A Radical Suggestion

[otherlander]

Societies and individuals should produce what is needed to sustain or entertain their members. Work should be something that is done to make necessary or helpful things, or to utilize those things for the good of one's self or others. When these things are done, the work is done. Members of societies should not, as a term of getting enough to survive on, have to spend set hour producing surplus for profit-driven entities.

WHY A SURPLUS-DRIVEN SOCIETY?

[Kitty Herder]

1. Because it profits the rich.

In the meantime, our paradigm of constant economic growth and the constant production of surplus, is destroying the planet and its peoples. Unregulated growth is the paradigm of the cancer cell.

[otherlander]

3. By regulation

do you mean things like labor laws, trade unions, etc.?

Because those are important to protect the people living within our society, but how do we enable people NOT to take part in this type of society?

I guess, just now, because one kind of society has such a monopoly, the only people who would be willing to endure the difficulties of opting out of the economy would be a few radical thinkers, and people in other less-developed countries who haven't been assimilated yet, especially tribes.

[Kitty Herder]

6. I meant unregulated as in it continues when it's no longer useful and has

crossed the line into being harmful. The body regulates the growth of cells by stopping their growth when it's not needed.

Perhaps a better word would have been "unlimited."

As for enabling people not to take part in this type of society, I really don't know. We're pretty much stuck in it. I know this is an extreme statement, but I think we're slaves to one degree or another because we are forced by necessity to work for someone else. Yes, we're free to leave, but only to either live on the street, find someone else to work for, or invest everything trying to be self-employed in a system that's stacked against us, guaranteeing that most who try will fail.


It's not like we can just live off the land. Try doing that on our so-called public lands and see how far that gets ya. If we want to live off our own land and were not fortunate enough to inherit a large parcel of it, we have to work for someone else our entire live to buy that land.

[Glorfindel]

2. Have you seen "The 11th Hour"? a movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio

addressing this very question? I highly recommend it. If I remember correctly, a scientist in the movie stated that for every truckload of useful goods that is produced, 32 truckloads of waste/trash/garbage are produced. The awful truth is that almost seven billion people are trying to live on a planet that can support (maybe) one billion comfortably. The population of earth has MORE THAN DOUBLED since JFK was inaugurated in 1961.

[otherlander]

5. No, I haven't

but i hear what you're saying, that we need negative population growth, which looks like it's going to happen (was it predicted to start declining around 2030 or something?). We probably need negative economic growth, too, but we can't force that, we can just give people the option not to participate in the cash economy. One thing I was thinking about that is that if people are guaranteed rights to ancestral lands and can still use it to farm/hunt/herd/gather or whatever, they can live that way and not be forced into urban life/ 9-to-5 jobs.

[splat]

4. Advertising makes us want what we do not need

[otherlander]

7. Advertising is dumb

Why doesn't everyone just laugh at it? What is everyone looking for that they don't have that makes them take advertised products to try to fill its place?