Anarchoblogs

Homa Ecologica Cooperativo


Dobson's criticism of Kingsnorth appears to be like trite infighting. However, as an anthropocentric environmentalist, I reject the notion of ecologism as described in this article. However, I refuse to let others dictate terms. Ecology means the study of the home. Economics means the management of the home. I am an ecologist; therefore I subscribe to a real meaning of ecologism, an anthropocentric one. As an Ecologist and as an Economist I reject the linear growth paradigm. I favor instead, a human need centered paradigm of ecological economic redevelopment.

The path we are on will not be a gentle one to lower energy. The path we are on guarantees the four horseman of the apocalypse will be dictating the terms. We need to unite as humans, and very soon, to fundamentally redefining the way that we conduct our daily business. We need to put the industrial, the enginocentric, and fossil fuels, into historical perspective and consciously commit to a future that is different, particularly in relation to the use of the automobile. Gasoline is a gigantic and foolish opportunity cost for a very precious finite resource, oil Radical reduction of its use for personal transportation is among the most important commitments that we can make if we want

Secondly, we will have no future unless we can consciously evolve, meaning moving from a risk and return economic paradigm to a plan and implement one. The evolution from Homo Economicus to Homa Ecologica Cooperativo is overdue. It needs to be an intentional evolution and it is well-past (pun intended) time we began it.

A Note to Dr. Mike Ellis on 08/06/2010


Mike,

We need a new paradigm of economic development. Given the existing crises and impending otherwise in resource constraints and the lack of equitable allocation, I know that many reject the politics of the G-20, the G-8, the G-1 (the USA) and the Capitalist Plutocracy and concomitant Military Industrial Complex that has been riding centuries of history based on economic Lordism/serfdom, substituted with the Capitalist profit paradigm or requirement of "risk and return".

We need to cut the Gordian knot and reject such servitude and replace it with an ethos and modus operandi and intentional evolution to Homa Ecologica Cooperativo. Practical translation of such involves much education, particularly with respect to the goals of community organization, cooperation, and solidarity, and eventual direct action of the taking of Treasuries resources for direct, non-usurious, allocation to individuals and communities (in the form of community betterment organizations) based on need. The mission is One of ecological economic redevelopment inculcated on the principles of inclusion, humanity, equity, altruism, well-being and quality of life, sustainability, and peace. This is a cooperative communitarian/socialist economic democracy paradigm of "plan and implement".

Being that most calls for socialism only clamor against the offending parties, and make weak attempts to organize within the political constraints and organizational and media domination, some with an impossible and misguided agenda of electoral victory and others with the misguided and premature agenda of revolution. What the political reformers and the cheerleaders of revolution have in common is a complete lack of understanding of the resource concerns and fundamental economic reorganization that is necessary.

I think that it is necessary to mitigate the inhumanities of the progressions of the industrial revolution and phase back more of an industrious ethic that goes along with relocalized artisanry, human ecology, agroecology (including urban agroecology) and an ethic of peace, cooperation, and solidarity.

Given that I feel much alone, although it is completely eclectic, in the enunciation of this paradigm, I call upon you for expressions of solidarity and commitment to aid in the furtherance of this mission. Please do not tarry with respect to a response, particularly related to how we can progress.


In Peace, Friendship, Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity,

Mike Morin
512 W. 10th Avenue, #2
Eugene, OR 97401
1-541-343-3808
www.peoplesequityunion.blogspot.com

The G-20?


We must try not to think of our world as being on the other side of no tomorrow, though at risk of understatement, the hour is getting late.

The biggest problem that I see us facing is the entropy that has set in with the passing climaxes of industrialization and the fossil fuel age. The age of the consumer is riding itself out, but in its path is unspeakable genocide, ecocide, and suicide.

If we could envision, educate, and communicate to the people of the planet, particularly those of the G-One (the USAers who are by far the most mad and mislead); the alternative vision of resources allocated directly to individuals and communities - based on need, and re-learn the ways of community, a "plan and implement" cooperative communitarian socialism, rather than the Imperial, Militaristic, Greed-driven, "risk and return" paradigm (or excuse), could go a long way towards turning things around.

Only idiot puppets like Obama don't understand that the Financial Game is over. The only thing left for the Financial Overlords is to keep putting money into mostly failed endeavors that will DRIVE (the fossil fuel age and automobiles are relative flukes and need to be put into historical perspective) the planet to extinction based on an insistent sucking the resources of the earth dry by insisting on the industrialization/consumption paradigm when we all should be asking for and working for an industrious/well being paradigm.

My guess is that 80% of the USA GDP is the consumption of gasoline for personal purposes. The automobile is the most destructive toy that ever disgraced the planet.

In addition to the rearrangement of the Financial Paradigm and Systems, we must also recognize and commit to the reduction of the use of the personal automobile in the USA by 80% in the next 20 to 40 years. This could be done by rebuilding communities and reallocating resources so that almost all communities are sedentary.

It's a tall order, but let's recognize the mission at hand and work diligently to educate and organize (so that we can allocate), accordingly.

In Response to Raj


(In response to video and blog post on World Bank "Land Grabs" on Raj Patel's website introducing the concepts behind the book, "The Value of Nothing")

Raj et al,

Thank you for your leadership and valuable enunciation of common sense.

The Capitalist system is dead, more appropriately killing and dieing. It is the insane momentum of financial abstractions and technological "advancements" that is DRIVING (the automobile is a fluke of human history) the world to genocide, ecocide, and suicide. The Center of such a "progression" is the Military Industrial Complex led hegemony of the British Imperialist Capitalist/Industrial "culture" that saw the Bank of England transform itself to the Federal Reserve in the USA. Its' continental and colonial tyranny have manifested themselves in the World Bank and WTO, Corporate Capitalist Conglomerates and Wall Street and Main Street Financial and Land Overlords.

It is far past the 11th hour in our world, but if there is a solution, it lays in the the idea of a World Congress for Community Economic Development where we can work towards neighborhood/community, inter-community, and inter-regional solidarity and cooperation with local ecological economic redevelopment plans based on need and bypassing the International Finance "Community" as represented in the US by the Federal Reserve and participating Financial domineers and exploiters.

Save for strongholds like Kerala and Cuba, emerging Venezuela and the outgrowths of the work in these areas, we have not yet begun to organize. It is quite problematic from where I live, and throughout at least the North American continent (the only geography that I know) in that people are so firmly acculturated by the status quo that the people do not seem to have the hope, let alone the ability, to visualize an alternative economic system. The environmental damage and the momentum of entropy is so severe and the consciousness of the people so polluted and so incremental. "They've all bought into it", a friend terms it.

To each his own has become to each his own personal crisis and I wonder whether we have the educational and communication tools to reach them, that there may be, and the only hope is, a collective solution beginning with local community but extending out to world around solidarity and cooperation.

As I write this, my neighbors go their separate ways.


In Peace, Friendship, Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity,

Mike Morin

BasicsI attended Planning School at the U. of MA in Amherst in Fall 1975, after studying Environmental Studies on the undergraduate level. It was a mostly misguided program of studies, as are all planning curricula in the United States. Older students …

Continue reading at Peoples' Equity Union …

One Big Union


Although I try not to be delusional about this, the answer (at least potentially) lies in efforts underway to form "One Big Union" which the AFL-CIO and ITUC are at least giving lip service to...

Should we be able to accomplish such organization, and gain control of the National Treasuries world around, bypassing Capitalist Plutocracy Organizations such as the Federal Reserve System and allocating Treasury funds directly to individuals and Community Betterment Organizations (CBOs), we could possibly succeed.

Such may require National/International/World Presidential Commissions which would supplant "the Administration(s)" and Congress/Parliaments, etc. and would focus on building a grass roots economic democracy, a World Congress on Community Economic Development.

We could accept and implement a resource allocation paradigm that would fundamentally change the ways and means that resources are allocated to and within communities and among and within economic sectors.


In Peace, Friendship, Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity,

Mike Morin

The current Capitalist dominated system is dysfunctional both from an equity/fairness and economic and natural resource sustainability perspective.The dominant paradigm in Capitalist financial business operations uses something called the discount rate…

Continue reading at Peoples' Equity Union …

His "public asset fund" has very similar intentions, I think.

Let me comment on the concept as you have presented it:

For what it is worth, government ownership is not going to be very popular, and is unnecessary. Why do we need the government to own the assets? If we can turn the property and capital over to the government why can we not instead turn those assets directly over to workers' cooperatives with funds collected by the government. Why do we need the government to administer? They merely need to facilitate.

Secondly, we must be vigilant and careful about Capitalists selling or otherwise ceding obsolete capital assets to workers. ESOPS are a good idea for workers, but have disadvantages. They don't deal withe physical/economic realities of local disinvestment and they do not address the issues associated with Corporate/Union partnerships in damaging sectors such as military contracting, alcohol and tobacco production and distribution, etc.

Let me clarify, if not reiterate, the definition of a Bank is that it is investor owned. By contrast savings banks and credit unions are depositor owned.

Among the purposes of an equity union is to evolve us away from an investor "class", non-workers who live off capital gains and dividends. Rational and purposeful (for meeting community needs and reasonable wants) Equity participation, sharing, and granting would replace speculative equity investing, equity trading, and lending (usurious by definition and certainly in practice).

In essence, the main purpose of an Equity Union system would be to evolve the private sector into a quasi-public One.

We also need to abolish the Federal Reserve. Let the Treasury make direct allocations to community equity unions instead of allocating financial capital to Investor owned banks.

Please pass this communication on, if you deem such appropriate.

Let me know what Dave thinks of my ideas, and by all means encourage him to contact me directly.

Thanks for writing.

Take good care.


In Peace, Friendship, Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity,

Mike Morin
wiserunion@earthlink.net

The current Capitalist dominated system is dysfunctional both from an equity/fairness and economic and natural resource sustainability perspective.The dominant paradigm in Capitalist financial business operations uses something called the discount rate…

Continue reading at Peoples' Equity Union …

Good questions, Bob.

To reach a eutopian (good place) socialist reality, it would be highly advantageous for every neighborhood village to have a local equity union, and it is important that each local have extensive inter-community relations, especially with the other neighborhood/villages in their region (defined as metropolitan area transposed on a watershed).

All deposits and donations in-kind would be voluntary (and members can participate to whatever extent they care to) and all equity union funds would be dedicated to community betterment programs and organizations consistent with the principles of the cooperative communitarian ecological economic redevelopment plan. Recipients of equity sharing/participation would be required to be workers' cooperatives or community/worker hybrid cooperatives (as a transition vehicle from the status quo to the desired).

The incentive is primarily altruistic and socialist, because it is the right thing to do. While equity unions are starting out, depositors would be at an acknowledged disadvantage relative to the traditionalist Capitalist game of exceeding the hurdle rate, that is getting a better return on their "investment" (equity union shares are participation SHARES (literally) and not investments) than the assumed discount rate. With the Capitalist system failing, such could be viewed as not a disadvantage but a social equitable participation in an inclusive, equitable, needs based, wellness-oriented, humane, peaceful, and sustainable culture. An advantage of values over monetary "value". An advantage of quality of life over a quantified standard of living.

When Equity Unions are the standard operating system, real ecological economic redevelopment will replace abstract concepts of economic "growth". Equity sharing and participation will replace equity speculation, equity trading, and lending.