what an absurd rhetorical generalization

Furthermore, I am talking about one idea of rights vs. responsibilities. I am not making any broad judgments about any religion. If you wish, I admit to attacking ONE idea from Protestant Christianity and supporting its antithesis in my own religion.

Religion is something that is important to billions of people, regardless of your atheistic ideas. Personally, I’d trust God over Greenspan any time.

You wrote:
“I am not exalting my own religion, merely citing my source”. But that is the point , that is not the right forum to bring religious arguments and
religion is not relevant in this discussion. Regarding religion, people of the same religion have completely different views regarding properties and money.
Besides, what is your execuse for attacking another religion and exalting your own religion.
You wrote:
“I personally believe the Protestant mindset of God given rights to consume the resources of the Earth is the underlying idea that is driving us to destruction. We have a God given responsibility to care for the Earth – at least as it is stated in the Qur’an.”
Lest you think I am biased against or for certain religion, as
I mentioned before I am an atheist and in my humble opinion all
religions are bunch of fairy tales full of conradictions and open to numerous conflicting interpretations. Sometimes they provide guidance and comfort in life but in other times they are big obstacles
against practical fulfilled life. And in other times they could be the
source of so much harted, bloodshed and extreme violence among people.
Again, that goes for all religions without any exception.

Economics – while a human devised word – has a place in the ecosystem and thus the natural order. More importantly how we apply economies creates a prism by which we relate to one an other and the universe as a whole. That’s like EVERYTHING. So, while we can debate and argue the value of a particular economic theory or the economist – persona – economics is vital to existence.

That said, Mr. Keye I’d suggest you take a look at this link to learn more about 21st Century Georgist economics as applied to the environmental and resource usage (and population).
http://wealthandwant.com/docs/Tideman_Applications_LVT.html

Why you removed my comment on AJ Nasreddin message. I think
my message raised a valid question and I was not out of line in any way??!!

My point was to bring to light the thinking process that we in western societies have inherited from the past. If you look back to the more religious times of the 19th century and before, most economists and businesspeople express the idea that everything on Earth was given to mankind by God to use. Although some people no longer believe in God, the idea remains. It’s much like “Thou shalt not steal” is still accepted without having to develop a new philosophical argument just because some might think the Bible is fiction. Other religions and philosophies have the idea of caring for the Earth rather than exploiting it. I’m just speaking from what I know.

Moreover, there are many other ways to look at the world. I am not exalting my own religion, merely citing my source. My second comments are in response to Hue, whose question has been deleted.

“This Krishna Consciousness is a science to understand what is the difference between a dead body and a living body.”
(A C Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada)

I applaud you and though I am a hypocrite, it doesn’t change what I notice to be true…that being a game competitor in the practice of accumulating wealth by managing/exploiting labor- including one’s own, doesn’t lead to creativity outside of the practice of doing it.

I was just responding to something Evie said.

That points to another barrier to a humane, sustainable system. Corporations are a shield and barrier to personal responsibility. Union Carbide killed 3500 or more in Bhopal and no one has been responsible. I have known people who used corporate bankruptcy to shield significant personal assets from the effect of poor business decisions and failure while businesses who sold goods to them had to absorb the losses.

It may be that the equation is so simple as number of people compared to land area and resource supply; that the designs of excess use and geometric increase are the inevitable outcomes. But, we do not know. The ‘isms’ are only designs around a common model of growth and excess, and, while effecting who has what, do not ultimately change the end result: that growth is limited to one side of the homeostatic curve. The other side is diminution and contraction.

It is our unique human adaptations that have brought us to this moment and it will the depth and range of those adaptations that determine our future. I can see a possibility for consciousness order processes to reengage the biophysical reality and guide us to reconnect our economic designs with the natural economy of the biosphere. Failing that such a reconnection will certainly be made without our participation and assistance.

Yes, partly. The first issue is that “land” is subsumed under capital and thus made invisible under neo-classical economics – the way of neoliberal free trade and the Chicago School of Econ (M. Friedman).

Once land was eliminated from the simple equation of land-labor-capital the very privatization and preditory nature of capitalism particularly as enshrined in corporatism – became what we know today – was swarmed the planet. It is not the only turn in the road that has given us this death knell economic system.

As labor struggled and found some power in the early and mid-20th Century, it precipitously lost it in the 1980s and on ward to present day. But that “power” was ephemeral because it was not soundly grounded on land and access to it and other resources essential to the creation of wealth. In other words, unions and the like were not only corruptable but did not provide more than a modicum of power to labor.

With land squarely on the page and the re-creation of our business models around the notion of worker ownership we have the beginning of radical and fundamental change. I would add but one more component – universal human needs. Without a clear understanding and application of UHN we will be forever in an unsustainable trajectory. Why? Because the purpose of work is currently narrow and based on the material. Understanding universal human needs closes that gap and acknowledges those finite interrelated needs which are mostly non-material. It ends confusion of what a human need is – of what it is to be human. Materialism (accent on ism) is not a human need. Needing a new dress or coat or car is not a human NEED. Clothing, yes, food, yes, shelter, yes, security, yes. But those needs are really ONE – the need for sustenance. There are at least 8 other needs which have to do with human development and communality – essential to the quality of life itself.

So, here’s what I would offer;
1) re-establishing land (and all natural resources) as a visiable and shared economic based on the laws of rent,
2)re-invention of worker based businesses,
3) and rejection of an economics based soley on pathalogically marketed sustenance which gives way to an obescity of the mind, and shift toward a holistic acknowledgement and fulfillment of universal human needs…

Together will lead us to an alignment of the human species with the natural order of life. Fascism is the alternative.

Have you looked at Henry George’s Progress and Poverty?

Georgist arguments are premised on all wealth being derived directly or indirectly from land – both terra firma as well as all natural resources. There simply is no human wealth without access to natural resources.

In a brilliant synthesis of this thinking, H. George makes it clear that the distribution of wealth is best (only) achieved through a rent applied to the use of the resources – particularly but not exclusively land – and that that rent would go back to the community where the resources are reside.

The economics behind this has been astoundingly replicated throughout the world but it has also, like all applications, a “loser” -capitalist resource privatization. This “loser”, today, is where the centers of power reside.

Western neo-classical economics (incorporated in the ruling class) has made every attempt to erase George’s profound and replicable work in the academic community. Even Marx is allowed to have a voice – however shunted (after all didn’t your hear “communism failed per Soviet Union) – as long as neo-classical economics which would privatize the commons which is essentially everything on earth (and perhaps beyond) continues to dominate the planet creating waste lands and urban slums as it rapes the earth and the labors of its inhabitants.

The very act of privatization has been a trajectory started during the times of conquest and continued with great enthusiasm in the USA. Our glorious preditory capitalism is based on it.

This is not a “battle” which can be waged on a large scale. It is possible to attain the kind of fair distribution of wealth through a process of communal rent. This does not eliminate the “ownership” of those things provided by capital and labor. So, a home, for example, would be owned by one or more individuals through a deed; BUT the land foot-print would be common property – humans do not make land, BUT they create the value of land. So a rent (or tax) would be applied to the land and other resource use, and not to those things created through capital and labor.

This aligns t the notion of taking (land) only what one needs and not hoarding and speculating off the “fat” of the land which is how the wealthy 1% become the wealthy 1% at the expense of the other 99%.

I do think that this is only part of the answer, but absolutely NECESSARY if there is to be a fair distribution of wealth. The other parts can be obtained through models of shared business (cooperative) and community ownership whereby the work relationships are democratically based and where owner/manger/employee become one and the same, thus reducing the tension between those persons in today’s Western (US) business/work environments. We see working examples throughout the globe. These should be nurtured and used as a point of learning and building.

The issue of our economics with its unsustainablity is nothing less than an issue of specises survival – Human species.

What about you, Hue? What are your thoughts on the matter?

Bozhidar, take a look at:

http://www.antislavery.org/homepage/antislavery/modern.htm

Lest anyone forget, communal property is always companioned with brutal, over controlling governments in proportion to the amount of wealth available. Sure, people look at the idyllic life of the Native Americans or other similar societies in past centuries, but they had limited wealth. In smaller groups, such as a tribe, people also have a voice. In larger societies, a ruling elite emerges which will be happy to tell the masses what they can or cannot do with the communal wealth while being equally deaf to their voice. I can’t imagine anyone willing to give up their freedom to be told what they can buy or not, what they have to produce or not. No one wants to live on an animal farm.

I also am not claiming that the western, credit-based capitalism is the answer – clearly it is the root of many problems the world is facing today. Part of the biggest problem is that western capitalistic democracies have removed direct responsibility from people. The CEO of a company is rarely held responsible for the poisoning of the environment and the killing thereby of people effected from the “company’s actions.” The company may be fined, heavily even, but this is just as easily written off as a business expense for the company. Imagine how different the world would be if the people in the company responsible for deadly pollution were treated like any individual criminal. I’m sure Texas would be the cleanest state rather than the biggest polluter – no CEO would like to see himself strapped to a table to get a lethal injection.

What is important for me is that people regain their humanity. Keye’s assumption, I believe, is essentially flawed because he is still working within the framework of an economic philosophy mixed in with biological arguments. He might reach his aims better if he went off and joined the Rosicrucians – their argument that over population being a real danger to the existence of our species has more sense than Keye’s argument. We have removed our biggest predator – diseases – without adjusting our mindset of how we wish to live on this planet. Other biological organisms, when their predators are removed, overwhelm their environment and kill it, eventually killing themselves as well. Humans are no different – other than having the mind to understand the process.

My belief is that economic systems will not help. People need to gain a spiritual understanding that other people are valuable, not as a resource, commodity, or consumer, but as human beings. I personally believe the Protestant mindset of God given rights to consume the resources of the Earth is the underlying idea that is driving us to destruction. We have a God given responsibility to care for the Earth – at least as it is stated in the Qur’an. Though this idea has been largely ignored due to the vastness of the planet, it is an idea relevant to the times we live in today. Today we must all look more closely at how we use our resources and the way we need to care for the planet – not just for people, but for all the flora and fauna of the planet.

In Islam, one of our underlying ideas is that what you own, owns you equally. If you don’t want to be a slave, give up your possessions. Damned if I’ll be enslaved by the State or the State’s communal property!

It would not because the likelihood is proportional to the TYPE of communism. That demands that people think. Socialism IS communism; so is every bit of New Testament rhetoric. Old Testament rhetoric is blind capitalism. (And I mean no disrespect for the present heirs of the Old Testament.) The point is: the *ethics* of these philosophies of living within communities are radically opposed to each other, and (with no particular endorsement of New Testament adherents) Jebus was a communist.

Evie thinks that because she “did it herself” she IS entitled to everything she believes, as is writ herein. It IS a class thing, and it IS a race thing. I can damn well tell Evie, or anybody, what their history is. History is not a private little garden. So, to *that* argument, I will simply say: . I can read. And the apocryphal stories handed down from Granny are NOT history; they’re tales, filtered thru just as much that filters “history” as not. History is as much what we forget as what we remember.

Every and any pump MUST be primed for it to work. The graceful and truly productive engine of economy must be primed, and that is (a) expensive, and (b) the ONUS of the *class* that has the wherewithal in excess. Period. It does not by any means translate as an ownership of that pump! If you want to hide behind denying God or whatever to save your ass from having to pay you FAIR (not equitable) *share,* that would make you a bigot. If you want to hide *with* God and all that, then you HAVE to also recognize that absolutely everything Jesus preached is communism.

Unless you don’t understand what communism is.

And THAT is the real case.

As regards Joseph Danison’s case, you’ve got yer heart in the right place, but don’t blind yourself: it IS a political issue. It is most DEFINITELY a political issue. The commons is no more; it’s robbed by plunderers and surrounded by hookers.

Two thoughts: (1) Do unto others, and (2) don’t shit in your own nest. That will solve the question of community under any conditions.

Of course, we modern intellectuals steeped in science are scandalized by this anthropomorphism. It is naive. It is the mystical participation with the natural world that is the distinguishing feature of the true aboriginal weltangschaung. Gaia is not a mother, for crissake, Gaia is an ecological system, that is to say, a vast and complex machine, a natural machine, like a cell is a natural machine, like all living things are biomachines. We will eventually understand the subtleties and crack the algorithms involved and create biomachines to suit our purposes. I’m not going to hug and tree and say “Hi, Mom!”. I’m going to calculate the board feet of lumber in that tree, the price the Japanese will pay for it, and then cut the fucker down if the environmental assessment indicates the loss of that tree will not cause the hillside to collapse. Then for relaxation, I will go home and fuck my mother up the ass.

And why not? Why not eliminate all these primitive feelings, these aboriginal vestiges of relationship, and just live a life of pure reason, utility, and enlightened self-interest? Yes, own the earth, get your slice, rip the shit right out of it to find the gold and the oil, but always remember to abide by the site reclamation laws, or at least devise some proxy scheme of ownership so you’ll never have to pay those costs, which can be onerous.

Friends, the reality of the commons is rising up to torture us all. It is gathering force in the collective memory to emerge as a living nightmare. We are beginning to experience “climate change”, the early stages of global ecological dysfunction. There is no political explanation and no political solution because it is not a political issue. It is a matter of the heart and a question of identity. Who the fuck are we?

Dog is love.