Don't Bail Out, Build Out of Our Present Economic Debacle
![buildingbig407891431_53f0fd6f7a[2].JPG](http://www.realitysandwich.com/sites/realitysandwich.civicactions.net/files/imagecache/large/buildingbig407891431_53f0fd6f7a[2].JPG "buildingbig407891431_53f0fd6f7a[2].JPG")
Once upon a time there was an economic disaster that laid low the United States of America and spread hardships from sea to shining sea and even out across the oceans blue. Then came a war of unprecedented proportions. But we beat back the Great Depression and won the Second World War. It's more than a little relevant at this point to ask, "How'd we do that?"
Far from the federal government's admonition to spend vaguely toward prosperity, delivered in the early days of sliding toward our current meltdown with delivery of our juicy little "economic stimulus payments," which were the first of this year's bail outs and which cost the United States around $150 billion dollars, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt built us out of the Depression and won the War by saying, "Don't spend, save. Invest in the future of this country and let's built it up as if we believed in its future."
The "it" that got built started out with dams, bridges, post offices, soil reclamation and reforestation projects. The government was paying people, but they actually did something. Then, with Nazi Germany on the warpath and Imperial Japan too, the "it" turned into tanks, guns, bombs and airplanes. But build as if our survival depended on it we did.
Today we wake up to discover we've been building suburban sprawl, the most inefficient form of habitat we could ever have imagined, a form so bad it renders car-based cities the largest contributor to climate change and species extinction. There's where the bizarrely expensive houses miles from anything else, with the even more bizarre mortgage terms, began and spread. There's where the mess was first and worst, compounded by the raising cost of gasoline, asphalt, car depreciation and everything else automotive. Take a map of the Bay Area or anywhere else and you will see that the per-person demand for energy and contribution to climate change goes up as population density and "mixed-use" goes down. Surprise! We are facing another World War, the War of the current built environment against the World itself.
So what to build this time around? Instead of dams, guns and bombs our economic and ecological, national and planet survival depends on building the ecologically tuned, higher density, mixed-use city with its subsystems of transit and bicycle transportation and solar and wind energy. Bail out is not the right term for infusing federal money into building a better world and I doubt Roosevelt used the term, though extreme conservatives of his time probably though of it as a bail out of the worker. Today's bail out is proposed for the people who at best could go on to loan money into action by financing something -- but what? The last big thing on their track record was exactly what imploded causing the current disaster: car-dependent sprawl, plus a certain measure of their own contagious greed.
Liberals say bail out the small guy (and don't mention the same old sprawling mess) by trying to shore up mortgages to energy-hog buildings and commutes. The general notion that the federal government should actually do something here is completely appropriate, but what?
In early 1942, Roosevelt told the automobile manufacturers it was going to be illegal to make any more cars until the war got won. They didn't believe it at first, but they got paid, too. And that's what they did: joined everyone building us out of the Depression and War. For a year and a half in the middle of the war -- amazing to our ears today -- not a car was produced. And we won. We need a clear strategy like the New Deal building up to win the Second World War. I wouldn't advise banning cars today, but I would advise building the city that simply doesn't need them. In other words, how to get out of our economic mess? Build out, don't Bail out. Ecologically tuned cities are the answer.
Image by Gunnsi, courtesy of Creative Commons license.
Tweet- 10-8-08
- Richard Register's blog
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Yes, but
I think if we take the ideals of Permaculture and mix that with Jacque Fresco's notions of society, and then throw in consensus processes like Citizen's Deliberative Councils and World Cafe Process, and anything Bucky Fuller has to say about the future, then we have a good beginning to this mess. . .
We need more support of local communities, empty out the cities to a large extent, give everyone the knowledge to become self-sufficient, and know better to control population growth AND resource usage.
We need community gardens, local currencies, and also locally accepted forms of barter and exchange that are not regulated by anything other than the people who use the local system.
Cities are great and all, but I don't think an ecologically tuned city would be anything like what we think of as cities now and as a quick example I'll reference Fresco's ideas again.
We need a complete redesign of society basically, will that happen without first extreme calamity and upheaval? Are cities even safe in such a climate as ours when things can go bad in a matter of days(they haven't come to that yet, but now with this economic crises we can see how easily things can "come out of nowhere" to bite us in the ass and throw the whole system into turmoil!).
How do we convert/transition our present cities into ecologically tuned ones that you talk about? That is a question we should all be considering. . .
Black Light in the Attic Podcast w/Serpicody & Sancho
http://blacklightattic.podomatic.com
Fresco
Yes, I was recently exposed to the work of Jacque Fresco and I think it's very inspiring. What introduced me to these ideas was the film Zeitgeist: Addendum, which I highly recommend to everyone here. It discusses (among other things) the nature of our debt-based monetary system, the role of "economic hitmen" in our foreign relations, and proposals for how we could create a resource-based society founded on the ideas of emergence and symbiosis.
If you want to read more about Jacque Fresco's work, check out The Venus Project.
The ball is in our court as well
Will the government decide to act in the best interest of the people and recognize the abundance of opportunities, or will it attempt to maintain the "in-the-box," "business as usual" approach due to the familiar vested interests? Whatever we do, it's going to require a war-like mobilization and coordination of efforts and resources. The question is whether its going to be an actual war (civil, resource, ideological, or a combination thereof) or capacity-building for creating a harmonious society. I've read Richard's book, "EcoCities" and this would answer alot of Sancho's questions, and I agree that ultimately building these visionary cities would only happen with a true shift of collective priorities.
So, it is imperative that we catalyze that shift! We can't wait for the government to make the first move- we can start our own mobilization to spread these ideas and opportunities of a better world NOW! The vision needs to touch people outside of these in-the-know forums! The time for feeling embarrassed about being "alternative" or "free-thinking" or "wise" is over, because the world vitally needs our input! I would suggest WiserEarth as an initial resource for people to learn about the whole gamut of "memes" integral to solving these problems, and connect with others to spread them. www.wiserearth.org
(If people want to brainstorm more about catalyzing the spread of these visions, you might contact me over wiserEarth, my username is also yodelheck there.)
Thanks for that, I'll have
Thanks for that, I'll have to check that book out man.
I'ts like I say, instead of supporting the slogan, "Fuck the Man!" we need to say, "Forget the Man, let's do this thing ourselves!"
Black Light in the Attic Podcast w/Serpicody & Sancho
http://blacklightattic.podomatic.com
The New Green Deal
The New Green Deal is here.
It by-passes the monetary economy and goes straight to the energetic proposal that electrical energy is political energy is personal energy (is metaphysical energy). The question is this, what if everybody was responsible for their own energy? We have the technology to make centralized power and energy be a remembrance in the history books. Everybody, that includes you, will stand up and take responsibility for our own energy in a healthy and renewable way, this includes our electrical energy to operate our lights and cell phones. In such a paradigm, we, as individuals, will be energetically aware and energetically responsible; truly living in a distributed energy existence while all connected with communication.
What will it take to realize this vision? How do we get a healthy, renewable and distributed planetary energy infrastructure for every woman, man and child? Well, its up to us to make it so, and maybe the government will help by supporting a New Green Deal. Heck, even if the government itself does not, we will remember we are the government and that you are the government and maybe you will give it to yourself. Now, that is personally empowering in more ways than one.
How to do it? Well, our friend, Van Jones of Green For All, The Apollo Alliance and the Ella Baker Center, just released his book titled The Green Collar Economy.
We have all been living to the build up of this historic transition, that is, working hard to fix/make this planet a healthy and happy place to live and dream. Here is a description of the book:
Provocative, personal, and inspirational, The Green Collar Economy is not a dire warning but rather a substantive and viable plan for solving the biggest issues facing the country--the failing economy and our devastated environment. From a distance, it appears that these two problems are separate, but when we look closer, the connection becomes unmistakable.
In The Green Collar Economy, acclaimed activist and political advisor Van Jones delivers a real solution that both rescues our economy and saves the environment. The economy is built on and powered almost exclusively by oil, natural gas, and coal, all fast-diminishing nonrenewable resources. As supplies disappear, the price of energy climbs and nearly everything becomes more expensive. With costs and unemployment soaring, the economy stalls. Not only that, when we burn these fuels, the greenhouse gases they create overheat the atmosphere. As the headlines make clear, total climate chaos looms over us. The bottom line: we cannot continue with business as usual. We cannot drill and burn our way out of these dual dilemmas.
Instead, Van Jones illustrates how we can invent and invest our way out of the pollution-based grey economy and into the healthy new green economy. Built by a broad coalition deeply rooted in the lives and struggles of ordinary people, this path has the practical benefit of both cutting energy prices and generating enough work to pull the U.S. economy out of its present death spiral.
Rachel Carson’s 1963 landmark book Silent Spring was the pivotal ecological examination of the last century. Now, rising above the impenetrable debate over the environment and the economy, Van Jones’s The Green Collar Economy delivers a timely and essential call to action for this new century.
Let's do it. its up to each of us to take responsibility for our energy, and, there may even be a job in it for everybody.
Loves and Light,
Dr. Ryan Wartena
The fix is what?
Hmmm... Sounds like central planning to me.
From the article: "The general notion that the federal government should actually do something here is completely appropriate."
On the contrary, the general notion that the Federal Government should do something is entirely inappropriate. Well, I take that back, the government SHOULD do something. It should repeal its fiat monetary monopoly, institutions, and laws that led to this crisis in the first place.
As Einstein once brilliantly put, "We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used to create them."
Ask yourselves... should we really look to the same institution that encouraged suburban sprawl to stimulate more ecologically sound cities? This is the same institution, remember, that has promoted ethanol as an environmental cure. Should we really look to the same institution that made the Great Depression longer and more severe to get us out of our current economic mess? "Build out" we should do, but WE should do it, not the government.
FDR and Hoover's New Deal policies should not be looked at as a model for what to do, but an example of what NOT to do. Public works projects, for example, froze up the country's labor and capital in projects favored by bureaucrats instead of corresponding to individual needs and desires that would contribute to the productiveness and welfare of society as a whole. Public works also helped to sustain unemployment by sucking away funding for private enterprise, and by keeping wages from falling in proportion to the decline of commodity prices. Hiring-policies for public works were also widely abused for political gain.
Price-fixing, work restrictions, supply control, tax increases, inflation, and bans on finance and industry are exactly the kinds of things that should not be enacted if we want recovery sooner rather than later. Let's all work together to help build a more sustainable society, and that means leaving the gun out of the equation.
I was going to say something similar
I feel that you and I are on the same page here. The roots of the economy, the people, need to work hard to help bring the entire system back to life. The main benefit of the New Deal was job creation. People who would not be doing anything had something to do, and they received a pay check for doing it.
The people need to increase the demand for workers in a similar fashion while leaving the government out. This is a monumental task. I know many companies have been cutting their work force down, and others have implemented hiring freezes. Maybe there can be room for something like a farmers market. It could offer cheap goods and bring income to people who need it. This is obviously just some random idea that occured to me, but I believe that it is on the right track.
/The Bail Out is price-fixing, and price-fixing never works.
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Lying tears hurt others. Lying smiles hurt oneself
screw you guys I'm going home!
Recession...