Economics is a theoretical framework that is used to justify behaviour in banking and government. It has some nasty properties, like for instance its neglect of the finite nature of resources. This has consequences when its rules dominate 100%, because economics only works if there is untapped resources that regenerate themselves somehow.
In the US we see the effects of economic thought in action. In principle there is not so much wrong with economics. Its general principle is that if there is demand it will create supply, and so in the end all problems will be solved as they emerge. However economics in the US has been infected with a parasite, a resource that has injected itself in almost every transaction, which is fossil fuels. You can’t buy anything at the hardware store f.i. without driving there (spending fossil fuels), and the stuff you buy being part plastic, supplied from some far away place, requires fossil fuels to come into existence and arrive where you buy it. This is generally the case with all stuff people need.
Fossil fuels are used in almost every transaction you make, this is a parasitic novelty of the last 70 years or so
According to the rules of economics a citizen/consumer lives in quite a barren environment, where he/she needs a job to afford what he/she buys. A person is not motivated to have more skills, and in many cases he/she doesn’t have any except some that maybe use a lot of fossil fuels, like eating meat and driving a quad or senseless diesel truck. It doesn’t matter if you are a lean hipster in the city that doesn’t sustain itself but for the fossil fuels you use, or a fat redneck in a bungalow. The economy has made it so everything you do has a fossil fuel cost, even your job.
The problem with this is simple : The consumer is not supposed to be smart. The (as we call it) destructive endpoint of fossil fuel generated products, is not supposed to distort the market or compete in it unless this is his/her job. With automation we know we don’t need a lot of smart people or a lot of physical labour (in fact we do, but it has to be at the end of a fossil fuel based logistics chain, which places it outside the US). The economy thus promotes the emergence of bland, uninterested, fatalistic people who will scream to get a big mac. Economics in the US has been too successfull in disempowering individuals and as we speak this success is still growing, as f.i. cash is removed and so economic considerations as promoted by the banks, and their ability to penalize who don’t conform start dominating behaviour completely.
We have two actors in this process as you can see above, one is fossil fuels, the other is the banks. Together they exploit whatever spontaeous talent emerges, and monetize everything to their own benefit, even education, health care etc. Why the banks and fossil fuels, why are banks so important in this process? Because they have almost nothing to wield their power. The only thing banks have is credit, which is nothing but which becomes important because people can use it to buy fossil fuels. Credit is carboncredit. Without it banks could not function one day the way they do today.
A civilization is a large community that can sustain itself
Try to do any transaction with your dollars, but make a rule that nobody can buy fossil fuels with them anymore. You will immediately see that this makes your money all but worthless. This should be a grave worry to you because YOU CAN NOT MAKE FOSSIL FUELS. Sorry for the caps, but reread the last few sentences again and again until you feel there is a problem. All your transactions depend on something you can not make, that your neighbour can not make, that nobody is born with the talent to make.
The above is a slight exaggeration, some may be organic biofuel farmers or have some rare property of land that will generate its own energy, or you may own a wind turbine that has been payed off in full. You exist, but you don’t by far determine what happens to your energy yet, you sell it into the same system that sells fossil fuels, for dollars (in the US). I am writing about the people who do need to drive to a supermarket and buy food, that does not own land. This is the super vast majority of ‘consumers’.
The way economics works is that it does its thing (create huge factories, mines etc.), then if too many people suffer they have to revolt. Then if banks realize they can’t have their carboncredit game with all that suffering and revolting, some payoff is made (social safety net) so people will return to their workstations. Then economic forces will start eroding those hardfought rights because individual entrepeneurs find themselves in hell under pressure of banks who supply their credit. This credit makes the market big and adversaries close to equal, because banks will extend credit to all parties. Warning, capslock comming : ALL BANKS COOPERATE IN THIS GAME. IT IS THEIR ONLY GAME.
The EU has had more local autonomy as countries in it competed, than the US. Therefore banks have had less grip on it and the social safetynet has been stronger. That and we don’t like to make people desperate in the EU. Still we face the same threat of economics.
It used to be different. People would be more sovereign, farmers would own their land, governments would own thier countries, but all has fallen under the control of the carbon/credit system, banks extending credit which is used to buy fossil fuels. Even the fossil fuel companies! This has lead to a less resilience on a local scale, less expertise and less inspiration in a large part of society. Whole generations are taught that if you only perform and behave interestingly you have done your job, and you are a winner if you make others follow your example (place products on your instagram).
Banks oppose renewables (even though they tell you they don’t) because they make banks obsolete and lower cost of everything in society
Now the above should make it easy to understand that as some in society feel entitled to more than others, the credit that is going around in the economy will accrue with some that are more skillfull in persuading you to share unequally (which is a natural thing). Melania Trump is beautifull, therefore many are motivated to share with her without getting anything back. Just the privilige is enough. Of course this is exactly what kept her ancestors alive and beautifyll. It’s a lucky draw this aspect of beauty, and normally it would not hurt to let beauty lead. Ivanka is a better example than Melania, because Melania doesn’t seem to sell anything, which is she doesn’t seem to create much opportunity for this unequal exchange. Ivanka does. She sells with her appearance and presentation. It doesn’t do much harm really, but it is how the economy robs so many every day, by renting some face to create unequal exchanges. This makes society unequal.
Beauty leads. Make sure you find the right things beautifull
A pretty face is like a monopoly, our mind works with ideals, it finds the ideal thing of any category beautifull because it doesn’t have to spend a lot of energy to percieve it. In nature that would mean that if our brain adjust to it (which takes a few weeks, even though our brian has evolved to do so), we will find nature beautifull. The more you get explosed to something, the more beautifull you think it is, because your brain knows it, it is easy to process. Your brain being naieve will think “This happens a lot, better like it” because in a natural environment that would not hurt you, or you would not be around! In our economy with its marketing processes, it can mean you get hurt for sure. Just today California declared Roundup (Glyphosate) a carcinogen. Monsanto sold it to millions of people to use in their garden. It is in much of US drinking water. It gets blown into the air, it persists and kills insects, birds, cats, mouses, lizards and now also : people. This is because Monsanto operates in the carboncredit economy, and you have been taught through repetition (and lies) that this is a thing to accept.
Cruelty is a result of uneven distribution of skills and power in society
Sometimes people need to cooperat to match the skills and power of a cruel agent
Now if you don’t like this because for instance you are aware of the global heat accumulation happening (climate change) and are scared for your children or grandchildren, you may want to do something to change this. The people in the big companies, and many employees, won’t. They fully believe they do a great job, have a great life, work very hard. Even though they all use fossil fuels they can’t produce themselves. You, who wants to change things can do only one thing : Reduce transactions that involve fossil fuels. Eliminate them. You will be going against the strongest force in the economy, that to push fossil fuels in every transaction.
A great way to santize our economic models is by taking out all the banking system numbers. They make no contribution to the GDP, only creation of value by manufacturers.
Most people on the planet live without any fossil fuels in their lives. But they are usually poor (and the World Bank is trying to ‘help’ them). Today this is no longer necessary. You can go off grid, have organic food, use equipment to farm it which you run on electricity or biofuels (if necessary). You can have a closed system in which most people work some of the time to keep everyone happy. It requires education and development of local skills, but the institutes that own and develop skills can be coowned by you (instead of being a debt cash cow for banks). The only thing you have to do is to see the things that are bad for you as ugly, and those that are actually good for you as beautifull. This requires you to learn and expose yourself to them.
Detach from beauty you don’t control, learn to find the right things beautifull
You reading this may be able to choose your experiences, and know there is veracity in the above. Then you need to start to move to places where you can see nature as it is, where you can organize and learn to have access to skills and services that you need. I’m not saying at all that you need to move into a straw hut, but just that you have to give what is yours, your life and effort and resources, to those that are trying to make an equitable exchange. To those that you know will not try to capture you and dumb your down. To those that are close so they can be held accountable.
One of the important things the above detachment from the carboncredit economy requires is going bankrupt. This seems to be a terrifying thing, but it happens all the time. Why? Because if most of the debt you have is caused by fossil fuels, and you can not make fossil fuels, then you can not repay it. Ever. Don’t talk about earning the money to buy the fuels and thus repaying it, because you know those are different fossil fuels. New ones, made available by new credit to capture new activity in a debt trap. If you worked for a farmer and got bread from him as pay, and you ate it, then yes, you would have to work again to eat again. But guess what : banks don’t work for the fuel, fossil fuel companies don’t work for the fuel (yes a super marginal bit ok). You can make grain grow to make your bread, but you can’t make fossil fuels no matter how hard you try. The debt, if it keeps you from freeing you from the economy, is not meaningfull to you. People should support each other as they go bankrupt if they must.
Removing yourself from the ‘economy’ can also take the form of going off-grid. This seems to be a possible trend in the future.
A world is possible to reach that does not have the perverse incentive to burn fossil fuels in every transaction. But banks can not help us to get there because they are the ones that so desperately want us to need fossil fuels, because they live of transactions (you get that without caps I hope). So to extract ourselves from the carboncredit economy and its destructive and repressive forces we need to orient towards the things that are truely beautifull, the natural, the sovereign, the free. This will mean we educate ourselves, we find problems are more complex than we think, and that complexity will start to look beautifull as we do.
We don’t have to be autarkic (totally self reliant) at all to get to this place at all. Cooperation is one of the remaining free resources, one the economy will try to undermine by making us suspicious of each other. Black/white, man/woman Christian/Muslim every soccer, football and baseball team. It would be fine if those teams where the best players of your local community, but they are not, they are a thing of beauty that has been coopted by the banks to divide you and entertain you as you find you have no freedoms in your life.
Make a national pharmacueutical company, one that only uses renewables, only sources sustainably and as close to the factories as possible. One that ships by electric transport and one that supplies energy to the grid to power those means. One fully owned by the patients, who are trained to make the medicine and process the constituents. It will be nearly free. Even just being able to make medicine locally can cut cost dramantically (as a dutch pharmacy in a poor neighborhood of my city is proving). Just an example. You can make up many.
To be continued..