posted by jim on April 4, 2010

from Democracy Now; some rights reserved.

“If it is not controversial…If it is not dangerous, if it does not ask us to consider changes that frighten the establishment, it is not about democracy.” -Paul Woodruff, First Democracy: The Challenge of an Ancient Idea.

I’m leading a reading group on democracy at the Northern Virginia Ethical Society using Paul Woodruff’s book First Democracy: The Challenge of an Ancient Idea.

Arundahti Roy writes about the experiment of liberal democracy in India…but is it really democracy: I am eager to read her new work.

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Tags: arundhati roy, democracy, field notes on democracy: listening to grasshoppers, first democracy: the challenge of an ancient idea, paul woodruff

posted by jim on March 26, 2010

Earth Hour is March 27th, 8:30 to 9:30 pm. Power down, turn off the lights, save some fuel. I think it’s useful and fun to practice carbon sequestration. For all our schemes at sequestering carbon, nature does it better. Coal, oil, and tar sands are all examples of the way carbon has naturally been sequestered and energy efficiency and alternative energy is the best way to go in my humble opinion. So instead of coming up with elaborate schemes to sequester carbon let’s just not burn them. Let’s just keep the oil in the soil, the coal in the hole, and the tar sands in the land (I didn’t make that up, by the way). Tree Hugger suggests that it makes a difference:

“One of the big myths about Earth Hour is that it doesn’t actually make any difference, that the generators are running anyways. But the generators run on schedules and the operators now take Earth Hour into account. In Ontario, Canada, they dialed back the generators and reduced power generation by more than 6%…

In the City of Toronto, power consumption dipped 15.1% (a lot of people were into it here). In the Philippines, power saved was equivalent of shutting down six coal fired plants for an hour. Even Dubai cut back by 200,000 kWh.”

Over at Crunchy Chicken, Deanna Duke suggests you have some Earth Hour hanky panky. We plan to have an Earth Happy Hour block party amongst the neighbors in our 50 townhouse neighborhood. I don’t what percentage of our neighbors we’ll get to turn off the lights, but I’ll let you know.

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posted by jim on March 17, 2010

See Homegrown (see their website at urban homestead) and many, many other environmental films at the D.C. Environmental Film Festival March 16th through March 28th. This family grows 6,000 pounds of food on 1/5 acre.

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Tags: d.c. environmental film festival, dc, dc environmental film festival, grow your own, intensive agriculture, Path to freedom, urban agriculture, urban homestead

posted by jim on March 16, 2010

I’ve been blogging for over a year, so happy new year. I like to think of Utopian Economics as a crossroads, of sorts. A place where high tech meets low tech, where people come from different places to produce abundance for their own benefit, their community, or their planet. I hope to encourage a cross fertilization of ideas, feral hybrids, and rabid adventurers amongst people who wouldn’t normally talk to each other. I encourage you not to think out of the box; I encourage you not to live in a box.

Your utopian economist,
jimcoli

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posted by jim on March 11, 2010

Let’s Deconstruct Healthcare Opposition for a moment-

“Americans are happy with their healthcare”-This a phrase meant to induce amnesia. The goal is that EVERYONE should have healthcare and this ditty is meant to make those who have insurance feel insecure about healthcare change. It dismisses people who don’t have insurance.

The Government Takeover of Healthcare-
This talking point goes something like this: “It’s a government takeover. Government isn’t responsive to anybody.”
Remember Drive by Births. That great idea came from insurance companies that pregnant moms would go to the hospital, give birth, and mom and infant would leave the next day. Reducing hospital stays decreases costs and increases profit. You might call that rationing health care to boost income. It was public outcry and government action that changed this. Death panels usually come up about this time, but the other side uses the terms “end of life decisions.” And that really is about you making the decisions. I mean which side is for Choice, here, anyway?

Healthcare Money is NOT a Corporate Right-
“It’s a Government takeover of 1/6th of the economy” or “A public option is Socialism”. I suppose 1/6th of the economy (or whatever the actual number) is meant to give you a sense of a Government of monstrous proportion. Socialism…well, let’s look at what we’ve got. Free market healthcare? Well, let’s assume we have something close to that. The goal of markets is to maximize profits not give everyone healthcare. Now we must say, here, that there are principled people (particularly Libertarians) who do not aspire to cover everyone. We must agree to disagree on this point for the moment because I am only addressing the many healthcare opposers who believe that the free market is the American way to go. You know those folks who want to legislate the markets into covering more people even though the market approach is to funnel people into particular demographics where they can pick and choose. The real despots here are those who say that people can’t organize and form their own market (that was called the public option), a market of people called Americans; your friends and neighbors, aunts and uncles, sons and daughter, but also anybody-anybody you may not like. That may be the rub for some people-not all.
This position is characterized by Senator Orrin Hatch: “Congress has never crossed the line between regulating what people choose to do and ordering them to do it. The difference between regulating and requiring is liberty.” This consistently Libertarian statement from someone who is not a Libertarian is just puffery. These are the vultures who leaves the working poor (and those without work) to go without healthcare by limiting our choice to just markets.
To me it is inconsequential whether you believe in markets or you believe markets are greedy. Markets simply refuse (and are unable) to provide for the General Healthcare of our nation. Markets won’t go away when Americans have a right to create their own health care public option.

Corporations-
There are people who believe corporations are legal creations that provide elite privilege to a few and there are others (like the Supreme Court) who believe that corporations are just a collection of individuals. But there is another phenomena of corporations that creates a feudal wall in our society. The employees inside a corporation get favorable benefits, flexible spending plans, 401k matches, and maybe…a pension contribution. It is not generally recognized that law not markets force corporations to distribute these benefits somewhat equally (that’s a serious distortion of the word equal, I might add, most of the benefits go to a few within the company). The average employee may not be impressed by these benefits and their tax savings but they are unimaginable to working people who work in small industry and the working poor. But these people, who are more likely to vote, are essentially bought out of any interest in making political changes in healthcare for anyone else. In fact, talk of change makes them susceptible to political fear tactics. A public option would be a considerable weapon in weakening the power and privilege of corporations.

Category: Community & Mutual Aid, Do It Ourselves Health, Health, Utopian Economics | No Comments »
Tags: Donkey party get off your asses, Healthcare, healthcare protest

posted by jim on March 6, 2010

I like this little film. It reminds me of the experiment my wife, Amy, and I started in the 90’s. We didn’t know it was an experiment at the time. I was renting a four bedroom house, two car garage in beautiful downtown Tyson’s Corner in Virginia for $500 (just $125 for each housemate!).
We had our wedding party gather wild flowers for our wedding, became vegetarians, hung up a clothes line to block out the view of a parking garage across the street, used a push mower on those parts of the lawn we didn’t let grow into garden, wildflowers, blackberry bushes, and to be honest: weeds. We tried to avoid chain stores and chain restaurants when we could because they destroyed locality (I hated going someplace new and finding the same old chain stores). We could walk to Gucci, Hermes, and the Tyson’s Mall if we cared to. We bought used stuff at thrift stores. We grew some food and scavenged enough berries and apples from forgotten apple trees to freeze and can them. When Amy moved in with me, we shared our space with the one remaining housemate and began investigating cohousing. We started a compost pile and we bought some worms to eat our garbage in the basement. One weekend I decided that we should go on an energy fast and we unplugged everything in the house accept the refrigerator.
(more…)

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posted by jim on October 26, 2009

Last year in the Mid-Atlantic region there was a lot of discussion about the lack of acorns. Some oak trees, it seemed from some accounts, produced no acorns at all (this may be the oak trees evolutionary way of keeping the squirrel population at a sustainable level). This year was a different story: there was plenty for everybody. The squirrels had so many this year that they hardly complained when my son and I gathered a mess of ‘em and left the rest to compost naturally. So now what to do with them? Acorns take a lot of labor to prepare but they remind me a bit of wheat. I mean in their ability to serve as a staple food. Listen:

California Indians did not have to be farmers, and for the most part were hunters and gatherers. There was a ready supply of deer, fish, rabbits, fowl, native plants for vegetables, native fruits, and even seaweed. Even so, acorns are said to have been the main food of as many as 3/4 of our native Californians. Acorns were everywhere, are easy to gather and store fairly well … as long as your storage places are squirrel tight. Some groups buried baskets of nuts until they were needed.@ Siouxme.com.

I can believe that when I see so many acorns in a suburban landscape that has many fewer oak trees than it once did.
But as I was saying using acorn is a labor intensive job: it helps to have a village. Barring that, here are some techniques I found helpful to getting acorns.
1. Enlist the aid of kids. They love gathering them.
2. Use something heavy to crack them. I used a sledge hammer. We put some down on the sidewalk and I picked up the sledge hammer and dropped it on them. Imagine the early Indians (sorry, after listening to Sherman Alexie I can’t say Native American or Indigenous people with a straight face anymore) using a large wooden mortar and pestle. Once you’ve cracked them you have to take the shell off. This takes tough nails.
3. Once you have separated the meat from the shells acorns need to be leached in water. You can read how this was traditionally done at Sioux Me. I boiled the water a couple of times but then used several changes of cold water.
4. I put the meats on aluminum foil and dried them on our grill after cooking a meal (hey I’m a utopian economist, right).
5. Final step, I used an electric grinder to make acorn flour. It is slow going in my little grinder but you don’t need much. I can see where two or three people working together with a large stone or wooden pestle could do a better job. Acorns don’t have any gluten which means the flour won’t stick together like wheat does, you can use it like corn meal in your conventional recipes.
For a fantastic taste experience try this Acorn Cake recipe. I highly recommend it but heed the warning on cook time. When acorns are abundant, you get a real sense of why the Earth becomes the subject of worship and adoration in many cultures. Enjoy the abundance!

Category: DIY Community & Mutual Aid, DIY Food, Food, Utopian Economics | No Comments »
Tags: acorn flour, acorns, DIY Foo

posted by jim on September 23, 2009

photo by RachelH; some rights reserved.
Okay it is not a study, but to me it captures some sense of truth. A friend of mine was telling me something he heard: “They say in the U.S. the people are afraid of their government, and in France the government is afraid of its people.”

So who are the freer people? Je ne sais pas, je pose la question.

Category: Utopian Economics | No Comments »
Tags: democracy, equality, freedom, Healthcare, liberty, socialism, tea bags

posted by jim on September 22, 2009

photo by ClickFlashPhotos; some rights reserved.
If you have my luck, your apple orchard is all suburbia. The first apple tree I came across was on abandoned property. I found two more on the unused lawn of a corporate office next to our apartment building and one more on our apartment building’s grounds. They were remnants from the rural farm country that used to be here. I’ve lost these trees but I’ve found others. It takes a certain amount of audacity to collect these and good judgement, but I’ve never had a problem (in fact, people usually make positive comments).
The best way to collect apples is to shake the branches. This works fine for dwarf apple trees, but most of the trees I find require climbing. Shaking the trees means you can collect 2 to 3 large grocery bags (depending on the yield) of apples in just 5 to 15 minutes.
These organic (by neglect) apples are usually not the best for eating. We save the best for eating and the rest we chop up for apple sauce-removing the wormy or bad parts. We also core and slice some (again removing the bad areas) for drying and/or freezing. We use an apple peeler and corer. Just one apple tree can yield and extraordinary amount of food. I have never tried apple cider or hard cider, but these are also options I hope you have a chance to try. I often see neglected apple trees in rural areas, as well. Happy hunting.

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posted by jim on September 16, 2009

photo by Jarrod Trainque; some rights reserved.
Ayn Rand had difficulties with (and perhaps did not believe in) evolution. I first realized this when reading some of her more obscure material (The Ayn Rand Letter or perhaps, The Objectivist Newsletter). Rand made reference to an ancient primate find that indicated that primate hands had evolved for tool making before primate brains had enlarged (kudos to the person who can email me the reference). Rand was quite hostile to this idea and, it seemed to me, the idea of evolution, in general. Later I read in Nathaniel Branden’s (associate, former lover of Ayn Rand) autobiography Judgement Day that she indeed was hostile to the idea of evolution-Rand, the atheist.
But why is this so important to understanding Ayn Rand and Objectivism (Rand’s philosophy and the birther movement for Libertarianism)? Branden, himself seemed mystified by Rand’s position.
Evolution qua evolution undermines the idea of teleology and objectivism as a black and white, yes or no, either-or,moral philosophy. Rand built her philosophy on an Aristotelian model and skipped the 19th century all together. While Nietzsche and Marx were student’s of Darwin’s work, Rand ignored it and purported herself the throne of criticizing modern philosophy. But that’s the real key to understanding Rand’s blind spot. Rand was one of the most vitriolic social critics of her time. She, to this outside observer, seemed pleased to be condemning people: as moral cowards, or anti-life (not the abortion kind), or moral obscenities, just to pick out a few. She did it with great confidence in her judgement.

A moral code is a set of abstract principles; to practice it, an individual must translate it into …particular goals and values which he is to pursue. This requires that he define his particular hierarchy of values, in the order of their importance, and that he act accordingly. Thus all his actions have to be guided by a process of teleological measurement.

Rand smuggles teleological into an otherwise clear definition of a moral code. It displays both Rand’s brilliance and pettiness. She clearly states what a moral code is but by smuggling teleology into the definition she gets to define what the proper purpose of morality is.
Consider this statement by Rand: “It is much easier to acquire an automobile in New York City than a meal in the jungle.” Really? I suppose if you lack a certain sociological and anthropological (Rand loathed them both) and even economic knowledge you might make that statement. But more to the point, now you get to make hierarchical judgements yourself: a city dweller is superior to a jungle dweller (savage was a common epithet of Rand’s). Many people have and do live in comfort affluence in jungles and places we consider marginal because they have a technical knowledge and sophistication about the place they live in that we lack.
But really, this thinking just rolls over the humility that the 19th century taught us. Yes we do have to make moral judgements as Rand suggests. But if we are lazy thinkers, if we believe we can make judgements with absolute certainty and that those who disagree with us are evil or anti-life, we do it at our own peril. We diminish human creativeness, particularly in the area of morality. Consider another way:

“I would rather say that because morality appears to be a human invention, we should esteem it as we esteem such inventions as language, art and science. This esteem…does not mean uncritical adoration. Rather the reverse; I believe we express our esteem for the great moralist, poets, artists and scientists of the past by imitating their creativity rather than parroting their ideas, and by creating our own unique voices and visions and contributions to humanity’s accumulated wisdom and folly. (I always hope to add to our wisdom, but realize that the probabilities are that I am, just as often, adding to our folly.)”

Robert Anton Wilson; Natural Law: or Don’t Put a Rubber on Your Willy (Sorry this book is out of print).
Not surprisingly, what is left of the Objectivist empire realizes this is an important concept in the face of modern evolutionary thinking. Harry Binswanger has a book called The Biological Basis of Teleology Concepts. The book is rather low on my rather large book list. Here is a description of a Binswanger lecture on the 9/11 attacks.

The war on terror represents, not merely a clash of civilizations, but a clash of fundamental ethical premises: the premise of life and the premise of death. America was attacked, Dr. Binswanger argues, because it upholds and embodies the value of life, while its enemies scorn life and worship death.

What brilliant insight Dr. Binswanger brings to understanding 9/11! (I’m being ironic if you didn’t catch that.) Life or death ladies and gentlemen, or maybe something a little bit more complex than that? Maybe a lot more complex than objectivist philosophy is capable of providing.

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Tags: Ayn Rand, Barbara Branden, evolution Ayn Rand, Nathaniel Branden, objectivism, Robert Anton Wilson, rubber on your willy