A post by Ed Che.
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This post will attempt to prove that the errors of humanity’s history so far are systemic, the direct cause of which being capitalism; the financing and then pursuit of a bottom line of money. This system is at first a disconnect, from the living within the means of, nature around us. With the introduction of capitalism, the indigenous were systemically incentivized to hunt more beavers, to please the fashion in Europe. Rather than “oh, my gosh we are killing a living animal,” the idea of money or currency changes the rational to a calculus of available resources: hm, well I could probably kill a few more, make a few more snares, a few more hours– so from the earth, that beaver in this case, from being directly supportive of him/her/or them, its now a means for getting money, which supports him/her/them. That happens with farmers, too: a self-motivated person who can grow enough food turns into someone who is growing commodity, for market, for money, for food. They are disconnected with their environment in that could be anything that they are growing; even inedible spawn of Satan such as monsanto’s GMO “corn” and “soy””beans”.
The logic of return to a bottom line leads rational people to invest in what nature would see as an overproduction. This altered reality lead to large parts of the continent we live on getting deforested; leading people to entirely CUT DOWN large parts of where we live! before realizing the immorality of what they were doing. It lead to extractive industries which made high-density plastics, PVC, metals, and weapons. Nowhere along this line of thought is there a consideration of the necessity- do we have to have these things? but rather is driven by the financiers, the elite and parasites who are only after a convenient “bottom line.” Your life, as a do-er and rational person, is reduced in their eyes to that bottom line. Indeed, even today many well-intentioned posts talk about incomes as if that is life…. how about love, right? (food and wifi, ah?)
The getting places of the right things at the right quantities at the right time does not happen on its own, as economics would have you believe. In reality a large amount is syphoned off to the financial ingenuity in the middle; saying hm I could make that work with the numbers. Such that the farmer in the Southern hemisphere gets perhaps 20% if that, of the price that is paid at consumption. This gap is accounted for almost entirely by capitalism, the people that can write business plans and, get them financed. There is a top ten percent that this system favors, while the rest are suckered into….
Labor. Labor is what the bulk of humanity got suckered into in capitalism, and this component really brings it down to: can you put up with and do what you’re told for an extended period of time every day, for money. These 99%, are the cogs of the machine which make it work. It’s not the political talkers, it’s the marx-esque working class. Again, there’s a disconnect: rather than question that basic social condition upon which the system is based, we all do this because we feel stuck in it. But of course, if we are the people and there is a system, we can change it, if we want to right?
It would be untruthful for me to JUST say that democracy is stacked and corrupted by money. The truthful thing for me to say would be that there is an alternative, that’s developed in nearly all aspects of life and furthermore, that this alternative is fun to develop for because its called hacking. Once committed to a non-capitalistic lifestyle, the design and implementation of a new system is what takes over. You want as elegant a solution as possible, such that it can be free for you and everyone else. We have the internet; this process is totally possible. Hacking: to repurpose the dominant paradigm in order to make it more accessible for all parties involved.
So every day I hack something different, it could be some kind of plant, or a hot shower. Many of the utilities from before I’ve come up with and posted on my websites, social media profiles, github, and wikis. These sites are intentionally free and open to anyone; if this idea catches on then very quickly the freedom will be so accessible to anyone with the few sites. There is actually a call to action url with over fifty shares: http://tinyurl.com/opalt-cta. Since not all places are alike, these solutions will be in large part different for those different areas. They will, however, all be referenceable online.
This new model would operate such that once built, it needn’t many resources (intentional use of that word) from the outside world, and operate with no money. This is very possible on house-scales already, in towns accessible by using common spaces like libraries parks and street benches, in cities if you don’t pay rent. (What is the concentration of property-deeds into the hands of a one-percent other than a foolish attempt to bottom-line a common resource??) Once built, houses would be for the most part self-sustaining, and consumption would happen from the library or cloud. Development of new technology still happens, but under different guidelines, for the system has changed. (technology, is not to be trusted; trust me for now that it would find it’s way.) Its important to note in discussing anti-capitalism the difference between want/need and have to. Need, as it turns out, is not strong enough. You have to do some things. Its been happy for me for a long time as I’ve not used been a part of capitalism for years now. (identifying and turning down these influences when they come at me.)
If the human race goes away from capitalism as its guiding system, a lot of the system’s current struggles will be made irrelevant. Rather than a singular point of freedom, this wave brings in a community. With that agreement, a new paradigm brought about would function equivalently both upstream and downstream of each of us.
Paying bills to make ends meet: if I’d like to grow food and more than I need I will give it away, as long as I don’t need to pay the bills any more. And some things will be a downsize, probably what was needed anyways: eg, if there’s not fuel for the tractor in the same way, let’s get together and grow the food (many hands would make light work of it), or use electric now to get away from the fossil fuel requirement; or use horses (who also, help grow their own food/alfalfa, and are very beautiful and sacred animals).
Greed right now we are in a system which encourages and rewards greed. People spend a lot of their time thinking about the wrong things. It goes hand in hand with effort in the new one, in that if you have the mind for it, you’ll have the right things that you want. One person with the mind of a trailblazer does not discourage others from doing these things, and those seeds might help if there’s extras. Again, in a cooperative system the excess helps the system and heals the earth. This does not take away from any one person having enough; and does not mean any forced equality like in communism.
Corruption I do not want to get into politics in this post, as that would be a corruption of my intention and is something that I don’t think that much about, but others do. A corruption of this post would be to say, oh that’s “socialism,” or whatever else that’s been done before, just taking an economic theory that’s totally new and making it something about government.
Rent, and evictions There was another fallacy that white people did when they came to this continent: they ascribed a financial asset on top of the earth. This made the land not only have its physical “being there,” but something about money also. I read a book that talked about this, maybe by Noam Chomsky? which described this as a financial alchemy which made the United States “rich.” By “accounting,” if you have a financial asset that is the land’s “property,” you actually have twice as much wealth. Think about it. It would be so fucking awesome and fun if an area, such as a city, gave up land values! Would just be available units, with those who lived there having preference of course, and any new buildings would come from available materials, such as the cob city in southern Sudan. Many would also probably move out of the city, so that there would simply be a flux. Cities with urban underdevelopment would find a new blood of folks experimenting with art and music, coding and new food growing. There would be an amazing online culture.
So, what are these solutions that makes this possible? Well, one of them is the ability to grow things in a very small scale. Check out “Ed Che how to live free” on youtube. This setup includes utilities: heat and a hot shower. More tobacco should be grown and figured out how to. Would be nice to have a low-altitude variety of coffee too, #justsayin. Otherwise, anything that you currently do, think about a way that it could be done for free. Try to hack that, and share pictures with your friends : http://twitpic.com/photos/eddiemill. Beware if you’re a do-er, designer, for that capitalistic parasite who will be a pimp to you. It’s like, take the QEG plans and try building them,live with and be happy or teach n bring in others once that seeds and manifests again. Free materials are there, they manifest: if you’re thinking things like cardboard, you’re #doinitright. http://github.com/em-che Finally, the webshare on wikis and how-to sites being what we use to teach society and to learn.
What would be the proper process? Well, first of all I would say come discuss it: http://opalternative.tk. It’s like, either we adopt something new or else we go on with what will be a pyramid scheme re-inforced for life. Its very difficult to beat their scheme that’s as it turns out pretty deeply coded. Fuck the system! If you take the alternative path from money, we’ll win for the future, not only Earth but other planets as well. How big? Can be #allofus.
We’ve human competence, and freedom to gain. Older folks have their retirement. If needed to use money, to end money. Let’s use the internet for this, eh>
A Global Organic Mindset 