Homa Ecologica Cooperativo
Dobson's criticism of Kingsnorth appears to be like trite infighting. However, as an anthropocentric environmentalist, I reject the notion of ecologism as described in this article. However, I refuse to let others dictate terms. Ecology means the study of the home. Economics means the management of the home. I am an ecologist; therefore I subscribe to a real meaning of ecologism, an anthropocentric one. As an Ecologist and as an Economist I reject the linear growth paradigm. I favor instead, a human need centered paradigm of ecological economic redevelopment.
The path we are on will not be a gentle one to lower energy. The path we are on guarantees the four horseman of the apocalypse will be dictating the terms. We need to unite as humans, and very soon, to fundamentally redefining the way that we conduct our daily business. We need to put the industrial, the enginocentric, and fossil fuels, into historical perspective and consciously commit to a future that is different, particularly in relation to the use of the automobile. Gasoline is a gigantic and foolish opportunity cost for a very precious finite resource, oil Radical reduction of its use for personal transportation is among the most important commitments that we can make if we want
Secondly, we will have no future unless we can consciously evolve, meaning moving from a risk and return economic paradigm to a plan and implement one. The evolution from Homo Economicus to Homa Ecologica Cooperativo is overdue. It needs to be an intentional evolution and it is well-past (pun intended) time we began it.
Saturday, August 21, 2010
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Public “Jobs”
Public “Jobs”
Ok, Alan, I stand corrected on the way the "private sector" works. My issue was with Mr. Khan's call for "investments". The word investment applies an allocation of money for which there will be a return to the investor. I am saying that wild econometric growth, the continuance of a supply side paradigm is not the best way to allocate "our" funds.
There is more than one issue here. In the past, government allocated funds to infrastructure (i.e. highways, sewers, electricity projects, hospitals, schools) all in accordance with the wishes of their masters "the Private Sector" in keeping with an amazingly myopic linear growth model based on assumptions of infinite resources, infinite economic growth, and with absolutely no concern for the long term environmental/public health.
The Unions want to keep the public sector of the growth paradigm alive, regardless of the lack of the private sector to succeed at their part of the game. It is a full speed ahead to destruction, stay alive one more day, reaction to a fundamentally flawed Capitalist "Plan" of World Manifest Destiny.
If we are going to allocate funds for economic progress, let's do it in an ecological manner that is sustainable. One that puts the industrial revolution and the fossil fuel age into historical perspective. One that allocates resources for the creation of sedentary, low energy input, sustainable communities. One that sees the big picture and allocates funds among and within economic sectors in a planned rational manner that starts with a vision of what we want the future to look like, to be.
Public sources should allocate wages and benefits, if they choose to make "investments", it needs to be in a One Big Union worker owned scheme of some sort. That won't happen. Investments will be allocated to Capitalists and they will continue with their ways of exploitation.
These arguments are academic. The Capitalist system is dead, and it is too late in History for an alternative. No one should be poor. We need to make sure that resources are allocated to those who are at risk of that. The ideal would be to allocate funds to community betterment organizations for community betterment all over the world. But that is not a practical option.
It doesn't matter what you or I think, say or write. The Capitalists will get their way. They will only be hastening the resource limited crash, by trying to stave off their economic demise.
The “Democratic” approach, favoring the body politic, to the continuation of the dominant paradigm is preferable to the “Republican”, but the voting on the War Powers Act of 2010 based on “Progressive Democrat” Obama’s budget displays what a woeful dilemma that the Capitalists present.
We’re not going to live happily ever after. Since we’re in the belly of the Imperialist beast and we’ve got no say, anyway, let’s just hope that wild momentum driven delusions that call for investments to the genocidal, ecocidal, suicidal, Corporatist economy don’t take away funding for the basic survival needs of the growing majority of the disenfranchised, because the disenfranchisement is permanent and there will be no “recovery”.
Ok, Alan, I stand corrected on the way the "private sector" works. My issue was with Mr. Khan's call for "investments". The word investment applies an allocation of money for which there will be a return to the investor. I am saying that wild econometric growth, the continuance of a supply side paradigm is not the best way to allocate "our" funds.
There is more than one issue here. In the past, government allocated funds to infrastructure (i.e. highways, sewers, electricity projects, hospitals, schools) all in accordance with the wishes of their masters "the Private Sector" in keeping with an amazingly myopic linear growth model based on assumptions of infinite resources, infinite economic growth, and with absolutely no concern for the long term environmental/public health.
The Unions want to keep the public sector of the growth paradigm alive, regardless of the lack of the private sector to succeed at their part of the game. It is a full speed ahead to destruction, stay alive one more day, reaction to a fundamentally flawed Capitalist "Plan" of World Manifest Destiny.
If we are going to allocate funds for economic progress, let's do it in an ecological manner that is sustainable. One that puts the industrial revolution and the fossil fuel age into historical perspective. One that allocates resources for the creation of sedentary, low energy input, sustainable communities. One that sees the big picture and allocates funds among and within economic sectors in a planned rational manner that starts with a vision of what we want the future to look like, to be.
Public sources should allocate wages and benefits, if they choose to make "investments", it needs to be in a One Big Union worker owned scheme of some sort. That won't happen. Investments will be allocated to Capitalists and they will continue with their ways of exploitation.
These arguments are academic. The Capitalist system is dead, and it is too late in History for an alternative. No one should be poor. We need to make sure that resources are allocated to those who are at risk of that. The ideal would be to allocate funds to community betterment organizations for community betterment all over the world. But that is not a practical option.
It doesn't matter what you or I think, say or write. The Capitalists will get their way. They will only be hastening the resource limited crash, by trying to stave off their economic demise.
The “Democratic” approach, favoring the body politic, to the continuation of the dominant paradigm is preferable to the “Republican”, but the voting on the War Powers Act of 2010 based on “Progressive Democrat” Obama’s budget displays what a woeful dilemma that the Capitalists present.
We’re not going to live happily ever after. Since we’re in the belly of the Imperialist beast and we’ve got no say, anyway, let’s just hope that wild momentum driven delusions that call for investments to the genocidal, ecocidal, suicidal, Corporatist economy don’t take away funding for the basic survival needs of the growing majority of the disenfranchised, because the disenfranchisement is permanent and there will be no “recovery”.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
The BP Spill
The BP Spill
The BP Oil Spill is but the thief that got caught. Oil and other fossil fuels are filthy businesses and the constant seepage, spills, runoff, environmental stripping and small, unreported disasters are ongoing.
This BP Spill is a precursor for the drilling industry that is constantly going deeper, taking larger risks to extract the oil that is further from our more conventional grasps.
One wonders how much truth we are being told. Of course what is being heard is what most want to hear, and what the oil industry wants everyone to hear: that technology saved the day and that all is under control and always will be, as the news media commits to “case solved” and the plight of the fishing industry and the lives of the folks on the gulf gets left behind in their coverage.
Any why do we take such risks? And why do we wage aggressive war in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and rattle “our” sabers at Iran? So that we can carelessly glide from destination to destination as our privileged imperial ownership caste where our only real job is to consume what each other own?
Oil is a precious resource and one that should be used wisely. Oil heats our homes, oil would be very useful in a humane agricultural system, oil products can cook our food, oil products can be used to generate electricity which, if prudently used, can add much to the quality of our lives. Oil products are used for the creation of durable goods and as feedstock for other valuable uses.
But, people of the USA squander over 15 million barrels a day of oil equivalent to fuel their mindless forays of consumption in personal automobiles. They know no other way. But it doesn’t have to be this way. We could rebuild our neighborhoods and reallocate goods and services accordingly so that the things that people need are available within walking distance of most. Such a program of building/rebuilding village/community/telecommuting centers could not only contribute to a worthwhile goal of reducing personal automobile usage by 80% in the next 20 to 40 years, thereby greatly extending the tail of post-peak fossil fuels for future generations, but would also greatly add to the communitarian, sedentary, quality of life for all.
We need to commit to this as a nation and commit to it right away.
In addition to improving our domestic quality of life, such a commitment and action plan would go a long way to easing geo-political tensions and allow “us” to cease aggressions with oil rich regions and ease the pressure to extract so much carbon fuels, so fast, thus alleviating the ongoing environmental damaging and greatly reducing the chances of large environmental disasters.
Of course, the momentum of the industrial society and currently accepted "growth" imperative will cause the oil industry to try to maximize oil revenues, therefore production and consumption, and thus environmental degradation and sooner long-term, sustaining fuel shortages. The only solution to this problem, that I can see, is the nationalization of the oil companies and their associated industries, with production scheduling co-ordinated with a full fledge demand side management plan.
The BP Oil Spill is but the thief that got caught. Oil and other fossil fuels are filthy businesses and the constant seepage, spills, runoff, environmental stripping and small, unreported disasters are ongoing.
This BP Spill is a precursor for the drilling industry that is constantly going deeper, taking larger risks to extract the oil that is further from our more conventional grasps.
One wonders how much truth we are being told. Of course what is being heard is what most want to hear, and what the oil industry wants everyone to hear: that technology saved the day and that all is under control and always will be, as the news media commits to “case solved” and the plight of the fishing industry and the lives of the folks on the gulf gets left behind in their coverage.
Any why do we take such risks? And why do we wage aggressive war in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and rattle “our” sabers at Iran? So that we can carelessly glide from destination to destination as our privileged imperial ownership caste where our only real job is to consume what each other own?
Oil is a precious resource and one that should be used wisely. Oil heats our homes, oil would be very useful in a humane agricultural system, oil products can cook our food, oil products can be used to generate electricity which, if prudently used, can add much to the quality of our lives. Oil products are used for the creation of durable goods and as feedstock for other valuable uses.
But, people of the USA squander over 15 million barrels a day of oil equivalent to fuel their mindless forays of consumption in personal automobiles. They know no other way. But it doesn’t have to be this way. We could rebuild our neighborhoods and reallocate goods and services accordingly so that the things that people need are available within walking distance of most. Such a program of building/rebuilding village/community/telecommuting centers could not only contribute to a worthwhile goal of reducing personal automobile usage by 80% in the next 20 to 40 years, thereby greatly extending the tail of post-peak fossil fuels for future generations, but would also greatly add to the communitarian, sedentary, quality of life for all.
We need to commit to this as a nation and commit to it right away.
In addition to improving our domestic quality of life, such a commitment and action plan would go a long way to easing geo-political tensions and allow “us” to cease aggressions with oil rich regions and ease the pressure to extract so much carbon fuels, so fast, thus alleviating the ongoing environmental damaging and greatly reducing the chances of large environmental disasters.
Of course, the momentum of the industrial society and currently accepted "growth" imperative will cause the oil industry to try to maximize oil revenues, therefore production and consumption, and thus environmental degradation and sooner long-term, sustaining fuel shortages. The only solution to this problem, that I can see, is the nationalization of the oil companies and their associated industries, with production scheduling co-ordinated with a full fledge demand side management plan.
Friday, August 6, 2010
A Note to Dr. Mike Ellis on 08/06/2010
A Note to Dr. Mike Ellis on 08/06/2010
Mike,
We need a new paradigm of economic development. Given the existing crises and impending otherwise in resource constraints and the lack of equitable allocation, I know that many reject the politics of the G-20, the G-8, the G-1 (the USA) and the Capitalist Plutocracy and concomitant Military Industrial Complex that has been riding centuries of history based on economic Lordism/serfdom, substituted with the Capitalist profit paradigm or requirement of "risk and return".
We need to cut the Gordian knot and reject such servitude and replace it with an ethos and modus operandi and intentional evolution to Homa Ecologica Cooperativo. Practical translation of such involves much education, particularly with respect to the goals of community organization, cooperation, and solidarity, and eventual direct action of the taking of Treasuries resources for direct, non-usurious, allocation to individuals and communities (in the form of community betterment organizations) based on need. The mission is One of ecological economic redevelopment inculcated on the principles of inclusion, humanity, equity, altruism, well-being and quality of life, sustainability, and peace. This is a cooperative communitarian/socialist economic democracy paradigm of "plan and implement".
Being that most calls for socialism only clamor against the offending parties, and make weak attempts to organize within the political constraints and organizational and media domination, some with an impossible and misguided agenda of electoral victory and others with the misguided and premature agenda of revolution. What the political reformers and the cheerleaders of revolution have in common is a complete lack of understanding of the resource concerns and fundamental economic reorganization that is necessary.
I think that it is necessary to mitigate the inhumanities of the progressions of the industrial revolution and phase back more of an industrious ethic that goes along with relocalized artisanry, human ecology, agroecology (including urban agroecology) and an ethic of peace, cooperation, and solidarity.
Given that I feel much alone, although it is completely eclectic, in the enunciation of this paradigm, I call upon you for expressions of solidarity and commitment to aid in the furtherance of this mission. Please do not tarry with respect to a response, particularly related to how we can progress.
In Peace, Friendship, Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity,
Mike Morin
512 W. 10th Avenue, #2
Eugene, OR 97401
1-541-343-3808
www.peoplesequityunion.blogspot.com
Mike,
We need a new paradigm of economic development. Given the existing crises and impending otherwise in resource constraints and the lack of equitable allocation, I know that many reject the politics of the G-20, the G-8, the G-1 (the USA) and the Capitalist Plutocracy and concomitant Military Industrial Complex that has been riding centuries of history based on economic Lordism/serfdom, substituted with the Capitalist profit paradigm or requirement of "risk and return".
We need to cut the Gordian knot and reject such servitude and replace it with an ethos and modus operandi and intentional evolution to Homa Ecologica Cooperativo. Practical translation of such involves much education, particularly with respect to the goals of community organization, cooperation, and solidarity, and eventual direct action of the taking of Treasuries resources for direct, non-usurious, allocation to individuals and communities (in the form of community betterment organizations) based on need. The mission is One of ecological economic redevelopment inculcated on the principles of inclusion, humanity, equity, altruism, well-being and quality of life, sustainability, and peace. This is a cooperative communitarian/socialist economic democracy paradigm of "plan and implement".
Being that most calls for socialism only clamor against the offending parties, and make weak attempts to organize within the political constraints and organizational and media domination, some with an impossible and misguided agenda of electoral victory and others with the misguided and premature agenda of revolution. What the political reformers and the cheerleaders of revolution have in common is a complete lack of understanding of the resource concerns and fundamental economic reorganization that is necessary.
I think that it is necessary to mitigate the inhumanities of the progressions of the industrial revolution and phase back more of an industrious ethic that goes along with relocalized artisanry, human ecology, agroecology (including urban agroecology) and an ethic of peace, cooperation, and solidarity.
Given that I feel much alone, although it is completely eclectic, in the enunciation of this paradigm, I call upon you for expressions of solidarity and commitment to aid in the furtherance of this mission. Please do not tarry with respect to a response, particularly related to how we can progress.
In Peace, Friendship, Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity,
Mike Morin
512 W. 10th Avenue, #2
Eugene, OR 97401
1-541-343-3808
www.peoplesequityunion.blogspot.com
Sunday, August 1, 2010
The G-20?
The G-20?
We must try not to think of our world as being on the other side of no tomorrow, though at risk of understatement, the hour is getting late.
The biggest problem that I see us facing is the entropy that has set in with the passing climaxes of industrialization and the fossil fuel age. The age of the consumer is riding itself out, but in its path is unspeakable genocide, ecocide, and suicide.
If we could envision, educate, and communicate to the people of the planet, particularly those of the G-One (the USAers who are by far the most mad and mislead); the alternative vision of resources allocated directly to individuals and communities - based on need, and re-learn the ways of community, a "plan and implement" cooperative communitarian socialism, rather than the Imperial, Militaristic, Greed-driven, "risk and return" paradigm (or excuse), could go a long way towards turning things around.
Only idiot puppets like Obama don't understand that the Financial Game is over. The only thing left for the Financial Overlords is to keep putting money into mostly failed endeavors that will DRIVE (the fossil fuel age and automobiles are relative flukes and need to be put into historical perspective) the planet to extinction based on an insistent sucking the resources of the earth dry by insisting on the industrialization/consumption paradigm when we all should be asking for and working for an industrious/well being paradigm.
My guess is that 80% of the USA GDP is the consumption of gasoline for personal purposes. The automobile is the most destructive toy that ever disgraced the planet.
In addition to the rearrangement of the Financial Paradigm and Systems, we must also recognize and commit to the reduction of the use of the personal automobile in the USA by 80% in the next 20 to 40 years. This could be done by rebuilding communities and reallocating resources so that almost all communities are sedentary.
It's a tall order, but let's recognize the mission at hand and work diligently to educate and organize (so that we can allocate), accordingly.
We must try not to think of our world as being on the other side of no tomorrow, though at risk of understatement, the hour is getting late.
The biggest problem that I see us facing is the entropy that has set in with the passing climaxes of industrialization and the fossil fuel age. The age of the consumer is riding itself out, but in its path is unspeakable genocide, ecocide, and suicide.
If we could envision, educate, and communicate to the people of the planet, particularly those of the G-One (the USAers who are by far the most mad and mislead); the alternative vision of resources allocated directly to individuals and communities - based on need, and re-learn the ways of community, a "plan and implement" cooperative communitarian socialism, rather than the Imperial, Militaristic, Greed-driven, "risk and return" paradigm (or excuse), could go a long way towards turning things around.
Only idiot puppets like Obama don't understand that the Financial Game is over. The only thing left for the Financial Overlords is to keep putting money into mostly failed endeavors that will DRIVE (the fossil fuel age and automobiles are relative flukes and need to be put into historical perspective) the planet to extinction based on an insistent sucking the resources of the earth dry by insisting on the industrialization/consumption paradigm when we all should be asking for and working for an industrious/well being paradigm.
My guess is that 80% of the USA GDP is the consumption of gasoline for personal purposes. The automobile is the most destructive toy that ever disgraced the planet.
In addition to the rearrangement of the Financial Paradigm and Systems, we must also recognize and commit to the reduction of the use of the personal automobile in the USA by 80% in the next 20 to 40 years. This could be done by rebuilding communities and reallocating resources so that almost all communities are sedentary.
It's a tall order, but let's recognize the mission at hand and work diligently to educate and organize (so that we can allocate), accordingly.
In Addition to “Workers’ Rights”
In Addition to “Workers’ Rights”
We have to also redefine “work”. We need to evolve from the industrial era to a modern industrious one. We need to bypass the Capitalist Plutocracy that evolved from the Bank of England into the Federal Reserve, the Capitalist Banking System, the WTO, the World Bank, their aggressive Military Industrial Complex and their subservient, yet aggressive to us, governments and commissioned militias.
We need to begin to educate and organize towards Independence from Financial Overlords and towards a cooperative communitarian vision that takes hold of the Treasuries of the world and allocates resources, based on need, to individuals and communities. We have to relearn the concept of community, but recognition is the first step towards realization.
In Peace, Friendship, Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity,
Mike Morin
We have to also redefine “work”. We need to evolve from the industrial era to a modern industrious one. We need to bypass the Capitalist Plutocracy that evolved from the Bank of England into the Federal Reserve, the Capitalist Banking System, the WTO, the World Bank, their aggressive Military Industrial Complex and their subservient, yet aggressive to us, governments and commissioned militias.
We need to begin to educate and organize towards Independence from Financial Overlords and towards a cooperative communitarian vision that takes hold of the Treasuries of the world and allocates resources, based on need, to individuals and communities. We have to relearn the concept of community, but recognition is the first step towards realization.
In Peace, Friendship, Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity,
Mike Morin
In Response to Raj
In Response to Raj
(In response to video and blog post on World Bank "Land Grabs" on Raj Patel's website introducing the concepts behind the book, "The Value of Nothing")
Raj et al,
Thank you for your leadership and valuable enunciation of common sense.
The Capitalist system is dead, more appropriately killing and dieing. It is the insane momentum of financial abstractions and technological "advancements" that is DRIVING (the automobile is a fluke of human history) the world to genocide, ecocide, and suicide. The Center of such a "progression" is the Military Industrial Complex led hegemony of the British Imperialist Capitalist/Industrial "culture" that saw the Bank of England transform itself to the Federal Reserve in the USA. Its' continental and colonial tyranny have manifested themselves in the World Bank and WTO, Corporate Capitalist Conglomerates and Wall Street and Main Street Financial and Land Overlords.
It is far past the 11th hour in our world, but if there is a solution, it lays in the the idea of a World Congress for Community Economic Development where we can work towards neighborhood/community, inter-community, and inter-regional solidarity and cooperation with local ecological economic redevelopment plans based on need and bypassing the International Finance "Community" as represented in the US by the Federal Reserve and participating Financial domineers and exploiters.
Save for strongholds like Kerala and Cuba, emerging Venezuela and the outgrowths of the work in these areas, we have not yet begun to organize. It is quite problematic from where I live, and throughout at least the North American continent (the only geography that I know) in that people are so firmly acculturated by the status quo that the people do not seem to have the hope, let alone the ability, to visualize an alternative economic system. The environmental damage and the momentum of entropy is so severe and the consciousness of the people so polluted and so incremental. "They've all bought into it", a friend terms it.
To each his own has become to each his own personal crisis and I wonder whether we have the educational and communication tools to reach them, that there may be, and the only hope is, a collective solution beginning with local community but extending out to world around solidarity and cooperation.
As I write this, my neighbors go their separate ways.
In Peace, Friendship, Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity,
Mike Morin
(In response to video and blog post on World Bank "Land Grabs" on Raj Patel's website introducing the concepts behind the book, "The Value of Nothing")
Raj et al,
Thank you for your leadership and valuable enunciation of common sense.
The Capitalist system is dead, more appropriately killing and dieing. It is the insane momentum of financial abstractions and technological "advancements" that is DRIVING (the automobile is a fluke of human history) the world to genocide, ecocide, and suicide. The Center of such a "progression" is the Military Industrial Complex led hegemony of the British Imperialist Capitalist/Industrial "culture" that saw the Bank of England transform itself to the Federal Reserve in the USA. Its' continental and colonial tyranny have manifested themselves in the World Bank and WTO, Corporate Capitalist Conglomerates and Wall Street and Main Street Financial and Land Overlords.
It is far past the 11th hour in our world, but if there is a solution, it lays in the the idea of a World Congress for Community Economic Development where we can work towards neighborhood/community, inter-community, and inter-regional solidarity and cooperation with local ecological economic redevelopment plans based on need and bypassing the International Finance "Community" as represented in the US by the Federal Reserve and participating Financial domineers and exploiters.
Save for strongholds like Kerala and Cuba, emerging Venezuela and the outgrowths of the work in these areas, we have not yet begun to organize. It is quite problematic from where I live, and throughout at least the North American continent (the only geography that I know) in that people are so firmly acculturated by the status quo that the people do not seem to have the hope, let alone the ability, to visualize an alternative economic system. The environmental damage and the momentum of entropy is so severe and the consciousness of the people so polluted and so incremental. "They've all bought into it", a friend terms it.
To each his own has become to each his own personal crisis and I wonder whether we have the educational and communication tools to reach them, that there may be, and the only hope is, a collective solution beginning with local community but extending out to world around solidarity and cooperation.
As I write this, my neighbors go their separate ways.
In Peace, Friendship, Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity,
Mike Morin
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