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  • From: Sean Maley <semaley@yahoo.com>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Educating about money
  • Date: Mon, 19 Sep 2005 11:12:13 -0700 (PDT)

I'm hoping this is as popular a topic as I am
enjoying.

1. I'm not saying money needs to go away. That would
be like proposing the factory workers go find new jobs
to stop the pollution. Just as the factory can be
redesigned in accordance with it's environment and to
use minimal energy, money can be be re-engineered to
work with how people work.

2. I'm also alluding to tribalism as a paramount
social construct to implement permaculture beyond
books, seminars and isolated villages.

3. I am not suggesting communal ownership of anything;
free loaders kill a community every time. The
ownership of "land" should be regarded in the same way
as air, water, and progeny; we all need and deserve
the means to survive and prosper. A house is property
to be owned, not the land it temporarily rests upon.
It takes learned skill, time, and natural resources to
build a home. There should be compensation to those
who are knowledgeable and able to build them when they
are needed.


-Sean.

--- Marimike6@cs.com wrote:
> << Money makes it appear fair for one person to
> retain their given possessions over others.
> Superficially, this certainly looks to distribute
> resources according to who deserves it. Then again,
> our true physical needs are air, water, food,
> shelter, and reproduction. Most of us are swimming
> amidst our needs, but no longer recognize what it
> looks like. If we lie there in the urban park,
> basking in the sun, pulling up dandelion greens to
> eat... we literally risk arrest: >>
>
> ***
>
> Cometh now the Devil's advocate (again).
>
> The experiment has been tried already, that we level
> everything and give everyone an equal share. It
> didn't work out as well as predicted. When we cease
> to respect private possessions we start our trek
> toward a condition where no one has any, and the
> strongest among us owns it all.
>
> I suppose it was Aristotle-- one of the Dead White
> Guys anyway-- who counselled that we should aspire
> toward the Golden Mean. To me that means we don't
> want to err on the side of defining all value by its
> monetary number (the condition our culture
> approximates today). But we also don't want to erase
> all monetary value entirely, as it provides one of
> the bases by which you and I get to have things like
> these computers, and houses we don't have to build
by
> hand if we're busy doing something else.
>
> We have invented this amenity as a convenience. It
> should be our handmaiden, serving our purposes. It
> shouldn't be our master-- or worse, the end-all of
> existence.
>
> There are many things wrong with the Law now too--
> as there are many things wrong with money. But
should
> we then erase the Law entirely, and live in our
> primal state? Or should we work toward achieving the
> reasonable middle, where money alone does not write
> the law but men and women of good will get to
provide
> some input into its shape and intent.
>
> Post note: As I recall from living in the co-ops
> back in 1966, the arrangement whereby no one owned
> anything was very popular with the lazy layabouts
who
> brought nothing home for the table. In time it grew
> less so with the people who were doing all the work.


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