Capitalism vs. Sustainability

Is anybody emigrating to Cuba ?

Why is it that the immigrants are coming in the other direction ?

 

Earthmother, out of everyone on the forums you always consistently have the wisest and most true things to say.

McLeod, you need to get real about living in India.

I've lived in 3rd world country conditions. You know what it's like?

You wake up ass early in the morning and eat corn gruel for breakfast. Than you work outdoors with caveman tools for about 10-12 hours, with more corn gruel and... oh yeah, corn pancakes and veggies for dinner!! Everyday, for your entire life. Except on holidays, you may have 1-2 sardines for a real birthday treat.

"Omg a sparrow!!! Kill it and we'll cook it for dinner!!!"
"Wow a dandelion!!!! Momma's gonna be so excited for lunch!"

You piss on corn to give it nitrogen. There are mountain lions in ur backyard waitin to pounce on you when you go use the pot (literally, a tea kettle sitting on the ground with corn husks for TP).

You tell me how safe you feel when it's pitch black outside, you're taking a dump, and you see two giant beady eyes moving in front of you, prowling around.

How are you gonna grow plants on shit soil if you don't have the resources to replenish it? There's no seed bank, tillers, fertilizers. You or your neighbors don't own cars .

I tell you this man. You don't realize what you have until you lose it. Even as bad as things are, people in India would switch places with you in a heartbeat.

Use what you have to get what you want. There are tons of resources in this society that will allow you to realize your dream, USE THEM!. Neither India nor America is perfect, but in America we have the RESOURCES to make things closer to the ideal. I'm guessing you're pretty young so you have not really got into the gaining wealth phase of your life, but learn to be empowered.

 

Why thank you...

 

Yes, I lived there for 6 months.

And I didn't always live in fancy hotels, in fact most of the time i roughed it living on farms and sleeping outside.

So why do some many westerners fuck off their VISAs and disappear there. Why does the Israeli government need to send out planes every year to bring home scores of their citizens?

Because people go there, realise how free they are, and they don't want to come home.

Well I like to think 37 is still young yes, but I'm pretty much fucked so far as sorting out a mortgage and a pension are concerned, even though I still have 30 years before i can retire.

I don't give a shit about these things though.

 

Rich white people from the west with plenty of money to retire and more importantly citizenship and instant access to the west again if shit really goes wrong are the ones who go there.

 

Right on. Even American citizens who have seen everything they own disappear as a result of their financial recklessness are better off than a majority of the world. We also don't have to worry about getting our asses blown off by a bullet or mortar fire on our way to the shitter either.

I've heard of programs in which foreclosed houses are used to house homeless people displaced by the meltdown, 'sounds like a constructive solution to me.

 

It's all fair and well saying that capitalism has brought jobs to people in the third world, but I'm sure there lives were far more rich and rewarding before. what you also also have to remember is that these jobs might in some cases lift people out of poverty, but the whole reason there is poverty in many of these countries in the first place is because of capitalism.

 

I wouldn't say capitalism is the problem, just simple greed. Profit in capitalism can be used in very benevolent ways. So don't blame capitalism, blame the human.

And when you say "rewarding" what do you mean? You may be free in an isolated jungle, yet you may have malaria, be malnourished, and have no food security. Yet in Western culture we may be stuck with 9-5 jobs and a crazy runaway government.

And using foreclosed homes to house the homeless? That's the worst idea in history. Some person works their whole life to pay off a house, and when they can't afford it, some homeless person now gets it for free? So I have to work within the system until the system forces me out. And then the rules no longer apply.... I"m homeless now (and qualify for a free house...) yet some other person gets the house (that I worked for!!!!). IMO the real fix would be to change the nature of the system which causes this crazy dynamic.

Explain this to me.

 

This is going round in circles. Like I said before, the problem is both human greed AND capitalism. Human greed alone cannot cause all the destruction and poverty there is the world, without there being something else to act as a vehicle for it.

Yeah, it helps to line the pockets of the rich.

Rewarding in the sense that you leave work feeling like you have contributed something positive to the world, rewarding in the sense that you have done something that is going to help yourself to survive, help your neighbours and the planet. When you grow some food that tastes so good and nutritious, and you know that next year you are probably go to grow the same quality of food, and the soil will not become depleted.

Small is beautiful. Less is more.

How else can I explain this to you?

If we bring back the seasonality in food, then we might go hungry for a month whilst we wait for the next season, and have to live on skanky old potatoes. But when that food eventually comes, you are going to enjoy it so much more than if you have an endless supply of food from the supermarket that relies on third world slave labour to produce much of it and is wholly unsustainable. We'll find that out the hard way in years to come when the food supply starts to run out because the soil it is grown on has become depleted and the rain cycles and the whole planets start to become more hostile towards supporting the growth of food because we've fucked the whole thing up out of stupidity and greed.

The most rewarding occupations are the simplest ones. I can derive a great deal of satisfaction from something as simple as sweeping the floor. But I can't when stuck in a noisy factory, or in front a computer racking my brain all day.

The simple jobs are like a mantra, you get lost in them, and you feel better at the end of the day, I get home, stretch my muscles, have some nice food, smoke a pipe, and sleep like a log, and wake up the next day feeling full of life.

Why should someone work their whole lives to pay off a mortgage.

I've never bothered to get a mortgage because I don't see why I should pay so fucking much for it. It's a house. some of these shit houses are made of cardboard and built in a matter of weeks. Why the fuck should it cost me nearly a quarter of a million then to buy one!

So I am stuck in a cycle of having to work to earn money to pay rent to some rich fuck who was "wise" enough tot take advantage to the housing market at the right time.

The whole system is shit.

No-one should have to work their whole lives to pay for a roof over their heads, and no-one should be allowed to exploit the system to make a fast buck.

And if there is shelter, and people sleeping rough, they should be given that shelter.

Anyone who disagrees with that shouldn't call themselves human being.

I've put up homeless people from time to time, and gotten into trouble from my landlord for it. I could have done more, but I just can't see someone out on the streets if I can help them.

 

Y'all are bickering but there is a lot of truth in all your statements. I just think about the time they start placing HOMELESS people in houses that were foreclosed upon, thus causing people to be homeless..... This is just fucked up. Let's play musical houses and bulldoze the rest.

Even if all you "own" is a piece of land with a tent on it, you still gotta pay taxes. And everyone needs someplace to BE. So no matter WHERE you ARE, someone has to PAY. There is always gonna be a problem because it requires a certain amount of $ to be anything but a squatter, and even a squatter has to live somewhere. And every somewhere has to have taxes paid on it. That is the one thing that can not be escaped.

Being "free" is a state of mind, not a location.

 

I guess ur right about capitalism and greed. I just see greed as the innate problem, since all reality does ultimately stem from the human mind. So you can get rid of capitalism and corrupt communism will take its place. A chick can get out of an abusive relationship and plop in another just because she hasn't changed her mentality.

I agree wholeheartedly about mortgages and especially food seasonality. It amazes me how probably 90% of people in the city have never had a vine-riped tomato. Tomatoes so sweet that they taste almost too sugary. And when they find out that tomatoes don't naturally taste like what they get on fast food burgers, they have a revelation that they have never eaten a "real tomato" before. Amazing .

 

regular store-bought food really seems just barely edible once you realize what Real food is.

 

Tell me about it. I'm eatin some homegrown pepper varieties and garlic, n I'm bout to go out to the garden n harvest some green beans. It's like watching the miracle of a child grow into an adult, except much tastier.

 

Speak for yourself!

 

Try telling that to someone who has just been locked up for smoking the 'erb.

I might be free in my mind and my spirit, but I also have to live within a material world, with people who think it their right to restrict the freedoms that as a human being I should be entitled to.

Being free is also a location, unless you are like Buddha or Jesus or something, most of us donot have the mental capacity to overcome the capitalist chains were are all, most of us, shackled to.

 

Of course the best solution is to eliminate foreclosure altogether with tougher laws against the banks, but better to let homeless people live in an abandoned foreclosed house with the understanding that they maintain it and fix it up in lieu of rent than to bulldoze it or let it sit there a vacant deteriorating eye sore while people are living on the street.

 

I'd beg to differ. Do you see how unbelievably wrong that is? I understand ur "making use of good resources", but still!

What if you had worked 25 years to pay off a house, and then lost your job. Then eventually you lose your house, and all of a sudden some guy that's been taking your money all of a sudden decides that its "free"? Why don't they give it to the person who actaully LOST the house? But then there's issues of fraud n stuff, so then all of a sudden he's at disadvantage compared to some possible bum on the street who has no idea about living in mainstream society?

McLeod, freedom is an iffy thing. Like I said before, there's no freedom if ur chronically sick or are stuck in the boonies because you can't get out. Why don't you really go move to India, all you gotta do is work for less than a month at a fast food place. Save up that money, buy a ticket, and sail away!!!! It's really *that* simple.

 

One day I plan to.

At the moment it is not that simple though.

 

I feel yah man. I"m still relatively young (20) so hopefully eventually I'll be able to set up a "permaculture" of sorts. But if all else fails I know I"m part Native American so maybe I can go on a tax-free reserve. That'll make things a lot easier ^^.

 

or... you could join the Lakota Sioux