The flaws with the present economic system are:
1) They are founded on assumptions of scarcity.
2) Assumptions of scarcity inevetably lead people to seek control of
resources and, eventually, other people who become seen as resources (as in
the definitiion of capitalism we have seen posted here recently that requires
employees, therefore human resources.)
3) Since resources and pathways for control are finite, and since people
seek control, it eventually becomes concentrated. Therefore most people lack
control of their own lives.
As in this medium of communication, in industrialized societies connect
everyone in a network of highways, wires and pipes and come down hard on
people who seek to live independently of this network. Since this is
allegedly the sustainable agriculture group, lets look at food. Using rather
old figures--sorry, that's what I've got, the USA state of Maine imports 60
percent of its food and exports 70 percent of what it grows. In other words,
the CONTROL of the Maine food system is external. Anytime they get too
uppity, someone can pull that food tether up short. Some of this is even the
same food! For example, potatoes can be exported from the state in bulk and
come back to supermarkets in bags or as frozen french fries. I understand
that Maine has made some progress on this part of the problem.
Control issues are inextricable from the industrial model, which seeks
specialization and has, almost as a religious mania, a fixation on linear
systems: input=output+waste. Integration is vertical, not systemic, still
linear. In other words, the system itself operates by different rules than
nature. Meanwhhile, we burn up electrons speculating whethere it this sytem
can be sustainable. Gads! In effect we are giving the finger to God and
arguing about whether S/He will tolerate it. Take one guess and move on to
something of substance.
There are systems based ont he assumption that the universe is a place of
abundance. I don't want to get into a long discussion about abundance
philosophy here, but suffice it to say that operating societies based on
abundance philosphy have the following attributes: 1) people have a
responsibility every second of every moment of life to be responsible; 2)
Responsibility requires acceptance of the gifts of the universe as we have
use for them (vs. compelling nature to relinquish something that is not
offered.) Abundance philosophy, for example, has no need of mountains to
flatten mountains because the mountain contour is one of the myriad forms of
abundance and therefore SACRED. 3) Probably should have been 1-- Gifts of
creation are sacred. Our first responsibility is to the gift of our own
lives and our second responsibility is to the gifts of creation that our
lives touch. Since we cannot be responsible for actions that have
concequences we do not experience, we seek to minimize the possibility of
such actions. A strip mine becomes unthinkable. Turning over a stone
requires thoughtfulness. 4) As thinking beings capable of resourcefulness,
our responsibility is to be responsible to utilize those gifts that are in
abundance, for clearly those are what we can safely consume. 5) As thinking
beings capable of awareness, our responsibility is to be aware of those gifts
that are having a hard time or that are scarce and these acquire a special
kind of sacredness (tapu I believe is the Maori word) in which we avoid
exploitation and use our powers for healing and education to protect them.
An endangered species becomes the responsiblity of all the people. 6) As
thinking beings capable of awarness, we are expected to learn from the
lessons of Nature or Earth and comply with the laws we see there. The
paramont of these is the law of gifts (love) which governs the harmony
between giving and receiving. Everything receives gifts necessary to its
nature and everything returns gifts, in the right place at the right time,
necessary to the well being of the Universe. We eat a blueberry and crap the
processed seeds in a pile of fertilizer near the edge of the wood in a
clearing (for visibility during a fairly defenseless activity). This is
fulfillment of our responsibility to the gifts of blueberries. We pee a
certain radius from our habitation, by instinct so far as I can tell, and
this marks the place as ours. It also stimulates productivity around our
settlement. We breathe O2 and exhale CO2 and H2O. Plants imbibe the latter
and exhale the former. This is the way of things. We can get very
polysylabic and psuedo scientific in the way we put this, and we can
triviliaze these concepts and cast them in Disney characters, or impute
assumptions that you will not fine above, and thereby engage in resourcefull
self-justification. But bullshit aside, this is the way of things. We we
stray from this path, we'd best not be lost too long. We are probably the
least irreplacable organism on the planet. Remember the two common scenarios
for extinction, assuming no serioius "outside" intervention such as cosmic
collisions, are when a species numbers drop below the reach of the laws of
statistics and they blunder into genetic drift. They can drift right out of
adatation to their environment and, like a candle without oxygen or a chick
that falls into cold water, just go out. When a species numbers become such
that it has the appearance of a monocrop, it's time can be up also. We all
know that monocrops develop plagues that are not significant in wild
populations. Wipe the smorgasborg of nature off the table and replace it
with one food--ok. If you are then surprise that everthing learns to eat
that one food, well extinction is too good for you, maybe nature has
something worse. Like survival in small pockets that lapse into genetic
drift.
There are models of economic activity that move us away from the philosoophy
of scarcity and toward the philosophy of abundance. These include the LETS
system developed in Canada by Michale Linton, various cooperative models,
community banking models, land trust models, etc. In all of these models,
and if you want the full treatment, take the last segment of my online
Permaculture Design Course, people function in community. We are herd
animals, and beyond that we are communal animals. The good of the community
is important. In the persistent, though agriculturally unsustainable,
religious communities of western Pennsylvania (I forget the name of the
Christian cult), if John's house burns down, Jacob shows up to help rebuild
it even though he privately thinks John is a jerk. It is for the good of the
community that Jacob rebuilds John's house. Insurance can be seen for what
it is, an affront to the human potential for decency, an assumption that the
universe is in a case of scarcity and shrinking rapidly.
These are the fundamental economic questions--do we opt to endorse scarcity
or abundance. If I assume abundance, then I give away my surplus to those
who somehow have missed the cues littered about the global landscape, or who
have been preyed upon by the scarcity folks. I am sure as hell not going to
give any more than I can get away with to General Motors, though I won't
grieve about it either. I pay my taxes because the money is a government
thing to begin with, but I don't pay more taxes than necessary because there
are ways to covert money to real value. At one time, I think we could have
reversed the economic woes of the Philippines with about a million dollars, a
little more than half a percent of what the Canadian government was spending
on one island there. I suspect that window of opportunity has passed.
I trust those of y ou who have followed me through this impromptu declaration
forgive my simplification. America On Line doesn-t--it keeps promting me to
send the damn message or go offline. So I'll send it.
For Mother Earth, Dan Hemenway, Yankee Permaculture Publications (since
1982), Elfin Permaculture workshops, lectures, Permaculture Design Courses,
consulting and permaculture designs (since 1981), and The Forest Ecosystem
Food Network. Copyright, 1996, Dan & Cynthia Hemenway, P.O. Box 2052, Ocala
FL 34478 USA YankeePerm@aol.com
We don't have time to rush.