The problem is unemployment; only growth can create the jobs. Schools and hospitals are underfunded; the answer is faster growth. We can’t afford to protect the environment; the solution is more growth. Poverty is entrenched; growth will rescue the poor. Income distribution is unequal; the answer is more growth.

If the answer to the problem is always more growth then who dares ask the question: What if the problems are caused by economic growth?

Quote from ‘Growth Fetish’ by Clive Hamilton, sourced from postgrowth.org “Occupy – A Cultural Strike” by Amelia Byrne and Sharon Ede

As Hamilton and others are beginning to recognise, economic growth is not our only solution to life’s problems and the management of the economy is not our only purpose in life. We all have personal needs that can be satisfied by the economy but as social animals we also have communal needs.

I find it interesting that many traditional societies recognised this and revered gods of pleasure. For example, IxCacao, the Mayan goddess of chocolate was apparently married to EkChua, the god of commerce. Like many marriages it could be seen as a tug-o-war, the more commerce, the less time for chocolate. A happy and contented marriage struck a good balance between the two. This was further highlighted by the fact that the Mayans used cocoa seeds as their currency. Think about it – you can work hard to earn lots of cocoa seeds but if you don’t take a chocolate break your seeds will eventually lose their freshness and become worthless. Another way of looking at it is that the purpose of work was to have enough chocolate to share with others.

In any case, there was no point storing up riches. Money was used only to facilitate trade and a balanced life included spending time with loved ones.

The Ancient Greeks took a different approach to the same issue. In addition to pleasure as an opposing force to commerce, they regarded all communal functions as diametrically opposed to the economy. That is, as well as social functions, they included public functions related to building a community and a city in this category. Dionysos was their god of wine, ritual pleasure and theatre. I call him the god of the public domain.

At the end of each work-day Greeks would gather in a symposium to drink with fellow citizens. The word ‘symposium’ is a compound Greek word, from ‘sym-‘, which means ‘together’ and ‘potein’, which means ‘to drink’. So a symposium was a forum where people drank wine together, a place where citizens interacted, debated, partied, a place of communion. The symposium was central to the Classical Greek understanding of ‘city’, of ‘household’, of ‘economics’ and of the distinction between the ‘public domain’ and the ‘private domain’. The symposium was held in a room, which was a part of the home but usually connected to the public square. It provided both a bridge, and a clear separation, between the public domain of the city, or the polis, and the private domain of the household.

The role of the host was crucial to the symposium because before the guests arrived he was responsible for diluting the wine. Diluting wine you say?!! Well Greeks considered that diluting wine showed that, as a civilized society, they were able to control, or manage, the use of alcohol. You see, when the host added water to the wine it was an indicator that he wanted a serious conversation, the symposium would be a ‘public’ event. When he chose not to add water, the symposium would be a ‘social’ event, he was happy for his guests to get drunk. So the Greeks had a clear and practical way of distinguishing the ‘social’ from the ‘public’.

Now, we generally understand what is meant by a ‘social’ event, let’s call it a party; but to fully understand what they meant by ‘public’, we must appreciate why Greeks offered diluted wine and didn’t instead offer, say, orange juice.

To the Greeks, wine was symbolic. The Greek god Dionysos was the god of wine, theatre and of resurrection after death. You might say, what do these godly duties have in common? Well, when you drank wine, you became different, you were no longer your usual or natural self. An actor at the theatre pretended to be someone other than his usual self and of course, the resurrected self was not the natural self. The Greeks used the word ‘ecstasy’, literally from ‘ec-‘, meaning outside and ‘stasis’, meaning ‘state’, your natural state or present situation and so Dionysos was the god of ecstasy. When you were ‘ecstatic’ you were outside or beyond your natural state and this was important to their idea of the public domain. To enter the public domain you had to drink wine in the symposium, specifically diluted wine, so that you could step outside your usual state. You had to step outside the private domain to enter the public. They were mutually exclusive. The private domain was governed by necessity and the responsibility to provide food, clothing and housing. To enter the public domain you had to firstly conquer the private domain. To be a free citizen you had to be free of necessity.

This is reinforced by the word Greeks used for managing the household. The ‘ikea’ or ‘ekos’, from which we derive the prefix ‘eco-‘, means household and ‘economia’ or ‘economy’ was the management of the household. The Greeks believed that the economy is the burden of our existence in the natural world. A responsible citizen would satisfy his economic obligations before participating in public affairs, which he could then do voluntarily and as afree citizen. Citizens would strive to complete these responsibilities as efficiently as possible so they could attend public events together with other free citizens. Freedom was freedom from economy, freedom from work, freedom from private responsibility. Only citizens who were free of economic responsibilities could offer the city a just government. The ecstasy of the free citizen standing in the public domain was an early expression of our idea of man conquering nature; but he conquered nature with the aim of being free to debate with his fellow citizens about how to build a good city.

This clear and deliberate separation of the public and the private domains is not unique to Classical Greece. In the Americas, tobacco, hemp, chocolate and coffee were variously used and served the same purpose as wine in Athens and so they were venerated in the same way. I wonder to what extent our drug addictions relate to our addiction to, or desire for, freedom?

Closer to home, we theoretically divide our week to separate the public from the private through the Jewish Sabbath and the Christian Sunday. These were both adopted as a day of rest and as a holy day. We once left behind the demands of work and the economy for one day in seven so as to focus on personal and community development. Today, we no longer have holy-days, we have a break, an escape or a vacation. We aim to separate or vacate ourselves from the daily grind, from the economy, but rarely with the conscious intention of finding a space for growth and development. We speak of recreation and do not appreciate that the word is re-creation, a time and place where we re-discover or re-invent ourselves through our interaction with others.

When these ideas were rediscovered during the Renaissance, the separation of the public realm from the private was expressed through clothing. People wore fine quality, clean, colourful, elaborate and impractical clothing to differentiate themselves from the laborers, to show that they were free. Hence the Italian love for fine clothes and your mother’s insistence that you wear your Sunday best to church where you received diluted wine so as to commune with the divine.

Today we, white-collar workers, have adopted the Renaissance idea of distinguishing ourselves from laborers through the clothing that we wear. We claim to show that we are free by ironing our shirts and wearing a tie. I like to call it the irony of the iron. We also purchase expensive material goods to show that we have the financial freedom to do so but ironically we fund these purchases by increasing our debt, a burden that limits our freedom. In Australia at least, average household debt is three times higher than it was in 1990 both when compared to income and when compared to the value of assets. The need to show that we are free has become the burden that steals our freedom.

So is there a simple summary of the distinction between private and public? The private domain is the domain that focuses on private interests, on the economy, on self-interest and this should not be over-looked. We need to provide for our personal necessities. The public sphere, on the other hand, is the place for focusing on public interests, on the interests of others who are not necessarily connected to us; it is the domain of selflessness. Where we come together with our neighbours to deal with our common interests and to create a common culture; it is the place of compromise, where we forfeit a little of our own interests so as to build common assets and a common understanding of our collective selves; the place where we willingly and freely help others, where everyone benefits through the free contributions of others. It is not possible to be selfish and selfless at the same time. You must choose to be selfless. You must choose to create a public domain.

Earlier, I deliberately used the expression ‘man conquering nature’ because Athenians, unlike other Greeks of the time who mostly lived communally, were so enamored by the idea of the public domain, that in their minds, it was justifiable to use any means necessary to conquer the private domain. This allowed them to justify slavery and the oppression of women in the household. Tyranny was justified in the household, because it allowed the head of the household to become a free citizen. But, of course, the maxim always holds that ‘the ends never justify the means’.  It is not possible to cultivate tyranny in the household and expect that the free citizen will enter the public domain as a just man. It is not just about putting boundaries on economics, but how you establish those boundaries.

According to the philosopher Hannah Arendt, “Man cannot be free if he does not know that he is subject to necessity, because his freedom is always won in his never wholly successful attempts to liberate himself from necessity.” I would argue that revolutions invariably begin because one segment of society is doing all the labor while another segment has all the power. This is the substance of the #occupy movement. The Athenians justified slavery because their rhetoric suggested that somehow slaves would benefit by living in the greatest city or the biggest or most powerful city; but a great city is different to a good city. The Sabbath allows everyone to be free once a week. We need to create a time and a space in our cities that allows all people to be free. Not bound by another set of oppressive rules, as required by organized religion, but free. We need to build a free public domain; and this should be the aim of housing theory. How do we build homes that assist us and free us rather than being a burden, both in terms of maintenance and in terms of the mortgage debt?

Surely a more beautiful society would be one where the citizens freed themselves, not by conquering nature but by mastering it, by being stewards of nature, by working in harmony with nature to satisfy their needs. Surely we can build our households based on this interdependence and harmony so that all can be freed some of the time. We have learnt so much in recent years about water cycle management, about permaculture, food cycle and waste management and about passive architectural design and energy cycle management. Surely we are in a position to build a self-sufficient household for a clan of say, 10 or 20 people. Not just any 10 or 20 people as the ‘free-market’ will throw us together, but intentionally grouped by the people themselves because of common interests and, most importantly, because of complementary skills. I imagine a household where all the residents are equal shareholders so that the burdens do not fall on one or two in the household; and where there is a gathering place for holding a symposium.

This self-sufficient household for a small clan is my dream for our future and for the future of housing.

If anyone is interested in developing a collaboration/social networking site that facilitates the collection of people into clans and providing homes, converting social networking sites into ‘public networking’, maybe converting facebook to placebook, then please comment below or read my other papers at www.polisplan.com.au and contact me with your ideas.

There is one catch, this is not an economic project, it is a public project. There is no money in this, it’s a labour of love!

True fellowship among men must be based upon goals that are universal. It is not the private interests of the individual that create lasting fellowship among men, but rather the goals of humanity…”

I Ching, foundation text of Chinese society

Cross-posted from Polis Plan, 18 November 2011

Related posts:

1. Freedom from money
2. Book Review: Not For Profit by Martha C. Nussbaum

Related posts:

1. Occupy Eyewitness – New York
2. Asset Mapping For The Long Haul: A Strategy For Occupy Movements
3. Occupy Eyewitness – London

This is the second in a series of articles from the Post Growth Institute reporting on-the-ground impressions of Occupy events around the world. The London account includes observations by Post Growth’s Sharon Ede – who happened to be visiting her friend, documentary film maker Mike Freedman - in London on the day Occupy London commenced, and footage and reflections by Mike, including an interesting insight into Occupy from the perspective of the police. 

What was the feeling like at the Occupy you visited?

Occupy London Stock Exchange (LSX) happened to kick off right at the end of a visit I had with a friend of mine in London. Mike was keen to see what was going on too, so we both headed off to the London Stock Exchange on 15 October.

The original plan for Occupy LSX had been for people to gather in the area outside the stock exchange, however I discovered a police line blocking access and claiming that area was ‘private property’. I was pointed in the direction of St Paul’s Cathedral by a man sitting nearby the police line, who also told me that if I went inside the cordon at the cathedral, I may not be able to get out. I later discovered that this meant you could come and go as you wished, but if events did turn violent, the police would  ‘kettle’ (contain) those within the cordon - people would not be allowed leave, and could be effectively detained there for many hours.

Within the inner police cordon, several hundred people were gathered on the steps and immediate surrounds of St Paul’s Cathedral. There was a space of about ten feet between the two police lines of the inner cordon, and the outer cordon, beyond which many more hundreds of people had gathered to be part of the demonstration and to hear speeches that were made on the steps of the cathedral. There was a helicopter overhead, police dogs on hand and a large police presence – the authorities are still skittish after the London riots earlier this year.

But aside from a minor a scuffle that occurred briefly outside a Starbucks, it seemed to me there was no energy in the air that hinted at violence. The crowd was a wide cross-section of ages and appearances, banners, drums, signs and included various media crews, independent and mainstream, local and international. They were orderly and peaceful. There were a lot of people in conversation with each other.

What kinds of conversations did you have with people, or did you overhear?

The man who warned me about going inside the inner cordon told me that he would never normally have gone to a protest like this, a year or two ago. His words to me were ‘I was asleep then, I’m awake now’. I talked to him a little about what we are doing with Post Growth, and gave him a card. There were a few people who were questioning the police, asking them why they were even there, as it was a peaceful protest.

Mike’s short documentary of the day gives an interesting insight into the psyche of the police, and the conflict they bear in having to carry out their duty despite any personal views they may hold – the police force is one of many public services experiencing cuts, and such austerity measures are one thing the ‘Occupiers’ are speaking out against. Mike struck up a conversation with one senior officer who would not shake hands, but said he wanted it all over so he could go home and have his dinner. Maybe there was a sense, or hope on the part of the police on that first day, that Occupy LSX was a flash in the pan. Nearly four weeks on, it’s clearly not.

The day before the protest began, I began following the Occupy London Facebook page. There were a couple of hundred followers. 48 hours later when I left London, there were over 10,000. There are now over 30,000. Anyone who tries to tell you that social media is only keeping us isolated, or is ‘clicktivism’, doesn’t understand the power of social media for organising real-world action and conversations that can and do create momentum for change. Occupy began in Wall Street on 17 September, yet it was a good week or two before the mainstream media would report on it – but the news was being posted to Facebook and Twitter.

Did you notice anything or encounter anything that signalled post-growth thinking?

There was one hand scrawled sign that asked why we were creating money as debt, which is a key driver of growth. Since then, Positive Money (based in London, and whose Executive Director I met with earlier that week) have been down to the site to talk to people there on this issue. Other than that, nothing specifically, except a general sense that things are very broken and unfair, and need fixing.

But is it sufficient to patch up the old system so it works a little more fairly for a little longer? Or is it time for a broader conversation about reinventing not only the economy, but the social contract?

Between Two Mirrors – Urban Anthropology

A short documentary shot by Mike Freedman on the first day of Occupy London, 15 October 2011

‘It’s like being caught between two mirrors…’

Excerpts from Mike’s ‘Open Letter to the Occupiers’

On the role of the police:

The law is such that the police will enforce it as ordered regardless of its substance.  In instances when the police have used heavy-handed tactics, they have done so because they are upholding the law as it has been explained to them and along the lines by which they have been instructed to do so.  This is not a semantic point, but a very important key to our future as social beings on this beautiful planet of ours.  A change in the law will change the behaviour of the police.

The police force is exactly that – it is a force, a tool which does the bidding of the hand which wields it.  I may personally disagree with a great deal of the laws currently on the books, and I may wholeheartedly disagree with the manner in which those laws are sometimes enforced, but the police are not the enemy…

When the laws are changed to better suit the idea of justice and governance that befits us as an intelligent life form, the police will be on the front line of keeping those laws intact.  The neutrality of the police may be a most incomprehensible thing to those witnessing violence as a result of it, but that neutrality is also to our advantage.

Police men and women who will use baton and pepper spray to subdue those allegedly violating public order will steadfastly turn those weapons on whomever is designated an opponent to public order, no matter how it is defined.  If this is the case, as I believe it to be, then we have no enemy in the police.  They are human beings, just like us, and the structure which they are a part of has convinced them that we must be watched and subdued.

The police in Britain and across Europe have undergone some of the most stringent cutbacks in wages, man-hours and employment numbers.  These protests stand, among other things, for equitable wages in return for fulfilling work.  These police men and women are the people we are fighting for.  They just don’t know it yet, and if they do, they have pressures of their own to account for their silence as they wait patiently for the law to allow them to act in accordance with their beliefs.

Whether or not people should follow orders they disagree with is by the by.  It is both dishonest and unfair to expect them to behave differently to how we think we would in their place, because we are not in their place.  They are not our enemy.  There is no “they”.  There is only “us”….

On change:

True revolution begins in the mind.  If we learn the ways of the oppressors only to replicate those ways when we have replaced them, then we have achieved nothing.  The only true revolution begins with the realisation that we are all one.  Beneath political and social definitions and dynamics, there is no oppressor and oppressed.  There are only vulnerable, fearful people manipulated by deeply rooted buttons which those who wish to retain power know how to push…

Any threat to power can be very frightening.  This is why ideas are the commodity most tightly regulated in our cultures.  Our modern global system is built on piles of abstractions and unquestioned assumptions.  To maintain the structure of this ideology, built as it is on quicksand, only a superficial amount of idea variation is tolerated before the protectors of the structure crack down…

The deeply extractive, materially fixated, morally bankrupt, ecologically and socially destructive number games which are played world wide right now are simply a washed-out perversion of an underlying economic truth which has been lost over time, namely that people require access to goods and services in complex societies and the easiest manner in which to distribute those goods and services is by the use of a common means of exchange which frees the labourer from needing to find a supplier who wants the thing he produces…

It can no longer be a social norm that goods arrive before us with no provenance and no moral association other than our desire for them.  It can no longer be morally (let alone intellectually) justifiable to bang on about economic growth in the OECD nations when the major purpose of growth is to support the growing debts we accumulate through a persistence in allowing money to be created as a debt-bearing thing rather than circulated as a debt-free service.

The strict extractive system which is currently in place in the OECD nations, centred on taxing the people in order to service debt generated wilfully, will never resolve inequity either at home or abroad…

Asking for what the wealthy have is irrelevant.  We should have something far greater in our sights: a real birthright for every living thing on this planet, in balance, understanding and peace.

Related posts:

1. Occupy Eyewitness – New York
2. Occupy – A Cultural Strike
3. Asset Mapping For The Long Haul: A Strategy For Occupy Movements

This is the first in a series of articles from the Post Growth Institute reporting on-the-ground impressions of Occupy events around the world.

How did you first hear about Occupy?

I live part of the year in New York and part in Sweden. The first news I heard of Occupy were whisperings in emails from friends in New York about the upcoming event – many not quite sure what to make of it. It was not something that I had consciously chosen to pay attention to. But, as we were harvesting the last carrots and busy putting layers of hay on our gardens for the winter in Sweden, news of it crept in. I began to see Facebook postings from people I know who were at Wall Street, and cell phone snapshots of well-known artists and cultural theorists who where there, such as (theorist) Cornell West and (filmmaker) Jonas Mekas.

The next I heard of Occupy was a series of articles printed in the Stockholm commuter newspaper, Metro, that many people read on the way to work and school (see image below).  This made it feel real to me: the news of the demonstrations in New York reaching across the world to become a part of the rhythm of daily life in Sweden.

What was the feeling like at the Occupy you visited?

Returning to New York last week I visited Occupy Wall Street for the first time. Zuccotti Park, the heart of the occupation, is a place that I’d never particularly noticed before, though I have walked by and through it. It lies just up the street from Wall Street and the New York Stock Exchange, and on the other side is Ground Zero, and the September 11 memorial. The first evening I visited there were a couple of hundred people gathered in the concise rectangular park, which has a footprint the size of the large buildings in the area. I was struck by the organization of the space: paths were clear, tents were neatly covered in tarps, folks were singing in one corner dedicated to song and spirit, delicious looking pizzas were being served for dinner, there were people staffing a media relations tent, and a library with books for loan and reference organized in rows inside water-proof containers.

In the evening darkness, most people were gathered at one end of the park, and a meeting was underway. When a person spoke they would stand in the middle of a thick circle of people. As they spoke, the crowd repeated their words, amplifying them for others to hear. It was a beautiful, slow dance: people chose their words carefully and spoke in short, clear sentences, that could be then carried out further on the crowd’s voices. Ripples of agreement or disagreement with the speakers and ideas being discussed moved through the crowd: not in voices, but through hands. Among other things, the demonstrators were considering how to spend some of the $100,000+ raised in recent weeks. A sea of approving hands moved up from the crowd as a proposal was made to buy tents to send to fellow protesters in Oakland, CA – a sign that consensus was being neared. And, the meeting continued making space for further debate…

Any other thoughts?

Being there physically, at Occupy Wall Street, the symbolism of the occupation hit me. That is: the occupation as a symbolic gesture. In the midst of the surrounding highly charged buildings – the sites of the 2001 attacks on New York and the epicenter of the financial world and its crisis, it seem that a new kind of power had arrived. A perhaps tenuous, but fierce and measured power holding a space, its own space, a space for another way of being in the world – for that possibility – for many people’s desires of what that possibility could be. A power occasionally drawing its energy from opposition to the status quo, but also from within itself. Asserting itself as an equal, as a way of walking forward with or without the approval and acceptance of the powers that be. Even more beautifully of course, this power has been spreading across the country and the world. I hope that it continues to develop it – resisting the pressures to collapse or temptations to extremes (and there are certainly many contradictory and challenging energies in the mix) – evolving a space for the 99%.

Any particular readings or resources you would recommend?

If you get a chance take a look at Ethan Miller’s OCCUPY * CONNECT * CREATE series, at www.geo.coop, for a thoughtful perspective on Occupy. For a post growth related perspective, take a look at filmmaker Ben Zolno’s work for the Post Carbon Institute on talking about the “end of growth” at Occupy.

Related posts:

1. Occupy Eyewitness – London
2. Occupy – A Cultural Strike
3. Asset Mapping For The Long Haul: A Strategy For Occupy Movements

Gunnar Rundgren, who has worked with most parts of the organic farmer sector – from farming to policy – since 1977, brings us a parable which highlights some of the dilemmas of international trade as they relate to issues of growth, resource use, and inequity. (Read the original text in Swedish, here and visit the author’s English-language blog, here.)

Once upon a time there were two producers of sand, Henry and Loser. They dug out the sand from the same place, with a shovel and a wheelbarrow. The sand was sold at the side of the road to by-passers. They didn’t earn a lot but enough to survive, to send their children to school, and buy a new wheelbarrow and shovel every other year. The little they could save was used for funerals or if someone in their families fell sick, or had an accident.

One day, for reasons we don’t have to discuss here, Henry was able to buy an excavator. It was expensive and the fuel is also expensive – but still, he can dig sand thousand times faster then before. And he can dig longer hours, his machine works all around the clock and he has bought a truck to supply customers with sand. Through the increased productivity sand prices fall, and therefore consumption increases. More houses and roads are built, the wealth increases. Henry produces more and more sand.

Taste the word “produce” by the way. Doesn’t that give the impression that Henry creates something, that he creates the sand? In our way of speaking we say that we “produce” when we dig up a piece of nature and sell it. And “our wealth increases”? How, when there is less and less sand left and one has to dig deeper and deeper to get it, can we say that wealth increases? Pertinent questions, but let’s put them aside and look at Loser.

Loser leads a hard life. The price of sand falls again and again, and the clients now want to have the sand delivered to their doorstep. And the sand is deeper and further away as Henry’s excavators dig more and more. Clients also have very specific demands on the sand, it should be graded in various fractions and there must be no ”foreign” materials. One day a client even asked about the social conditions for Loser’s employees.

Loser looked at him with an empty look: “I have no employees, it is just me and my family.”

“How much do you pay yourself? And what about the children, do they go to school?” the conscientious client asked.

Loser had to admit that he had to take one of the boys out of school to help carry the sand to the clients and that one girl had been taken out of school as they no longer could afford her school uniform, books and pencils. The conscientious client said, “we can no longer buy from you; I am sure you understand that we have to take social responsibility.”

Another client was concerned that Loser was destroying nature, “Didn’t you destroy a fox burrow the other year, when expanding the sand pit?”

“Well I did”, Loser said, “but Henry’s excavators are driving this, they take almost all sand; the little I dig up makes hardly any difference”.

The client replied, “Henry has an environmental policy; he offsets damages here by protecting precious sand dunes in Morocco. Also, he made a very nice mountain bike track for the children in old parts of the pit. He is a good example of corporate responsibility, while you are just destroying the environment.”

As you might have realized by now, life was hard for Loser. Every year his income shrank. When the wheelbarrow broke down, he couldn’t buy a new one. Another child had to quit school and carry the sand in buckets.

For a short while he had a rebound. A consultant from the regional development agency came and told him to look for another market niche; sell sand for special purposes and not “commodity-sand”. “There is a huge demand” the consultant said, “and there is special support for such local quality production” he said, before driving off in his SUV leaving a cloud of dust in his tracks. As long as the support kept coming in it was okay. The support ended, clients were unreliable and fads came and went and as soon as some business was lucrative enough Henry went in and out-competed him. One day Loser had to throw in the towel for good. He now lives on social support.

Our little story shows what happens in an unequal world with free trade and access to fossil fuel; where the price of oil determines the “value” of human labor. That is one of the most important factors in the story. It is simply not possible for human muscle power to compete with fossil fuel driven machinery. We might think that gas is expensive, but a barrel of oil has as much energy as 14 peoples’ annual labor. The absolute poverty line is 1 dollar per day, which is more or less the lowest salary one can pay any place on earth. Even with such deplorable salary, the cost for 14 peoples annual work is around 5,000 dollars, while a barrel of oil costs 100 dollars.

For sure, once can’t compare oil and human toil one-to-one. Human labor has skills and intelligence. True, that is why we have machines to convert energy into something useful. The market is also rarely as “free” as in this example; people with so varied conditions hardly compete next to each other. Some simplifications are made. But with cheap transportation technologies and largely deregulated markets differences in market conditions have plummeted, and prices for most commodities are converging on the planet. Some may also say that there is rarely such a competition for resources as in this example. To some extent this is true, but seen in a global perspective and long term, there is just one planet with a certain quantity of any resource.  The first oil brought into the industrial economy was available, in good quality, in abundant shallow reserves on land and was therefore very cheap to extract. Oil is now pumped from big depth under difficult conditions, and qualities are often lower, simply because the best sources are long depleted. To be closer to the example, there is even a global market for sand, which is a scarce resource in some places, for example, Singapore imports sand from the USA.

The relevance of our story is most easily seen in agriculture, where farmers using the most basic hand tools, such as a hoe or a spade, are competing with farmers who have a machine fleet that is worth millions of dollars. In this case, the labor of the small farmer is competing with oil and machinery. Making things even more absurd, the highly mechanized farmers are subsidized by their governments. To borrow money for an investment costs them a few percent in interest rate, while the poor have to pay twenty to forty percent interest rates for loans – if they can get any. The conditions for competition in the so-called “free market” are exactly so skewed. The brutal truth is that there is no future for most of the half a billion small farmers of the world in this market place.  A few can survive by going for niche, organic or high-value products, others have to migrate out of the farm sector, and they do. There are, however fewer employment opportunities for them than there were for my grandparents in Sweden who could go from farming to industries that needed workers. And there is no space for the farmers to invest so that they could compete more fairly with “us”.

These are the conditions that we should discuss when we discuss global poverty and starvation (and not increasing GMOs or the use of chemical fertilizers). These are the conditions which actually make the poor poorer. The neo-liberal market doctrines can’t produce viable solutions to the poverty trap of billion people.

We must realize that a “free” market in a deplorably unequal world is not “free” at all. One percent of the world’s population controls around half of all wealth and gaps are widening. When we have so different access to resources, a free market creates bigger gaps and not only relative but also absolute poverty.

The way out? Well, I don’t say it is easy. I don’t claim that we will solve the problems with government regulations, tariffs and government monopolies – in most cases these have had devastating effects. The first step is to clearly see the problems that are generated by a capitalist market economy and fossil fuel, and realize that their root causes are systemic and structural. The solutions are therefore to be found in alternatives to this.  How they can look like is a subject of another fairy tale.

”One doesn’t discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.” – André Gide

No related posts.

I was asked weeks ago by some in the Occupy Wall Street movement to make suggestions for how to frame the movement. I have hesitated so far, because I think the movement should be framing itself. It’s a general principle: Unless you frame yourself, others will frame you — the media, your enemies, your competitors, your well-meaning friends. I have so far hesitated to offer suggestions. But the movement appears to maturing and entering a critical time when small framing errors could have large negative consequences. So I thought it might be helpful to accept the invitation and start a discussion of how the movement might think about framing itself.

About framing: It’s normal. Everybody engages in it all the time. Frames are just structures of thought that we use every day. All words in all languages are defined in terms of frame-circuits in the brain. But, ultimately, framing is about ideas, about how we see the world, which determines how we act.

In politics, frames are part of competing moral systems that are used in political discourse and in charting political action. In short, framing is a moral enterprise: it says what the character of a movement is.  All politics is moral. Political figures and movements always make policy recommendations claiming they are the right things to do. No political figure ever says, do what I say because it’s wrong! Or because it doesn’t matter!  Some moral principles or other lie behind every political policy agenda.

Two Moral Framing Systems in Politics

Conservatives have figured out their moral basis and you see it on Wall Street: It includes: The primacy of self-interest. Individual responsibility,  but not social responsibility. Hierarchical authority based on wealth or other forms of power. A moral hierarchy of who is “deserving,” defined by success. And the highest principle is the primacy of this moral system itself, which goes beyond Wall Street and the economy to other arenas: family life, social life, religion, foreign policy, and especially government. Conservative “democracy” is seen as a system of governance and elections that fits this model.

Though OWS concerns go well beyond financial issues,  your target is right:  the application of these principles in Wall Street is central, since that is where the money comes from for elections, for media, and for right-wing policy-making institutions of all sorts on all issues.

The alternative view of democracy is progressive: Democracy starts with citizens caring about one another and acting responsibly on that sense of care, taking responsibility both for oneself and for one’s family, community, country, people in general, and the planet. The role of government is to protect and empower all citizens equally via The Public: public infrastructure, laws and enforcement, health, education, scientific research, protection, public lands, transportation, resources, art and culture, trade policies, safety nets, and on and on. Nobody makes it on their own. If you got wealthy, you depended on The Public, and you have a responsibility to contribute significantly to The Public so that others can benefit in the future. Moreover, the wealthy depend on those who work, and who deserve a fair return for their contribution to our national life. Corporations exist to make life better for most people. Their reason for existing is as public as it is private.

A disproportionate distribution of wealth robs most citizens of access to the resources controlled by the wealthy. Immense wealth is a thief. It takes resources from the rest of the population — the best places to live, the best food, the best educations, the best health facilities, access to the best in nature and culture, the best professionals, and on and on. Resources are limited, and great wealth greatly limits access to resources for most people.

It appears to me that OWS has a progressive moral vision and view of democracy, and that what it is protesting is the disastrous effects that have come from operating with a conservative moral, economic, and political worldview. I see OWS as primarily a moral movement, seeking economic and political changes to carry out that moral movement — whatever those particular changes might be.

A Moral Focus for Occupy Wall Street

I think it is a good thing that the occupation movement is not making specific policy demands. If it did, the movement would become about those demands. If the demands were not met, the movement would be seen as having failed.

It seems to me that the OWS movement is moral in nature, that occupiers want the country to change its moral focus. It is easy to find useful policies; hundreds have been suggested. It is harder to find a moral focus and stick to it. If the movement is to frame itself, it should be on the basis of its moral focus, not a particular agenda or list of policy demands. If the moral focus of America changes, new people will be elected and the policies will follow. Without a change of moral focus, the conservative worldview that has brought us to the present disastrous and dangerous moment will continue to prevail.

We Love America. We’re Here to Fix It

I see OWS as a patriotic movement, based on a deep and abiding love of country — a patriotism that it is not just about the self-interests of individuals, but about what the country is and is to be. Do Americans care about other citizens, or mainly just about themselves? That’s what love of America is about. I therefore think it is important to be positive, to be clear about loving America, seeing it in need of fixing, and not just being willing to fix it, but being willing to take to the streets to fix it.  A populist movement starts with the people seeing that they are all in the same boat and being ready to come together to fix the leaks.

Publicize the Public

Tell the truth about The Public, that nobody makes it purely on their own without The Public, that is, without public infrastructure, the justice system, health, education, scientific research, protections of all sorts, public lands, transportation, resources, art and culture, trade policies, safety nets, …  That is a truth to be told day after day. It is an idea that must take hold in public discourse. It must go beyond what I and others have written about it and beyond what Elizabeth Warren has said in her famous video.  The Public is not opposed to The Private. The Public is what makes The Private possible. And it is what makes freedom possible. Wall Street exists only through public support. It has a moral obligation to direct itself to public needs.

All OWS approaches to policy follow from such a moral focus. Here are a handful examples.

Democracy should be about the 99%

Money directs our politics. In a democracy, that must end. We need publicly supported elections, however that is to be arranged.

Strong Wages Make a Strong America

Middle-class wages have not gone up significantly in 30 years, and there is conservative pressure to lower them. But when most people get more money, they spend it and spur the economy, making the economy and the country stronger, as well as making their individual lives better. This truth needs to be central to public economic discourse.

Global Citizenship

America has been a moral beacon to the world. It can function as such only if it sets an example of what a nation should be.

Do we have to spend more on the military that all other nations combined? Do we really need hundreds of military bases abroad?

Nature

We are part of nature. Nature makes us, and all that we love, possible. Yet we are destroying Nature through global warming and other forms of ecological destruction, like fracking and deep-water drilling.

At a global scale, nature is systemic: its effects are neither local nor linear. Global warming is causing the ferocity of the monster storms, tornados, floods, blizzards, heat waves, and fires that have devastated huge areas of our country. The hotter the atmosphere, the more evaporated water and the more energy going into storms, tornados, and blizzards.  Global warming cannot be shown to cause any particular storm, but when a storm system forms, global warming will ramp up the power of the storm and the amount of water it carries.  In winter, evaporated water from the overly heated Pacific will go into the atmosphere, blow northeast over the arctic, and fall as record snows.

We depend on nature – on clean air, water, food, and a livable climate. And we find beauty and grandeur in nature, and a sense of awe that makes life worth living. A love of country requires a love of nature.  And a fair and thriving economy requires the preservation of nature as we have known it.

Summary

OWS is a moral and patriotic movement. It sees Democracy as flowing from citizens caring about one another as well as themselves, and acting with both personal and social responsibility. Democratic governance is about The Public, and the liberty that The Public provides for a thriving Private Sphere. From such a democracy flows fairness, which is incompatible with a hugely disproportionate distribution of wealth. And from the sense of care implicit in such a democracy flows a commitment to the preservation of nature.

From what I have seen of most members of OWS, your individual concerns all flow from one moral focus.

Elections

The Tea Party solidified the power of the conservative worldview via elections. OWS will have no long-term effect unless it too brings its moral focus to the 2012 elections. Insist on supporting candidates that have your overall moral views, no matter what the local issues are.

A Warning

This movement could be destroyed by negativity, by calls for revenge, by chaos, or by having nothing positive to say. Be positive about all things and state the moral basis of all suggestions. Positive and moral in calling for debt relief.  Positive and moral in upholding laws, as they apply to finances. Positive and moral in calling for fairness in acquiring needed revenue. Positive and moral in calling for clean elections. To be effective, your movement must be seen by all of the 99% as positive and moral. To get positive press, you must stress the positive and the moral.

Remember: The Tea Party sees itself as stressing only individual responsibility. The Occupation Movement is stressing both individual and social responsibility.

I believe, and I think you believe, that most Americans care about their fellow citizens as well as themselves. Let’s find out! Shout your moral and patriotic views out loud, regularly. Put them on your signs. Repeat them to the media. Tweet them. And tell everyone you know to do the same.  You have to use your own language with your own framing and you have to repeat it over and over for the ideas to sink in.

Occupy elections: voter registration drives, town hall meetings, talk radio airtime, party organizations, nomination campaigns, election campaigns, and voting booths.

Above all: Frame yourselves before others frame you.

Cross-posted from CommonDreams.org with kind permission

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From rock singer Bob Geldof to UK politician Gordon Brown, the world suddenly seems to be full of high-profile people with their own plans to end poverty. Jeffrey Sachs, however, is not a simply a do-gooder but one of the world’s leading economists, head of the Earth Institute and in charge of a UN panel set up to promote rapid development. So when he launched his book The End of Poverty, people everywhere took notice. Time magazine even made it into a cover story.

But, there is a problem with Sachs’ how-to-end poverty prescriptions. He simply doesn’t understand where poverty comes from. He seems to view it as the original sin. “A few generations ago, almost everybody was poor,” he writes, then adding: “The Industrial Revolution led to new riches, but much of the world was left far behind.”

This is a totally false history of poverty. The poor are not those who have been “left behind”; they are the ones who have been robbed. The wealth accumulated by Europe and North America are largely based on riches taken from Asia, Africa and Latin America. Without the destruction of India’s rich textile industry, without the takeover of the spice trade, without the genocide of the native American tribes, without African slavery, the Industrial Revolution would not have resulted in new riches for Europe or North America. It was this violent takeover of Third World resources and markets that created wealth in the North and poverty in the South.

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Reprinted in part with kind permission from The Ecologist (July/August 2005), a British monthly devoted to discussion of environmental issues, international politics and globalization. More information: The Ecologist, Unit 18 Chelsea Wharf, 15 Lots Road, London, SW10 0XJ, England, theecologist@galleon.co.uk, www.theecologist.org

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This article has been cross-posted from whydev.org

Economic Growth: Accessible for some but not all

The global economy, even before its evolution and sophistication, was and is about access; about controlling access to resources, knowledge and markets. Economic growth for any one nation is also predicated on this same concept of access. However, as the many of the current economic, political and social systems are set up, only a small percentage of a given population benefit from a nation’s acquired access. They have privileged access through geography, patronage, gender, status, nepotism, corruption, and family history.

For example, in the U.S, the top 20% of the population have 85% of the wealth. This year, the poverty rate in the U.S hit 15.1%, or 1 in every 6 people. In Australia, according to a report from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), the wealthiest 20% of households in account for 62% of total household net worth. Research has also shown that such wealth inequality is not truly understood by the public.

“I think one of the reasons that we see people having a disconnect between understanding how much wealth inequality there really is, is this very strong American belief in the ability to be socially mobile and to be mobile with your wealth. So people have very strong beliefs that across generations and even in their own life they can go from rags to riches. And it’s certainly possible. I mean one of the fantastic things about America is that that is in fact possible. But it’s much, much rarer than people believe, and especially wealth transmission, so money that goes from generation to generation to generation is very flat. So it tends to perpetuate a great deal over time” (Prof. Michael Norton, Harvard Business School).

Development without growth

Wealth in very uneven in its distribution, both in the U.S and Australia, and across the world. Yet, international institutions continue to push for economic growth-oriented policies in international development contexts. These policies are deeply rooted in a particular understanding and histories of industralisation, capitalism and growth. However, there are others, such as many UN agencies, smaller actors such as Non-Government Organisations (NGOs), Community-Based Organisations (CBOs), and individuals like Amartya Sen, who push for a broader understanding of, and approach to, development. Ones that encompass well-being, social, environmental and human development, reframing concepts of freedom and happiness without the intense focus on wealth.

However, this concept of access has trickled down into our articulation of these new spaces in development, and into sectors such as microfinance and education. It is believed that greater access to, and control of, finances and credit will empower and reduce poverty. Yet, the evidence is far from conclusive. In education, for example, the eight Millenium Development Goals (MDG) articulate access. In particular, MDG number two and three which relate directly to education say nothing of learning.

Indeed, it is not even stated in the MDGs whether children need to learn once they are in a classroom. It was wrongly assumed or just not considered. It is only recently that international attention has prioritised a post-access agenda as data reveals declining standards, high dropout rates, and low achievement rates in countries such as Uganda, Ghana and India. Although there has been remarkable success in striving towards the MDGs, in some cases, we are seeing rising levels of inequity. For example, according to a World Bank report on Ghana, a girl in a rural area from the poorest quintile is 13.9 times more likely not to have attended school than a boy in an urban area from the richest quintile. This is despite the government achieving almost universal primary school access and an average GDP growth rate of 5% over the past decade.

It is not such a far leap to then say that the access agenda is characteristic of very individualist societies, and has perhaps contributed to a blindspot on equity.

Sharing as a basis for economic and educational development

The conventional wisdom holds that if a child has access to education, then it is their responsibility to take advantage of it. Traditional educational pedagogies encourage individualism and competition. Through learning activities, standardised assessment tasks and even whole systems. Complimented by extra-curricular activites, children are constantly encouraged to compete against their peers; even when with a team, they compete against a team of their peers. Education systems are geared towards giving children a competitive advantage throughout their lives.

But, what if we were able to change this narrative? To encourage truly collaborative learning, in which children share knowledge, ideas, resources rather than compete for access? If we want to challenge the current economic growth model, then it must start with education. An initiative of the Post Growth Institute, an international group seeking to inspire people to explore paths to global prosperity that do not rely on economic growth, has begun the challenge through an innovative and participatory approach.

On September 15th, at various public locations worldwide, people handed out their own money to complete strangers, two coins or notes at a time, asking the recipients to pass one of these coins or notes on to someone else. The aim was to raise awareness and start conversations about the benefits of economies based on sharing, as well as offering a learning experience that gets us thinking more critically and creatively about our relationship with money and how we could have new types of economic activity. It would be great to see this event adapted to schools to include children, teachers and parents in conversations about not just economies, but education, based on sharing.

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On September 15, 2011, Free Money Day will provide an opportunity for us to re-engage with money, as well as some realistic alternatives to the current dominant economic system.

Perhaps only a generation ago, money was largely understood as the route to freedom, but for me (and it seems for many members of my generation) it feels a lot more like a ball and chain.  In the past 25 years alone, the world has experienced 87 monetary crashes.  While it is important to acknowledge a degree of instability is to be expected within all systems, our current economic system requires more than stability … it requires growth.  This puts us in the difficult position of relying on an unsustainable system for our own sustenance.

Fortunately, alternatives are gaining momentum and – in contrast to the legitimate stress many people experience in relation to money matters – these seem to have the potential to move us in directions of openness, possibility, and real prosperity.

Alternatives are all around us

Ideas about generating complements to existing economic systems have been around since the start of the 20th century; and of course living off the land has been a way of life for most people throughout most of history. But now the globalization of our economic system, coupled with the globalization of communication, has made possible what many see as a worldwide movement in the direction of alternative economies.

‘Economies’ is intentionally pluralized here as few who are part of this movement advocate the development of a singular mega-system; this is a movement of multiplicity.  As in the natural world, decentralized systems and diverse networks are crucial for sustainability.  With diverse, localized, fluid, and creative approaches to prosperity, the likelihood of ‘crashes’ of the scale we are currently experiencing may be significantly reduced – one of the many potential benefits of this kind of major economic transformation.

Perhaps showcasing a few existing initiatives will serve to provide a clearer idea of the alternatives that are being proposed, and – perhaps more importantly – the benefits they can foster. Examples include:

Community Economies

While ‘economies’ are often thought of strictly in terms of financial activity, the Community Economies Collective aims to diversify the notion.  Attending to ‘hidden and alternative’ economic practices such as volunteer work, household labour, food production, and the arts can enrich communities in ways that are sustainable.

Central to this project is the practice of identifying and mobilizing existing community assets in order to strengthen them, rather than focusing economic and development efforts in the area of needs alone.  Whereas capitalist and growth-oriented notions of economic development often strip communities of assets that are not included in their measures, a community economy approach aims to cultivate assets – which exist in all communities – thus contributing to more equitable and sustainable development practices.

Sharing Economies

Instead of all members of a neighbourhood owning their own lawnmower, tools, car, vegetable garden (you get the idea), Janelle Orsi (a sharing lawyer) suggests we could all save money, time, and stress by sharing a lot of these items.  Beyond sharing ‘stuff’, she also advocates sharing jobs, childcare, and rides.  Aside from what it saves us, Orsi – as part of the larger sharing movement – insists doing so can also enrich our lives by building community and facilitating sustainable living.  Her book, ‘The Sharing Solution’, provides recommendations, guidelines, and even templates for agreements and contracts in order to develop sharing arrangements with ease.

Sharing can take place on every level, described as ‘the four degrees of sharing’.  The first degree is something most of us probably do anyway: it is informal sharing like carpooling and having potluck dinners.  It requires cooperation and very little planning.  The second and third degrees gradually increase in both commitment and reliability (including things such as sharing yard space, and community-wide tool-lending libraries), leading to the fourth degree of sharing.  This level of sharing takes place on the level of infrastructure and involves more planning and even restructuring at the community level.  It can include such sharing possibilities as carpool parking lots, city-wide bike-share programs, and community garden plots.

The ultimate outcomes of sharing economies are thriving communities in which the needs of more people are met, with less of a cost to the natural world and less reliance on our current fragile economic system.

Collaborative Consumption

According to Rachel Botsman (co-author of ‘What’s mine is yours: The rise of collaborative consumption’), collaborative consumption is the idea and practice that provides alternatives not only to what we consume, but to how we consume.  It is a movement that aims to connect people in order to reduce the amount of ‘stuff’ we accumulate, and to ensure ‘stuff’ reaches those who could use it – and then pass it on – rather than sitting around unused (thus leveraging under-used items and space).

Collaborative consumption largely involves swapping things without any money changing hands at all, but it can also involve renting.  It is not necessarily about avoiding the money system altogether, but rather about ensuring people can access the things they need or want without having to purchase or own them, which requires a system of mass production.  It can take place on the ground with local clothing swaps, for example, but it also takes place via internet technology.  When people organize, the need for more stuff is drastically reduced as we can each simply know where to go to find someone who doesn’t want (but has) something we want (but don’t have).

Rather than all of us individually punching the clock daily so we can earn money to buy items that have been manufactured to sit in each of our individual homes, collaborative consumptions stretches the lifecycle of products and reduces waste while at the same time reducing the number of hours we need to work and the amount of money we need to earn – giving us more time and energy to do the things that really matter to us.  Collaborative consumption is not about doing without – it is about doing more with what we already have.

JAK Members Bank

This is a member-owned, interest-free banking system based in Skovde, Sweden.  No member can own more than one share, all banking activity takes place outside of the capital market, and loans are financed only by members’ savings.  The result?  A bank that is invulnerable to market turbulence, savings that are not subject to unpredictable interest hikes, and a debt-free economic model.  While this may sound too good to be true, it can perhaps more effectively be argued that our current growth-oriented system is too good to be true.

JAK Members Bank is one example of an institutionalized cooperative approach to economic sustainability.  Others include landshare co-ops, co-operative housing, and consumer cooperatives.  The keys to JAK Members Banking and other institutionalized cooperatives include: democratic non-hierarchical ownership, accessibility, and sustainability.

Free Money Day

This is all really exciting stuff – and real stuff – that’s happening right now!  But how do we get people buzzing about it?  How do we ‘free’ money from the big expectations we have accorded to this construct, and ‘free’ ourselves from its shackles?  How can we remind ourselves that the real value lies in what is exchanged via money (goods, services, time, experiences) – not in the money itself.  With increasing and legitimate overwhelm and despair at the current state of affairs, how do we tap into this energy in order realize there are alternatives?  How do we start the very conversations that get initiatives like these off the ground and into our communities?

Free Money Day has precisely this intention. On September 15th in various locations worldwide, people will be giving out money to strangers – two coins at a time – and asking people to pass one of them on to someone else.  The idea is simple: experience the freedom of letting money go, both literally and figuratively.  The ultimate aim is to inspire the kind of dialogue that leads to the types of exciting economic alternatives highlighted above.  By recognizing the limits of a growth-oriented economy and the possibilities that come with post-growth economies, we can perhaps all become mobilized to connect with existing alternatives, or even instigate some of our own.

To find out more about Free Money Day, please visit www.freemoneyday.org.  You can subscribe to receive updates, read more about the event, find out where there will be one close to you so you can participate, or sign up to host one in your community.

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