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  • From: Misha Gale-Sinex <mgs2369@attbi.com>
  • To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Greening Earth Society
  • Date: Tue, 10 Dec 2002 15:50:01 -0800

Hi Kirb, and all--

Wow Mish,

That's a lot to take in. I like the Carbon tax approach.

Green taxes are fascinating indeed. For some true leadership thinking *and action* (not just cogitating), see:

Minnesotans for an Energy Efficient Economy (ME3):
http://www.me3.org

Particularly their tax and incentives program:
http://www.me3.org/projects/greentax/index.html

The hidden costs of the fossil fuel economy in North America and Europe are largely externalized onto the rest of the world, as well as the poorest people in these nations. Primary among those costs: the military subsidy it takes to keep fossil fuels cheap.

I really will dig around for that Cliff Cobb report on the real costs of private automobile ownership.

An outstanding resource is Steve Keen's book, published in 2001, /Debunking Economics: The Naked Emperor of the Social Sciences/. From Australia's Pluto Press and the UK's Zed Press.

The chapters:

1. No more Mr. Nice Guy--why the public needs to know that economics is intellectually unsound
2. The calculus of hedonism--why the pursuit of individual self-interest dos not maximise social welfare
3. The price of everything and the value of nothing--why most products cost less to produce as output rises
4. Size does matter--why the economic argument against monopolies is invalid
5. To each according to his contribution--why productivity doesn't determine wages
6. The holy war over capital--why the productivity of capital doesn't determine profits
7. There is madness intheir method--why assumptions do matter, and why economics is so different from the true sciences
8. Let's do the Time Warp again--why economics must finally treat time seriously
9. The sum of the parts--why Keynes's criticisms of conventional economics are still relevant today
10. The price is not right--why finance markets can get the price of assets so badly wrong
11. Finance and eocnomic breakdown--why stock markets crash
12. Don't shoot me, I'm only the piano--why mathematics is not the problem
13. Nothing to lose but their minds--why most Marxists are irrelevant, but most of Marx is not
14. There are alternatives--why there is still hope for a better economics

The references section alone to each chapter is worth the price of the book, whose cover blurb states, "The purpose of studying economics is not to learn ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists."

:^D

See Steve Keen's home page as well:
http://bus.uws.edu.au/Steve-Keen/

And his Debunking Economics site:
http://www.debunking-economics.com/


ALCOA's Rockdale, TX smelter is just a few miles from us. It's the single
most air polluting plant in Texas, built in '53 and grandfathered since the
Clean Air Act passed.

Dubya's Texas. Worst air quality in the nation.


Now the city of San Antonio is giving them 16,000
acres of land to strip mine for lignite and in exchange ALCOA gives them all
of the water they pump from the Carizo-Wilcox Aquifer in order to
depressurize the water table.

Every state and federal agency has backed away from their proclaimed
regulatory role and rubber stamped one permit and waver after another. The
saddest part of the story is that, ALCOA's employees are basically being
poisoned and held hostage - accept our working conditions or lose your
livelihood. ALCOA actually busses their employees into the public hearings
regarding the new surface mine, pays them for their time at the hearings and
has them brainwashed that there is no other way to run the plant except
under present conditions.

Speaking of opening some whupass, you or someone else could write this up as a news story. I'm guessing that /The Progressive Populist/ would publish it, ditto Common Dreams. I truly do empathize with you, deeply and sadly. I grew up in conditions like you describe--"employees being poisoned and held hostage - accept our working conditions or lose your livelihood"--with oil companies being the power brokers, in our case.

People in other nations often speak of the U.S. as a bastion of privilege, and to some extent that's true. However this nation has an increasing majority who have been brutalized by economic violence, some for generations.

Most people think of the U.S. as a brand--like Nike, Coca-Cola, or Kathie Lee's K-Mart clothes. When you look beyond the prosperous corportion controlling the brand, you start seeing the sweatshops, the child labor, the environmental degradation. Again, externalized costs.

There are in fact a limited number of privileged people in this nation...though there are very many people who identify with the wealthy and their wealth, even when it is to their detriment to do so. At the same time, there are complex reasons that people are energy hogs. Later this winter let's return to this topic, as we get our household energy audit Web site together. I also have some observations on how banks--not homebuyers--drive the size of "the average American house" through their lending practices and deals with developers.

The saddest thing, I think, is a person who shows no moral sense, holding forth about others' moral judgments. There is a lovely anecdote about George Bernard Shaw that I often think of, that relates to this.

Shaw was at an upscale dinner party, sometime in the 1890s. A man of wealth and eminence was holding forth about how terrible it was, the women on London's streets who openly sold themselves for money, and how these women were reprehensible, destructive of the city's moral fiber, and should be removed or hidden away.

Shaw asked the speaker to say more about the nature of the problem.

"Well, sir," replied the speaker, "these women and girls will sell themselves for a few shillings to whoever comes by!"

I see, said Shaw. So it is a matter of them selling themselves to strangers? But I have heard of women at parties in the salons of wealthy homes, transacting their bodies for hundreds, even thousands, of pounds for a single night's entertainment of one of our city's leaders. Sometimes they know the man, sometimes not.

"That is unfortunately true," the moralizing speaker said, "though in that case,whether she knows the man or not, the transaction is somewhat more understandable. After all, which of us wouldn't accept a minor fortune for a single night's dalliance with a man of distinction!"

Everyone laughed and nudged and "hear-heared."

Shaw--who was undoubtedly more personally acquainted with the people who actually transacted their bodies for bread than anyone in that room--said, "Yes, I've heard this said. Tell me, sir, does this reflect your own beliefs?"

"What do you mean?"

"Say you were offered ten thousand pounds to spend a single night with someone of distinction. Would you?"

Everyone laughed, and the other man hemmed and hawed, but finally admitted that for ten thousand pounds for a night, yes, he'd do it.

"Would you do so, say, for five thousand pounds?"

More hemming and hawing, but the man finally admitted, yes, he'd spend a night with a rich, esteemed stranger for five thousand pounds.

"Would you do so with a poor man, for ten shillings?"

The man looked at Shaw, turned bright red, and exploded, "Sir! What do you think I am?"

Shaw looked at him levelly and replied, "We have amply established what you are, sir. Now we are merely setting the price and terms."


peace
mish





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