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The New Economy Won't Be Like the Last One
Despite the best efforts of the Obama administration, the economy is a long ways from recovery. The speculative system that created the mess remains intact, and foreclosures and unemployment continue to rise. But at the same time, a new economy is taking form. It’s built on a recognition that the only thing too big to fail is the Earth itself. It is designed to build sustainable wealth for families, communities, and ecosystems, and it’s our best chance to improve prospects for future generations, instead of leaving them with ever-growing debt, conflict, and environmental destruction.
Politicians, pundits, and financiers defend deepening our national debt to bail out the institutions of a failed Wall Street system. But this system, built on speculation and the rule of money, is undermining the health of the planet and the well-being of all but the wealthiest few.
The new economy is built on new forms of money, and on democratic finance and business. In the summer 2009 issue of YES!, we report on worker-owned cooperatives that distribute the benefits of hard work to employee-owners who call the shots in democratic workplaces. These co-ops spend locally and are rooted locally, so they are long-term boons to their local economies. And they don't close down in favor of sweat shops in low-wage regions.
Money, though hidden in plain sight, is another critical piece of the puzzle. As currently created, it destabilizes our economy and concentrates wealth. Many communities are developing new means of exchange that work even when there is a global shortage of credit. And the issuing of money could be a public service, rather than a profit center for private banks.
We’re told we need Wall Street in order to finance business. But Wall Street has quit serving the real economy and, with the continued blessing of the Obama administration, is acting as a global casino, creating exotic and toxic packages of “assets” that have no function but to make money for the already wealthy.
In the new economy, credit is provided through local banks rooted in the communities they serve. Credit unions, community development banks, and other democratic institutions also serve, rather than cannibalize, the real economy.
Americans know we’ve been living beyond our means, and we’re cutting back. That means the segment of the old economy centered on encouraging wasteful consumption will continue shrinking.
The new economy—sometimes with the aid of President Obama’s stimulus spending—is moving in to meet needs unmet by a system centered on mega-profits. New jobs are being created to install renewable energy and weatherize homes, raise food through more labor-intensive and less damaging means, build public transit systems and inter-city rail, and rebuild schools, bridges, water systems and neighborhoods. We can no longer defer these vital investments as we did when we oriented our economy around the desires of the ultra-rich.
The new economy is about increasing quality of life, improving health, and restoring the environment. The resources to pay for this will be the resources that previously went into multi-million-dollar CEO pay packages and oversized returns on speculation.
With reduced consumption, we’ll no longer need to fight for an excess share of the world’s resources, so we can slim down our bloated military budget. We can save on prisons and police, since people with access to good education and jobs less often turn to crime.
An Earth- and human-centered economy is not inevitable. We could revert to a winner-take-all system in which a few benefit and everyone else fights over the scraps. The current economic downturn, though, offers an exceptional opportunity to rebuild and, this time, to make it an economy that works for all.
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97 Comments so far
Show All"Despite the best efforts of the Obama administration ..."
the first eight words of this article sum up the writer's (author???) imagination. the only thing more vivid is her ending: "with reduced consumption..."
which planet, sarah, do you live on?
common dreams, please.
lino June 25th, 2009 9:39 am...She lives on the planet of propaganda...the same propaganda that shoved the false flag of 9/11 down our throats.
My sentiments exactly.
Z-zzzzzz
This article is BULLSHIT! Any real attempts to build an new economy on sustainable footings will be crushed ruthlessly by the Mullahs of Wall st. and the rest of the BIG CORP nobility that now rules with an IRON f'ing fist. Iranian women have more BALLS it seems then all of America's down trodden masses these days. Nobody is challenging the Imperial order. These articles are the fantasy literature of the 21st century. I keep this shit right up next to my Sci Fi reading.
It's the effort that makes us better than the Mullahs.
Luckily Gandhi didn't think so... India never would have been freed of the English Empire.
Every empire in history has crumbled. I hope this will be the last one we have to crush and we should make sure of it.
Yes beat the drum of us having to learn to live with less. I dont see the 1% making those adjustments, do you? Maybe just maybe that was the whole point of this meltdown, brought to you by the Feds. WE should learn to live with less.
No thankyou. I want more.
I realize that my formal education left a lot to be desired so I make the effort to properly educate myself, including on the subjects of economics and economic history so I know at least on a basic level what is going and it makes me able to tell who knows what they are economically talking about. That said, Gelder's economic ignorance and economic prejudice coupled with her dogmatic certainty that she knows what she is talking about - has me speechless.
Submit your editorial to an econ prof. who is worth his salt and see what he says about it.
Everyday I read foolishness that insults my intelligence - that's hard to avoid nowadays - but Gelder brought that to a new low. Thanks!
There will be a new economy.
Well, several thousand of them actually. And they will have a loose interconnection via remaining internet and phone connections, plus local and long distance couriers (think Pony Express, only slower).
These economies will be extremely local, and will support the regions and remaining cities with the basics they require. Older sections of cities will be progressively looted for their resources of refined metals, glass, plastics and few volatile petrochemicals, and the concrete towers slowly dismantled.
There will be hunger, at least until the population equalizes to the environment, and the food will be local, organic, and mostly meat free.
The vast legions of office workers will have to learn new skill sets, indigenous to self-sufficiency and cottage industry. Those who have repair skills will be in high demand, and those fractional few remaining of the obscenely wealthy will be scorned, ridiculed and hated for their demonstrations of excess, and their paranoid necessity to have mercenary guards accompany them everywhere. The 'poor' will be everybody else, living in economically necessary simplicity, making do or doing with out.
This is not some pie-in-the-sky dream. It is the reality that is bearing down on us like a rock slide.
And it is coming sooner than you think.
Walk in peace.
Respectfully, Galenwainwright, what WILL be coming soon is a police state un-like ever before seen; this country will collapse from the inside and our remedy will be martial law.
We no longer have a vocabulary that brings us together, a language that can unite us to a common singular cause. We are ego-run-rampant! We have many, many resourceful, well-meaning individuals who will start a cause but will not join one. Everyone wants their own brand, their own logo.
The "vast legions of office workers", many of whom cannot "live" without modern technology and convenience, will be reduced to desperation and barbarism. We will panic and rip one another apart. We will be a spectacle for the wealthy.
Civilization left us long ago. "Progress" will not allow us to return to guilds, tribes, or communities. Already in our world we produce enough food for 12 billion people - And a billion of us are starving. The organic "movement" was stillborn - bought and paid and made a brand by big business.
A civilized people would drag these politicians and corporate oligarchs into the street and remove them from society. But alas...
Until we embrace a remedy from this ignorance we will continue to march off the same cliff.
That police state will rely upon a rapidly exhausting single resource (oil), and will be unable to monitor every single human interaction. Outlying areas will be left to fend for themselves, and people will return to barter and trade out of necessity, creating a thriving 'grey market' that the government will have no control over.
It is the few remaining elites who will cheerfully submit to the police state, telling them selves that the impoverished masses beyond their gated communities want to break in and take their worthless crap. Hence the mercenary guards I mentioned previously.
When I say that food will be organic, it will be because petrochemical fertilizers and pesticides will be almost non-existent, and most people will be eating out of their kitchen or community gardens, just as they did up to and including WWII, but very little after. The great agri-corporate farms will wither, dying off as their financial base depletes itself in a series of economic implosions.
Will there be unrest? Definitely. Will there be repressions and crackdowns resulting in protester deaths? Definitely. Will the bloated and obscene US model of greed and overpopulation collapse?
Definitely.
Walk in peace.
Thank you GW. Peak Oil is coming and not even lowering the crude oil prices temporarily seems to be working if the past 2 decades was any indicator. We need to localize our currencies as well so that no local economy will find it easy to go predatory. I don't know if you have heard of hemp or algal oil but even those two require decentralization, localization, and good labor to keep the prices not too high but think of the benefits. Since neither can be cheap through a centralized economy unlike petroleum, a police state will be tougher to come by. Lots to say about hemp and algae oil but you'll be surprised that such peaceful plants for fuel can actually help weaken and shutdown the Military Industrial Complex.
Hemp and algal oil, while both nominally viable alternatives, suffer from the same problem.
Scalability. There will never be enough production to meet even a fraction of demand.
So we had better get used to living in a situation where you use it up, use it over, make do, or do with out.
Walk in peace.
I didn't say that hemp and algal oil would fully work. I am already aware that unlike conventional crude oil, the "whole sale volume sale" mantra won't work with algal oil or hemp. People will be forced to conserve and restrict their urge to guzzle even as decentralized production and localized delivery significantly cuts down the economic and environmental costs. What exactly do you mean by them suffering the same problems?
The good thing about Peak Oil is that fewer people will say no to carpooling, metro stations will be forced to improve and even lower their obscene fees, and more businesses will be forced to spread out and even allow more teleworking from home. Contrary to what I feared, I can't tell you how much of a relief it is to work remotely from home and avoid having to travel 45 miles to work every day.
P.S.: I find your last sentence "Walk in peace" attractive. :)
Since you cannot step in the same river twice, how can we achieve this?
Our "educational" system has been very effective in lowering the ceiling on not only critical development and self-sufficiency but also civic responsibility. Our souls are malnourished - And there is seemingly no interest but self-interest. Of what interest is the natural world to any of us when we have no real indication of what it is? We have been taught to consume and disregard. We strive to break this dependency, to what degree we are able - But for most there isn't even the consideration. Many of us are well-comfortable inside illusion's illusion.
I, despite my pessimism, believe people are good - They are simply not taught to be as such; evil is just a separation from this, like shade from the sun. Rob a man of his possessions and decorations, his status and wealth, and what are you left with? A living heart with consciousness and ability. And at the end of the day who does not want a peaceful existence?
I suppose the seeds we need to plant are ones of self-sufficiency and dignity. I think, at their center, the ideas of your posts posses quality, but that quality needs a foundation.
And as for elites - Their interests are simply not my interests.
Ms Van Gelder's article is a synopsis of the argument made by her "boss" David Korten (YES! Magazine co-founder and chairman) in his 2008 book entitled "Agenda For a New Economy: From Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth."
The critics of the intellectual underpinnings of the argument can find his CV (including the fact that he holds PhDs from the business schools at Stanford and Harvard) here:
http://www.yesmagazine.org/default.asp?ID=119#board
The ideas are utopian, without doubt, and all the more compelling for the fact that they show the fallacy of the growth-centered capitalist model that's destroying our natural, political, human and financial ... uhm ... capital.
hope this can help give direction to our concrete vision for the future:
..the late japanese master masanobu fukuoka showed how to grow grains (and vegetables) without fertilizer, pesticides, or plowing, by observing nature. --he also showed how to grow rice without transplanting,-which creates a strong naturally pest-resistant plant,--in his fields we could find every kind of pest and disease but it did not effect the amount harvested... on top of this his method leaves plenty of free time allowing human culture and art to also grow and develop... in a certain sense, the garden of eden has always existed,,,,around the same time frederick dolman showed how to teach a child beginning at 6 months of age, about 20 minutes a day,..with the result that the child knew several languages and advanced mathematics at four years of age,,,
Once again I find myself addressing the merely wishful thinking exemplified here with the fundamental economic issues. Economy must be founded on scientific fact and not mere social projection. As before, I offer these links to become informed about the new thinking relating the laws of thermodynamics to production, without which the market might consist only in the barter of sea shells and bits of rock:
http://www.eco.uni-heidelberg.de/ng-oeoe/research/papers/Faber%20et%20al%20AEE%201998.pdf
http://www.eco.uni-heidelberg.de/ng-oeoe/research/papers/JPEE_Introduction.pdf
http://www.ecoeco.org/pdf/jointprod.pdf
http://events.it-sudparis.eu/degrowthconference/themes/3Second%20sessions%20panel/1Indicators/Friend%20A%20Degrowth%20Paris%20april%202008%20presentation.pdf
"the market might consist only in the barter of sea shells and bits of rock." Barter is barter no matter what is being traded. Sea shells and bits of rock have as much value these days as the fiat currency we use now. Worthless unless a agreed upon value. Nothing has value unless someone wants to pay the price you are asking. We have allowed Wall Street and the Banking community to dictate what is of value. That time is coming to an end.
The sun, too, is coming to an end, but not any time soon.
We can invalidate the social projection, but not without science, hence the links mounting economics upon production (as Adam Smith observed), but bounding production with thermodynamics (which neither Adam Smith, nor Karl Marx realized).
As far as anytime soon, you might be right. Me thinks though that we have relied upon science too much.
The human aspect needs to be reintroduced.
Science is the only path to overcome the traditional superstition that is the substance of conservatism. Science is the very stuff of which humanism is made. That which has been passing for economics follows the model of mathematics as science does, but its principles are not founded on science – the result is that economics as we practice it is a form of pseudo-science like astrology or alchemy.
Sioux Rose
CLASS ACT: I generally like and respect your posts, but this one is all puffed up. Just as a boat with only one oar (cold logic/science) will ONLY succeed in circling, there is something to be said for that more diffusive other oar, i.e. right brain. Creator purposely installed two sides to our minds that we would not ONLY be led by science and cold reason... science has done some things well, but it has also gotten us lofty things like bombs; and scientists who study the mind also have learned how to break it down via a nefarious number of torture tactics. What some call the heart, or the spirit, or intuition, or basic instinct ALSO has its wisdom. So call my field a pseudo-science all you like but mystics, poets, and lovers have seen, known, and experienced things science and its ilk have not.
Rudolph Steiner, Germany's pre-eminent mystic termed science the "consensus of mediocre minds." The inventor, say a mind such as Einstein's, was equal parts mystic, poet, and rebel! Science alone can be a barren field, sir.
Thank you for all the links! I have been checking them: all work, save for the last one. Could you look into it?
Unfortunately, the restrictions on the Comments box will not permit full reproduction of the last link which always truncates, but I will try again.
http://events.it-sudparis.eu/degrowthconference/themes/3Second%20sessions%20panel/1Indicators/
Friend%20A%20Degrowth%20Paris%20april%202008%20presentation.pdf
Thank you!!
Someone ought to let Congress and Wall Street in on this vision. They are all wearing the blinders of personal gain, profit, and recognition!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Frank, forget Washington. Change happens from the bottom and works it's way up. The new economy is forming out of both idealism and self interest. As it grows it will eventually change Local government first, State government, then the Federal Government. We must form groups of people to change local lifeways and government first. The sooner we adopt the new lifeways the better. Washington is not a change agent but instead is propping up old 20th Century ideas. In the year 2001 we crossed the threshold to a new future, we turned a page of history. If we wish for peaceful change we must get solidly behind the new economy now, otherwise change will be violent and result in Fascism.
Just like there will be a reduction in population, there will be a new economy.
Just like we won't stop overpopulating the planet, the greed addicts won't stop--can't stop-- until the whole old order falls in around our ears.
It WILL happen, and I am afraid before this time next year.
Right on, SEAGLASS. Obama is not going to get any new converts just because he is Obama. Bush policies were (and are) destructive, dangerous and just plain ridiculous. To think that the Dems can put a different label on what are essentially Bush policies is nonsence. As usual we will have to let this play out till it comes back to bite the Dems and Obama. This article is just more DLC crap.
Prescriptively, Gelder is right: a sustainable future lies only in the localized making of a living (I purposely avoid the word 'economy'). All giganticism (economic, military, industrial, architectural, urbanistic, etc.) must end. It will end either catastrophically or deliberately.
I do not consider such prescriptions utopian at all: they are prescriptions for the only realistic and peaceful future ways of making a living.
The word 'deliberately' brings me to my reservation regarding Gelder's article: although she does see that "[w]e could revert to a winner-take-all system in which a few benefit and everyone else fights over the scraps," she underestimates the resistance (including violent repression) that Empire's beneficiaries (the few and wealthy that rule this country and a good deal of the world) will put up.
We are in a very perilous situation, but Gelder is right in saying that the present massive failure and breakdown of savage capitalism do offer an opportunity for radical change. The problem is, will people seize that opportunity in a deliberate manner and usher in a relatively peaceful and orderly transition to the new arrangements for making a livng?
At this point, and in view of the gang of mainly servile fools in Congress and in the White House, the prospect for such a transition looks dim.
I appreciate your post. I don't get the "fuggetaboutit" sour taste that I get from others.
"The problem is, will people seize that opportunity in a deliberate manner and usher in a relatively peaceful and orderly transition to the new arrangements for making a livng?"
For me, this really is a moot point. For one thing, few times in history have transitions been peaceful and orderly. People are messy and they make messy changes. Sometimes violently messy.
For another thing, we can always use this question as an excuse not to act. And, many people do that every day. What does it matter what everyone else chooses to do or how change happens? If we were really as hep and conscientious as we like to believe we are, we'd just do the right thing no matter what others think or do or even whether it's allowed or approved of.
"You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else." Churchill
I hear you very clearly and, in the end, I tend to agree with you.
I raised the question that you quoted in order to present the most desirable course of action in the transition out of our present desastrous predicament. I consider it to be a regulative ideal -- a goal that should orient action as much as possible. It is certainly not meant in the least as an excuse for not taking action.
We must begin now to take our lives and fates into our own hands, live and make a living as locally as possible, develop public transportation (resuscitate the United States' once great network of railroads) and local businesses, avoid purchasing goods made in China or other far-off countries, grow our own vegetables, raise chickens, keep bees, promote alternative fuels, reside in small towns (where walking or bicycling to work is possible), rekindle the water ways as transportation routes, stop buying useless junk, subscribing to needless magazines, and watching television, and so forth (see Richard Heinberg's advice and discussions of these matters on his Web site, for example).
However, I am very much aware that what is desirable and what in fact will happen are not necessarily coextensive.
"We must begin now to take our lives and fates into our own hands, live and make a living as locally as possible..."
Very well said, Abe.
To me, this is the most empowering thing - when I realize that even as limited as things are, the most powerful thing I can do is to start changing myself, and therefore, my world. Of course, the flip side of this is to sit and rail against what is without applying my own elbow grease and therefore, guarantee that my world won't change.
Yes, we are in agreement.
One must begin by changing one's relation to oneself and others and to one's environment and one's way of making a living: that is where change begins and must begin, for waiting for Obama to change anything is total abdication, passivity, and, one might even add, a form of suicide, or at least a form of serious masochism.
By the by, no one is claiming that making these changes is easy, but I would suspect that, no matter how hard it is, it will still be easier in the end than not doing anything at all and waiting for Savior Obama to change something, for such a passive attitude will cost us dearly.
It's time to snap out of the fix, out of the holy economy, out of the Machine, out of the trash culture, out of the fat and the excess, out of the consumerism, out of People magazine, out of the ideological piffle delivered by most media, out of Hollywood, out of theme parks, out of Las Vegas, out of Disneyland, out of Cheeze Doodles, out of soft ice cream and soft drinks, etc.
Touché!
People often complain that there is no movement of disengagement, but that's not true. There is actually a large movement that has been doing this for years. Many years. It's a continuum and many of us are somewhere along that path. All we have to do is tune ourselves into where we want to go, and we will start seeing others who are doing likewise. And they will help us.
Abendland, I like what you and Ted Markow are saying. It's a refreshing bit of sanity to read this after some of the negative, cynical comments early on here.
Your comments are productive whereas those others I referred to serve no purpose at all. Complaining won't solve a thing. We can't expect the same monster institutions who created this mess to get us out of it.
I'm glad I'm not the only one here advocating self-reliance. To quote a line in a song by Velcro Sheep, "We are the only saviors I can see".
I hope you're comments are widely read and considered. If I were to cease posting on CD today, I could rest assured that guys like you are out there speaking my heart.
Back to the garden. Peace!!
Moondoggy, thank you for your supportive words!
Wish you much success in building that bridge with them logs! That is the sort of thing we must learn how to do again.
In general, we must recover all the old knowledge: farming, construction, carpentry, botany, plant breeding, boating and boat making, animal husbdandry, horse carriage making, smithing, bee keeping (before they are all dead), traditional architecture and art (perspective and, generally, representational drawing), book making, etc. Make seed archives to bypass monsters such as Monsanto.
We must learn again to use hand tools, divorce ourselves gradually from the use of electrical tools. Buy and store manual tools (coz' when the grid starts failing, they will make the difference between life and death).
Buy as many old books on these subjects as you can find! Collect them, treasure them, scan them and make them available to others and on the Web. In fact, a publisher should begin reediting the old trade manuals.
Choose one or more of these areas of endeavor and start developing its respective skills. The more you know about these matters, the greater your chances will be of surviving the civilizational collapse that will slowly, and in some places, more rapidly, erode and eventually undo industrial societies over the decades to come.
Once our predicament becomes really dire, those with skills will also be able to teach them to others and to the youth.
Don't forget beer and wine making!
Yes, hand tools. I'm collecting them and learning the skills. We try to do as many things by hand as possible, forgoing the use of electricity. We live in a log cabin and heat with wood. We also have a wood burning hot water heater. I'm planning to add bee keeping to my skills some day.
We had a power outage one year at Thanksgiving due to 2 big ice storms in a row. The power was out for 8 days. We just fired up the woodstove in our kitchen and cooked our traditional thanksgiving meal as usual. Got our wash water by hauling buckets from the river and drinking water by melting snow. We were warm and cozy and read by candle light.
Later I ran into a neighbor on the road and asked how their Thanksgiving was. He said, "We ate corn flakes. Had to throw out the turkey." I talked to other neighbors and they said, "We drove into town and got a room at the Holiday Inn and ate at a restaurant." We talked to people who live in town and they said, "I don't know how I would survive if the power ever went out."
They key is preparedness, being able to live without electricity. We've been doing this all along. I've always had an inclination to do so, and actually rather enjoy it. It's so quiet and peaceful when the power goes out. And here in the outback of northwest Montana where my family and I live, the power goes out often. We are literally at the end of the line, so when it goes out, we're the last to get it restored.
Both my wife and I had done a lot of camping and lived off the grid before we met. So we're a perfect match. Most people consider us an anomaly. Well, all I can say to that is good luck when the empire falls. They'll be coming to us to teach them how to live.
This year a wild turkey landed in our yard on Thanksgiving day and hung around for a couple of days. I suppose if we didn't already have a tofurkey in the oven, we might have had some feather plucking to do.
My advise to everyone is the same as the boy scout motto: be prepared!
Beautiful post,
Abendland, you ponder, "will people usher in a peaceful transition?"
But allude to the impossibility of that in your 3rd to last paragraph.
The transition will require the wealth of the country be returned to the people. Never in the history of the planet have the elite/wealthy given up their stolen amassed wealth w/o radical revolutionary violence, ie, over their dead bodies.
Moondoggy-thanks for pointing me to Abendland and Ted Markow. xlnt posts by both-if every "localized making of a living," meant this, it meant that in every county in America, ALL they needed had to be produced there, all, in 5 years this country would be healthy.
We over and underestimate ourselves.
Hey, our phone call last night got cut short. The battery went dead in my phone. Call me back and leave me your number. I never wrote it down, even though I had a pad and pen with me. I woke up this morning with the pad and pen still in bed with me and an ink mark on my hand. Life is a trip!
Azjoe, thank you!
Regarding the issue of violence, please see my reply to Ted below: Abendland June 25th, 2009 6:53 pm.
The true economy will never recover until society reduces materialism significantly. For example, I cannot tell you how much more relieved I am to not have to travel 45 miles to work every day and 45 miles back of course now that I can work from home remotely at least until the end of summer. I don't know if it's just me but the less I found myself having to spend, the less unhappy I got.
"I don't know if it's just me but the less I found myself having to spend, the less unhappy I got."
No, Jennifer, it's not just you. Just a taste of what it's like when we start kicking the consumption drug.
Jennifer\Ted ~
I find any day I don't use a car to be noticeably less stressful, and I try to structure days so that I don't...it's more than just not experiencing the stress of driving as an act...it's more of a naturalness that is harshly interrupted by the grinding of the starter and the smell of the fuel and the insulated feeling of being closed in and zipping past things rather than experiencing them...being in the elements is a very grounding thing...just supporting what you've said...
Jennifer, Ted, Dubet,
All good comments and sentiments. I concur entirely.
I left a very big city (New York City), where I lived for years and years, and moved to the country. My whole life has changed. I had so many shirts and pants and socks and whatnot to go to my office job and look presentable and all that jazz; now, the stuff lies in storage tubs; I don't use it any more. Same for all my snazy shoes. I nearly forgot about it all, and one of them days I'm gonna give it all away. My Banana Republic credit card has been in retirement. Now, I do carpentry. Now, I see the passing of the seasons again, just as when I was a child. In the city, I worked in a office without windows for almost twenty years -- I used to fall asleep on the bus or on the subway on the way to work... I suppose you get the idea...
Abendland, having moved from the rurals to the city due to seeking employment and then suburbs due to rising costs of living in the city, I don't know if I'll ever go back to living in the country side. I do miss living the countryside life in some ways but I was amazed at how much living in the city opened my mind to so much more knowledge and understandings of what was going on in the world than I even had before that. I also got to meet more diverse people and even find out more about the plight of the working class not only in the city but even where I used to live and foreigners as well. I could find myself working back in the country side but with rural MO depopulating, the closest I'll get is probably working in the suburbs but since I live in the surrounding suburbs, it might not be a bad idea. If I had to move back out to the countryside, I still think I would end up missing my life as a city girl than I missed being a country girl but maybe there will be unexpected changes such as Peak Oil, improvements in public transportation, populist uprisings, etc ... that could make me feel otherwise.
dubet,
Me and a friend have been hired to build a log bridge across a creek. The guy who hired us is a lawyer who has a summer cabin nearby. So we hopped in my jeep and drove up and down the forest roads in the nearby state forest to look for a suitable dead tree.
We both were starting to go, "whoa, this sucks, driving around in a vehicle. We'd be better off to ride these roads on mountainbikes. Yeah, you can't really see much from a car, like you can on a bike."
So, rather than continuing on, we turned around and drove back and parked that stinkin' rig. On Monday we plan to fill up our water bottles and continue our search on bikes, something we should have done in the first place.
2 things will continue-
A. Existing wealth will continue to be updrafted.
B. The population will continue to sky-rocket.
These in concurrence insure a rapid decline in the US standard of living-lost homes, no health care, lost lives and dreams-
Karl Marx said A + B=Revolution, seems he is dead on track in his predictions.
And Sarah, whoah, respectfully I submit her optimism is ridiculous!
the population may skyrocket...on the other hand, chemical alteration may render many sterile...