Posts tagged Ecosocialist Plan
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
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNkugyv2Mkk—– Original Message —–From: Mike MorinTo: rlogan@igc.orgSent: Tuesday, December 29, 2009 10:12 PMSubject: Re: new paradigm of developmentRavi (and Jason),With respect to your Post-Peak “Moment”:They’d rat…
Continue reading at Peoples' Equity Union …
Response to John Russell
Hi John,
Sorry, it took so long to get back with thee...
The fundamentals of an ecological economic redevelopment plan, while embracing relocalization for food and other necessities does not preclude the concept of comparative advantage, which as you have described would lead the folks in your area to specialize in grass fed meat and dairy.
To us, since 1976, it has always been a paradigm of "towards self-sufficiency" in food production. Inter-community and inter-regional trade can be sustained IF the USA and others will dedicate and commit and realize an 80% reduction in personal automobile use in the next 20 to 40 years, by rebuilding neighborhoods, and reallocating goods and services, to make it so that almost all (there will be rural exceptions) can get what they need within walking distance of their homes.
The terrible squandering of fossil fuel use for wasteful consumer automobile forays across and throughout the sprawlscape in search of their daily needs and many unnecessary consumer wants (the latter a result of the loss of community and resultant meaningless lives) is a large opportunity cost relative to transport for necessary trade, and for the other more important applications of fossil fuel use such as solar assisted home heating, cooking, hot water, drying, and the generation of electricity. Also, fossil fuel inputs into agricultural systems (while phasing such out to the greatest, or least optimal, extent possible) needs to be a much higher priority use of fossil fuels than the personal automobile.
Still, I strongly believe in the need to move towards veganization of diets for health and pollution reasons. I say towards because my personal experience has proven to me that when my work is mostly physical that I do need to eat a bit of meat occasionally to maintain my strength and body weight. On the other hand, eating meat every day is a recipe for disease and sickness, especially among the sedentary (among whom meat ingestion should be strongly discouraged). Milk products are important for children.
The evolution of these things and the repopulation of rural areas with the appropriate small farm technologies, labor, equity, and products (coupled with the maximization of "urban" gardening) will not evolve via a process of "invisible hands". It will only happen in a timely manner, if it is part of a consensual plan and implement economy based on a consensus of world unity and cooperation founded on the principles of inclusion, humanity, equity, environmental health and wellness, quality of life, sustainability, and peace.
Thanks for writing.
Q. (By Gil Scott (Martin Luther Kin)): What's the word?
A. (By John Lennon (Martin Luther Kin)): The word is love, the word is good.
All People Kin.
In Peace, Friendship, Cooperation, and Solidarity,
Mike Morin
Dana,
Just got finished watching "The Story of Stuff". Annie Leonard did an excellent job. Thank you for your contribution to the funding of this short film. I have made a small donation in support.
Apparently, the short is getting much viewership, hopefully it is not exclusively "preaching to the choir". Fundamental behavior change is essential to any hope that we have towards achieving sustainability in our communities and our world.
But awareness and behavior change of "consumers" is not enough. We must regain our humanity and we must radically alter our economic relations. Such will be extremely difficult because the Capitalist Growth Machine has centuries of momentum which has accelerated drastically in the last generation. The tragic growth pradigm of an economic system is one that eschews the reality of a finite planet, that eschews the teachings of ecology, that eschews the true needs of the majority of the people on the planet, and eschews environmental/public health and humanity towards people/workers and other living things.
We need a fundamental paradigm shift to an EcoSocialist Economy based on the principles of inclusion, equity, humanity, quality of life (in lieu of standard of living), sustainability, and peace. We need to radically rearrange the way resources are allocated to and within communities and among and within economic sectors. Such a "plan and implement economy" would have the neighborhood as a locus and work assiduously to develop and maintain inter-community, inter-regional, and world cooperation and unity. A strategy of ecological economic redevelopment would be employed and realized. In the United States a goal of walkable neighborhorhoods, reversing a century of sprawl, by reducing automobile usage by 80% in the next 20 to 40 years, rebuilding neighborhoods/town and village centers (or building the latter in many cases) and reallocating the production and distribution of goods and services so that almost all can get what they need within walking distance of their homes.
I have attached a paper entitles "Restructuring Our Financial System" which proposes an alternative to the current dominant paradigm. Please take a look at this.
I would greatly appreciate your feedback on this letter and the attachment. I would be very glad to share more of my work with you. I have a 25 page concise, comprehensive plan that you may want to look at. Please do not hesitate to request this, or to communicate with me on any issue or concern related to this communication.
I am not seeking funding, I am seeking exposure for my ideas. To whatever extent we can collaborate would be of great interest to me.
Thank you.
I hope to "hear" from you soon.
In Peace, Friendship, Cooperation, and Solidarity,
Mike Morin
Eugene, OR
(541) 343-3808
I think that what we are seeing is not just the bursting of the housing bubble, but the bursting of the entire supply-side economics paradigm, by a couple of generations of Capitalists who thought that they were infallible, in good part because of their "victories" in WW2 and the Cold War and were riding a wave of ASSUMED success.
The presumption of success had momentum and affected the business culture to the point that credit and equity flowed freely and foolishly.
Now, reality is setting in. Over-supply side economics cutting its own throat by paying no attention to how their worldwide dominance of financing low wage Capitalism, a race to the bottom for the working class, was undermining effective demand for their over-supply of low quality, of marginal utility junk. The over-extension of credit "helped" for awhile, at least until all the overly materialistic fools had filled their over-priced luxury and common-place homes with a plethora of unnecessary toys, including those gas gluttonous opulent ostentations in their driveways. Then the bills came due and the over-supply economy was so over-supplied and credit so maxed out that it ceased to be able to grease the wheel of the assumed insatiable wants economy.
The price of gasoline and other fossil fuel products contributed in helping to weaken effective demand for what would have to be seen as an impossible continuation of mindless commerce.
In order to sustain wealth, people have to produce items of value. Other than the computer industry, it's all been speculation, more speculation, more speculation, more speculation, fueled by greed and accelerated by foolish arrogance.
We need a fundamental paradigm shift in resource allocation, an alternative that would target the needs of people and not the profits of the few (which they will find increasingly impossible to realize). We need to change the way that resources are allocated to and within communities and among and within economic sectors.
A Plan and Implement Economy is the only answer to the perilous problems facing a world of resource scarcity and concomitant rising tensions.
I invite your responses and will forward them to this group, if appropriate.
Thank you.
In Peace, Friendship, Solidarity, and Cooperation,
Mike Morin
By now, some of you may have received the 25 page document regarding the Ecological Economic Redevelopment Plan that I have been forwarding to interested parties within the last month.
If you have not taken the time to request the document, or have not yet read it, please try to find the time and do so. It is important.
The plan deals with matters of utmost importance, especially to our youth and children. It is a mission of that elusive world peace, which with mans' grace could be achieved in a time that we can communicate like never before. Yet, at the same time we are on a precarious precipice or downslope in human civilization with respect to scare natural and economic resources and building tensions because of such.
A Plan that puts inclusion, equity, humanity, quality of life, and sustainability as the basic pillars of a plan and implement modus operandi, a plan that addresses the needs of people, not profits for the few, a plan that presents a fundamental and solid alternative to the current failed Capitalist Financial system, is the remedy that we need.
Such is the document that you should consider.
I am asking you all to participate. I am asking for your feedback. Let's all try to work together to make a new era possible. Of course, some will have disagreements. For those of us that ascribe to the fundamental mission and principles, let's work those out. Let's discuss how we can become the dominant paradigm, and how we can implement the changes that would benefit everyone, especially the youth and children.
The fossil fuel age is winding down, yet we have become so tragically dependent upon those resources. Conservation and demand side management is the key. If we don't commit to such and begin very soon to plan and implement an alternative economy, then there is little hope for the progeny of the planet. But, we still may have time.
What can we do?
What do you suggest?
Please don't delay in joining the discourse.
Thank you.
In Peace, Friendship, Cooperation, and Solidarity,
Mike Morin
