Comments auntiegrav has made

  • The only structural change that will make headway is for many people to die from industrial agriculture. As long as the government has systems in place to protect the dirty food concentrators (recalls, inspectors, liability protection from accusations), then centralized food will grow to be an even worse disaster than it is now.

    The government needs to stop 'helping' farmers by instituting systems that are designed to protect large operations. They also need to pass a 'right to food' law that gives anyone the right to grow and sell food without interference as long as it is direct to the consumer. Food safety begins with the consumer, and land husbandry takes people, not machinery.

    Additionally, the price of fuel must go up in order to reverse the last 100 years of replacing people with petroleum on farms.

    Government involvement in education needs to change, also. There is too much emphasis on the college education and the urban lifestyle in all public schools. There needs to be more emphasis on learning useful skills and working at productive labors and cooperating with nature, rather than all of the Systems of conquest which use Progress as a religion.

    Communities need to learn again about how to be communities and how to do things for themselves without being homogenized into a petroleum/transportation-based lifestyle. Farms 'get big or get out' because there is no value taught about being small and local.

     

    On Sustainable ag meets the MSM -- and wins! posted 3 months ago 14 Responses

  • Yes. After the choice, we come up with excuses.

    People ARE cows. They need instant feedback when making decisions at the cash register or the shelf. That means prices. That means we need to get rid of the income tax and put all government costs and the cost of wars and food subsidies and everything else into a sales tax to be seen at the store.

    The world is the way it is because processed food is too cheap and people don't see the actual costs when they buy things. There is a bill already written to do so, it just needs to be negotiated for the amount. Right now (It's called "The Fair Tax"), it is favored mostly by republican sponsors because it is written to be revenue neutral and just replace the income tax. That puts it at around 23% with a prebate for poverty-level spending. It needs to be doubled (at least) to reflect the costs of our debts that have been placed on future generations through environmental damage and health destruction.

    When the cost of things gets high enough, people will stop buying and start growing their own.

    With a world where the elite/management/manufacturing/wage slave model is failing, this should have been done 15 years ago when the Fair Tax was first proposed. Now it's too late to 'save' any of the luxurious life we had and think in terms of knocking down all of the marketing castles in the sky.

    What are people for? THAT's the question. As far as the planet is concerned, they should be providing some usefulness, but instead we are only thinking in terms of consuming. Everyone talks about feeding the world's people, but what the hell for if they are only going to destroy their own world?

    Stop it. Stop the marketing and the lies and the myths of a 'free' market and do it by showing how much it really costs WHEN PURCHASES ARE MADE.

    People do stuff. They make up reasons for doing stuff. In that order. Everything they do is in response to hormonal wants. Sometimes we can build fences to keep the cows in and sometimes they have to be painful fences.

    On Sustainable ag meets the MSM -- and wins! posted 3 months ago 14 Responses

  • There have been some good comments here, so once again, I'll try to incompetently make my point:

    If someone had come up with a 'carbonless' energy source in the 1940's, we would still have consumed the planet. Carbon is a problem right now because Al Gore (and others, of course) made people aware of the carbon dioxide problem, but the real issue is one of consuming more than we need to consume of everything. Some people will pop their hand up immediately and say we need population controls. Others say we need a carbon tax. Still others say we need incentives to encourage savings instead of spending.

    All of these issues can be addressed with one change: get rid of income taxes and put all externals (carbon, government, overconsumption, police protection for our 'stuff', fire protection, roads, bridges, welfare--ALL of it) onto a sales tax for everything (I humbly recommend the FairTax.org plan, but not at such a low rate).

    If someone figures out what's wrong with physics and we get cold fusion, the carbon tax becomes moot yet we would still "Expand or Die", and end up doing both.

    Something needs to be done about the oxymoron of "sustainable growth" that has permeated social thinking just like "perpetual profits" has up until now.

    We know that things cannot grow perpetually. We know that overconsumption is a problem. Currently, carbon IS part of almost everything we buy or do but that doesn't mean it always will be.

    Don't keep the argument so narrow as between "carbon tax" and "cap and trade". Look deeper at the causes of our problems and look for the simplest possible solution.

     

    On Myth: Unlike cap-and-trade, a carbon tax is simple, immune to manipulation, & politically palatable posted 7 months, 3 weeks ago 44 Responses
  • It isn't the taxes that make rich people rich, it's the money YOU spend to make the gap wider and wider. The rich get richer because we buy their stuff at exploitative prices (when you consider the cost of wars to keep the resources flowing from even poorer countries than what our 'poor' live in). The fair part about the FairTax is that it gives a rebate for the poverty level spending. That's all. The rest (carbon reduction, moderating consumption, etc. is NOT a claim of the people promoting the FairTax.) That part is up to you. How fair is the 'free' market which gives all the breaks to businesses who can game the system? Make the system ungameable: the failure mode of the FairTax is that people stop buying stuff they don't need and put their money into savings instead of giving it to the corporations that promise "always low prices". Where's the downside? We cannot keep the economy we have, regardless of what we dream. We can only fail big or fail in way that creates a sustainable system. The income tax is the cancer. The FairTax is the car crash where you get to pick how fast you are going. Take your pick. The major problems we are facing right now aren't about rich or poor: it's about overconsumption and deception and government assisting corporations and the rich to increase consumption through taxes on our children under the premise of "fixing" the 'economy'.On Myth: Unlike cap-and-trade, a carbon tax is simple, immune to manipulation, & politically palatable posted 7 months, 3 weeks ago 44 Responses
  • "There's only one party with a climate policy that's based on science, and that's the Greens." While that may be true, but the climate problem isn't a scientific one, but a psychological/government behavior one, and the Greens don't have much in the sense of government power or psychological commons with the majority. I agree that they should be mentioned, however, if only for the sake of seeing how NOT to get elected in a bully-based democratic government. You can't win if you're 'nice'. Obama did, but by default, I think, and many don't trust him because he's too nice and doesn't fit the leadership profile. The Greeks figured this out with the first democracies.On Myth: Democrats support good climate policy and Republicans oppose it posted 7 months, 3 weeks ago 13 Responses
  • OH, and back to the idea of taxing carbon. What if I invent something that doesn't use carbon to produce energy? How much of the planet would be left when it reaches common use? The problem is not specific to fossil fuel use. The problem is that humans use more than they put back and we are consuming things that should not be consumed. If we want to change that behavior, we have to give people ALL of the information (true costs) of the things they think they want and reduce the incentives to companies to manipulate minds (especially young ones) through advertising. It is one thing for a manufacturer to get a break on sales taxes when buying raw materials that will be taxed at the retail level, quite another to give a 'business expense deduction' for coercing young minds to demand their parents take them to McDonald's every day for the latest series of landfill-destined Happy Meal toys. The obfuscation and slimy consumerism needs to be moderated directly. The only question left is "how much?"On Myth: Unlike cap-and-trade, a carbon tax is simple, immune to manipulation, & politically palatable posted 7 months, 3 weeks ago 44 Responses
  • Has anyone here actually READ the information on the FairTax which I mentioned before replying? Please do before calling it "regressive" and talking about the "burden on the poor". There is a simple thing called a "prebate" which is 'refunded' each month to everyone (not just the poor) for the costs of the tax on spending at the poverty level. In other words, it is a simple matter to relieve the poor of the burden of taxes, much simpler than how it is done now with the income tax code.On Myth: Unlike cap-and-trade, a carbon tax is simple, immune to manipulation, & politically palatable posted 7 months, 3 weeks ago 44 Responses
  • Follow through your own logic first before replying. "Price only affects behavior at some level" is exactly the point. You have to put the ACTUAL price up front where people see it. If using gasoline means that we go to war, then the price of the war needs to be at the pump, not buried behind the human resources department someplace, and treated like a reward when we receive our 'refunds' in April. Speeding tickets are a perfect example of price vs. government. The price is set to raise revenue, not to stop speeders. Take the FairTax plan, and double it or triple it to cover the costs of bailouts. The beauty is that the failure mode (cheating) means that people have to live locally, trade with their neighbors, and grow and make their own stuff. Now THAT's conservatism! A sales tax is a lot less regressive than a dead planet. The person who pays the sales tax IS the person building the building because the person BUYING is the person who starts the builder to work, not the builder's boss. It's all about consumption and marketing. Take away the tax incentive to advertise, and see what happens. "Knowledge, not college."On Myth: Democrats support good climate policy and Republicans oppose it posted 7 months, 3 weeks ago 13 Responses
  • The Republicans have the perfect tool: it's called the FairTax bill. If the Democrats are serious about environmental issues and preventing the economic collapse from financial bubbles, then they should just get on board with the FairTax (sales tax to replace income taxes) and the only issue left is to negotiate the rate to a point where people will stop consuming more than they need. Things like carbon taxes and cigarette taxes and gas taxes are all just little con games when the real issue is our overall consumption and waste of resources. If someone comes up with an alternative fuel for cars or electricity, then the carbon tax becomes useless and we all go back to consuming the planet in other ways. The FairTax puts the costs of ALL the externalities at the focal point: where purchases are made.On Myth: Unlike cap-and-trade, a carbon tax is simple, immune to manipulation, & politically palatable posted 7 months, 3 weeks ago 44 Responses
  • The Republicans have the perfect tool: it's called the FairTax bill. If the Democrats are serious about environmental issues and preventing the economic collapse from financial bubbles, then they should just get on board with the FairTax (sales tax to replace income taxes) and the only issue left is to negotiate the rate to a point where people will stop consuming more than they need. Things like carbon taxes and cigarette taxes and gas taxes are all just little con games when the real issue is our overall consumption and waste of resources. If someone comes up with an alternative fuel for cars or electricity, then the carbon tax becomes useless and we all go back to consuming the planet in other ways. The FairTax puts the costs of ALL the externalities at the focal point: where purchases are made.On Myth: Democrats support good climate policy and Republicans oppose it posted 7 months, 3 weeks ago 13 Responses

  • Who says they should live?

    Before some sanctimonious bleeding heart starts yelling, we need to truly evaluate what we believe we are as a species. So far, we are nothing but a blight on the face of the earth, causing green things to die and dry up, spreading invasive species around with our transportation systems, and basically, acting as though the nature of the planet is some foe we must vanquish, even though doing so will kill us.
    We really need to ask, "What are people for?" In the context of what life does in all cases except humanity. That means, we need to contribute more usefulness to our children than we consume in resources. Pretty simple. The complicated parts come in when we ask, "How many of us do we need to accomplish this?" "How many people can the various regions of the earth support permanently?", and "Can we work to improve those numbers to reasonably support the numbers of people we currently have spawned onto the planet?" "How will we maintain our own diversity for security against catastrophic events?"
    If any particular region turns out to be unsustainable (most populous countries are actually in better shape Net Creative-wise than the industrial ones.), then cooperative actions need to be taken to improve the situation. If we don't, the randomness of nature will change the numbers FOR us.

    "It's not me"-Martin Blank

    On The limits of consumption-based food movements posted 1 year, 3 months ago 35 Responses

  • Matters of trust and honesty

    We can go 'round and 'round about the benefits and movements and politics of the various 'non'profit systems, but the bottom line comes down to being able to trust without having to have a system to do so. Local trumps certified organic because it isn't 'certified', it is trust-based and simple. All of the lobbying efforts of organic orgs are good, and I appreciate them, but they are enabled BECAUSE people buy their foods over long distances and create wealth for someone to pay these organizations. If the money was kept in their pocket, then the individuals and small farms would have more political power. Would you feel safer paying 50 bucks per hour to your neighboring farmer, or to a government inspector at the end of a long chain of lobbyists and slacker contracts and policies?
    Current economic conditions are pointing at the complexity of our System of systems and chortling about how stupid we have been. Most of the resources we sucked out of the ground to build our empires have been put into landfills and spewed into the air, while people are actually less happy and secure than they were 100 trillion dollars/tons of minerals ago. What do we have to show for it? We will all be forced to evaluate our trust systems and resources more frugally in the future, simply because they will be more expensive. It used to be cheap to 'hire' grocery stores to go to Mexico and beat wage slaves into weed-pulling submission. It also used to be cheap to pay farmers to go out and breath petroleum-based pesticides all day. No longer. Three meals to a revolution, people. 3 meals.

    "It's not me"-Martin Blank

    On The limits of consumption-based food movements posted 1 year, 3 months ago 35 Responses

  • Food stability is political stability

    The current food system is a shaky monoculture monorail, propped up on cheap fertilizer, cheap oil, and people in debt. Any country is only 3 meals from a revolution, including the grand old United States.

    Got local food?On As the ground shifts under their feet, food giants experiment with new strategies posted 1 year, 4 months ago 8 Responses

  • Not Completely Wrong

    A great thinker, but if you were to read the article from back to front, you would see it in a different light. The very FIRST thing we need to do is eliminate those plastic flamingos. This DOES have a 'one size fits all' solution. It is called "The FairTax Bill". It's in Congress already, we just have to face the fact that our consumption is the real enemy, not what we consume. Whether it is grain, guns, or gummy bears, we use too much and have nothing positive as a species to show for our wastefulness. Every bit of our government overhead should be based on consumption taxes. We need police because we have too much stuff to protect, we need roads because we have too many cars, and we need concentrated farms because we have too many people who would rather pay someone to cook their food and kill their animals for them.
    If you really want Change, keep it in your pocket. Your dollar is your only vote, and so far, we are voting for a dead planet.On An interview with California environmental adviser Terry Tamminen posted 2 years, 10 months ago 8 Responses

  • Big Systems don't work

    The problem is that the people who decide to go to war aren't the ones paying the bills for it. They see numbers with lots of zeros after them as the cost of a worn-out tank or jet engine and it's all Monopoly money to the testosterone-filled doofuses that say "kill 'em all and let Allah sort 'em out".
    The energy crisis is the least of our problems in the near future. Most of the difficulties will arise around ideologies and nationalism that NEVER considers the Net Creativity of what we do. When it comes down to considering our Consumption, we just don't. We only consider our desires and what the 'next' person has. If someone else has something, we are supposed to have it, and our kids are supposed to each have one. It's all in the marketing. 9/11 was just the big red SALE! sign in front of the Depleted Uranium Toy Store.

    "It's not me"-Martin Blank

    On Oil imperialism is going to be the end of us posted 3 years ago 13 Responses