron Paul, how do I explain him. Ron Paul exists and is allowed to campaign, funded by some invisible hands hiding behind the internet, because he is selling you the gold standard. His motives are pure, but he is wrong. After this crisis, they will try to change our currency, and gold is going to rescue us, so they will say. The problem is not fiat money, it is who controls it. The gold standard will make things worse, it will prevent us from ever rebuilding our economy and manufacturing base by limiting our money supply. The gold standard for the historically challenged was blamed for the last depression, that only affected those countries that were on it. Those who got off it first, recovered first.
As for our farmers, they are controlled by Agri-business who hire illegal immigrants and use GMO seeds that grow food which shrinks testicles and destroys immune systems in rats, which is why Europe won't touch them and African nations whom are starving reject such food giveaways, yet most of what you eat is GM food that is mainly untested in the US. Who needs rats and guineau pigs when we got so many people to test it on.
Previous depressions and boom bust cycles destroyed the American farmer, funny this guy does not know this. He may well know of the global plan to turn us into an agrarian society and get our population down to 75 million.
Money is an evil system of domination and control for the benefit of the few at the expense of the many. The foundation of money is the idea that "quantity matters more than quality" and "people must be controlled." From this we conclude that "some people are better than others" and that "money will decide who is better."
The essential evil of money as an idea is that we must live in the abstract because money is always about numbers and numbers are abstract.
Is it any wonder that this system has produced war, terrorism and environmental degradation? Peace is a virtue. Justice is a virtue. Sustainability is a virtue.
Money is not a virtue. We have constructed our society around a fundamentally evil idea that "quantity matters most." This idea is destroying us and our planet.
Stop. Think about it. Go the other way, towards quality, virtue and wisdom.
Steve Moyer
http://stevemoyer.us
metamind: Your comments are quite accurate about the nature of money today - however, historically, people have tried very hard to make and keep money as an instrument of the people. Read what the US Constitution has to say about money - the money belongs to the people, and the Government is granted only the power to certify weights and measures of that money.
There is a famous quote - "If people control the money, people control the government. If the government controls the money, the government controls the people." This quote does not include the question I like to add, "What if private banks control the money?" The math isn't hard to do.
Rebel Farmer January 20th, 2008 11:26 pm
"But wonder of wonders, the buyers are letting me lease the house back for 2 years to start. They have also agreed to let me put together a community farm program where they would "lease " the land back to the group for a tax deduction."
Rebel Farmer,
That's great news!.....and a workers co-operative sounds like the perfect model. Your creativity and values will be your guiding light and success.
The Chicago school of economics has perpetual growth as a tenet of their theories that promote free market economics and laissez-faire policies. Further, this school neglects the basic fact that the money supply is managed and thus the notion of a free market is false.
The U.S. has been using these theories to manage their economy for the past 30 years. Dr. Bliss points out the delusions of these economic theories.
It's time to reject these theories and the conservative movement started by Reagan.
The Failure of the American Narrative.
Rebel Farmer "I'm not sure how I'm going to put this all together. I'm thinking more of a workers co-operative as a business model."
Our co-op's articles of incorporation are on-line for all to steal from. If you're in BC, you simply change a few things and file it. If you're other places in Canada, it shouldn't be much more work, since every province has similar Cooperative Association Acts. If you're elsewhere, it might take more work -- co-ops are not even a legal concept in many US States -- you have to bend the language of a regular incorporation, which generally puts profit ahead of all other concerns.
Gail: Thanks.
Jan: I worked as the CFO for our local grocery co-operative for about 9 years. In Oregon cooperatives are legally recognized by the Sec'y of State and have separate laws of regulation under incorporation. The problem is that I have very little familiarity with WORKER cooperatives. But I'm working on that. And thanks for the encouragement.
Jan: I just tried to e-mail you through your web site. It didn't seem to send.
This decade will be remembered as the time where the American Dream morphed into the American Scream. Why are we screaming? Good Christ, do you really want me to make a list? Particularly when said list has been echoed over and over and over again ad infinitium, ad naseaum?
The thing is, as our author points out, human beings are the only animals that have managed to fool themselves into thinking that they are seperate from nature. The Greek myth of Antaeus points to the fallacy of this school of thought. He was a son of Earth so every time his whole body touched the ground, his strength was renewed to pummel the opponent who knocked him down. Heracles (Hercules in Latin as he is better known) figured out how to kill him, though. He just held Antaeus up in the air and crushed the life from his body before dropping him back down to terra firma. A more fitting metaphor for what is happening right now, I cannot think of.
Because we made the choices we have, the destruction of the false US economy is going to be long, painful, and, quite possibly for a few million (or billion) of all humans on this planet, fatal. It's the principle of population explosion, where a species population surges to staggering numbers before the lack of resources reduces those numbers drastically. Don't think for a minute that what has happened to sub-Saharan Africa, Bangladesh, or various hurricane-ravaged Carribean islands can't happen here. We used to say (and W still says) the same thing about torture. The Gulf Coast, post-Katrina, may be a preview of what's coming next to the North American continent.
Dr. Fred Kirschenmann on Biodynamics and US Economy - http://www.tvw.org/media/mediaplayer.cfm?evid=2007110139B&bhcp=1
Straight forward explanation on environmental risk analysis for newbies -http://www.slide.com/r/IJQwkZXO6z8_L7thuwL0VUs7Wgdvyueu
Yep, the shift is happening. We'd better keep enjoying life thoroughly today and every day. I'm trying to indulge in love every moment, regardless what the economic position is in my country or on my planet. Thanks for the postings.
Bill Molison, David Holmgren, Doug Bullock, Paul Stamets, Fred Kirschenmann, and all the up-and-comers.
In the good/bad arrangement that the Rethugs and Dims have become, this is starting to shape up like the premeditated S&L fleecing.
It's actually two crimes for the price of one. The first crime was in the deregulation and pilfering. The second crime was the bailout, rather than the jailing.
Looks like we're heading that way again, folks!
We are going to need some early legislation to prohibit banks from foreclosing on homes and land until the crisis eases and humane accommodations can be made. Then survival may be possible. With no home, survival is unlikely.
I feel we need a Roosevelt "New Deal" stimulus package but that will never come from the Bush administration.
When we do get some sort of stimulus package, don't spend it, pay off your debt!
And if things get even worse or you want to wreak even more havoc, don't pay any bills for a few months. Just stop paying bills. It will damage your credit, but what an incredible affect it would have if millions of people stop paying bills AND stop shopping for 3 months.
D n G -- Very true, most Americans do not have experience nor live where camping outside is viable.
This is certainly an important issue.
http://www.trafford.com/07-2440
Dear Sirs and Mesdames,
This subject, in my mind, is the most immediate most urgent and serious matter confronting the Human Race. Despite the fact that many great minds, philosophers, politicians, academics and economists, have all created eminent careers based on their knowledge and understanding of how free enterprise, national economies and the human race interact, they have all failed to admit the obvious. It is glaringly obvious that we have large swathes of the human race that do not have access to money; it is that simple.
Therefore we need a system of economy that literally accommodates the needs and aspirations of every human being. A system that will not rely on taxing others' in order to provide all the multifarious forms of infrastructures, as well as our human and social obligations. A system of taxation in which the haves are continually being pressured to claw back those taxes from the have-nots. We must face the fact, once and for all; this system can never provide all human needs and infrastructures.
We have allowed right-wing ideology to dictate the terms and even if or when large swathes of populations may be fed and housed or have health needs addressed. We tolerate the fact that we have millions of working poor who will never earn enough to meet all of life's basic costs. Many of these are struggling to raise families the bedrock of our future. Those who work lead the most precarious of lives.
Precarious, because their work and income has become the plaything of corporate power, which moves production to lower waged economies. This makes the executives and the shareholders richer but at the cost of the misery they leave behind. Wages go down, but not prices, or costs of living, and the formerly free "social wage entitlements" are removed.
This is the "rationalized" world directed by Corporate Power and implemented by our Governments, the world of "user pays".
Take it or suffer the consequences. The Government calls this "work choices". Hear the Corporate applause? The consequences are total destitution for some; they could buy none of life's essential services.
Complete and total destitution for many unless they work, no shelter, no food, no health care, and no education, none of life's necessities.
So we need a system, which provides equal opportunity and care for all, overlaid with free enterprise. At the same time we can put in place a fair and equitable industrial relations system that eliminates employer employee antagonisms.
Our democracy is in serious trouble. Rich people and corporations channel funds into political parties in order to achieve their own commercial or ideological ends cleverly bypassing democratic inputs. It is happening in all democracies but that does not make it "worlds best practice" or "right". We can correct that quite easily. We make so-called free trade agreements under which corporations are exempted from government regulation that control workers rights, pay and working conditions. Is this democracy, is this really necessary, should corporations have such unbridled power, where will it end?
Introduction of The Universal Economy will immediately and substantially impact and improve such questions as Poverty, provision of universal education, health care, pensions, unemployment, housing and all public infrastructure (roads bridges schools hospitals etc). None of this will require the imposition of taxation.
The concept of The Universal Economy will be easy to introduce, because it benefits everyone, everyone will want it to work. It will be hardest to implement in third world nations, not impossible, just slower to implement. It will kick start economies wherever it is introduced.
This is a concept for the twenty-first century. Put to one side traditional thought processes and embedded conventions see only the greater-good and benefit of mankind then you will support this enterprise with the open heart and mind it deserves. Adopt this concept for the good of humanity.
Give your support, not money.
Yours Faithfully, THOMAS W ADAMS.
Rebel Farmer wrote: "Jan: I just tried to e-mail you through your web site. It didn't seem to send."
Sorry 'bout that! I'm working on it. Leopard Server 10.5.1 update makes PHP checkdnsrr() function core dump. AAARRRGGGHHH!!!
Try Jan AT Bytesmiths DOT com
¿ the cat spit out a PHPairball ?
I'm sorta looking forward to the end of the information age, should I last so long...
What wonderful things I might be doing in the garden or the shop if I didn't spend 8+ hours a day on this damn thing. Our servants have become our masters.
I think we're well into the MIS-information age.
Working more with people (less with "information") will also be a welcome improvement in life for me, as well.