Comments on: The cornucopian episteme & money

By: S.L.

S.L. — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 22:35:49 +0000

Here is something that I think is a nice candidate for the quotes box.
“Money is a sign of poverty.”
-Iain M. Banks, 1987

Interestingly this is a quote I found on a lecture about the “RepRap”
fabrication technology. More about it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZfcETkbGWk&feature=related

Technology with some interesting social, economic, and ecological
consequences. The tie in with breeding, symbiosis, and making manufacturing like
agriculture is food for thought.

By: m.c.

m.c. — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 17:46:12 +0000

I think Gerald Ford also voted against the 1965 Social Security Act. Reagan was not yet Governor in 1965 but I believe he campaigned against it.

By: m.c.

m.c. — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 17:18:20 +0000

A little more on Health Care. When Pres. Johnson got Congress to Pass Medicare & Medicaid in 1965, very few Republican members of Congress voted for it. Bob Dole, Don Rumsfeld and other prominent pols voted against it. Gov. Reagan was opposed to it though he couldn’t vote. Obama needs to get a Public Option through even if No Repubs vote for it, even if they call it a Co-Op or something else. Later, the public will recognize the Bill for its positive results.
~50 House Dems hold seats whose districts were carried by John McCain in the ’08 election. There are the members who need to be on board.

By: Michael Anderson

Michael Anderson — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 04:22:35 +0000

From Joe Baegent:

http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/141668

Some good observations (as usual, in his gonzo tone) on money, consciousness, and a bit on Henry’s post, here. Gotta be in this world, like Stan sez, and TAKE action—-doesn’t have to be the equivalent of moving the Earth’s axis, but DO it…

By: Henry

Henry — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 03:55:10 +0000

Good post here:

Scott McGuire [Scott McGuire is an organic farming and permaculture master based in Ashland, Oregon]

For most of my grown life I’ve been a plant person; farmer, gardener, tree-planter, landscaper… and for quite a while now have been beating the sustainable-living drum as a “food-supply activist”. For the past few years, in addition to growing a backyard demonstration garden (www.greentownaction.tv/sustainable-garden), I’ve been teaching classes on plant-craft, as well as going to meetings and organizing activities like the Neighborhood Garden Project, matching folks wanting to expand their gardens with others without any space for one. The Transition Towns movement is well underway in our small Oregon town, which is quickly becoming a haven for retirees and other equity immigrants from California.

But I’m burnt out on all the blah-blah. Sometime last spring I stopped going to these kinds of meetings due to the lack of focus and distracting blather that never seems to get grounded in any compounding action (oh, and it was also time to sow seeds, so seeya). One symptom of denial around the immensity of the changes required/pending, is the invisible goo that fills a room causing everyone to think and move as if they were underwater, or in a dream where you can’t run away fast enough or find where you left your backpack… It’s absolutely surreal, the effective slow-motionizing of cognitive dissonance.

The rest of this post is here:

http://mikeruppert.blogspot.com/

By: Henry

Henry — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 03:49:51 +0000

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5615#more

How Much Natural Gas Do We Have to Replace Gasoline?
Posted by Robert Rapier on July 30, 2009

By: Stan

Stan — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 15:38:34 +0000

I would agree that creativity can cut both ways. My point is, I suppose, that perspective matters. Pedator-prey relations (et al) exist alongside symbiosis (et al), and in conjunction with each other. All the time. My preoccupation with symbiosis and niche maximization is more political and tactical than it is scientific curiosity (though it is interesting from that perspective). Martinez-Alier iirc showed how these dominant metaphors (machine, system, etc) become hugely significant in the formation of our cultural practices. We need less energy-sink confrontation and more squatting.

By: (Boer) Tom

(Boer) Tom — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 21:30:18 +0000

To Stan:
Regarding non-antagonal niche-maximization: I don’t think it substantially alters the reasoning regarding excessive dumping of nutrients. Beyond some point, a lack of some shared nutrient can push symbiotic relationships into antagonistic modes. Also, when some niches are widened, the species occupying those niches, those dependent on them, and those in symbiotic relationship with them, benefit, at some expense to some of the rest of the ecosystem – some parts are in partial conflict with others e.g. on the basis of shared nutrients – and the ecosystem may still simplify as they overconsume more limited nutrients in proportion to the suddenly abundant nutrient, by letting some species become dominant. As for the ideological content, every species is part parasite/predator (even on sunlight, e.g.), and provides for other species, even if only at death. There are very few species that don’t share nutrient sources with others, if any.

By: Stan

Stan — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 11:52:22 +0000

DeLanda, in A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History, reassigned the term “market” to self-organizing activity, and noted that what we now call “market forces” are, inn fact, mostly “anti-market forces,” impositions based on social power that divide and conquer (disembed) markets (self-organized trading activity). And as Polanyi et al suggest, these activities were not strictly trade/econoimics, but were woven into the “embedded” fabric of shared history, kinship, and other cultural phenomena.

I’d also point out that nature provides us with many examples of cooperation and symbiosis and creative non-antagonal niche-maximization, not just head-to-head competition (our own bias growing out of our cultural-historical — and cosmological — interpretation of Darwinism, “red in tooth and claw”).

“Anti-market” may be a useful term for meme-skirmishing, dressed up as it is in seemingly familiar garb, yet embodying something far more subversive. Monopolies, agribusiness, and interstate highways are all anti-market institutions. So is the state!

By: (Boer) Tom

(Boer) Tom — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 22:08:47 +0000

Oops: Please correct the above: prices increase as supplies drop with respect to demand, not decrease!