quote of the day
Dec. 5th, 2007 10:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chelidonFrom a mailing list earlier today:
"What has to be undertaken is a thorough, complete change in the whole way
of life in America/the industrial world such that people can sustain
themselves through their own work applied to some patch of soil somewhere.
Well, yes. It becomes an increasingly wise idea to know how to grow food, and/or make friends with people who do. I figure, at the very least, then you get to eat fresh healthy organic produce, and that's got to be a good thing.
Here are some stats showing how the government has been jiggering the numbers to vastly underestimate the amount of "new money" they've been creating in recent years to cover our massive debt load from Iraq and other boondoggles. This creation of paper money in turn makes the economy more vulnerable to both inflationary pressure and debt/currency collapse, as any basic economics text will assert.
We're also underestimating the true inflation rate of the prices you and I actually pay by choosing to exclude food and energy costs (both of which have been rising substantially) from the government calculations of "core inflation." Um, hey, last time I checked, food and energy were pretty darn "core" to the money I pay out, directly and indirectly, from month to month.
There's a saying I've learned from sustainable farming circles, that current petrochemical-based industrial farming techniques "feed the plants and starve the soil." In other words, you have to keep dumping more and more artificial additives into the ground, that ultimately come from oil, and industrial suppliers, in order to get food. But that all looks very productive and successful...just as long as you can keep dumping more chemicals into the ground all the time. But as soon as you stop, or even cut back a little...it all falls apart very quickly, because you have built no essential value into your soil -- in fact over time you've drained it dry of all those things necessary for real sustainable growth.
And that's exactly what's happening with our economy, as well as our land. Talk about very, very literal metaphors... It's a good time to learn to till and enrich the soil around us, wherever we are, both literally and metaphorically. Add value to the soil around you, compost relentlessly, it's better than putting money in a bank, because it's a bank we'll all need to draw on, sooner or later. Building and strengthening the soil, building the communities, and the processes, and the relationships around us, so we are surrounded by fruitful, fertile lands and not barren desert, builds community wealth -- it makes us all rich. And that's the kind of wealth that lasts, and holds its value, and repays with interest, come what may.
"What has to be undertaken is a thorough, complete change in the whole way
of life in America/the industrial world such that people can sustain
themselves through their own work applied to some patch of soil somewhere.
Well, yes. It becomes an increasingly wise idea to know how to grow food, and/or make friends with people who do. I figure, at the very least, then you get to eat fresh healthy organic produce, and that's got to be a good thing.
Here are some stats showing how the government has been jiggering the numbers to vastly underestimate the amount of "new money" they've been creating in recent years to cover our massive debt load from Iraq and other boondoggles. This creation of paper money in turn makes the economy more vulnerable to both inflationary pressure and debt/currency collapse, as any basic economics text will assert.
We're also underestimating the true inflation rate of the prices you and I actually pay by choosing to exclude food and energy costs (both of which have been rising substantially) from the government calculations of "core inflation." Um, hey, last time I checked, food and energy were pretty darn "core" to the money I pay out, directly and indirectly, from month to month.
There's a saying I've learned from sustainable farming circles, that current petrochemical-based industrial farming techniques "feed the plants and starve the soil." In other words, you have to keep dumping more and more artificial additives into the ground, that ultimately come from oil, and industrial suppliers, in order to get food. But that all looks very productive and successful...just as long as you can keep dumping more chemicals into the ground all the time. But as soon as you stop, or even cut back a little...it all falls apart very quickly, because you have built no essential value into your soil -- in fact over time you've drained it dry of all those things necessary for real sustainable growth.
And that's exactly what's happening with our economy, as well as our land. Talk about very, very literal metaphors... It's a good time to learn to till and enrich the soil around us, wherever we are, both literally and metaphorically. Add value to the soil around you, compost relentlessly, it's better than putting money in a bank, because it's a bank we'll all need to draw on, sooner or later. Building and strengthening the soil, building the communities, and the processes, and the relationships around us, so we are surrounded by fruitful, fertile lands and not barren desert, builds community wealth -- it makes us all rich. And that's the kind of wealth that lasts, and holds its value, and repays with interest, come what may.
