I didn’t meant to get rid of the ref, just make him someone mutually agreed upon by both teams. Of course we will need courts and laws to settle disputes, but that doesn’t mean we need one and only one option – the monopoly held by government. – JBob

JBob, a mutually agreed upon Ref would be great. That gets into the participatory democracy aspect of what I try to share. Industry and government are both manipulating us into passive submission – we’re not politically active as we used to be.

http://permaculture.org.au/2010/05/20/the-century-of-self/

You and Cyrus may appreciate Marcin’s work in this regard, if you haven’t already seen it:

http://permaculture.org.au/2008/11/04/the-flaw-of-western-economies/

http://permaculture.org.au/2009/02/06/building-the-sustainable-economy/

http://permaculture.org.au/2009/02/19/rediscovering-democracy/

http://permaculture.org.au/2010/03/23/towards-local-democracy/

No need for magical forces, just a system that generally rewards self-interest to the extent that one provides value for others, i.e. goods or services others want.

Just removing government and leaving industry unbridled in its ’self interest’, as you put it, doesn’t leave me feeling comfortable at all. Self interest will only lead us back to where we are now – monopolisation and centralisation (I’ll sound like a broken record, as I’ve said this to you repeatedly). Basing society on selfishness is never going to work. As I understand it, selfishness combined with privatising everything on the planet is your recipe for success. I wish you could think this through, and consider what a free-for-all this would become. These articles might interest:

http://gadfly.igc.org/politics/right/private.htm

http://gadfly.igc.org/eds/econ/theory.htm

But you too seem to possess a kind of faith – that government will let us successfully transition to a post oil world. – Cyrus

You have me wrong here Cyrus. I don’t at all think government will successfully transition us to a post oil world. Government is clearly controlled by industry, and they’re increasingly becoming fascist as things become unglued. It’s my belief that we need to become government, by widespread, grass roots participation in it.

Cyrus – you wrote, above, your views on what will happen in the future if we persevere with the status quo. My request, however, was:

I’d personally and particularly like to understand how you see it playing out after all government has been removed. – Craig Mackintosh

What I’m asking for is for a clear picture/prediction on what would happen if your views were applied. Please advise your prognosis on the steps that will occur if we remove government. Please advise, specifically, what you would like to see happen, how it should be staged, and what results you expect to come from it.

The strategy is based on 3 key objectives: INDIVIDUALISM, SECTORIALISM and PARLIAMENTARIANISM – all for securing an open market economy on all levels, national and global.

I – INDIVIDUALISM
The basic element is to get people out of committing social elationships – out of the tribe, of the village, of the family and out of the marriage – only in such a situation is the system able to manipulate you in any direction. And that’s what it’s all is about.

II – SECTORIALISM
The sectorial system of administration is able to achieve extreme results within limited sectors – it can follow its own agenda, strive for maximum benefits without any consideration for other sectors,and without interference from anybody else from outside the aim that is set up for the limited sector. Transcend all geographical boundaries and give room for companies to fit into any local government administration and community for exploiting resources.

III – PARLIAMENTARIANISM
As developed in France, in Prussia and in England during the 17th and 18th century, into the system of majority dictatorship that is the ctual state of the system, where huge political parties, through management and public relations, are able to manipulate globally, using the structure of the political parties for international cooperation and control.

These functions of these basic characteristics are secured by a class of administrators, manipulators and intellectuals who are the basic requirement for the functions, the legitimisation and the dynamics of this monstrous complex of a new Empire. A class of people in our societies who constitute the stability and convenience of the existing order – the middleclass – the group of well educated individuals who are paid by the capital owners to secure and manage their interests and therefore are well-paid and allowed extreme comfort and consumption.

To change such a system is impossible without radically changing the 3 basic characteristics – and that’s what we have to do if want to change the actual tendencies to bigger and bigger disasters… To show good will, common sense or spiritual responsibility are all the middle class way of explaining away the bad conscience of our self indulgence – and would only give time for even worsen catastrophes.

http://www.permakultur-danmark.dk/?Artikler:Nordic_Pamphlets:DENGLUSAUism

DENGLUSAUism
THE MOST DESTRUCTIVE POWER EVER ON THE GLOBE

That government will save us is an illusion. They are mostly the problem.

Diet and obesity is a great example. It was government subsidies and dietary recommendations that created this problem. By and large the people escaping obesity are those who wake up and take charge of their own health. The single greatest thing government could do to help public health and obesity is to completely withdrawl from the issue of food and food subsidies. They created this problem and they are actively opposing its resolution.

In the US people are waking up to the fact that the standard ‘healthy diet’ advice and the drugs are killing them. And they are rejecting all that in search of healthy, life giving whole foods, prime among them raw milk. But it is government, on behalf of the corporations, who are actively fighting them. Right now the FDA is in court arguing that people don’t have a right to make their own food choices and they have no right to health. Why? Because they are attempting to outlaw foods which make people well when drugs can’t. The author of this article seems to think the government knows better than people what we ought to eat. But in our country it is the government who is proscribing and defending the very things making us sick.

But this article misses all this in its attempt to defend the nanny state.

Top down solutions almost never work, especially when you are trying to defeat the status quo. True change must happen one person at a time on the ground. When the people change the government will follow. But until that time the government cannot make the people change for good and the government is quite likely to fight any change for good the people attempt.

This book is useful as we are now leaving the fossil time-age, and the changes in community will be even more dramatical than when we entered the fossil time-age, also known as the industrial revolution.

The only revolution adaptable to this new post-fossil time-age, is in my view a Permaculture Revolution.

Unfortunately most people are still blind for what have to come.

Yes, I agree we must by time get rid of huge bureocratical structures, because these rigid structures outlaw living structures. Because living structures are organic by nature, while bureocratical structures are mechanical, and henche the exactly opposite. We probably need a state or gouvernment of some kind, this is not the big problem. The problem is every structure that doesn’t allow or eliminate living structures, and the state bureocracy is here the worst.

JBob, you can just find the quotas most important from these “others” you menchened, and add some small notes on why you choosed these quotas from your authors. Craig did the same thing here with Wendell Berry: http://permaculture.org.au/2008/08/19/developed/

As we are entering the end of the fossil age, we now have to create new systems adapted to this new time. Just like the people of Paris developed new systems/ideologies at the beginning of the fossil age or industrial revolution, discussing at the cafes.

This site is a kind of cafe where we can share ideas to develop new design systems for a post-fossil and post-industrial time age. And here you have an opportunity to give your contribution. Only this way we can evolve!

The book that seems the most interesting to me is “Money: Understanding and Creating Alternatives to Legal Tender”. I’m a huge fan of community money – it keeps the money within the local community and stops taxes going to the government. Although I think if it proves popular the government will probably outlaw it and throw people in prison if they continue using it

I personally appreciate your articles – even if I do not agree with them. They make me question my world view and look at the possibility that I might be wrong. That’s always a good thing.

But you too seem to possess a kind of faith – that government will let us successfully transition to a post oil world.
While I would love to share your view of representative democracy and socialism I just don’t think it is realistic.

In my humble opinion this is a realistic view of how the following decades will play out and why I think a libertarian approach will prove superior:

1. Peak oil/Limits to Growth will create a series of economic shocks that will make large globalised industry untenable. This will result in bankruptcies/recession/mass unemployment.

2. Governments will try to maintain the status quo (and preserve the oligarchs) and will “stimulate” the economy to preserve jobs that should no longer exist e.g. car factories/construction workers/bankers/big-ag farmers etc.

3. For a while it will seem that the governments have succeeded in putting us “back on the growth track” using a combination of
increased debt, increased taxes, money printing and resource wars.

4. Eventually we’ll have a shock so large that government will lose control completely (maybe hyperinflation?). Then we’ll see a real plunge of living standards and people will be completely unprepared.

‘Letting the cards fall where they may’ is not such a bad strategy. Maybe most people have to feel a little pain before they make a transition to a more sustainable life?