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The latest obscenity of Western Colonialism

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Re: The latest obscenity of Western Colonialism

Postby smallpoxgirl » Mon 13 Mar 2006, 14:00:16

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('lorenzo', 'T')he difference is that I'm not convinced of the cottage strategies of the Zapatistas or those the Maoist rebels in Nepal.


You're not that convinced that they want land? Or that they are doing the right things to get it? I'm not that familiar with the situation in Nepal, other than that there has been an insurgency for a while and the US government has been aiding the Nepalese government to try and squash it.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I') think a better strategy is to use the means available in capitalism, against capitalism.


I don't see how on earth that can work. This is the problem that displaced subsistence farmers are having all over the globe. For most peoples of the third and fourth world, it is impossible to find employment that pays enough to buy the things that you would have been getting for free as a subsistence farmer. I saw a study a couple of years ago where this anthropologist added up all the things that this particular group of hunter-gatherers in South America obtained in a year from their environment(pelts, food, etc.) He then estimated what it would cost them to buy all those things on the open market. As I recall it came to like $60,000 per person. It seems pretty clear to me that if you kick those guys off their land to plant oil palms that they are going to have a dramatic decline in their standard of living. Same for the subsistance farmers who are now going to have to work for your oil palm corporation for a pitance, and pay taxes, and then try to buy food and other goods that they would have otherwise just made.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')hat is: by using the means it offers against those who abuse it. Just like you can use the instruments of globalisation, against globalisation: corporations have become multinational, well so must unions.

I don't disagree with the concept of using the system against it self, e.g. environmental lawsuits against the forest service. I think that you have to realize though that the people running the system aren't idiots. They are not going to let you just use the system to dump them on their heads. They are ultimately going to use the system to its full advantage against you. There are certain inherent constraints within the system that can sometimes be exploited, e.g. the facade of "fairness". Ultimately though the system is there to exploit you and it's going to do just that.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he question now is: how do you intend to make these plans a reality? I haven't read anything concrete about this from your part.

I am going to work and save and buy land. Once that part of the equation starts to be more tangible, I will start working on getting a group of people to work with me to collectively own and use the land. It should be pretty obvious, but I will say it anyway....The issues related to subsistance living for a medical doctor living in the United States are radically different from the issues that confront a Campesino in Mexico. First off, they are starting from a wholly different place. Many people in Mexico live on land that they and their family have worked collectively for years. Mexico fought a war in 1910 that gave them that right. Up until the encroachment of "free trade" most of those lands were held collectively by communities. Since the advent of "free trade", American companies have forced a change in the laws around those collective lands. They have been parcelled out to individual people and as those individual people fall on hard economic times, the lands get sold and parcels become fragmented. Never the less, the campesinos are fighting to hold their lands and maintain their existing subsistance communities. I don't have land or community and have to try to develop them from scratch. The second major difference is that I have earning power that is several hundred times what a campesino could ever expect to make in the free market. It is therefore realistic for me to expect to save money and buy land, where a campesino can barely keep his belly full off what he can earn.
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Re: The latest obscenity of Western Colonialism

Postby jimk » Mon 13 Mar 2006, 17:55:31

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('smallpoxgirl', '
')my fondest dream for many years now has been get land so I can raise my own food.


Here is a fundamental question...

I assume that the level of resource consumption common in the industrialized world is unsustainable, i.e. even if we ramp up nuclear or palm oil etc. we will just be digging ourselves even deeper into a pit that eventually we will have to climb out of, scraping sheer walls with raw fingertips. People around the world are paying these kinds of heavy prices today, and we "developed" countries will not be able to keep the costs exported forever.

So my question is, what to do about it. Here are some options.

1) Party even harder now, knowing that the party can't go on forever.

2) Build up a fortress to maximize one's own comfort or extend one's lifetime after the party is over.

3) Figure out a mode of living that is sustainable on a wide scale and work to shift over to such a mode as soon as possible. Perhaps one just doesn't want to exploit the weakness of others (a sustainable mode of living is presumable not exploitative), or perhaps one hopes to serve as an example for others so they can see the viability of a sustainable way of life. But this option is about actively transforming one's own way of life, and at most helping others in a passive way.

4) Looking at the current suffering in the world, and the greater suffering that's around the corner, one can work in a variety of ways to relieve hunger or injustice etc.

5) Realizing that a lot of suffering comes from distorted economic, political, military, industrial, etc. systems, one can work to restructure these social institutions, so they are less exploitative and more sustainable.

6) Realizing that these warped social institutions are reflections of distorted thinking, warped ways of understanding the world and humanity and how humans are or should be related to the world, one can work to change people's ideas.

Anyway, Ms. SPG: it sounds like you are a licensed physician? Pardon my presumption, but if you were to spend enough time in the fields to be able to survive on the harvest, I think that would not be the optimum way for the world to harvest the fruit from all your skill and training! I applaud your desire and commitment to find a more sustainable and less exploitative way of living. Growing food is an important part of living, no doubt. But medicine is crucial, too. Our whole medical system is an incredible mess. Unsustainable and exploitative! There is critically important work to be done in rethinking medicine and restructure its institutions.

Pardon my presumption, but with your vision and talent, maybe you have greater work to do than tending rows of corn. I certainly hope you get some land and can garden it, but maybe just some fresh vegetables etc. and you can trade medical services for the wheat and corn.
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Re: The latest obscenity of Western Colonialism

Postby Ludi » Mon 13 Mar 2006, 21:54:56

What does she need wheat and corn for?
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Re: The latest obscenity of Western Colonialism

Postby jimk » Mon 13 Mar 2006, 22:44:18

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', 'W')hat does she need wheat and corn for?


Perhaps you have already outlined somewhere the ideal post-peak diet? I am certainly happy to learn about better foods, nutritious and easy to cultivate in a sustainable way.

Not sure the exact nutritional requirements for an ordinary person... maybe 2500 calories with 20 gms protein and 10 gms unsaturated fat. How to grow that with no inputs of petroleum or fertiizer produced with low energy input? Farming is hard work, if you're living off it. In non-industrial society, seems like 95% of the population farms. That says that there's about 5% surplus in sustainable farming.
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Re: The latest obscenity of Western Colonialism

Postby EnergySpin » Tue 14 Mar 2006, 04:32:39

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jimk', '
')
Not sure the exact nutritional requirements for an ordinary person... maybe 2500 calories with 20 gms protein and 10 gms unsaturated fat. .

Caloric intake depends on many factors ... use the Harris Benedict formula to see how many cals you need:
http://www.bmi-calculator.net/bmr-calcu ... -equation/
Protein requirements vary , but for short term balance young men and nonpregant /nonlactating women require 0.63 gm/kgr or 0.28 gm/lb.

It is kind of funny to read about various back to the land fantasies peppered with dreams of communal living. Somehow, my brain goes back to the days where this was the norm of living and the economic school of thought that developed to promote these ideas.
So there you go ladies and gents: the French Physiocrats reloaded (or how to revive an economic school that died 3 centuries ago)
http://cepa.newschool.edu/het/schools/physioc.htm
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')However practical many of the Physiocrats' policy measures were, they wrapped their arguments in metaphysical clouds. They differentiated between the ordre naturel (natural order, or the social order dictated by nature's laws) and the ordre positif (positive order, or the social order dictated by human ideals). .... The believed that the only choice humans had was either to structure their polity, economy and society in conformity with the ordre naturel or to go against it. ....
The Physiocrats identified three classes of the economy: the "productive" class (agricultural laborers and farmers), the "sterile" class (industrial laborers, artisans and merchants) and the "proprietor" class (who appropriated the net product as rents). Incomes flowed from sector to sector, and thus class to class. A "natural state" of the economy emerged when these income flows were in a state of "balance", i.e. where no sector expanded and none contracted.

I seriously think that manure powered steady, non-technological progress supporters read upon the physiocratic movement. After all, they share the same core belief system with many prominent academic figures e.g. Professors Ehrlich and Pimentel:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')n 1768, as France collapsed in a near-famine, the Physiocrats still called for "non-action", muttering on about their ordre naturel

Even certain prominent steady state economicians (H Daly, A Sen) are resorting to Physiocratic-like ideas to predict what a steady state economy would look like.

As a final note before I leave you people dreaming about the past ...
if people really cared about the environment we would all be quorn eating vegetarians, living in 500sqft apartments located at downtowns of breeder reactor powered, car-free urban centers, the size and density of NYC.
"Nuclear power has long been to the Left what embryonic-stem-cell research is to the Right--irredeemably wrong and a signifier of moral weakness."Esquire Magazine,12/05
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Re: The latest obscenity of Western Colonialism

Postby Doly » Tue 14 Mar 2006, 04:44:33

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('EnergySpin', 'A')s a final note before I leave you people dreaming about the past ...
if people really cared about the environment we would all be quorn eating vegetarians, living in 500sqft apartments located at downtowns of breeder reactor powered, car-free urban centers, the size and density of NYC.


Hey, that almost describes me! I don't eat much quorn, but I'm certainly vegetarian. I live in a tiny apartment (not sure how much is 500sqft, but can't be very far from that) in an urban center. The center isn't car-free, but it has some car-free areas, not a lot of space for many cars anyway, and plenty of bikes. The city isn't exactly NYC, though, and not breeder-reactor powered. But I don't have a lot of choice in the latter.

Do I qualify as a good environmentalist?
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Re: The latest obscenity of Western Colonialism

Postby Ludi » Tue 14 Mar 2006, 09:38:20

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jimk', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', 'W')hat does she need wheat and corn for?


Perhaps you have already outlined somewhere the ideal post-peak diet? I am certainly happy to learn about better foods, nutritious and easy to cultivate in a sustainable way.

Not sure the exact nutritional requirements for an ordinary person... maybe 2500 calories with 20 gms protein and 10 gms unsaturated fat. How to grow that with no inputs of petroleum or fertiizer produced with low energy input? Farming is hard work, if you're living off it. In non-industrial society, seems like 95% of the population farms. That says that there's about 5% surplus in sustainable farming.


Gardening is easier than farming, and one's caloric and nutritional needs can be met more easily from a diet which contains a minimum of grains. Grains take an enormous amount of land and labor.

I recommend the book "One Circle" which details complete diets grown in the minimum amount of space.

http://www.bountifulgardens.org/shop/gr ... books.html
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Re: The latest obscenity of Western Colonialism

Postby jimk » Tue 14 Mar 2006, 14:00:43

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', '
')Gardening is easier than farming


What's the distinction you're drawing here? Is it gardening to grow 5 cabbages, but farming to grow 500?

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', '
')one's caloric and nutritional needs can be met more easily from a diet which contains a minimum of grains.


It's easy to come up with lots of attractive theories, but most of them aren't very realistic. I like to look around to see what has actually worked and been tried and failed. Of course the hunter-gatherer thing can work, given enough land per person and a healthy ecosystem etc. Or one can combine some farming/gardening (for me, those are essentially synonyms) with hunter/gatherer methods. But most cultures seem to use grains like wheat or corn or rice as the foundation of their diet. So my guess is that over the millennia, folks have tried a variety of ways to get the nutrition they need and learned that grains are generally the best way.

In a place where the salmon and deer and huckleberries are plentiful, I imagine life can be reasonably easy. Unless folks show up from other places where things aren't so plentiful and where they have developed all kinds of brutal weapons to fight over the scraps. But once people have to live on what they cultivate, I think it quickly turns into a full time job.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', '
')I recommend the book "One Circle"


Thanks for the tip, I'll take a look.
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Re: The latest obscenity of Western Colonialism

Postby smallpoxgirl » Tue 14 Mar 2006, 14:09:29

I personally am very excited about goats. Goats are browsers, so they are happy to munch on the various plants in intact forest and don't need cleared fields of grass. They will keep the underbrush down reducing fire risk. They can provide you with: meat, milk, manure, hides. There are even types of goats that you can shear like a sheep to get fiber for clothes. I am definitely all about providing your calories with the minimum labor input. I don't anticipate I will be giving up medicine.

In response to what Jimk had to say about medicine, I went through a really hard struggle with that a couple of years ago. Was very near to quiting medicine all together. Finally decided that it was an important way to help people. My dream is that I will provide the economic input for my community in the form of cash from medicine and also medical care to my community and that other people will put in more labor in terms of maintanence, gardening, etc. I won't quit medicine, but I do want to raise my goats. :-D

As for living in a radioactive city....all I have to say is [smilie=thefinger.gif] screw that!
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Re: The latest obscenity of Western Colonialism

Postby jimk » Tue 14 Mar 2006, 14:21:10

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('EnergySpin', ' ')
use the Harris Benedict formula to see how many cals you need


Thanks for the useful info!

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('EnergySpin', '
')As a final note before I leave you people dreaming about the past ...


It's certainly true that the past was filled with nutcases like the physiocrats. On the other hand, the past must have been filled with some practical folks who managed to keep things going, to build the foundations that supported whatever we have accomplished in the last million years or however long.

People have lived quite successfully at resource consumption rates vastly less than our industrialized cultures today. Something like sustainability is possible - we can know that because we have working examples.

Are you being blinded by some kind of dogmatic adherence to a narrow concept of progress that forbids one from learning from the past, or from "less developed" cultures? Any such concept of progress is absurd anyway, because progress happens exactly by learning from others. Sure, learning from their mistakes, but learning from their successes too. Worshipping the new just for its novelty is probably the blindest faith of all.

Or maybe I missed your point?
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Re: The latest obscenity of Western Colonialism

Postby Ludi » Tue 14 Mar 2006, 16:34:21

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jimk', '
')
It's easy to come up with lots of attractive theories, but most of them aren't very realistic. I like to look around to see what has actually worked and been tried and failed.


These aren't "attractive theories" this is based on experiments conducted by people all over the world for over 30 years, plus historical information going back thousands of years.

I don't think you've "looked around" much if you're arguing over this with me. You haven't even "looked around" much at this messageboard, where I've been posting about these things for a year.
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Re: The latest obscenity of Western Colonialism

Postby jimk » Tue 14 Mar 2006, 20:30:45

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('smallpoxgirl', ' ')
I won't quit medicine, but I do want to raise my goats.


Yeah, I think community is essential. Just like diversity is key to making a healthy and productive garden, diversity is key for community. It's only talented doctors who will be able to rethink medicine and plant the seeds for new models of practice, ditto for engineers etc. I think a big piece of the rethinking is to re-vision the role of the expert. Instead of concentrating the expertise, protecting a monopoly... what makes sense for a sustainable & non-exploitative approach is if the expert is teaching and empowering others. E.g. start with preventative medicine & just healthy lifestyles. Similarly with engineering... a lot of times it's the problem that needs to change, more bicycles and fewer jet airplanes. Stop building bridges to nowhere.
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Re: The latest obscenity of Western Colonialism

Postby TheTurtle » Tue 14 Mar 2006, 20:41:50

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('smallpoxgirl', ' ')I won't quit medicine, but I do want to raise my goats. :-D


And when a neighbor has a sick goat and there is no veterinarian to be found, Ms. SPG will be just the right person to call for help! :P
“Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.” (Ted Perry)
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Re: The latest obscenity of Western Colonialism

Postby EnergySpin » Wed 15 Mar 2006, 03:45:27

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jimk', '
')It's certainly true that the past was filled with nutcases like the physiocrats. On the other hand, the past must have been filled with some practical folks who managed to keep things going, to build the foundations that supported whatever we have accomplished in the last million years or however long.

Well, the point I was trying to make is that almost ALL physiocratic ideas have found themselves into the work of steady state economicians and are parroted left+right without consideration of their implications.
For example H Daly never gave a meaningful answer during the debate about a hypothetical steady state economy in the August issue of Sci American regarding unemployement and distribution of goods, nor how we could prevent this system from deteriorating into physiocratic feudalism.
In fact, if you read more closely you will see the same spirit of the "natural order" that sentences everyone in the world except a very small minority to eternal misery. Unless of course people are interested in a Marxist steady state utopia ... a democratic steady state economy with stock markets/free enterprise/small and big businesses is NOT possible.
However an oppressive feudalist steady state economy is possible and did survive for almost a millenium in Medieval Europe.
So bottomline = let's keep the idea of sustainable growth and see how to decouple it from resource consumption (aka demateriliazation).
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jimk', '
')People have lived quite successfully at resource consumption rates vastly less than our industrialized cultures today. Something like sustainability is possible - we can know that because we have working examples.

Oh this is true ... as someone who has lived in a 500sqft studio-700sqft apt in a nuclear powered city, I can tell you that it is indeed possible :roll:
In fact there is at least empirical evidence that the USA passed the point where more goods = more happiness in the 50s-60s.
What Can Economists Learn From Happiness Research?
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jimk', '
')Are you being blinded by some kind of dogmatic adherence to a narrow concept of progress that forbids one from learning from the past, or from "less developed" cultures? Any such concept of progress is absurd anyway, because progress happens exactly by learning from others. Sure, learning from their mistakes, but learning from their successes too. Worshipping the new just for its novelty is probably the blindest faith of all.

Or maybe I missed your point?

You missed the point :roll:
But if were to go back to a manure powered agrarian utopia we would find that they are plagued by the same problems that led our ancestors "forward". And in any case, a manure powered world is not possible for 6.5 billion people .... but a "high tech" world is (sans the cars, coal fired plants). The words "quorn eating vegetarians" tried to marry the new ("quorn") with the old ("vegetarian") as far as consumption patterns are concerned. I find it amazing that an industrial microbiology system which directly converts "Waste" to "food" (after all this is what ecosystems do ) could satisfy the protein needs of the world at a much lower energy cost/reduced land use compared to alternatives. Yet I have not seen anyone saying that hey, let's do that instead of raising cows: it seems that our "steak-based" way of life is not negotiable irrespective of our cornocupian or manurotopian viewpoints :-D :-D :-D
The same goes for many other things e.g. nuclear power, wind farms, biotech which contradict certain pre-existing biases about what is pure/natural etc
"Nuclear power has long been to the Left what embryonic-stem-cell research is to the Right--irredeemably wrong and a signifier of moral weakness."Esquire Magazine,12/05
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Re: The latest obscenity of Western Colonialism

Postby lorenzo » Wed 15 Mar 2006, 07:47:39

Thanks EnergySpin for your realism.

Precisely for the reasons you point out, I think the best strategy for the poor farmers in the developed world is to find a point of entry into the global economy, and the biofuels option might just be that point.

The few agrarian utopians' arguments aside, there's no doubt in my mind that the last untouched bits of land on this planet are going to be colonised anyways in order to make them productive and to serve Progress (however tragic this is). And since this will be the case, I'd prefer the people who live there now to be the proprietors of that production, and not some outsider. It won't be easy to help them getting there, but I think it's worth a shot.

Reactionaries here in the West telling them they should starve and be happy because they can enjoy a bit of unspoiled land, are indeed reactionary.


My question to the reactionaries: if plantations are going to be created, under which terms and conditions would you prefer to see them appear?

1. Under conditions set by the Chinese, who're moving extremely rapidly in Africa because they need its resources, and who don't give a crap about the environment, nor about basic social standards, and who are not burdened by any colonial sensitivities (i.e. they pretty much feel free to behave like real colonisers).
2. Under conditions set by Western corporations, who're moving rapidly in Africa because they want to profit from its resources (by selling them to the Chinese), and who don't give a crap about the environment (despite the fact that they Greenwash themselves), but who at least are committed to some social standards
3. Under the conditions set by The Natives, who decide for themselves which are the rules of the game

Simple but realistic question, I think.
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Re: The latest obscenity of Western Colonialism

Postby Ludi » Wed 15 Mar 2006, 09:31:03

They certainly don't need to starve, lorenzo. No one is telling them to, at least not in this thread.

http://www.growbiointensive.org/biointe ... html#kenya

http://greenbeltmovement.org/c.php?id=8
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Re: The latest obscenity of Western Colonialism

Postby smallpoxgirl » Wed 15 Mar 2006, 13:33:07

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('lorenzo', '3'). Under the conditions set by The Natives, who decide for themselves which are the rules of the game


Are you a native?

Because you look to me like a Westerner trying to decide what the rules will be.
"We were standing on the edges
Of a thousand burning bridges
Sifting through the ashes every day
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Now is nothing more than a memory
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Re: The latest obscenity of Western Colonialism

Postby threadbear » Wed 15 Mar 2006, 13:57:02

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('smallpoxgirl', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('lorenzo', 'Y')our line of thinking is thoroughly bourgeois. Just look at your view of Africans: you buy your food with dollar bills. But you want them to be self-sufficient food farmers.


Maybe you just don't read anything I write anywhere else except these biodiesel threads. The reason that I buy my food with dollar bills is mostly the same as the reason why there are so many people starving to death in the third world. I don't have any land. I can't grow food because I don't have any land to grow it on. All of the land here and in much of the third world has been grabbed up by wealthy Americans. Maybe you don't read all the other stuff I write, so you don't know that my fondest dream for many years now has been get land so I can raise my own food.

Like anyone who has been divorced from the land, my only option for feeding myself is to work for cash and buy food. The truth is that there are all kinds of people all over the world right now trying to fight against people like you dragging them into the world of commodified resources. The is why the Mosquito people fought the Sandanistas. It's the reason the Zapatistas and the Campasinos are fighting Fox. It's the reason the Dine and the Shoshone are fighting Gail Norton. These people know good and darned well that if you kick them off their land so you can use it to graze cows or plant oil palms or run a bannana plantation or whatever, there is not a chance in hell that they are going to end up shopping at Walmart. What they are going to end up is living in urban squallor on the brink of starvation working in a maquiladora for $0.75 per hour to make consumer crap for other people to buy in Walmart.

The commodification of the world is a shit deal. It's a shit deal for people here who have turned into some new species of all consuming invertebrate, and it's a shit deal for the people around the world that are getting fleeced to make it happen. What people need is not magical mystery beans, it's land where they can make a life for themselves.


What about desertification? The supply of arable farm land is shrinking while populations increase. Most of the political hotspots in Africa are in areas where decreasing fresh water supplies are bringing tribes into conflict with one another. It's not ALL a problem of coporations/commodification. If nature is allowed to achieve 'perfect balance', millions will simply die of starvation, without the developed world's interferance. Mother Nature isn't benign and Utopian visions spun off romantic models of her are actually devoid of compassion. The best thing for overpopulation is urbanization and strict child labour laws. If you live in a tiny apartment, you are physically unable to have that many kids , and they are a net drain, if they aren't allowed to work.
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Re: The latest obscenity of Western Colonialism

Postby Ludi » Wed 15 Mar 2006, 14:09:54

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('threadbear', 'W')hat about desertification? The supply of arable farm land is shrinking while populations increase. Most of the political hotspots in Africa are in areas where decreasing fresh water supplies are bringing tribes into conflict with one another. It's not ALL a problem of coporations/commodification. If nature is allowed to achieve 'perfect balance', millions will simply die of starvation, without the developed world's interferance. Mother Nature isn't benign and Utopian visions spun off romantic models of her are actually devoid of compassion. The best thing for overpopulation is urbanization and strict child labour laws. If you live in a tiny apartment, you are physically unable to have that many kids , and they are a net drain, if they aren't allowed to work.


Threadbear, alternative models for agriculture address desertification. Please learn more about this before you discount these methods as "utopian."

I'm serious folks, this is getting stupid. Will you people PLEASE read these books and links I post about all the time. Please.

To start with, please read Permaculture: a designers manual by Bill Mollison.

If you don't, and keep going on about "manure-powered utopians" I'll assume you actually don't give a rat's ass about dealing with these problems but just want to shoot your mouths off.
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