Modernising Cantankerous Frank
Comedy Break, Economics, Global Warming/Climate Change — by Marc Roberts December 7, 2010
Click for larger view
Courtesy: Marc Roberts
Reversing this sort of madness is the key to a sustainable culture.
We’re all aware by now of how low expectations are realistic ones – what with one thing and another, and we all know that money can buy almost anyone, but, with a little understanding, and a bit of good will, who knows.
Comments (0)Ground 56%
Building, Economics, Global Warming/Climate Change — by George Monbiot December 1, 2010
The government has abandoned its sustainable homes policy – by redefining zero.
by George Monbiot: journalist, author, academic and environmental and political activist, United Kingdom
What does zero look like to you? Is it:
a. 0
or
b: 56%?
If the answer is a, you are an ordinary mortal. If the answer is b, you are a government minister, possessed of supernatural mathematical powers.
Comments (4)America is Bankrupt: It’s Going Full Circle
Alternatives to Political Systems, Consumerism, Economics, Financial Management, People Systems, Society, Village Development, peak oil — by Craig Mackintosh PRI Editor
Yes, it’s a strong title. But, it’s very real. The United States of America, built on incredible potential and an amazing constitution, has digressed and democratised itself into hell.
The US has declared financial war on the world – Prof. Dr. Michael Hudson
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years.
Great nations rise and fall. The people go from bondage to spiritual truth, to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependence, from dependence back again to bondage. — author unknown
The interesting thing about democracy is that despite all the positive elements of majority rule, it only works if the majority are ethical, objective and restrained.
Comments (13)Be Happy, or Else…
Comedy Break, Consumerism, Economics, Food Shortages, Society — by Marc Roberts November 30, 2010
Click for larger view
Courtesy: Marc Roberts
If they said what they meant….
Further Reading:
Comments (0)Anti-Pattern Capitalism
Alternatives to Political Systems, Community Projects, Consumerism, Eco-Villages, Economics, People Systems, Society, Village Development — by Oyvind Holmstad November 25, 2010
Obtain a yield — Permaculture principle three
At first glimpse it might seem like capitalism is a fulfillment of permaculture principle three. Still, this is wrong! A true yield is from a surplus of natural and human capital for us and generations to come. Permaculture principle ten tells us to use and value diversity. Capitalism tells us to value just one kind of yield, a yield of money and wealth.
Industry and production should have been based upon all available knowledge and had product benefits and health as goals. — Terje Bongard
Capitalism is too much about patents and hiding knowledge from competitors and consumers. Profit is the ultimate goal, not health and product benefits. This gives us artificial food like chicken nuggets, and mass production of short lived products lasting one year while they could have lasted 100 years, like for incandescent bulbs.
I think that there are two kinds of capitalism:
Comments (15)Global Crisis Explained
Biodiversity, Consumerism, Deforestation, Economics, Food Shortages, Global Warming/Climate Change, Population, Society, peak oil — by Alexander Seton November 22, 2010
Comments (12)
Selecting a Community Currency
Community Projects, Consumerism, Economics, Financial Management, Markets & Outlets, People Systems, Society, Village Development — by Shann Turnbull November 16, 2010
Every time we add our own labour to a product or perform a service we expend energy and increase the overall entropy of the environment. Every time we exchange money for product or service, the legal tender we use represents payment for previous energy that we expended. Money, after all, is nothing more than stored energy credits. – Jeremy Rifkin, Entropy: A New World View, New York: Viking Press, 1980
Money can be anything that people in a community will accept as carrying on its basic functions, which are to provide a unit of value, a medium of exchange, and a store of value. Throughout history many different forms of money have been created with a number of forms being used simultaneously within the same community. Each form has various advantages and disadvantages. These need to be reassessed with modern technology and in the context of the objective of creating for individual communities an autonomous banking and monetary system.
Historically, units of value have been defined in terms of the weight of a given commodity of specified quality. Ideally, the commodity selected as a unit of value should also provide a stable value over time. As scarcity creates value and abundance reduces value, we need to select a commodity, the availability of which remains relatively stable in relation to all the other goods and services traded for money in the community. This requirement is described as the quantity theory of money. Simple stated this theory says that, other things being equal, prices will vary directly in proportion to the quantity of money in circulation.
Comments (18)Alms and the Man
Aid Projects, Comedy Break, Consumerism, Economics, People Systems, Society — by Marc Roberts
Click for larger view
Courtesy: Marc Roberts
Thanks to Craig Mackintosh for pointing this out.
Comments (4)Think again before you reach into your pocket to give; the money you donate to feed starving children may actually be prolonging war in places like Darfur and Somalia, says Dutch journalist Linda Polman. Darfur is ruled by quite a sophisticated military regime which charges aid organizations for every move they are allowed to make in Darfur. “For every single person that works for aid organizations, for every single kilo of rice, aid organizations are forced to pay what they call, ‘taxes,’” she tells Big Think. “So the military regime there is actually cashing in on a lot of aid organizations for quite large amount of money. That money goes towards the war effort of the military regime of Darfur and is actually being used for the ethnic cleansing and the genocide taking place in Darfur.”
Peak Oil – “The Debate is Over”
Consumerism, Economics, Food Shortages, Society, peak oil — by Craig Mackintosh PRI Editor November 10, 2010
It’s been a long time coming, but the uber-significant Peak Oil issue has finally started to infiltrate the corridors of power. What they’ll do with this information remains to be seen….
There is no reason for optimism. — Dr. James Schlesinger (former Secretary of Defence and the U.S.’s first Secretary of Energy)
I made mention recently of the leaked German Military Peak Oil study (German PDF here, key points summarised in English here) which looked at the Peak Oil issue from a national security standpoint. Now the New Zealand government has created their own study — releasing it publicly, rather than forcing some conscientious and concerned person to have to sneak it out the back door.
The summary findings of the study are almost word-for-word with what I wrote a long time ago (here and here for example).
Comments (30)Burning Bridges
Comedy Break, Consumerism, Economics, Food Shortages, Global Warming/Climate Change, peak oil — by Marc Roberts
Click for full view
Courtesy: Marc Roberts
This could be the new paradigm for gated industrial communities – imagine the hungry clamouring at the fences. Lots of uncertainty here, considering the problems of food supply for a growing population.
Meanwhile…the military pitch in, as do scientists, to tell a more convincing tale.
Comments (0)Early Retirement Extreme
Consumerism, DVDs/Books, Economics, Ethical Investment, Financial Management, Society, peak oil — by Thomas Fischbacher November 8, 2010
Two issues keep on puzzling me about economics. On the one hand, it undoubtedly is an incredibly important subject. At present, my life pretty much depends on being able to buy certain things from a functioning economy and the same holds for just about everybody else. On the other hand, there seem to be a number of serious problems with deeply rooted beliefs about economics held my many professional economists. (This, then, also is one of the most important reasons why we are in a precarious situation in the first place – if people want "to save the planet", I like to ask "from what?". The answer seems to be: "from the consequences of an untenable economic ideology".)
So, developing a sane perspective on economics and in particular one’s own economic role certainly is an important goal. And no, I do not think management professionals who tell their students in their lectures that spending money on french brand name cosmetics is smarter than spending it on other cosmetics have anything to offer that I’d personally be interested in, thank you.
Comments (18)I Read it on the Internet
Comedy Break, Economics, Society — by Craig Mackintosh PRI Editor
I like this girl, even if she is a lesbian vampire.
Comments (11)
Social Indoctrination and Geoengineering
Alternatives to Political Systems, Consumerism, Economics, People Systems, Society, Village Development — by Peter Greg November 6, 2010
by Peter Greg
A friend shared this video series (at bottom) with me, and I thought it was one of the most brilliant and impactful summaries of the madness of social indoctrination and control in our materialistic culture, and some effective solutions to deal with it. Yes some may deem it controversial, but as the famous author George Orwell aptly put it "In a time of universal deceit — telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
And I will pre-empt this article with a gentle challenge: If these words bring up anger or negative emotions, or even accusations of being a ‘conspiracy theorist’, I ask you, are 262 million killed in the last 100 years (Google ‘democide’) not enough to show the utter madness of this collective path of materialism and consumerism we walk on?
Comments (9)Deep Peace in Techno-Utopia
Alternatives to Political Systems, Consumerism, Economics, Society — by George Monbiot November 5, 2010
A new film on Channel 4 disses the greens while dodging the issue of power.
by George Monbiot: journalist, author, academic and environmental and political activist, United Kingdom
So Channel 4 has done it again. Over the past 20 years, it has broadcast a series of polemics about the environment, and most of them have been fiercely anti-green(1). On other issues Channel 4’s films attack all sides. Not on the environment.
Last night it aired yet another polemic: What the Green Movement Got Wrong. This one was presented by two people who still consider themselves green: Stewart Brand and Mark Lynas. It’s not as rabid as the other films. But, like its predecessors, it airs blatant falsehoods about environmentalists and fits snugly into the corporate agenda. The film is based on Brand’s book, Whole Earth Discipline(2). He argues that greens, by failing to embrace the right technologies, have impeded both environmental and social progress. Not everything he says is wrong, but his account is infused with magical thinking, in which technology is expected to solve all political and economic problems. This view, now popular among green business consultants, is sustained by ignoring the issue of power.
Comments (5)Surviving in the Cash Economy Once Your Food Forest is Established
Commercial Farm Projects, Economics, Food Plants - Annual, Food Plants - Perennial, Markets & Outlets, Medicinal Plants, Plant Systems, Village Development — by Judith Goldsmith November 3, 2010
Richard Alan Miller likes to tell the classic story of one of the first farmers who came to him for help.
He had 400 acres in Iowa in corn, which was infested with burdock. He had tried everything — spraying, everything — and he couldn’t get rid of the stuff. The bank was threatening him with foreclosure.
He came to a workshop I’d given at Charlie Walter’s Acres U.S.A. conference in Kansas City, and got in touch with me. When the bank heard I’d been hired to consult, the banker gave him a one-year stay of execution. I advised him to: sell half his land; sell half of his capital equipment; and then I had him get rid of his noxious weed — which was the corn! — and grow what nature wanted him to grow, which was the burdock!
I helped him sell all his burdock crop to Asian markets in Chicago, at two dollars a pound fresh (I advised him that he’d only get 60 cents a pound dried), where they couldn’t get enough of it for kim chee and fresh vegetables. After the first year, he was out of foreclosure. After three years, he owned his own land outright . . . and he started buying back his old land, and putting it into timber for his grandchildren!
Miller’s consulting does not always result in such dramatic conversion, but it has brought financial stability to many other small- to mid-size farmers and would-be farmers throughout the U.S.
Comments (24)
