The New Beginning: Kevin Carson

But infrastructure projects like big dams and the Interstate Highway System were created to make the mid-20th century model of centralized, bureaucratic, mass-production capitalism profitable. You can thank the Interstate’s artificially cheap long-distance shipping costs, in large part, for driving local canneries and breweries out of business, making large-scale agribusiness competitive against local food production, and for the Walmart “warehouses on wheels” distribution model that’s destroyed Main Street retail. You can thank heavily subsidized irrigation water from the big dams for making giant plantations in California artificially profitable. The goods at Walmart or the lettuce in a bag at the supermarket may look cheap, but you pay the hidden cost on April 15.

More on the collusion between Big Government and Big Business.

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

David Korten: What is Your Vision for the Future

Growth or Equality: Two Competing Visions for America’s Future by David Korten
David Korten on how closing the wealth gap can open the way to a fairer, more prosperous economy.

Related:
Three More Growth Fallacies by Herman Daly
Gus Speth: ‘Ultimate insider’ goes radical by Wen Stephenson
As Spain's Recession Darkens, Alternative Economies Rise
“Making Wholeness Heals the Maker”: Why Human Flourishing Requires the Creative Act by Nikos Salingaros
Technology + God = Meaning in Work? By Luciano Corbo

Organic Agriculture Plus Fifty Shades of Gray
Is A Faulty Stanford Study Putting Kids At Risk?

Kevin Carson, The Whole World is Watching

Uhmerican Consumerism - An Ugly Sight to Behold:
Life at (a cluttered, stuff-filled American) Home
Life at Home in the Twenty-First Century
UCLA news
Stylist
CS Monitor

History of New Society Publishers - Specials.

Saturday, September 01, 2012

Some C4SS Stuff

Kevin Carson, George Washington vs. the Licensing Cartels

What if the problem is not with the licensing, but with the scale and the bureaucracy that is doing it? What if it were in the hands of local guilds, with oversight by the government?

Kevin Carson, For Fake Corporate “Libertarians,” The World’s Just one Big Billy Jack Movie

Students for a Stateless Society (re)Introduced

Thursday, August 30, 2012

Good work in the South Bronx.

Green Bronx Machine

Stephen Ritz: A teacher growing green in the South Bronx

YT video of the above
Another TEDx talk: Green Bronx Growing Machine

Welcome to the Green Bronx Machine
Expert Q&As Green Bronx Machine with Steven Ritz
Edible Schoolyard

From earlier this year:
Bronx Breakdown: Star Bronx Teacher Banished to Basement & More (Updated)

Related:
SUSTAINABILITY: Our future (Part 3)

Kevin Carson, Obama’s Last, Desperate Attempt to Save Capitalism

Sunday, August 26, 2012

Kevin Carson on Libertarianism

Kevin Carson, Libertarianism and Liberalism: What Went Wrong

He begins with a strong claim about early liberalism:

1. The problem with mainstream libertarianism is its almost total departure from its radical roots. Early classical liberalism was a revolutionary doctrine, which declared war on the most entrenched class interests of its day. Even the most mainstream of classical liberals (like Adam Smith, James Mill and David Ricardo) displayed considerable hostility to the landed oligarchy and the politically connected mercantilists who dominated Britain in the early nineteenth century. And the classical liberal movement included, as well, a large radical wing represented by thinkers like Thomas Hodgskin, who saw the new capitalist system as a bastard fusion of partially free markets and industrialism with the old feudal class system. For Hodgskin, the new industrial capitalists were amalgamating with the old landed aristocracy to form a new ruling class. The capitalist system that was coming into existence was not a free market, but a new class system in which capitalists controlled the state and used it to enforce special privileges for themselves, in exactly the same way that the landed interests had controlled the state for their own interests under the Old Regime.

Misc.
The Next Big Thing: Neomedievalism
The world is fragmenting, badly. Gird yourself for a new Dark Age.

But are those big cities sustainable?

Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Items of Interest, 31 July 2012

Begun on July 16.

Culture’s Dead, We’ve Betrayed It—Can We Save It? by Andrew Haines

While a wholesale, artificial approach won’t get us to this spot, there are nevertheless things we can do to help this culture along. Foremost among them is to foster real community—meetings of people in the flesh. These should center not simply around discussing ideals, nor the totally banal; they should incorporate objective human goods like food and music, and they should draw from the cultural tradition whence notions of “aesthetic” and “goodness” arose. They should be pockets of humanism, but with a new and very self-aware intentionality.

I had a brief exchange with a Blackfriar about evangelization after I claimed that the "old ways were best, too bad they're not being used now." What old ways? "A strong local Christian community with one-on-one outreach - the "early Church" model, with an emphasis on the word community since the word doesn't really apply to most parishes. I don't see the ideal being obsered in the big metropolitan areas in the U.S., at least. Granted, there are many obstacles to that ideal being realized, but it would be good for theses to be recognized and addressed, so that people are no longer comfortable with the status quo." He had initially posted the above Apple video as a possible model for new evangelization efforts. wage slavery makes great demands of our time and two income - less resources, etc.

Part of the problem with parishes as community is that we have much more mobility so that people don't just socialize within their villages or local communities as we once did. It is still evident and very important in more agrarian societies, but not in the urbanised modern world. As such, we have to use new ways to build community, to give a sense of belonging. The Apple video above shows that a community can be formed out of a desire for excellence. In a Christian context, this would mean a love of virtue, and indeed, a love of God who is the Most Excellent. Evangelization, then, would mean letting that excellence be shared and seen and enjoyed by others – acts of charity and of preaching.

Fellowship was to be sought in the pursuit of excellence - what Apple promotes in its company ethos should be adopted by Christians, who would form associations not on the basis of local proximity, but on a common task or work. I responded:

Mobility (and mass urbanization) is possible only because of cheap energy. I would prefer the Church be ahead of the curve than behind it when it comes to adjusting to the coming loss of cheap energy, but it may not happen. Community/communion/friendship should be based on excellence but it also requires that one live with the other --"quality time" doesn't make up for lack of time, just as in parenting.

He ended with the implicit claim that this was not being realistic: " So, are we going to preach to the world that exists, or do we need to create that ideal world before we preach? I go for the former..."

Catholic ecclesial movements of the 20th century seem to be a response vocational model - ecclesial movements I have mentioned before that Fr. Louis Bouyer asks this question in his The Church of God, and I think his answer, that the local geographic parish maintains its importance in the life of the Church despite changing times, is right. Those who have an apostolate to preach or teach or administer the sacraments may have to meet the people where they are; but what of the laity? What are they supposed to do? The thing is that in our false meritocracy, very few people stay loyal to the company. There is a lot of changing of jobs, and very few stable friendships that survive the transition to a new workplace. (Especially if one moves to a new city or state!) More often than not, the people at work keep you company while at work or lunch, but you see very little of them when you are off work. You may get to be close with some, but if you change companies, they will probably drop out of your life, sooner or later. The human heart seeks stability and permanence, but we ignore this because we have to provide for ourselves or our families, or we have to follow career opportunities.

The recent NYT article, Friends of a Certain Age, casts light on the predicament of many young adults.

The Evolution of English
Robert Nisbet, Conservatives and Libertarians, Uneasy Cousins
Returning to the Path of Wisdom: Plato, Tolkien, and Technê by Jerry Salyer
Kevin Carson, The Phony “War on Cops” and the Real War on Us
Can Organic Farming Feed the World?
Resilience through simplification: revisiting Tainter's theory of collapse (part 1) by Samuel Alexander - complete
Resilience through simplification: revisiting Tainter's theory of collapse (part 2)
More from the Simplicity Institute

Korean Consumerism: Photos Highlight Korea’s Plastic Surgery Obsession

Music: Froberger Suites And Toccatas By WENDY GILLESPIE

Catholic: Community and Christian Life by Br. Vincent Ferrer Bagan, O.P.
Eastern Christian "Introduction to the Liturgy" (Part 2)
Gift and Greed: Why Benedict Is Right and Mandeville Was Wrong by John C. Médaille

Misc: Triple Aught Design shop visit :: San Francisco, CA