rant, rant, rant.
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Used to be people would get together to build a new house or barn do their harvesting together. They had something called community. Today we have a substitute called debt which has set itself in the place of community. Need a house today? So call the neighbours to lend a hand. Likely as not they will take you to the nearest fun factory for a rebuild. Today we call our friendly banker or loan shark, much the same thing, for a mortgage which is basically a 'rent to own' agreement, sometimes just straight rent, sometimes outright robbery.
There used to be countries that built and grew most of what they needed themselves. What could not be made or grown, they would trade outside their borders for these select item. As Adam Smith seems to say, that 'invisible hand' would strive to keep the market local. We now are run by a small group of international corporate CEOs who owe no allegiance to other than their own elite global (village) class. They put the nation's indentured citizens to the work of pillaging the wealth of their homelands for that elite's staggering profits. They have made the world 'local,' its nations immaterial and as much as possible reduced its people to externalities where if the 'citizens' are not hustling or 'on the make' to service debt, they are pushing a shopping cart bottle picking and wondering why.
Of course those citizens have been given lots of 'cleverly packaged goods' in exchange for their birthrights, but those 'goods' are much along the line of trade beads and shiny object used by the last group of scoundrels to steal countries like the joint called Canada ... from its Native citizens.
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I very much hope that the enormous value of community will be rediscovered over the next few years. You're quite right that it makes an tremendous difference to quality of life. We have indeed substituted monetization in recent years for what used to be provided by community, and I expect we will all find out in the future just how poor a substitute it really is.
Community-building is probably the single most important thing we can do to prepare for an energy-constrained and financially limited future.
GAIA Host Collective
rant, rant, rant.
-----
Used to be people would get together to build a new house or barn do their harvesting together. They had something called community. Today we have a substitute called debt which has set itself in the place of community. Need a house today? So call the neighbours to lend a hand. Likely as not they will take you to the nearest fun factory for a rebuild. Today we call our friendly banker or loan shark, much the same thing, for a mortgage which is basically a 'rent to own' agreement, sometimes just straight rent, sometimes outright robbery.
There used to be countries that built and grew most of what they needed themselves. What could not be made or grown, they would trade outside their borders for these select item. As Adam Smith seems to say, that 'invisible hand' would strive to keep the market local. We now are run by a small group of international corporate CEOs who owe no allegiance to other than their own elite global (village) class. They put the nation's indentured citizens to the work of pillaging the wealth of their homelands for that elite's staggering profits. They have made the world 'local,' its nations immaterial and as much as possible reduced its people to externalities where if the 'citizens' are not hustling or 'on the make' to service debt, they are pushing a shopping cart bottle picking and wondering why.
Of course those citizens have been given lots of 'cleverly packaged goods' in exchange for their birthrights, but those 'goods' are much along the line of trade beads and shiny object used by the last group of scoundrels to steal countries like the joint called Canada ... from its Native citizens.
------
I very much hope that the enormous value of community will be rediscovered over the next few years. You're quite right that it makes an tremendous difference to quality of life. We have indeed substituted monetization in recent years for what used to be provided by community, and I expect we will all find out in the future just how poor a substitute it really is.
Community-building is probably the single most important thing we can do to prepare for an energy-constrained and financially limited future.