Large scale consumerism is failing...

[Evasporque]

We were farmers and small merchants. Then we moved to cities and made big things out of steel. Then we found out information was more important than making things out of steel. Then people found out they could use methods of communication to sell lots of cheap junk from China. Now we just buy things and people use that information to sell us more cheap junk from China.

We still grow things but only stuff we can sell in mega bulk to go in cheap junk food made elsewhere or sold to 5000 stores nationwide.

We really only make the machines that make the parts for machines that put the junk we like to buy in packaging and boxes.

Time to go back to the basics.

Subsidize, develop and promote farmland in a 50 mile radius radius from a urban centers that is to be used for local food production, sale and consumption only.
Give local economies a chance and stop giving it all away to big box consumerism. The days of suburban sprawl are over.

Human scale with public transportation, civil engineering....not automobile size, auto only corridors...

Subsidize, develop and promote basic necessities manufacturing...textiles and basic clothing, local green power and transportation manufacturing.

The Trades...shoe making, clothing design and construction, leather working and curing, canning and curing, tool making and metal working needs to be resurrected to rebuild the basic needs of our local communities.

Small economies of small scale and micro businesses in numerous locations throughout urban areas are set aside, developed and promoted for local goods, services and light manufacturing. Seed loans and grants to make Americans work for themselves and each other again.

No national chains. No big box advantages. No more tipping the advantage to those with money
who pay to have the rules made in their favor.

Make idle housing livable. Force banks to sell foreclosed properties or given away to organizations to bring them quickly back into use for families that need housing.

This is progressive and is our future.

Economies based on large scales have failed all but the few.

In terms of long term sustainability of our macro economy...economy of scale is a fallacy.

[Newest Reality]

1. That's what we really need to do ...

and will HAVE to do if most of us want to survive in any kind of comfortable, dignified way.

Conditions will push us to make many important decisions about lifestyle, complexity and locality.

One of the first, and most important, ethical concerns may revolve around the question of profit as the only consideration for doing business. When profit is held above and beyond all other concerns, you see it as the results we are watching unfold around us from the elite-oriented economics to the ecological impact. We either consider the benefit and impact of business on people and living things as the most important factor with profit taking a lessor role, or we play winner take all and spoil everything and eat-up resources like mad until only small numbers of us can survive and maintain a decent standard of living.

[Evasporque]

3. it blows my mind how it wasn't America that changed but the economy...

Over the last 50 years....

My family were small town retailers, furniture store...for over 100 years.

All those small shops and trades...gone in my 50 years of life.

It is not that Americans are any different...it is that a few people got so incredibly rich so quickly things just went to hell and these same rich people fucked up our government in paying for laws to make them even richer...in doing so the threw us all under the gold laden bus they were driving into oblivion.

[SoCalDem]

16. The 80's ruined us all

Family owned businesses were gobbled up or ground down by all the mega-mergering that went on and on and on..

It may seem silly, but I track it back to "Dallas"..before that show came along, followed by Falcon Crest, Dynasty, Knots Landing et al...and throw in Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous, most tv shows were not populated with rich folks we werre supposed to actually like.

Before those shows, the people portrayed on tv were "cleaned up" versions of what most of us were, or could realistically aspire to be. Rich people were usually the "villain"...

Even doctors (the pinnacle of success back then) were shown to live in rather common surroundings.

Credits cards were routinely sent (un solicited) to millions of people who wanted to at least appear to be "Dallas-worthy"...and at the same time, the wall street wheeler dealers were idolized & fawned over by every magazine around..


it was a clever con job

[raccoon]

19. Great post. I noticed that too. Pre-1980's in the daytime soaps, there were doctors,

lawyers, newspaper editors...then somewhere around the 1980's, the families on the daytime soaps became mega-rich too, like on the nighttime soaps.

[Odin2005]

21. Interesting, I'm 25 and to me soaps have always been "Rich people screwing arounf".

Or there is the one ("Passions"?) with the evil witch. I never knew that old soaps were about ordinary people.

[SoCalDem]

23. Most of the old-timey soaps were pretty pedestrian

most of the "action" took place in people's kitchens, living rooms, or at a hospital....

The "stars" of the shows dressed like most of us do (or did at that time).. They were not jet-setting around.

[lonestarlib]

2. I've been having some of these same thoughts rattle around in my head.

[NNN0LHI]

4. Umm, who you planning on getting to go out and work in those fields?

I am getting too old for that.

Don

[Evasporque]

5. there will be plenty of workers.....

no....when it comes to finding workers to work fields for a decent wage, or in a small factory making shoes or tee-shirts...weaving textiles, or making socks...there will be plenty of people who would love to be part of a community of people making things for each other.

there are many who have no jobs now...and if something comes along where they can learn skills and what work means to a community...

while paying rent, buying food...(from others down the street)

then finding people to work and live as free people will not be a problem.

[lumberjack_jeff]

8. There are no healthy, fit people within 50 miles of urban centers? n/t

[NNN0LHI]

9. Oh, I am sure there are some

You ever worked in a field before?

Don

[lumberjack_jeff]

15. Yes, quite a few of them, actually.

Not everyone is able to work in a field. But most are, provided productivity is not the only overriding criteria.

[Liberal_in_LA]

6. farmland surrounding LA can't feed LA

[Evasporque]

10. not all of it...to feed everyone....

Also by the time this actually starts large tracts of land idle land will appear between sections of cities and separate communities.

When it comes to starvation and joblessness....or tearing down sections of idle worthless industrial and abandoned housing space and creating green and growing acerage it will happen.

Look at detroit...large tracks are returning to the wild.

LA might not be a good first example but every small town, and cities and urban areas up to 3-4 million could.

St. Louis, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Detroit....etc...etc..the Upper midwest would definitely benefit from such development.

[hifiguy]

7. Any system that depends on infinite expansion

is doomed to fail, except perhaps the universe itself. Even Einstein wasn't sure about the universe, though.

[Evasporque]

11. no reason to not make a reasonable pair of shoes....nt

[Gin]

13. many people used credit cards for shopping...then the rates

and fees went through the roof....so now..no funds..no credit..no demand for goods and services..(IMO)

[deaniac21]

12. I'm into creating techno music with acoustic instruments. A place

will be found for me!

[starroute]

14. I just spotted a back-to-the-land magazine at the supermarket checkout

It gave me kind of a shock to see it there among the tabloids and gossip mags. Pretty picture of a bunch of farmers on the cover. Articles with titles like, "No root cellar? No problem!" Stuff on sustainability.

Something's in the wind.

[TNLib]

17. That's what I'm thinking to0. Local farmers are starting to prop up now

and selling there veggies and beef at farmers markets, church parking lots and even in the breezeway were I work. Most of it organic. I think we are headed that way considering the price of food. Also I think we'll see next homemade type goods like clothing, textiles ect..

[Evasporque]

18. exactly....the local grown food movement growing in Milwaukee

Other basic needs goods need to be encouraged....

I actually looked into going to shoemaking workshops...there are several in the U.S. from boots to mules...

In some ways if you stop watching politics and look at what is going on around us...we see there are many progressive ideas that are spreading. These ideas just a few years ago were poo pooed by conservative as communist hippie socialist...

If anything...it is these ideas that will bring us together...


And if the money grubbing Pols and rich people destroy the economy and public sector to make them selves richer...they can knock themselves out...we will create a new economy and our own schools in our neighborhoods....fuck McDonalds Target, WalMart, TV and the rest of the trappings of consumerism....

People that want to wallow in that shit can go ahead and do so...I think though the rest of us will move forward and make America a great and vibrant place to live again without them.

We can't win playing the game that they make up the rules and cheat at as it's played....

Like "War Games" sometimes the best outcome is to simply to not play the game.

[Odin2005]

22. We have a farmer's market in dowtown Fargo and the food is delicious and cheap.

It's almost time to get some sweet corn, YUM!

[Odin2005]

20. Recycle and SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL THRIFT STORES!!!