[ox-en] Peace on earth
- From: Patrick Anderson <panderson altiris.com>
- Date: Fri, 05 Dec 2003 17:01:34 -0700
Peace on earth through personal sovereignty.
Personal sovereignty through sustainability.
Sustainability by meeting organic needs.
Meeting organic needs through land ownership, thermally stable shelter, agriculture (agriculture is selbstentfaltung?), and non profit insurance.
SUMMARY:
What are our economic goals? Do we really want prosperity?
If you were king of America, what would you do? You have hundreds of billions of dollars at your fingertips to be used on any whim. How do you proceed? Do you think paying the Department of Offense will do it? Certainly it will keep/create those types of jobs. Using DOO products to target water purification plants and power stations also ensures cleanup jobs after the payload is delivered. Maybe the imperialists are right. It will surely generate revenue.
You may think economic policies are designed to ensure every citizen has what they need and want. But is that really the goal of capitalism? Do kings really want their subjects to be self sustained? Why or why not?
Economics generally attempts to attach rewards that drive humans to goals that may not drive them.
Economic systems may or may not declare their goals, or they may lie about them. Even if they do declare them, and even if they are altruistic, those goals may be comprimised by a hacker.
It is easy to see capitalism abhors solutions. No business would be happy if their product or service were suddenly unimportant because a solution had been found.
Bare bones capitalism is based on supply and demand. It is a game system meant to drive citizens to work and consume. The original goal of capitalism may or may not have been altruistic, but there is a bug in capitalism. A bug that allows hackers use to exploit others.
I think there are two economic hacks currently in effect.
The first hack I call "Artificial Scarcity". It relies upon the difference between the perceived and actual supply of some thing.
The second hack I call "Demand Inflation". It is related to AS in that AS can be used to increase DI, but DI can be achieved in other ways too (creating a real scarcity through destruction, popularity, advertising).
AS is the more dangerous of the two, and is what I will concentrate on here.
One day some clever apes noticed the 'supply' presented to those in need didn't have to be the same as the true supply available.
Later, some even more dangerously clever apes decided to begin pretending intellect is property. They then proceeded to LOCK CLOSE all they could to create even more scarcity.
Not satisfied with this, they also began pretending the future potential of property and intellect is _also_ property. This pre-emptive strike has us reeling in shock and awe - probably because we weren't prepared for the depravity of the lie.
Anyway, it seems reality may be adjusted through lies or through legislation.
Lies can create an "artificial scarcity" of supply by pretending you don't have the solution, or you don't have enough to share.
Legislation can be used to pretend intellect is a physical object.
Legislation can be used to stop access to solutions.
Artificial scarcity is an unneccessary burden on society which LOCKS CLOSED solutions to decrease sustainability.
The concept of property appears (in my mind) in 3 forms:
Real Property, Intellectual Property, and Property Potential.
REAL PROPERTY (RP):
Real Property is the only true property. It consists of animate objects, inanimate objects and land.
RP ownership is important. We each need to fulfill our organic needs of air, water, food, shelter, clothing, sanitation, transportation, medicine. RP allows individuals the opportunity to address many of these issues.
AIR: change legislation to allow clean air, not "Clear Skies".
WATER: roof water funneled to cistern, solar water still cleans for drinking.
FOOD: Local agriculture (gardening) has historically helped support the peasant.
SHELTER: Make it straw bale construction on the north and glass/movable-mirrors on the south to create a thermally stable structure.
CLOTHING: Let's grow cotton, flax and hemp on our own property. A community center would house the processing equipment.
SANITATION: composting toilet, grow sopafina, goat milk soap, vegatable oil soap
TRANSPORTATION: human/solar/electric/ethanol hybrid cars and buses (lower you fare and increase your health - work out on the {commutersize, exerpool, gymmute}.
MEDICINE: grow many solutions. change legislation to allow.
Sadly, hoarding has made land artificially scarce. Some hoarding may be done somewhat innocently. But much of it is used to purposefully remove sovereignty.
Citizens suffer when too many of them own too little of the land. When 3% of the population owns 95% of the land, and they choose to that make that property LOCK CLOSED, capitalism flourishes because of the blossoming of need for food creates jobs. This activity uses "bubble up" economics to engorge those with the most.
There has always been enough land but allowing every citizen realistic access (even "work 50 years attempting to pay two mortgages, end up bankrupt" is not realistic) to even just 1/4 of an acre of land, and some education/technology about sustainability would destroy the economy while causing the poor to flourish.
Recognition of this gave rise to many forms of slavery. From indentured servitude (alive and well for the majority of US consumers) to the legal slavery of coal mine workers in debt to the Company Store, to the Taco Bell tomato pickers trafficked in Florida, to the Shah Makhdum Garments Factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh in which Disney employs garmet sewers for between 12 and 18 cents per hour.
Artificial scarcity has historically been used to enslave workers. Without realizing we were being fooled, we accepted the various proposed scarcities as real. Today artificial scarcity of land, food and water, especially when combined with debt, is used to sustain Free (as in slavery) Trade. The WB and IMF excell here.
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY (IP):
IP is a term RMS would have us reject because of the confusion and assumptions it causes through oversimplification.
IP is an ever increasing target designed by its creators to eventually LOCK CLOSED everything that is not Real Property. IP explicitly includes all human intellect and implicitly attempts to include all of Property Potential (PP).
Luckily IP legislation only turns non-property things into property. It doesn't say what state that property is in.
PROPERTY POTENTIAL (PP):
Of course potential is not real property either. It is further complicated by IP's attempt to absorb it. PP legislation allows an ape to LOCK CLOSED the capacity and future capacity of property.
RP Potential animate (RPPa): Monsanto has licensing terms for some agriculture seed to stops citizens from propagating, do some animals (say a purebred) have licenses restricting mating? What about the human animal? Rockafeller drug law artificially scarcifies plants that have been used for millions of years.
RP Potential inanimate (RPPi): Water privatization makes a killer profit. Stopping citizens from utilizing the full potential of any hardware (disallowing CPU overclocking, disallowing using game consoles as home computers, cell phone non-interoperability, can't refill some ink jet printers, etc.) Gluttonous land ownership creates AS of land which either starves people to death, or forces them to work for sub-human wages, water privatization kills people by denying them access to water, AIDS drug production restriction ensures high profit and continued customers.
IP Potential (IPP): Stopping citizens from reverse engineering software or designs. Stopping citizens from improving designs (dishwashers, lawn equipment, etc.)
Property can (in my mind) be in 3 states:
PROPERTY STATES:
LOCKED CLOSED:
RPPi: Citizens should have the right to lock enough real property closed to allow personal sovereignty without denying others. Many countries have ownership problems with 3% of the population owning 95% of the land.
RPPa: Stopping animals, humans, plants, spores, etc. from reproducing?
IP: Closed source software. Winmodems. Billy Gates loves these kind of gates.
IPP: DMCA stops citizens from realizing potential of hardware.
UNLOCKED:
RPPi: Some water, some land. Some private property. Some public property.
RPPa: Luckily most not yet LOCKED CLOSED.
IP: Public Domain, many Open Source licenses. Billy Gates loves these kind of gates.
IPP:
LOCKED OPEN:
RPPi: Need license to combat land hoarding and water privatization.
RPPa: Need license to ensure future sovereignty.
IP: Free Software (including the GPL). Billy Gates hates these kind of gates. I thought it was terrorists that hate freedom.
IPP:
CONCLUSION:
Citizens need private land ownership for true sovereignty.
We should LOCK OPEN most of Real Property, all of Intellectual Property and all of Property Potential to protect ourselves from hoarders.
Low cost technology mixed with old time wisdom can create a world overflowing with abundance. We may need to LOCK OPEN some land.
Begin the new economy today by asking a local business to allow the growth of gifting plants on their property.
Imagine pecans, almonds, peaches, apricots, raspberries, blueberries, cranberries, grapes, wheat, oats, rye, stevia, Salvia Divinorum for exploration, Ma Huang for pseudoephedrine (think Sudafed) and ephedrine (as always, be very careful about what you consume), coca (careful, addictive) for local anesthetic, marijuana for stress, poppies for opiates (careful). Change legislation to ensure citizens are never jailed for what they consume. But make the legislation tricky so that the dangerously addictive drugs become less important. Maybe this: addicts are supplied with treatment, but must do volunteer work (somewhat jailed, more like house arrest) in the same treatment center for some length of time. This will help sustain the treatment center while exposing the addict to others with same/similar problem.
Most businesses care little about their vegetation. Their primary concerns are 1.)"looks ok", 2.)"low cost/maintinence". Because of this, annuals may be less appropriate. It can especially easy to choose a gifting tree or perinnial shrub if modern organic techniques are used to keep care and chemical danger low.
The Gifting Plant Propagation Project helps citizens choose gifting plants by paying some percentage of the initial cost of the plant. The participant signs the GPPP contract requiring them to propagate that plant some number of times (dependent upon the initial cost covered) within twice the amount of time it normally propagates, and to ensure that propagation is moved to another citizen (whether by selling or by gift) which has never before participated in the GPPP. The original plant and any of its offspring are covered by the Communityism Plant License which is designed to ensure all citizens have the freedom to use these plant genetics.
OTHER:
We must regain control from Google. The algorithm must be exposed or made unimportant. A community is not sovereign when their information (or the lens into that data) is LOCKED CLOSED. A community accessible search engine (maybe use some storage concepts from FreeNet?) will give us back the keys.
Applying the GPL to land is like saying "I built this fence because I'm told I have to pretend this is property. I have LOCKED OPEN the gate because it doesn't hurt me and it helps others. If you want to build on what I started - sharing my fence, you must install a LOCKED OPEN gate to allow access to your property."
Gifts are the Achilles heel of artificial scarcity.
Solving problems destroys jobs.
Some gifts solve problems.
Some gifts destroy jobs.
Globalization is simply extended capitalism.
Pretend this new economy spreads suddenly across America. Pretend 90% of the citizens participate. Everyone is taken care of, but nobody is "making money". With no federal income tax, The Military Industrial Complex begins to fade. The Department of Offense becomes less important. We regain control from the corporations. We can easily boycott anybody since we have replacements. When the DOO begins bombing us to regain control, they will have to bomb every individual house since we won't need the supply lines they usually bomb (over there).
They say boycottmadeinchina.org , but what will the slaves do when they are layed off after you didn't buy from Walmart? We need to mend the problem from the ground up instead of pulling the rug out. Every time I buy a slave labor item I should set aside that same amount of money towards creating personal sovereignty in those whose backs I am walking on.
Corporations such as Bechtel create artificial scarcity of water through water privatization. Water privatization is a horrifying reality in parts of Africa now. People die when those holding the keys increase the price.
DeBeers artificially scarcifies diamonds by buying up all the mines while keeping the bulk of the diamonds locked up.
Many software vendors use AS to collect money long after the work to create the product is completed.
IP law grants citizens the power to control the thoughts and actions of others - even if the imprisoned concepts were discovered independently.
SUBOPTIMAL MATTER DUPLICATOR:
Solar powered.
Requires water.
Currently mostly Public Domain.
Large footprint.
Slow. Some things as quick 2 months. Others up to 10 years.
Can be portable.
Fails often. Often unexpectedly.
Can be attractive and/or discrete.
Can be nearly automated.
Smells beautifully.
Can be temporarily located on another's real estate to boot-strap the society.
Requires real estate ownership for full personal sovereignty.
Potential to "save the world" when combined with other concepts of sustainability.
The Free Plant Song [modified from The Free Software Song]
[To the melody of "Sadi Moma"]
Join us now and share the plant seeds;
You'll be free, farmers, you'll be free.
x2
Hoarders may get piles of money,
That is true, farmers, that is true.
But they cannot feed their neighbors;
That's not good, farmers, that's not good.
When we have enough free plant seeds
At our call, farmers, at our call,
We'll loose the bonds of financial slavery
Ever more, farmers, ever more.
Join us now and share the plant seeds;
You'll be free, farmers, you'll be free.
x2
Melody of Sadi Moma, a Bulgarian dance tune.
(Dash means previous note continues;
there are seven beats per measure.)
D-CB-A- B-CBAG- G--A--B C--B-BD A--A--- CDCB---
D-CB-A- B-CBAG- G--A--B C--B-BD A--A--- A------
next week: Robo-Food-Prep = Microcontroller based kitchen solution lowers the importance of packaged and/or prepared food.
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http://www.oekonux.org/