And obviously you stated there are alot of interpretations of what permaculture is. So I guess that is why there may be some disagreement with this stuff. I think capitalistic views have flooded the idealogy behind what true permaculture is. And when treated like that, it becomes just a shell of what could ideally be attained.
The funny thing is that my opinion is exactly the same thing when you replace "capitalistic" with "anti-capitalistic".
If you are not comfortable with the idea of earning money from farming, then I'm not sure why you are here in this forum.
Anyone who has never made a mistake
has never tried anything new
-ALBERT EINSTEIN-
Kerrick wrote:
(1)
Looked at from another direction, however, there's the question of whether or not a farm that doesn't turn a profit can be called sustainable from a practical standpoint. <...> After all if you don't obtain a yield of some kind, it's not sustainable, because you're sinking all your resources into a project that you get nothing back from. And a farm that relies on only one income stream is as vulnerable to changing market forces as a monoculture is to pests and blight.
(2)
I'm not yet a permaculturalist or a farmer, but I'm making shifts in my life to put this vision of sustainable economy into practice in my own life. I'm cutting my costs of living drastically and learning to make do with what I can produce myself in as many ways as possible. And while I'm learning and working, I'm saving, so that one day, I hope, I can have land of my own.
(3)
What would a permacultural economy look like to you?
Kerrick wrote:
I'm cutting my costs of living drastically and learning to make do with what I can produce myself in as many ways as possible.
Bird wrote:
one can't eat money, but one still needs money to buy the foods one cant grow
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tel wrote:I disagree. there are plenty of things folks are willing to exchange for food. money is probably the most common, but certainly not the most appropriate.
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pawnjp wrote:
well-reasoned argument.
Kathleen Sanderson wrote:
points both rational and lucid.
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Leah Sattler wrote:
using money is using barter. you are bartering for money. or the other way around. money eases the "barter"......"you may not have what I want but you can give me money for item X and I can go find what I want or wait till it is available and use the money to aquire it"
Leah Sattler wrote:
"you may not have what I want but you can give me money for item X and I can go find what I want or wait till it is available and use the money to aquire it" it gives great freedom and simplification of exchange.
Leah Sattler wrote:
as for avoiding taxes with bartering. I suppose if one were to be interested in engineering the collapse of all government entities then that would be a step in the right direction. most of us would prefer to keep some public services going. personally. I would be really upset if the hordes of people took over the countryside trying to survive through a barter system because everyone had to produce their own food.
Leah Sattler wrote:
and because taxes were avoided and no one needed to pay sales tax and no one needed income, there was no longer any government system to at least attempt to protect the enviroment and companies could be free to dump their trash in our rivers. no law enforcement or judicial system (what..back to town hangings and burning witches?) no ambulance or decent roads to take a woman dying in childbirth to a surgical facility or a young child dying of pneumonia to an icu. maybe we could just distribute suicied pills for hopeless cases. can't say "here is a bag of beans, please fix the road and save my life" or "hey fred, that dude down the street raped me can you take care of that for me in exchange for some hay? I would really prefer not to have to go through that experience again". not that you all are advocating a scenario like that but sometimes the bigger picture and consequences get lost on utopian ideas.
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Our inability to change everything should not stop us from changing what we can.
tel wrote: simple barter solves the problem to some degree. so would a Local Exchange Trading Scheme or a local currency or time bank.
"The greatest learning takes place in dialogue between people - learning is a social process and not just an intellectual event"
Our inability to change everything should not stop us from changing what we can.
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lapinerobert wrote:
Scarcity of any item increases its value not just money.
pawnjp wrote:
I should qualify that my personal guess at a manageable local economy is at a small town/ suburb level, but having said that, I'm not advocating some kind of economic isolationism, just a conscious shift towards localizing trade.
lapinerobert wrote:
A permaculture economy would be the same as a permaculture farm. Low import dependency. Maximum local production that has no detrimental ecological impact. A community that suppports local businesses that have a vested interest in the community.
lapinerobert wrote:
Money or trade beads gives one the ability to retain value until needed and to make wealth transportable. You can't carry enough hay in your pocket to town to barter for soap.
pawnjp wrote:
Another book/website recommendation.. The Transition Handbook and its very active website http://transitionculture.org/
Very well thought out low impact/small footprint localization and community organizing ideas and practices that are being taken up all over the world.
(They never use the big bad A word, probably because of the stigma attached, but I think their organizing is succeeding in including a much greater proportion of the populace because of its omission.)
(Not a rebuke by any means Tel.)
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Our inability to change everything should not stop us from changing what we can.
Only money that goes out of date like a newspaper, rots like potatoes, rusts like iron, evaporates like ether, is capable of standing the test as an instrument for the exchange of potatoes, newspapers, iron and ether. For such money is not preferred to goods either by the purchaser or the seller. We then part with our goods for money only because we need the money as a means of exchange, not because we expect an advantage from possession of the money.
Our inability to change everything should not stop us from changing what we can.
Kerrick wrote:
I read something about another idea, wherein the currency is devalued over time, deliberately, to provide an incentive to loan money at low interest; this is called demurrage currency.
lapinerobert wrote:
Time based currency is interesting but what about the type of service one gives, is a Journeyman's work more valued than an apprentice? What about quality of work.
If I have I have a vat of wine and it doesn't spoil, does it's currency value increase and what if my potatoes were turned into vodka? A currency that decreases in value in all cases doesn't seem to be the answer to me either.
A finite amount of currency in a community? Would that work?
lapinerobert wrote:
Any exchange for dissimilar products would involve some form of determination of abstract value.
lapinerobert wrote:
Greed, that is where we get into a problem. Greed is when either party doesn't agree that a trade is equitable. Greed is accomplished through an unequitable trade or by force and no compensation occurs. Who prevents that greed if it is through force?
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lapinerobert wrote:
If I limit it it to western culture what period of time has there ever been anything but capatilism as the norm?
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Our inability to change everything should not stop us from changing what we can.
Our inability to change everything should not stop us from changing what we can.
If a board member is unaware of some unlawful shenannigans who would be punished?
We need tax reform, flat tax, universal sales tax, something. What would be your method of taxing a trade?
I find these suggestions refreshing because they seem a good deal more possible than a total reform of the currency system would be. What do you think?
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tel wrote:
[/that board member and every other board member.]
Though I believe that there is some fiduciary responsibility to a corporatian for wrong doing charging someone for a coporate employee's misbehaviour is a bit of a strech.
Our inability to change everything should not stop us from changing what we can.
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one can't eat money, but one still needs money to buy the foods one cant grow
I disagree. there are plenty of things folks are willing to exchange for food. money is probably the most common, but certainly not the most appropriate.
If I limit it it to western culture what period of time has there ever been anything but capatalism as the norm?
why limit yourself to Western culture? or the norm, for that matter? even if you do, there are alternatives to be found, though maybe not on a Western culture-wide scale. Spanish anarchism and the Paris Commune come to mind. the Seattle general strike was short-lived, but folks took very good care of each other. I imagine the pre-industrial Western world was much less homogeneous, economically and otherwise, than it is today. other examples exist, but it takes some digging to find them.
Previously known as "Antibubba".
Our inability to change everything should not stop us from changing what we can.
Permaculture must permeate from the bottom up
Sometimes the answer is not to cross an old bridge, nor to burn it, but to build a better bridge.
I really like the idea that permaculture, and permaculturists need to permeate the world with new ways of living and surviving.
Permeate the world as nutrients permeate the extremely fine micropore structure of biochar.
LFLondon
=lapinerobert wrote:What will be the wake up call?
Previously known as "Antibubba".
lapinerobert wrote: We need tax reform, flat tax, universal sales tax, something. What would be your method of taxing a trade?
"The greatest learning takes place in dialogue between people - learning is a social process and not just an intellectual event"
Our inability to change everything should not stop us from changing what we can.
pawnjp wrote:
Personally I'm happy to pay tax. I believe (perhaps naively, I'm sure tel can join in here) that taxation is essential to an equitable society and for the protection of those most vulnerable, but "poor taxes" like sales taxes do the opposite.
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lapinerobert wrote:
Would you see part of your solution perhaps beginning with a more defined separation of State and Federal government?
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This can use a capitalist model; maybe one in which profits are consensual instead of adversarial.
Much of the current growth of permaculture, ironically, is built upon people in open systems purchasing the products that they see produced by (mostly) closed systems.
Money is an agreed-upon standard of labor.
In any macro system there must be a way for non-connected system to interact. Money allows that.
Marxism is a Western idea, and an abject failure, especially where growing food was concerned.
The current system (poorly) supports 7 BILLION human beings, unsustainably. How many people could be supported with a global permaculture that does not include game changing "gee whiz" creations like fusion? Three billion? Two? Zero Population Growth is not currently in favor even in China and India, so we are talking about the death of billions of unsustainable lives, and in a short span of time. Who makes that decision? Or will runaway growth make the decisions for us?
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