Homestead mailing list

["clanSkeen" <sgian AT planetc.com>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Marie McHarry" <mmcharry AT dtnspeed.net>
To: <homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Friday, November 26, 2004 8:37 PM
Subject: RE: [Homestead] second stolen election :


James wrote:

<<Global and fascist, couldn't be a worse
combination.  It's only Kerry would have been worse, Global and socialist.>>

I respectfully disagree, on a number of points though I believe I agree on
the major issue: globalism.

Consider my background. I'm the offspring of several generations of farmers,
and from the time I was about 10 and could follow the price of livestock and
grain in the papers, I understood that good export markets raised prices.
Now, we simply can't compete in global markets if we are to maintain a
middle class. No way can we produce soybeans as cheaply as Brazil, just for
example. Even our poor people need more money than any competitor to put a
roof over their heads and food in their bellies (let's not even consider
medical care because that's not really necessary for the economy).

At this point, most sectors of the US economy are propped up by government
welfare -- transferring tax money from middle wage earners (the $20,000 to
300,000 crowd) to corporations and agriculture. OTOH, we Americans are the
prize for the world market. When we end up producing nothing much, how are
we going to buy cars, electronic stuff, etc from the countries that undercut
us?


That said, I don't see that we're better off either materially or
spiritually than socialist Europe. From what I read these days, United
Europe may even overtake the US in power and prestige for maybe a generation
before the world enters a period that is dominated by the Asian countries.
Of course, if Europe and Asia have nowhere to dump the products they're
turning out, maybe all we face is a grim future.

In the meantime, I don't want some fascist Republican trying to order my
private life. I can screw it up on my own, thank you. I may not want the
restrictions imposed by the socialists, but -- of the two --


> PS: So, James, how would you address globalism? I believe that we should
> keep certain production domestic, and while my very DNA is opposed to
> tariffs, an intelligent use of such may be necessary to maintain a decent
> life.

Your DNA has good instincts.  To answer the question, though, I would not 
address globalism with the pretense of being able to fix (correct or 
overcome) its ill effects.  Here's why I say that:  No economic system, 
major system, has been in place during the lifetime of even the oldest 
person on this list which has been based on economic stabibility.  They are 
all bases on what is eumpamistically called "growth" but in reality is based 
on the plunder of some finite resource upon which they are based.  There ARE 
more or less stable economic systems and some of them have been in place in 
the microcosm for hundreds and in some cases thousands of years.  That would 
make another homestead discussion altogether since in many ways homesteading 
has at its heart the leaning toward a stable personal economy.  But for at 
least the past 85 years if not much longer than that, the idea of western 
economics (which, alas, has been exported to all over the world now) has 
operated by expoiting a finite resource and when that resource is depleted 
it sends a tendril or tentacle into some other unspoiled resouce and 
establishes itself there and sucks it dry.  That resource has been wood (to 
the point in some areas it could not be renewed), marine animals, slave 
labor, coal, topsoil, water, and many others leading up to the one that 
accelerated the process all the more - oil.   But some opine that we passed 
the point of "peak oil" some time around 2000.  With that economic resource 
no longer available to be expolited in an economy based on ever *increasing* 
resources, in the early '90's the western economies latched onto one of the 
last un-expoited resoures - trade differential and the difference between 
the economic status of the affluent and "backward" people of the world - 
that is - the expoitation of other people's labor.

So now I've come around to what I'd do to address globalsim.  Nothing. 
There's nothing can be done.  IMO globalism was a last measure to keep the 
economy from going into a fatal decline in the mid 90's maybe because of the 
oil (maybe not).  The fix can't last long.  The side effects have already 
been a sharp decline in what is produced in the US, a sharp rise in our 
trade deficit, and a sharp rise in the demand for oil (ironic, that) to fuel 
the very growth of the economies that make globalism possible.

"Growth" is accelerating.  There is a price to pay, or as Shakespeare put 
it, there will will be "a great reckoning in a small room."

> at least the socialists are addressing human needs. Fascists aren't.

Socialism is very much like the "King Saul" effect that took place with the 
federal Certified Organic standard everyone thought they wanted - they 
thought they wanted it because the imagined it would be taylor made for just 
them, perfectly suited to their needs.  It never works that way.  There are 
very few human needs that socialism need address if socialist-like 
governements (and fascists-like as well) would get off people's back, they'd 
not have the need to begin with.  Socialism no more actually addresses human 
needs than if you were to break someone's leg and give them some crutches 
address their need to walk.

> It sure seems like someone ought to be trying to figure out how to maintain
> a world economy, but instead we have everyone trying to grab his before the
> world runs out of stuff to grab.

Alas, that 'economy' in the minds and musings of most has now deteriorated 
into a vision of idle consumption.  I have begun to posit to anyone who has 
a such a vision for the world to first imagine that their vision has been 
realized and then voluntarily live NOW as if that vision had come to pass. 
For example, a friend who drives her SUV 60 miles to a rally protesting oil 
drilling in ANWR.  First live yourself as if we no longer prospected for oil 
and THEN protest it.

James