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  • From: David Travis <djtravis@hotmail.com>
  • To: <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] conservatism
  • Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2008 21:51:40 +0000



rafter t. sass wrote:
> Thank you, David, for expressing that so well.
>
> It sometimes seems like folks confuse markets with capitalism.
>
> On one hand, there is the traditional town square market, like you
> see daily or weekly in village and small cities in most of the world.
> (You know, the one that all our urban farmers' markets are trying to
> find their way back to.) On the other hand, there are the commodity
> markets of massive transnational corporations, and the consumer
> culture they require. Let's not confuse the former - community-based
> markets - with the latter - corporate, commodity markets. And
> capitalism, lest there be any confusion, is about the latter.

Rafter,

That's a really good point. People have been selling the fruit of their labor
at market for thousands of years. But the modern business corporation, as a
model, is only a little over 100 years old. Wage labor -- the very idea of
"having a job" -- was very rare only 200 years ago. And the class of people
who survive in society by investing in the stock of privately owned companies
is barely 300 years old. So all of this stuff is very new, and it's been
changing the entire time. Agriculture bas been around for around 10,000
years. It's just amazing that people can foresee us changing something that
old, yet think it's unlikely that we could ever do without something so new.


> We all make the system, I have no doubt about that - it's not as
> simple us benevolent, intelligent permies, and those greedy, ruthless
> corporate CEOs. But the folks who have most outrageously
> disproportionate ecological (and economic) footprint have always
> promoted the idea that the current system is natural and inevitable.
> This has been the case since feudalism, and before.


Sad but true. What's amazing is the widespread faith among people who have no
apparent vested interest in the survival of global capitalism -- indeed, even
people who have knowingly or unknowingly been harmed by it -- that somehow
"the market" will work itself out. Scandal after scandal, disaster after
disaster, a lot of people truly believe that the same forces which got us
into our current predicaments will magically get us out of them, and that a
system that has always favored the short-sighted and exploitive will
mysteriously start making decisions that are far-sighted and just. I
sometimes imagine the good that would happen if people simply shifted that
misplaced faith into an equally strong conviction that things must and will
change.

- David
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