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  • From: Claude William Genest <genest@together.net>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Capitalism works fine,
  • Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2003 09:55:53 -0400


Someone wrote:
> I'm interestd in applying the principle of diversity to the social and
> economic domains. How would the fair marketplaces defend themselves from
> the free market we currently have?

Claude replies:
I believe portions of the answer would include Hawken's "Natural
Capitalism". What green parties around the world are bringing in are
"polluter pays" policies and eco-taxes.

The idea is to tax the bads and dissservices instead of the goods and
services. In this manner we can get more of what we want ( clean ecosystems
and jobs) and less of what we don' t want ( e.g much of what constitutes neo
-liberal "Globalization).

In this manner, markets do what they are designed to do, react efficiently
to the new input.

As David Korten points out in "When corporations rule the world" - what we
have here is NOT capitalsim but "corporatism". Adam Smith clearly postulates
that free markets sell LOCALLY and that prices reflect the TRUE COST
ecological etc.) of production.... Also, in a truly free market, many of
these corporationss would go way the of the Do-Do because they are simply on
public welfare and artifiical life support.

In other words: The answer to globalization is localization and we don't
have to reinvent the wheel - turns out that the village/town scale has
always and will always work. Better still, the wide variety of "movements"
Slow-food, Simple Living etc. are all looking for a a way to DESIGN their
dreams and hopes into reality, and that's the service we provide. We work
WITH the incoming energies...

Ten, as ecological accounting is introduced, with a corresponding set of
carrots and sticks ( incentives and disincentives) then the financial logic
of local production, consumption, recycling becomes self-evident. Here we
move to William McDonough's vision of Cradle to Cradle manufacturing,
eco-industrial parcs and industrial ecologies which I think are brilliant
developments for permaculture designers.
>
If
> Permaculture is a peaceful form of sedition,

Yes . That's exactly how I perceive it too ~

how can we prepare for the
> day when the current society (and economy) disagree with our design

Because our designs provide a peaceful way out that is neither left nor
right but way out ahead.
>
> Not what already-existing system do we want, but what not-yet-existing
> system do we want? I consider this a legitimate question for designers.

Yes, but so is the question "what is already working ?" We don't impose our
wants on the land. We ask what she's got, what she's already giving, and how
we can best serve that. Similarly, our approach to socio/political/cultural
issues is to ask what the "Pattern Language" is, and work with the elements
in that that we know to be fundamentally timeless.

Claude
>

>
>
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