Fair Share Economics

Tj Jefferson wrote:
From a population basis, capitalism has been the most effective system in producing the most people with their measurable needs met. Full stop.

I'm not convinced.  For most of the time humanity has existed, capitalism did not exist.  Humans lived in egalitarian hunter-gatherer bands, and virtually everyone's needs were met.

John Saltveit wrote: Let's make our economy work for the regular people.
John S
PDX OR

I'm just a regular people, John.
While I can't say how the economy works for anyone else, it works fine for me just as it is right now. Not being educated by the government turned out to be an advantage in that I learned how to become an independent enterpreneur by working for myself in the private sector business world instead of being taught in school to become an employee.

Tyler

> everyone's needs were met...

Well, at least the ones who could survive.  I'm not championing any particular system here, but I _am_ saying to look at the whole picture to the best of one's abilities. One thing that the "old ways" did have that we in the 1st world don't, was a close and intimate and mostly eyes-open acquaintance with death. The grim reaper helped greatly to keep the people (as a people and probably individually) healthy and in balance with their environment. If you weren't healthy and in balance... You weren't there long. And that still applies to us, we've just been doing some version of deficit spending in this regard, wallowing in resource exploitation. I suspect that will stick crosswise in the craw of most modern western "technology will save us" and "gawd luvs us and made us rich (and is on our side)" citizens, but it looks pretty clear to me. The 1st world culture, at least popular, media expressed, university educated, culture, seems, as a whole, way out of touch.

Rufus

Trace Oswald wrote:
The way a group of 20, 30, 1000 people can live can't possibly be scaled up to support millions.

I think it could.  I think permaculture as a basis for society, instead of capitalism, could.  See Chapter 14 in the Designers Manual

https://www.geofflawtononline.com/learn/permaculture-a-designers-manual/chapter-14-strategies-of-an-alternative-global-nation/

Capitalism and permaculture go hand-in-hand, unless you're talking about the keynesian free-market abomination it has been turned into these days.

I call it consumerism. I've posted about it in other threads. The jist is that as soon as you're moving to a credit-based system, you've left much of traditional capitalism behind. You're no longer investing capital to empower a business or endeavour to generate profit so it can be reinvested in the system, but borrowing out of necessity and struggling to pay it back. As long as the bill doesn't come due, consumerism has a lot going for it, but we've been seeing the social and environmental costs of that approach for some time now.

Permaculture essentially advocates for a much more complete accounting than modern economics provides, where we are required to assign values to social and environmental costs. The idea that there can be no waste in a sufficiently large system fixes a lot of the ills of modern consumerist culture.

If we're going to get into capitalism, let's be specific about what we're discussing.

Trace, I think that permaculture is well-equipped to deal with the challenges of large-scale operations. No, you don't want to take the model that a community of 20 uses, take the one giant house they live in, build 49 just like it, and expect the system to work.

But you can, for instance, take one farmer and have him work an acre as an intensively-managed polyculture market garden in the manner of Jean-Martin Fortier, and then have the adjacent 99 acres worked by 99 other farmers, maybe each a little different, and all achieving a greater yield per square foot in terms of nutrient density and calories than the equivalent amount of corn or soy, or at least a greater value, in terms of value at market. And in that scenario, if they're working together, they can benefit from increased buying power, purchasing what inputs are needed in bulk and sharing limited-use machinery.

Approaching it from the community angle, we can, and do, form villages even within our megacities. Permies is a dispersed village of sorts. So think about a city of three million like Toronto, but where there were perhaps nuclei of permaculture spread out within that city, perhaps the permies members within that city.

Now imagine we acted as catalysts, gathering potential permies in our real-life communities around ourselves, just doing the same kind of stuff as we do on permies, but also together, in real life.

On those terms, why is it impossible to formulate our application of permaculture such that it is fractal in nature, such that the much larger whole is just an assemblage of tinier identical pieces? Nature does it. Doesn't that accord with permacultural sensibility?

-CK

Chris Kott wrote:

On those terms, why is it impossible to formulate our application of permaculture such that it is fractal in nature, such that the much larger whole is just an assemblage of tinier identical pieces? Nature does it. Doesn't that accord with permacultural sensibility?

-CK

I believe it is impossible because nature has a built in system that we (humans) have circumvented for far too long: population control.

We don't need it if we can expand the scope of our system.

If we colonise parts of the sea floor, for instance, and integrate vertical mariculture, the system becomes larger, and by using tools that expand not only the capacity for growing healthy food, but the ability for human effort to scale projects, people become an asset rather than a liability, in terms of the functioning system.

If we are able to build artificial habitats off the earth, that could off-load some of the population pressures on this planet, and if industry, by virtue of limitless solar energy and raw materials, is moved almost exclusively off-planet, we limit the risk of self-destruction through industrial contamination, as we are seeing now.

Population control is completely unnecessary in any case. The global population growth rate has been in decline in recent years. If outreach continues to the least developed countries, that often have the highest local population growth rates, such that the population, and primarily women, are educated to modern western standard, eventually including post-secondary education, we will have to start thinking about how to keep the population from serious decline.

I think all that is needed is a little out-of-the-box thinking, including perhaps a bit of whimsy to shake off the gloom that perpetually hangs around this corner of the conversation, and an expansion of the scope and scale of the system.

So we have mountains of plastic waste entering the oceans every day, the planet is heating up, the oceans are acidifying, and we are losing the ability to produce sufficient amounts of nutritionally sufficient food.

How's this for a solution: we colonise the sea floor wherever is particularly well-suited to sea-floor-based vertical mariculture and have people intensively farm it, with the system set up such that the more people live and work in the system, the greater its capacity, and so that it effectively acts as a filtration and carbon sequestration vehicle on the ocean environment. Mycobooms would float on the surface surrounding the sea farms, and looped curtains of material would hang down, trapping particulates as a filter that would get cleaned intermittently, while wave action would "power" the booms' filtration.

Likewise, grow giant artificial islands based on scrubbed reclaimed ocean freighters using biorock, forming rebar into a supportive structure and running electricity from renewable sources through it to form a cement-like mineral accretion that forms not only the structure of a soil-bearing island surrounded by mangrove and salt marshes, but a substructure 90% more massive (based on the physics of icebergs) supporting a floating coral reef all it's own.

As an aside, the growing of biorock not only benefits the coral and non-coral systems that it supports; this hasn't been proven, to my knowledge, but the way that the chemistry works, growing biorock almost has to remove carbon from the seawater, meaning that it should reverse ocean acidification, at least locally, and down-plume of the biorock.

In both cases, a productive outlet for human work is highlighted and turned into a way to produce food in a way that would not only let people and communities survive, but thrive and spawn themselves.

People are only a problem if you make them a problem, if your system is so small in scope that it excludes them. Every mouth comes with a pair of hands, and a brain.

-CK

David Livingston wrote:...but a small question how many businesses are started each year in the USA and what % survive five years...

I started a business that failed. That's how I learned to start businesses that don't fail.
Failure is a path to success in business for those willing to learn by doing.
This is a lesson government education could never teach.

Chris Kott wrote: capitalism and permaculture go hand-in-hand, unless you're talking about the keynesian free-market abomination it has been turned into these days.

If we agree to a specific definition of capitalism in which "profit" means "care of the Earth and people" and not what we typically think of as profit which is the acquisition of money and property.  "Create a surplus" in permaculture terms, with the surplus being returned to the system. In capitalism the surplus is retained by the capitalist.  That's the whole point of it.

cap·i·tal·ism
/ˈkapədlˌizəm/Submit
noun
an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state.

prof·it
/ˈpräfət/Submit
noun
1.
a financial gain, especially the difference between the amount earned and the amount spent in buying, operating, or producing something.

Yes, profit does mean the gain over the investment. Permaculture is chiefly concerned with how that profit is not only generated, but spent.

I should hope that the calories I harvest from my garden far outweigh the calories I expend growing it, and I think it right that I decide where it goes, don't you?

And if the permaculturalists involved own the land they steward, shouldn't they control what happens to their profit? I know I would see it that way. Even if they don't own the land, shouldn't they own the value of their labour?

The problem, as I see it is with corporations, not capitalism, specifically, with singular entities that accumulate profit and then use that profit to lobby government to sway things in their favour, at the cost of global welfare.

There are a great many issues here, and to just say, "Pfft, fuck capitalism, next," is the exciting, chaotic, lazy popular reasoning.

It's tedious to go over just how and why the system is broken, and so much easier to sweep the board clean and start from scratch. That only works if we're okay with the pieces we're knocking over being people.

-CK

My fiance is from a very small and most would say, primitive community of only about 25 households on the island of Mindanao in the Philippines. Some would have us believe that small communities like this, always look after their own and that everyone receives what they need.

Her father died when she was a year old. Close relatives refused them food because this was food they could sell and then convert the money to alcohol.

She has numerous scars ranging from half an inch to 4 inch long. These are reminders of times when she got caught in the wire as a child, while stealing food from aunts, uncles and cousins, to survive. So I don't buy into the idea of the gentle hunters and farmers, always looking after those who are vulnerable. It's a nice idea, but there's no way that we can really know what happened in the distant past.

One of her relatives became widowed. She moved to the city, because there was no way she could receive any help in the village, without providing sexual services.

I doubt that this sort of behavior is isolated to the only extremely primitive village that I've ever visited.

We can find bad examples in the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd worlds.  I would like to find good examples and aim to help our individual countries by seeing what could work in our country.  
John S
PDX OR

> 99 acres worked by 99 other farmers

Chris, your scenarios seem more or less consistent and possible to some degree, but I think you need to factor in the less than well adjusted, wise and agreeable humans involved. In my experience with selecting/evaluating people for work (not rocket science, but basic construction type work) I seems to me that 50% of the people you can find won't actually hurt you; half of those will do a mediocre or better job; half of those will do an adequate or better job;  half or of those ... Well, and so on.  And Good Guys turn into Bad Guys and vice versa regularly. They _have_ to - things change.

My point is that human beings, in my experience, _don't_ in any way conform to the One Good Ideal. Just NOT. We're way more, umm, let's say "complicated" than that. The _other_ side is just as much part of the picture as the creative side. Cain and Abel, alive and doing their thing, everywhere.

But I'm pretty sure we can evolve better understanding and traditions and we darn well better try to _live_ better. The positives of Permaculture include its focus on life and living and growing and learning and adapting and balance. Which seem to be in short supply overall.

Rufus

Dale Hodgins wrote:My fiance is from a very small and most would say, primitive community of only about 25 households on the island of Mindanao in the Philippines. Some would have us believe that small communities like this, always look after their own and that everyone receives what they need.

Her father died when she was a year old. Close relatives refused them food because this was food they could sell and then convert the money to alcohol.

She has numerous scars ranging from half an inch to 4 inch long. These are reminders of times when she got caught in the wire as a child, while stealing food from aunts, uncles and cousins, to survive. So I don't buy into the idea of the gentle hunters and farmers, always looking after those who are vulnerable. It's a nice idea, but there's no way that we can really know what happened in the distant past.

One of her relatives became widowed. She moved to the city, because there was no way she could receive any help in the village, without providing sexual services.

I doubt that this sort of behavior is isolated to the only extremely primitive village that I've ever visited.

Thanks for that dose of reality to counter the dewey eyed utopic romanticizing of other cultures.

Chris,
I think you're making some good points about it being easier to put down a system than to find one that works. Also about the distorted marketplace when the powerful can change the even playing field.

I also agree that I don't think we want to wipe out incentives, entrepreneurialism, and creativity.  These are actually required for success in many areas of life.  It's pretty much what we're doing with permaculture.  

However, we have arrived at a point in our history in which we are needing to evolve. We have evolved a lot of technological skills with the development of free market incentives, but the situations in which the entrepreneurs care

only about profit and not about the environment, workers and society are creating societal self destruction.  We need to use those skills that we have learned and turned them to more positive directions, so everyone benefits in our society.  Places like Costa Rica, Japan, Korea, Scandinavia, most of Europe, Singapore and the BLue Zones have found ways for businesses to work with the people for positive benefit for almost everyone.

 Average workers have had no gains in our society after inflation for the last 40 years, while the extremely wealthy have made nearly all the gains, and the poor are actually worse off than they were before.  We have so much tension and stress in our society.  Every time I go to another country, I am amazed at how much happier and relaxed people seem to be.  I am amazed at how stressed out, crazy and mentally damaged Americans are when I come back.  I think older cultures have learned that dying alone on a huge pile of cash at age 49 is not a successful life.  In the Blue Zones, people are not only healthier, but happier.  There really aren't rich people, and there aren't really poor people either.  Everyone counts. There are no throw away people in these societies.  They don't have video games, offshore tax havens, gated communities, derivatives, hedge fund billionaires, violent ghettoes, pornography, processed food, food deserts, superfund sites, fentanyl, Big Pharma, gangs,  cocaine, mental hospitals, prisons, tons of cops and guns, or toxic chemically producing industries because they have learned to live without them.  I would love to see if we as a culture could learn to live with less of these things.

John S
PDX OR

John Saltveit wrote:Chris,
I think you're making some good points about it being easier to put down a system than to find one that works. Also about the distorted marketplace when the powerful can change the even playing field.

I believe what gets overlooked is that each individual possesses the power to create their own marketplace. In a world of uneven playing fields, it's up to each individual to grab a rake and level out the field immediately around them within their own sphere of personal infulence. Everything else is under the control and personal responsibility of others.

People associate with each other on the basis of shared values... the honest with the honest, and the cheats with the cheats. It is impossible for a business transaction to take place without shared values. So each individual actively creates their own market as they interact with their own kind.

The cheats actually try to work with the honest, passing themselves off as honest until it pays to be dishonest, a la Machiavelli. It's easier to cheat an honest person than one who is wise to your scheme, unless you're really good at the game.

I think that point about there being no throw-away people is really apt, John. The thing is, there is no such thing as a throw-away person anywhere, we just treat some people like there are.

To get things done, such as in the case of a small community with a small number of dysfunctional alcoholics that have an outsized negative effect, we may need to segregate them from the system we're trying to improve, at least for the amount of time in which changes are occurring, hopefully while they get help they need to change for the better, or while they're finding a larger organism to parasitise.

We aren't throwing these people away. They aren't garbage, even if they have some qualities that hurt themselves and others. I object in the most strenuous terms possible to the idea that by accepting addiction as a mental health issue, it is somehow transformed from vice to virtue; this is not the case. It is still a problem that needs solving, though. This is one place where the second ethic is important to remember.

I think we need to push our intellectual and emotional evolution. I think we need to think and act more humanely. I think that there are wealthy people out there already practicing noblesse oblige, doing charity for the good of others without having hot irons held to their feet. Bill Gates doesn't have to play with poo-eating worms and waterless toilets for developing countries, so why is he doing it?

I think that a whole mess of chickens are coming home to roost, in the West and elsewhere. Climate change-driven migrations might not be obvious, but what else do you call it when drought or famine spur aggression over resources by competing national or international interests, and there's a resultant outflow of humanity seeking shelter in other countries? This is only one example.

The slow demographic turn-over that first galvanically shocked the body of the Republican party with Regan into spasmodically shoring up White America hasn't slowed, only gained momentum. This has forced a reevaluation of the progress of the greater equality movement that started with the precursors to the american Civil Rights movement, and the universal suffrage movement, and found it severely wanting.

It is becoming less and less easy to dismiss the misbehaviour of anyone thinking they're entitled to unduly encroach on the free will of another, in the form of whatever flavour of harassment, be it from a place of sexism, racism, or other assorted bigotry. I think the election of the head of the executive branch of the current american government was something of a regressionist backlash that hopefully happened now because this was the last time it was going to be possible to have that sort of nonsense rear its head, owing to a progressive shift leftwards (in reaction to the political slide to the right caused by Reagan).

The traditional primary industry and manufacturing jobs that formed the backbone of working america largely don't exist anymore, at least in traditional form. Hell, in another decade, it's suggested that we will have actually hit peak demand for oil, after which it will begin its march to insignificance just as coal is doing now. If the traditional company town model continues to exist, it will have to do so supporting other industries such as high-skills, advanced manufacturing, and likely more distributed, accessible post-secondary education.

The world of politics has become wary, at least in part, of the outsized effect that monied supporters can have, and at least some are actively fighting against the influence of big money. I hope to see more significant and more frequent progressive shifts once it's the concerns of the people, and not the corporations and one-percenters, directing the conversation.

So the board is changing. The need for a highly trained and educated workforce makes free or subsidised post-secondary education make sense as an investment in the economy. The more educated a person, the more progressive their attitudes tend to be, on average. Movement towards eventual universal healthcare will bring more equity across the board.

And something like a resource-minded space-race would push the need for technological advancement, even just in areas like telecommunications and telerobotics, such that ground-based telerobotic asteroid mining and other industries could pop up to replace dinosaur industries. Even just a domestic/North American push in infrastructure, to build not walls, but next-generation, hyperloop-based train systems, would generate whole new economies worth of jobs, and give people more options than the ones currently available.

Adaptation to the realities of climate change might lead to things like the aforementioned sea-floor colonisation and growing and cultivation of maricultural bergs. And after that there's orbital and lunar colonisation, and for my money, Bespin-style cloud cities on Venus, but that's several paradigm shifts away.

The point here is people. If corporate money is taken out of the picture, their bullhorn is replaced by the susurrus of millions, even billions of people. People and institutions have inertia, but get them moving, and those murmurs and whispers grow loud enough to shake apart the thickest of skulls barriers.

-CK

Tyler Ludens wrote:

I'm not convinced.  For most of the time humanity has existed, capitalism did not exist.  Humans lived in egalitarian hunter-gatherer bands, and virtually everyone's needs were met.

I would like to see evidence of hunter-gatherer bands that didn't discriminate against their female members, relegating them to menstruation huts or subjecting them to other "purity" taboos, treating women as a resource that produced the next generation of hunter-gatherers and mothers. I know that there existed matrilineal cultures and traditions, but I didn't think it was widespread enough to counter historical patriarchy.

Also, I thought that part of the reason that hunter-gatherer bands moved to pastoral and agrarian life was because it increased survival rates. I'm pretty sure concepts like capitalism couldn't have existed prior to that because there was no surplus to invest as capital. They were essentially living from one hunter-gatherer paycheck (hunt or harvest) to another, and starving when they happened too infrequently.

-CK

I dislike the idea that anyone should be able to come along and just take and distribute my unallocated capital. That's theft.  

In this country that is covered by the National Defense Authorization Act & the National Preparedness Act. "They" don't consider it theft since "they" created some documents that claims it's legal. Without a vote or even a simple discussion with the general permies. How do "they" live with themselves or sleep at night?

Workers have a voice.  The police don't shoot unarmed innocent black people.  Let's make our economy work for the regular people.  

They sure do have a very powerful voice but most don't realize it &/or are too overwhelmed/intimidated to take action.  Cesar Chavez. Cesar Chavez.

Let's make it work for ALL people. Worldwide.

Not shooting innocent people is a great starting point!!!

Chris Kott wrote:It's easier to cheat an honest person than one who is wise to your scheme...

In my opinion that's naivety rather than honesty.

"You can't cheat an honest man."

and conversely...

"The easiest man to con is a con man."

Someone cannot be cheated unless they want to get something for nothing. This situation has a karmic circularity to it in that people who seek to prey upon others are easily preyed upon by others who are just like they are.

Lots of innocent people get cheated just because they trusted somebody. It doesn't mean they brought it on themselves. Blaming the victim is the laziest possible way dealing with bad behavior of all types.

You can lend your snow shovel to someone who is stuck and they may drive away with it later. So you have been cheated, even though there was no expectation a payment or other reward.

My friend has a door that he leaves unlocked when there is inclement weather and some of the street people he knows may need somewhere to go. There is a fridge full of food that they are welcome to. He is a man of some means and feels that this is his civic responsibility. They just come in and then let him know that they are there. There's a shower. Obviously, someone could decide to steal his tools or his shoes or his laundry that are kept in this basement area, and he accepts that risk. So far this hasn't happened. Instead, people leave it tidy and but sometimes bring things that they have to share and leave it on the shelves.

If he does get ripped off, it could certainly be argued that he brought it upon himself, but not as some sort of negative karmic loop.

Dale Hodgins wrote:Lots of innocent people get cheated just because they trusted somebody.

Dale, I'm ok with each of us having a different view because we each have different life experiences. In my own personal experience, inherent to trust is knowing when and who to trust. If trust is misplaced it isn't actually trust. It's naivety. Innocence requires wisdom not to lose it. I learned this from four decades as an independent businessman.  

In the ancient archetypal story of Adam and Eve, before the snake offered Eve fruit and she ate it she was not innocent. She was naive. Innocence is understanding why eating that particular fruit is wrong and knowingly choosing not to eat it... through awareness and understanding is innocence retained.

Greg

"Innocents" die all the time and it doesn't make them non-innocent; by implication same goes for when they suffer through machinations of others. I am mostly sympathetic  w/your theme, but reality seems a bit more complicated. Innocence may protect against bad choice (eg. the innocent may not _see_ the choice and thus can't choose it) which in turn can protect against harm. But the protection is not absolute as there is always some overwhelming stronger power somewhere that simply cuts and bends what it pleases, or some trickery that leads astray from "inside" or from another direction that the particular innocent isn't equipped to deal with.  At least not through only innocence alone, by itself. Other factors become involved, are needed. It depends. Don't put your eggs all in one basket. There isn't a litmus test that allows deciding the good, bad and ugly.


Rufus

Rufus Laggren wrote:Greg

"Innocents" die all the time and it doesn't make them non-innocent; by implication same goes for when they suffer through machinations of others. I am mostly sympathetic  w/your theme, but reality seems a bit more complicated. Innocence may protect against bad choice (eg. the innocent may not _see_ the choice and thus can't choose it) which in turn can protect against harm. But the protection is not absolute as there is always some overwhelming stronger power somewhere that simply cuts and bends what it pleases, or some trickery that leads astray from "inside" or from another direction that the particular innocent isn't equipped to deal with.  At least not through only innocence alone, by itself. Other factors become involved, are needed. It depends. Don't put your eggs all in one basket. There isn't a litmus test that allows deciding the good, bad and ugly.


Rufus

We each represent a different view because of our different life experiences so I can only speak from my own. I know of no finer protection from the evil in this world than choosing to do what's morally right, because it sets into motion consequences evil could never possibly forsee.

Agree totally, Greg.

Cheers,
Rufus

Mercola had a really interesting article on regenerative farming and economics:



In a 2015 article, John Fullerton, founder and president of Capital Institute, presented the organization's views on regenerative capitalism, which is built on universal principles of health and wholeness. "We have identified eight key, interconnected principles that underlie systemic health," he writes. These eight principles, which he proposes be part of a regenerative economic system, include:

Right relationship — Economy based on the understanding that damage to any single part ripples outward to damage every other part of the system

Holistic wealth — The understanding that true wealth is more than just money. It can also be measured in well-being of the whole and broadly shared prosperity

Seeking balance — "A regenerative economy seeks to balance: efficiency and resilience; collaboration and competition; diversity and coherence; and small, medium and large organizations and needs. It runs directly against the (short term) "optimize" ideology that is at the root of modern financial logic"

"Edge effect" abundance — "Creativity and abundance flourish synergistically at the 'edges' of systems … For example, there is an abundance of interdependent life in salt marshes where a river meets the ocean … At those edges the opportunities for innovation and cross-fertilization are the greatest"

Robust circulatory flow of money, information, resources, goods and services

Innovation, adaptation and responsiveness

Empowered participation

Honoring community and place — "A regenerative economy nurtures healthy and resilient communities and regions, each one uniquely informed by the essence of its individual history and place"
Educate Yourself on the Benefits of Regenerative and Biodynamic Agriculture

John S
PDX OR

John Saltveit wrote:
Right relationship — Economy based on the understanding that damage to any single part ripples outward to damage every other part of the system

Holistic wealth — The understanding that true wealth is more than just money. It can also be measured in well-being of the whole and broadly shared prosperity

Seeking balance — "A regenerative economy seeks to balance: efficiency and resilience; collaboration and competition; diversity and coherence; and small, medium and large organizations and needs. It runs directly against the (short term) "optimize" ideology that is at the root of modern financial logic"

"Edge effect" abundance — "Creativity and abundance flourish synergistically at the 'edges' of systems … For example, there is an abundance of interdependent life in salt marshes where a river meets the ocean … At those edges the opportunities for innovation and cross-fertilization are the greatest"

Robust circulatory flow of money, information, resources, goods and services

Innovation, adaptation and responsiveness

Empowered participation

Honoring community and place — "A regenerative economy nurtures healthy and resilient communities and regions, each one uniquely informed by the essence of its individual history and place"
Educate Yourself on the Benefits of Regenerative and Biodynamic Agriculture

All great ideas!

In my opinion it's a waste of time waiting for others to implement them or even trying to motivate people into participating. Instead if you implement those principles yourself first, whoever shares your values will naturally participate without any persuasion.

That's a really interesting question. In my experience, some people who already have your values and understand the ideas will implement them.  

However, I have known a lot of people who have to see it and ask questions first.

I know others who have to examine their own practices to see what they could do.

Some need to start, little by little, doing it their way (such as Frank Sinatra).

Some people like to share what they do with you before they're willing to see what you do.

Some need to check with their spouses and friends and fit it into their schedules.

Some disagree with parts, and will start with something partly related, but partly different.

That's how we develop our culture into a living, growing community, as I see it.

John S
PDX OR

John Saltveit wrote:That's a really interesting question. In my experience, some people who already have your values and understand the ideas will implement them.  

However, I have known a lot of people who have to see it and ask questions first.

I know others who have to examine their own practices to see what they could do.

Some need to start, little by little, doing it their way (such as Frank Sinatra).

Some people like to share what they do with you before they're willing to see what you do.

Some need to check with their spouses and friends and fit it into their schedules.

Some disagree with parts, and will start with something partly related, but partly different.

That's how we develop our culture into a living, growing community, as I see it.

John S
PDX OR

John, everything you mentioned is up to the free choice of others, and not me. We host Saturday morning tours of our place to inspire others but whatever they choose to do as a result of what they see is totally up to them. Our lives are not on hold waiting for others. We set out in our own direction regardless of whether or not others choose to go the same way.

In business, people who share the same ethical values always find their own kind to interact in equitable value for value exchanges for mutual benefit. Trust is the invisible glue which holds a business community together. But it is not a collective of needy dependents seeking to be given their "fair share". For each is an independent self reliant solvent self motivated autonomous individual.

Tomorrow I'm going to town to do a job for someone who has been my client for nearly 40 years. Both of us have consistently prospered over the decades because of our shared ethical values.

Greg,
Your post is hard for me to understand.

Do you think someone is advocating for everyone being needy?

I think people become less needy as they work with others.

WHose life is on hold waiting for others? I haven't seen anyone on this thread advocating for that.

I don't believe that trust can only be built within the business community.  I don't know anyone who doesn't work with businesses, so I'm not sure what the business community is. Who is not involved with businesses?

It sounds like you believe that people's views are fixed and that they won't change their opinions over time, unless they already have the same values as you. That they could never be influenced by others.  I disagree with that idea.

I can't think of one single individual who prospered without connecting to other people.  

I don't think there is a self-reliant autonomous individual.  Everyone works with others in some way.

I live in the United States, which is an agreement among the citizens.

Most people who I know, prosper due to sharing values with others, whether they are working for a business, owning one, or using them.

Many things are up to the free choice agreements of communities of people.  Inability to understand how groups act doesn't mean that they never agree to work together, whether in business, the arts, social services, or volunteer activities.  Many people benefit from working with groups that they don't profit from.  Permies.com , for example.

John S
PDX OR

John Saltveit wrote:Greg,
Your post is hard for me to understand.

Do you think someone is advocating for everyone being needy?

Oh, not at all, John.
I should have been clear that this is just one person's opinion on the topic generally and not personally.

I live in California where "fair share" is likely to have quite a different connotation than it would elsewhere. Here, "fair share economics" is totally something else. It's the government robbing the productive to give the unearned to the undeserving.

What "fair share economics" means to me personally is what I do honest work to rightly earn by being of useful service to others. That is my fair share. No more and no less.

I do think it's important for everyone to contribute, both for now and to try to overcome obstacles in the future, for themselves and for others.  In my experience, people are happier when they see themselves contributing.  That includes welfare moms learning how to read, ADHD kids just learning how to sit through a whole lesson, or lobbyists for polluters contributing something positive in some area of life.

John S
PDX OR

John Saltveit wrote:I do think it's important for everyone to contribute...

I totally agree, John... and it's not just empty words either. I donate thousands of hours of my own time as a volunteer in convalescent hospitals. I'm the one who chooses who, when, where, and how I help others... not the government. Working to earn my fair share buys me free time which I use to help others. It's not a sacrifice either. For I receive far more in gratitude and appreciation than I could ever give.

Greg,
I think if we could get the politicians in this country to work together to understand each other like we are, we could actually accomplish something valuable in our government.
John S
PDX OR

John Saltveit wrote:Greg,
I think if we could get the politicians in this country to work together to understand each other like we are, we could actually accomplish something valuable in our government.
John S
PDX OR

Government?

In my opinion there is no such thing as a "political solution". There are only independent self motivated autonomous individual American solutions. Why would I ever need to engage in the dead end futility of trying to accomplish something valuable in the government when I can I accomplish something valuable in my own life?

If we could return governance to the concept of government, it would be less of a laughable idea, even for the grandfathered cynics. I started a thread about the idea here.

Anarchy, as in, living without people living in authority of any kind above us, is as unworkable a concept as communism. I think history has shown that, not only do we need bureaucracy to enable many people to coordinate their activities enough that our lives don't interfere unduly with each others, and that the negative impact of our collective activities on the environment can be mitigated, that bureaucracy itself will serve to elevate some over others, functionally if not by design.

For us to be able to assure any amount of long-term security and stability, we need a legal system to make law and change it as the world itself changes, and we need intelligent, compassionate people to be employed to enforce these laws.

We need a larger military force, though that doesn't necessarily dictate the mandate of that force, or foreign policy, to assure our own self-determination, as much as that is possible within the framework of a larger society and civilisation. I personally believe that instead of an Army Corps of Engineers or equivalent, countries might have, if not mandatory, then strongly suggested and incentivised, terms of reservist training and service, in the domestic Army Corps of Permaculture.

And we need armies of civil servants doing things like assuring that communities get the services they require, that infrastructure gets built and maintained, and literally thousands of other things that most people just don't even need to think about because it's all being done for them.

And to pay for that, we are taxed.

Whether we are taxed fairly, or whether it is used wisely, or whether your values and that of the majority differ, are all separate issues. Government allows society to function, which allows us to, among other things, work with the expectation of fair pay (for some, anyway), and be able to keep that pay, and exchange it for property or goods that, in turn, are also ours, guaranteed by law, whose seizure by force is prohibited by law.

I am not saying that systems aren't broken, because they are. But I get so tired of this reductionist nonsense that pares every argument down to a fucking meme. It's more complicated than that, because life is more complicated than that.

If you aren't working the levers of the system we're all stuck in to effect change in government, yours is the only life you change, and that only until you come into conflict with the government you otherwise could have worked to change from the inside.

-CK

Chris Kott wrote:If we could return governance to the concept of government...

If we could only return to the American concept of self governance.

Government is great for national defense, keeping law and order, and providing a utility infrastructure. That's all I use it for. Nothing else is of any value to me because everything else is my own personal responsibility to govern my own life.