Anarchoblogs in English

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.

I don't call it "post-carbon" because all life is carbon based.

I call it post peak-oil and post fossil fuel. The lifestyles of the "Western" world is so melded to the use of fossil fuels for all aspects of luxury and survival and irrational interaction and it has arisen in the last three hundred years as an integral part of the Capitalist system which as an extension of Feudal and Imperialist Military hegemony has raped and squandered the North American continent and others in its colonialist pursuits.

I thought that the Capitalist system was reformable, but now I see what a virulent madness it is... Good planets are hard to find and we are almost through with this one. I am riding out my days in the belly of the Capitalist Imperialist beast. I still think an equity union is a superior idea for economic relations, but it will not be of the real world.

I look to the Moslem world for leadership and would recommend that they resist the decadent temptations of Western life. The US Imperialist goal of World Manifest Destiny has been a hard and violent ride. It is now almost over. The meaning of almost is not clear. 5 years? 10 years? 100 years? and there will most likely be no clear line of demarcation defining the end. They will go on with their inanity in an oblivious crusade of the ultimate paradox between evil and righteousness until there is no fuel to fire the ignitions for their chariots of luxury, for their fleets and chariots and thunderbirds and drones of war.

Perhaps the Evilest Empire of All Time, the USA, is very near defeat. Perhaps not. However long it takes to strangle the beast, I know that all that will be left is a squandered planet.

It is a shame, because with rational, equitable, humane, altruistic, education and action the overshoot of population and the scarcity of resource availability could conceivably be dealt with. Instead we are running full speed into the worst period of suffering that Man has and will ever face.

If I weren't so stir crazy from the deafening silence of an irrational people then I would be fretting about how my life will play out in the collapse.

I've tried to make positive contributions all my life, I will continue to try given any chance.


In Peace, Friendwalkin', Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity,

Mike Morin

By "The Coordinator Class", I'm guessing that you mean the Management and Staff Workers of the Capitalist System that may or may not have ownership holdings in Capitalist Enterprises.

To whatever extent their ownership holdings are tied up in their expected income or their "good consumer" participation in the Capitalist economy have placed them at odds with an imagined Participatory Economy based on inclusion, equity, voluntary simplicity, wellness, peace, and sustainability there must be a vehicle of transition for these relatively skilled potential members of the working class.

A radical overhaul of the current Capitalist equity trading, equity return, credit system to one of sharing equity (an Equity Union) for purposes of ecological economic redevelopment/community betterment organizaions (CBOs) would be a possible transition vehicle in that Institutional Investors of all sorts could become altruistic and self-help contributors and participants in community/worker hybrid cooperatives forming inter-community alliances with the purpose of eventually transforming to an all inclusive cooperating system of sustainable, equilibrious, participatory economy, worker-owned and managed, entities.

Given that it is at best a longshot, and highly utopian, a grave concern is the ridiculously inflated cost of real and capital assets, and the collective holding of liabilities within the Capitalist system, that make it impossible for workers to employ capital in the pursuit of a right livelihood.

We need the vision of long range planning in a post-peak resource constrained world and we need to maximze participation among ALL PEOPLE, or at least among the current and past workers of the Capitalist System, including the "Coordinator Class".

The Ownership Class may fall into our safety-net system and the transition for them will seem unbearable and the support onerous to what is now a shell of productive capacity.

In Peace, Friendwalkin', Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity,

Mike Morin
Eugene, OR, USA

I am a 57 year old Environmental Studies/Socialist Economist with a MBA who works full time in the reimagining of a paradigm of ecological economic redevelopment and seeks to organize people around the mission of a world unity and cooperation effort to altruistically and fully and peacefully meet the needs of people based on the fundamental principles of inclusion, equity, humanity, environmental/public health and wellness, sufficiency, towards relocalization, peace, and sustainability.

I have just said nothing new, only stated it differently.

I do not kid myself, we are so small as to be invisible - except among ourselves, We are up against over 400 years of the Capitalist Institutional Leviathan and we are beset with an exploding population running dry of productive faciltative resources that we are accustomed to.

At risk of understatement, we are working against huge odds.

Yet those of us who believe that the work is worthwhile must come together and work together to make the noble attempt(s).

Will you join with me?

Let's discuss.



In Peace, Friendwalkin', Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity,

Mike Morin

Looked up Carmichael in my Atlas. Suburb to the East of Sacramento?

I've been to Sacramento, it is a very physically attractive city, especially the old town/Lavender District.

IF ONE CAN AFFORD IT, California, with all its rich agricultural resources and clement weather, is probably the best place on earth.

My ideas center around the post-peak oil and other resources reality. It will be necessary to rebuild or renovate all neighborhoods with village centers, and to reallocate resources directly, to make necessities available within walking distance for almost all, thereby reducing personal automotive vehicle use by 80% in the next 20 to 40 years.

I envision the complete overhaul of the economy to a "plan and implement" ecological economic redevelopment One, where community/worker hybrid cooperatives will be the mechanism of equity sharing and evolution to such relocalization.

The huge obstacle that we face all over the country and Western world is the outrageous inflation in the price of real and capital assets. Unless we can find some way to collectively write off or down the "market values", we will face an increasingly paralyzed linear trajectory to resource and economic oblivion and ruin. The situation will continue to crumble and collapse and only those with total equity in their economic holdings will be able to carry out even the most primitive commerce.

I am not optimistic as there is an extremely overwhelming (understatement) gap between the conceptual and the realization.

We need desperately, to be organizing around unifying mission and principles, but the people seem oblivious and locked into the deadly momentum of the fluke automobile culture that is only about 100 years old (compare that to all of human history).

"Car" Michael, how ironic.


In Peace, Friendwalkin', Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity,

"Carless" Michael
(Mike Morin)
Eugene, OR

Just finished reading Capitalism 3.0 : A guide to Reclaiming the Commons by Peter Barnes.

Have you read it?
It's well worth the read.

My impression is that Peter is a Socialist in Sheep's Clothing. He gives excellent historical perspective, and reading between the lines - some rather large comprehensive algorithmic possible solutions regarding transition strategies. His funding sources (e.g. Rockefeller Foundation) and Capitalist Publisher seem to place noticeable limits on his (what are otherwise bordering on radical) proposed fundamental, sweeping changes.

He makes good argument regarding the abuses of "the Commons" by Capitalism (Feudalism as precursor), and particularly the Corporate Variety, but awkwardly argues that the answer is to create Public Trusts of the Commons for the purposes of adapting (not replacing) the Capitalist/Corporate System in an absurd proposal to meet them about half-way. Such a supposition demonstrates either a lack of willingness to go beyond the constraints and desired target markets of funders and publisher and/or a fundamental weakness in the author's understanding of and/or willingness to challenge us with a Marxist perspective.

I believe it to be the constraints of the Capitalists more than the man's knowledge and perception base because he sneaks in some rather large equity and inclusion arguments in a book that ostensibly is targeting the "sustainability" crowd.

Nonetheless, it is a disheartening reality because it reminds me/us just how far into the Capitalist Corporate "game" and overshoot that we are, and what an overwhelming task it would be to try to reorganize the people into an alternative economic entity or entities. Barnes references Harvard Economist Mancur Olson's "Logic of Collective Action" in which Olson argues, "unless the number of players in a group is very small, people will not combine to pursue their common interests".

In Peace, Friendwalkin', Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity,

Mike Morin

Recently, the "Solidarity Economy Network" published an article that was printed in Time Magazine, about the Mondragon "Cooperative" Corporation (MCC), MCCs recent "letter of intent" with United Steelworkers (USW), and two very small workers cooperatives start-ups in Cleveland and SF Bay. While I applaud the efforts in Cleveland and SF Bay and wish them much success and a more honorable and principled and eventually all-encompassing "growth" than the original MCC, let's not get deluded by wishful thinking and political greenwash.

You must understand the cooptation that has occurred in the Mondragon "Cooperative" CORPORATION (MCC) which started small and highly principled, but has in reality evolved to little more than another predatory Capitalist Conglomerate. Starting as International Cooperative Alliance principled workers cooperatives, MCC has devolved to a Corporation, who according to this PR glitz article, has over 100 workers' cooperatives in a Corporation of 256 Companies. That translates to about 150 Companies, who are NOT workers' cooperatives, and knowing the history of Mondragon, it is a fairly safe bet that those 100 or so are probably functioning now as worker cooperatives in just about name only.

Early Mondragon experience can be a very useful model. But the bootstraps model that the Capitalists, including the lackey Labor Organization, USW, want us to get enthused about is a false promise and destined to fail like the MCC did in truely living out its original mission and intent.

Only a unified Socialism that precludes the corrupting missions and modus operandis of unprincipled Capitalist realities (Capitalism eschews externalities), will allow for the success of an economy that sets out to meet the needs of the people in an inclusive, equitable, humane, wellness oriented, sustainable, and peaceful manner.


Mike Morin

http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20090602_geography_recession?utm_source=LG&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=WIFLSFILG091229151087


Dear Jim Archibald,

Grade school Geography about the Midwestern "breadbasket", but one certain consideration that these ridiculous neo-cons seem to be overlooking is that food has to be produced, not just transported.

True, if we have anything left, perhaps we could go back to draft horses, river transport, etc., but to claim that an evolutionary Capitalist "free market" is the path is absurd. We are in overshoot and the population is and will be without coordinated education, effort, and action too ignorant, too incapable, and too old, and too few for any sort of survival to occur.

It is an evolutionary dead end, without the rational evolution to Homa Cooperativo.

Concerning their claims that the US Invasion and Occupation of Iraq, will be/is breaking the back of OPEC is profoundly premature.

By the way, any freezing in the Mississippi Waterway?, and any recognition of the reality of the fossil fuel bust that is going to wreak havoc on an ignorant people who just assume that the ignition is an extension of the hand?

Oh yeah, with all the dead putrefying bodies even the most primitive agriculturalists will not stand even the slightest chance.

By the time the dust clears on the largest cataclysm of all time, such a question would hardly be worthwhile.

But go see Avatar, I guess. The cataclysm will be on some planet far away. The cyclical market will rebound and we only have to switch on cruise control and wait for the invisible hands to continue their WMD performance of aggravated rape on this bountiful land.


In Peace, Friendwalkin', Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity,

Mike Morin