3. What, then, is that alternative worldview, that “new civilizational paradigm”? In Why America Failed I lay out, unsurprisingly enough, the reasons for why America failed, and I say that it was primarily because throughout our history we marginalized or ignored the voices that argued against the dominant culture, which is based on hustling, aggrandizement, and economic and technological expansion. This alternative tradition can be traced from John Smith in 1616 to Jimmy Carter in 1979, and included folks such as Emerson, Thoreau, Lewis Mumford, Jane Jacobs, Vance Packard, and John Kenneth Galbraith, among many others. In England it is particularly associated with John Ruskin and William Morris, who argued for the need for organic communities with a spiritual purpose, for work that was meaningful rather than mind-numbing, and who did manage to acquire a large number of American disciples. In a forthcoming book by a colleague of mine, Joel Magnuson, entitled The Approaching Great Transformation, the author states that we need concrete models of a post-carbon economy, ones that break with the profit model of capitalism—and not in cosmetic or rhetorical ways. He gives a number of examples of experiments in this vein, ones that I would term elements of a steady-state or homeostatic economy: no-growth, in other words. After all, writes Magnuson, “permanent growth means permanent crisis.” Or as I have put it elsewhere, our job is to dismantle capitalism before it dismantles us. Again, this does not mean taking on Wall Street, which I don‟t believe can succeed. But it does mean leaving the field: for example, seceding. (Movements for secession do exist at this point, Vermont being a prominent example.) And if that‟s not quite viable right now, there is at least the possibility of living in a different way, as David Ehrenfeld suggests. My guess is that “dual process”—the disintegration of capitalism and the concomitant emergence of an alternative socioeconomic formation—is going to be the central story of the rest of this century. And I suspect that austerity will be part of this, because as capitalism collapses and we run out of resources—petroleum in particular—what choice will we have?
The Waning of the Modern Ages: Presented by Morris Berman at The Vermont Independence Party | Vermont Commons
24 SepBleg: Beyond/Beneath the Nation-State
21 SepTwo days ago I put up a post in which I asserted, by the time-honored method of pulling it out of my arse, that
in the long run, more and more political action which shift to cities and thereby ‘hollow out’ the increasingly sclerotic system of nation states which governs the earth and the global level. In a century the nation states will be husks of what they are now and most of the world’s civic business will be conducted by shifting coalitions of cities and regions.
I’m interested in exploring that notion.
Very.
Anyone have ideas, suggestions for things to check out, etc.? Any relevant science fiction?
* * * * *
In that post I cited, as examples,
- the Second Vermont Republic, a group of citizens who want Vermont to secede from the USofA,
- the Transition Town movement, folks who are adamantly apolitical but who, in anticipation of peak oil, are working toward local self-sufficiency in food and energy and all that that implies, and
- Mayors of Peace, an international organization of cities seeking to end nuclear weapons by 2020.
What else is there like that, where “like that” is interpreted generously? Continue reading
Downsize the State: Nothing Succeeds Like Secession
4 SepThe good people at the Second Vermont Republic are at it again, helping to organize The Third Statewide Convention on Vermont Self-Determination, with a keynote address by Morris Berman (Why America Failed).
The convention will be held in the Vermont State House, Montelier, VT, on Saturday 14 September, 2012, from 9AM ro 4PM (party afterwards!).
Occupy Secession has this to say:
Only in Vermont would it be possible to hold a statewide convention on political independence in the House Chamber of the State House, where the Governor, the Lt. Governor, Council of State, Congressional Delegation, and the vast majority of the members of the State Legislature are all unconditional apologists for the American Empire and vehemently opposed to Vermont separatism. Yet that is precisely what is about to happen in Montpelier, Vermont on September 14th. Not only that, it is the third such convention, the other two having been held in 2005 and 2008. There is no charge for the use of the most prestigious venue in the entire Green Mountain State, because it happens to be the People’s House….
At the end of the meeting convention delegates will be invited to consider endorsing The Montpelier Manifesto calling for the rejection of the immoral, corrupt, decaying, dying, failing American Empire as well as its rapid and peaceful dissolution. Not unlike the 1963 Port Huron Statement issued by the Students for a Democratic Society, The Montpelier Manifesto is aimed at all citizens of the United States, not just those living in Vermont. Continue reading
Isolated and Under-Exposed: Why the Rich Don’t Give – Neighborhoods – The Atlantic Cities
21 AugThe study looked at tax returns for people with reported earnings of $50,000 or more from the year 2008 – the most recent year for which data was available. The report found that for people earning between $50,000 and $75,000, an average of 7.6 percent of discretionary income was donated to charity. For those earning $200,000 or more, just 4.2 percent of discretionary income was donated.
Turns out lower giving among the rich likely has much more to do with where they live and who they live near.
As this accompanying article from the journal notes, when the rich are highly concentrated in wealthy enclaves, they’re less likely to give as compared with the rich living in more economically diverse neighborhoods. The report found that in neighborhoods where more than 40 percent of taxpayers reported earning $200,000 or more, the average giving was just 2.8 percent of discretionary income.
In other words, concentration of wealth is also isolation from the less fortunate.
via Isolated and Under-Exposed: Why the Rich Don’t Give – Neighborhoods – The Atlantic Cities.
Too Central to Fail
18 AugA lot of attention has been put on “too big to fail,” the idea that big is risky. What really matters in a complex network system, however, is not bigness per se but connection centrality. In a network the liabilities of institution A become the assets of institution B whose own liabilities become the assets of institution C. An institution with high connection centrality can spread distress throughout a large portion of the network.
via Too Central to Fail.
Don’t Waste the Drought – NYTimes.com
17 AugWE’RE in the worst drought in the United States since the 1950s, and we’re wasting it.
Though the drought has devastated corn crops and disrupted commerce on the Mississippi River, it also represents an opportunity to tackle long-ignored water problems and to reimagine how we manage, use and even think about water….
But just as the oil crisis of the 1970s spurred advances in fuel efficiency, so should the Drought of 2012 inspire efforts to reduce water consumption.
Our nation’s water system is a mess, from cities to rural communities, for farmers and for factories. To take just one example: Water utilities go to the trouble to find water, clean it and pump it into water mains for delivery, but before it gets to any home or business, leaky pipes send 16 percent — about one in six gallons — back into the ground. So even in the midst of the drought, our utilities lose enough water every six days to supply the nation for a day. You can take a shorter shower, but it won’t make up for that.
The good news: There are a number of steps that together can change, gradually but permanently, how we use water and how we value it. Some can be taken right now.
Hiroshima to grade states on disarmament | The Japan Times Online
1 AugLooks like Hiroshima’s going to start its own foreign policy.
A prefectural official told The Japan Times on Tuesday that Hiroshima will conduct its own research and analysis of nuclear disarmament around the world and grade each country on its commitment to abandoning atomic weapons.
“This is the first time Hiroshima Prefecture has embarked on such a project,” the official said. The study is “a duty that Hiroshima must carry out,” the prefecture says on its website.
Experts are expected to start meeting soon and publish a final report in Japanese and English within the fiscal year.
via Hiroshima to grade states on disarmament | The Japan Times Online.
To Achieve Work-Family Balance, Americans Have to Work Less | The Nation
10 JulIt seems the summer heat is making us think about how to escape work. Tim Kreider’s New York Timesop-ed on our overly busy lives made a huge splash, while Mitt Romney himself came out sort of for vacations for all. Meanwhile, the controversy continues to swirl over Anne-Marie Slaughter’s article about why women “can’t have it all,” meaning that they still struggle to balance family and career. What do these topics have to do with each other? Everything. If we truly want improved work-family balance for American families—mothers and fathers alike—then we have to address the fact that Americans are overworked. We have to work less. Period.
We work too long, for too little, and don’t have time for nurturing one another.
via To Achieve Work-Family Balance, Americans Have to Work Less | The Nation.
Kohr Principles – NYTimes.com
5 JunLeonard Kohr argued that nations like the USA are too large, making catastrophic failure inevitable in the long run.
Unsurprisingly, Kohr’s guiding principle was anarchism, “the noblest of philosophies.” But its inherent nobility, he recognized, also made it utopian: a truly anarchist society could do away with governments and states only if all individuals were ethical enough to respect one another’s boundaries. Kohr cleverly turned this utopianism upside down, from weakness to strength: any party, any leader, any ideology promising utopia is automatically wrong, or lying [7]. Acceptance of utopia’s unattainability, in other words, is the best insurance against totalitarianism.
But if the ideal state cannot be attained, at least it can be approached, Kohr thought, by reducing the scale of government. Which sounds a lot like the famous quote from Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience”: “That government is best which governs least.” But in Kohr’s vision, smaller government should mean, first and foremost, a smaller area to govern. In such smallness, greatness resides. Counterintuitive as that may sound, didn’t Greece and Italy have their Golden Ages when they were divided into countless city-states? Not a coincidence, according to Kohr: smaller states produce more culture, wealth and happiness.
It might be easy to confine Kohr’s non-violent anarchism to the salon, where, over a fine glass of sherry, quixotic ideas may be lofted and shot down like intellectual clay pigeons. But he thought his gradualist approach eminently practicable, and tried to put it to good use in the field.
During his long career, Kohr supported the independence movements of Puerto Rico, Wales and Anguilla [8], and opposed grand unification projects like the European Union. He appealed for the breakup of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, long before they happened. And he publicized his ideas about how such small states should be formed and governed. He even devised a concrete upper limit for “smallness”: “The absolute maximum to which a society can expand without having its basic functions degrade, is about 12 to 15 million people.”
The answer was “not union, but division”: in a world where companies merge into megacorporations and countries into unaccountable supra-states, Kohr’s vision is both counterintuitive and refreshing. One of his 10 basic laws is the so-called Beanstalk Principle: For every animal, object, institution or system, there is an optimal limit beyond which it ought not to grow.
It’s time for a Corporate Spring – AlterNet – Salon.com
23 MayOur economy is dominated by a monoculture business model, Kelly says, driven largely by publicly traded corporations that have built in pressure from Wall Street for maximum short-term earnings. But a healthy, living economy needs biodiversity. We can find this if we begin to look around — across the U.S. and the world — where there are businesses designed not for maximum profit, but with a mission-driven social and economic architecture. One of these models is the “social enterprise.”
The Social Enterprise Alliance defines these organizations as “businesses whose primary purpose is the common good. They use the methods and disciplines of business and the power of the marketplace to advance their social, environmental and human justice agendas.” And one of the defining characteristics is that “The common good is its primary purpose, literally ‘baked into’ the organization’s DNA, and trumping all others.”
Here’s an example. Remember Working Assets? Starting out as a progressive-minded credit card company in the ’80s, it added phone service — first long-distance in the ’90s, then cellular in 2000 — and now it has created the subsidiary CREDO Mobile. The company operates as a for-profit business, which is privately owned, with most of the employees owning the stock, so it doesn’t have to bow to Wall Street pressures. They use their profits to help support causes they believe in — so far the amount of money donated is $70 million and counting.
via It’s time for a Corporate Spring – AlterNet – Salon.com.
Truth and Traditions 