Permaculture as a Gringo movement (continued )

For those who want to continue the Gringo thread

David ( with mod hat on )

Many a Central American farmer could ask if it´s fair for a permaculture teacher to rake in $20,000 from leading a two week design course while the small farmer toils daily for a mere $6 dollars a day.

I suspect that the permaculture teacher raked in something closer to $600 after all of the expenses of getting there and running the course. And due to the expense of getting there, why not have the $6 a day locals teach it? Or maybe after they take it, they can go from $6 per day to $100 per day.

If the "rake in $20,000" thing is true, and people can't afford it, then how did this person get $20,000? If somebody did gross $20,000 then there must be somebody down there that is paying it.

My experience is that nearly all PDCs run in the red.

If it weren’t for internet piracy and public libraries, the majority of books about permaculture that I wanted to read would still be on my Amazon wish list.

So this person admits to stealing. And if we want to talk about ethics, this person is entirely disrespecting the ethics of the creators of those works.

If the price is too high, then don't buy it.

If you think a book should be free, then write a book from scratch and give it away for free. Stop stealing!


...

I thought the whole article read as tripe written by a common dumbfuck. I wouldn't be surprised if we took a good hard look at this if we found out that there was a big monsanto check involved somewhere. I am shocked that anybody is giving it any attention.

When I first saw mention of the article in a few places and I saw the enormous amount of comments ... I took a quick look at the article, judged it to be worthless tripe and moved on. Then day after day more and more people kept bringing it up - and then the staff here had a discussion about whether the thread about it here had become too political.

The only thing I picked up from the article after browsing it was something about the gringos making $20,000 in an area where people are earning $6 per day. My first thought was "not this lame crap again. How does this shit get any attention?" The answer is that there isn't something that paints the picture of the upside of permaculture and explanation of why there is not the epic proof that so many are looking for.

So I wrote this. I think it is one of the best things I have written. But since it isn't controversial and accusatory and full of psychotic hate I guess not many people will see it.