Capitalism

Check out this series of articles over at Huffington Post. A good money quote:

Personally, I think capitalism is simply a concept that does not, in the long run, work. It's like communism -- it looks good on paper.

A "capitalist" is someone who makes a living not from their own labor, but from their money, their "capital." See, that's why it's called "capitalism," and not "laborism," or "hardworkism." Interest, dividends, stock sales -- not work. If you work for a living -- even if it's intellectual work, and you need that paycheck to live -- you are a worker. (Middle class is just a worker with a mortgage.) "Oh, what about the hairdresser on the corner! What about the mechanic down the block!" Well, what about 'em? If you own a business that you have to work at to make a living, you are an owner/operator, a self-employed worker. Let me say that again: If you own a small business that you have to work at you are not a capitalist! Sorry to shout, but for some reason people have a hard time with that one. The hairdresser, mechanic and the rest are owner/operators, living on their labor, and if they stop working they fail. Workers.

Most Americans are not capitalists. They might want to be capitalists, but no matter how much you, or that hardworking barista, that well paid techno-nerd, small farmer, or gangsta rapping bank teller may want to be capitalists, you are not capitalists. You are workers.

It goes on to give a nice critique of capitalism. A quick, concise read.
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Eureka

I turned to MyBetterHalf the other day and said,"Honey, I think I know what I want to do when I grow up. She looked up at me, smiled and said, "That's good."

Two years ago I finally got around to actually listening to what environmentalists were saying, and it didn't take me long to realize that at least most of what they were saying was true and jumped on the Green Movement bandwagon. Since I had pretty much decided what I was trying to do and the business I was trying to start just wasn't really going to get off the ground, I figured I could look at what sort of job I could create for myself that was green oriented.

It was then that I read Bill McKibben's book, Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and The Durable Future. Here's a quote from a reviewer of the book,

McKibben assails the core capitalist precept: that more is always better. While this was a good principle for nineteenth century societies scrabbling up the early rungs of the development ladder, he says that in a world outstripping its energy resources and facing global warming, a different ethos about the scale and structure of production has to be adopted — one that can help us live within our means (including developing giants like India and China).

But living within our means doesn’t imply that we have to return to the poverty of our pre-industrial forebears. It can also mean living better. In fact, McKibben says that growth without limits doesn’t makes us happy or satisfied. He points to studies in the new field of “hedonics” that claim that after a certain basic basket of needs is filled, the correlation between happiness and money disappears. Americans are the most affluent, but the least content people in the advanced industrial nations, according to these studies. Europeans, who consume about half the resources we do, far outstrip us in reported “well-being.”

McKibben says one difference may be that Europeans place a higher value on local community. Like the philosophy of “deep ecology,” which promotes the idea that humans need to experience a deep connection to the natural world in order to be happy, McKibben says that people need “community” to attain satisfaction. And they must use “technologies of community” to achieve it. Such technologies are locally based, promote direct connections between producers and consumers, and tend to be small-scale, although they can be integrated into a much larger network. They shift the balance away from globalization and toward localism in production and distribution.

There was something in the book that resonated deeply with me. The natural question becomes, how do we put something like this into practice. I look at the small southern conservative town that I live in and see plenty of people that have been thinking about some of these things. There are a number of people that that are very environmentally conscious and many that would like access to good, fresh, locally-grown food. I was even getting in touch with people that wanted to organize a co-op. They expressed they'd wanted to do this for quite some time, it was just that nobody had the time. I said I 'd give it a whirl, but then I got rudely interrupted.

It came about as I was recuperating that I planted my first garden. It was pretty successful for a newbie and I began eating fresh veggies straight out of the garden. Vegetables that actually had a taste to them. The potatoes that we dug out of the ground had a tecture that bordered on creamy. Tomatoes that weren't like biting into some sort of bland water balloon. You really can't get any better than that.

The real issue of course, is the economics of it. While an acre of land farmed "organically" is more productive to an acre farmed conventionally, it requires more labor. It was hard to get the numbers to a point you're getting somewhere. Then along came a revelation: something called permaculture. Although I may refer to it as The Answer, it is at minimum a very key component in the rebuilding of our local economies and the establishment of communities of such that McKibben talks about. The economics move into the permaculturists favor. Sounds good to me.

Do a google and some reading about it and we'll talk more next time.
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