Homestead mailing list

[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

> >What would you propose to restore the manufacturing base? I
> don't see a way other than tariffs, which would have the possibility
> of protecting industries that could not at the time compete on the
> world market, but how do you allow a company to innovate otherwise in
> this global economy?


I don't have a 'what we could do' solution, and I haven't seen any one else's 
solution to the problem that holds water either.  Tariffs won't do it.  My 
point in this would be just because there is no ready solution under hand, it 
does not make us any less the world's biggest parasites.  So big of parasites 
we 
are that we are willing to go to war and bomb civilians to maintain that 
status.  I just get a bit put out with the motivation for bombing everyone 
being 
attributed to oil company profits.  A mere flatunence in a hurricane compared 
to the motivation to keep our unearned and unmerited goods flowing from the 
rest of the world.

But as far as a resolution, I think that is beginning to take care of itself. 
 A global economy is utterly dependent on cheap oil.  We are in a lull right 
now, but even at that crude is more than three times what it was two years 
ago.  That is already taking the wind out of the sails of the globalness of 
the 
economy.

> 
> >You've gone back to an agrarian economy, but that's not possible for
> the majority.
> 

Everyone can't go back just the way I have.  Everyone wouldn't want to and 
everyone wouldn't be capable of it.  I'm not convinced that there aren't 
enough 
resources for everyone to do this, I don't know for sure that there are, but 
I 
 suspect that it's not really so big a problem.  I've done a lot of reading 
about what Cuba did in the wake of he demise of the Soviet Union and they had 
less resources per capita than I have.

But the world we are facing is full of new possibilities.  A friend of ours 
owns and runs a riding stable, as artificial an enterprise as you can 
imagine.  
Without gasoline and diesel to move the horses, move the patrons,. deliver 
hay, etc. etc. it would belly up in a week.  BUT as motor fuel becomes more 
and 
more scarce, the need for draft animals for everyday things like trollies, 
delivery wagons, and such will become a feasible alternative.  The savvy 
people 
in these positions are already looking at those possibilities.  

Our paradigm of going to a factory to assemble things is wasteful and in most 
places in the world it is not done.  Parts and materials are delivered to 
people's homes and the finished goods or partial assemblies are taken away.  

Do you use any of those indestructable Fortex(r) buckets?  They have gotten 
so expensive that I can nearly make one out of oak and sell it for less.  
Nearly, but it's coming.

My vision is one where people, as they have done for thousands of years, grow 
gardens and keep animals in so much as they are able.  It might be a 10' 
kitchen garden for some or a 50'x50' backyard garden with a few chickens and 
rabbits for others and then ply some useful trade to add to the general 
wealth, a 
real GNP.  The degrees and possibilies are endless. And these trades (once we 
hang all the state regulators) could include the neighborhood baker, brewer, 
cobbler, etc. etc.

There are more things, Horatio, in heaven and earth than are prusued on my 
homestead.


James