The Amish Way?
American essayist said he thought the Amish communities were the best example of a group in the U.S. that avoided the unsustainable nature of our modern world.
I have an affinity to the "voluntary simplicity" response to a unsustainable economy, even if the Amish themselves have to make continual compromises on where the boundaries lie for self-sufficiency versus cooperation with the wider world.
I lean to thinking every household is at some level open to setting boundaries on how it will interact with the wider community. I think every decision has costts and benefits. I also accept in general benefit of cooperation far outweigh the risks, at least in the short term. The "costs" tend to be more measured as long term dependency and loss of "sovereignty", self-determination.
There's also a bigger idea of responsibility for the "sins" of those you trade with. A simple example, if you buy blackmarket products on the cheap, you must recognize that they are probably stolen goods. Therefore you are partially responsible for these crimes. Similarly the entire markets of exploiting natural resources ultimately come down to power structures - one group lays claims over resources and can defend those claims with military power. They might even defend the claims through a bribery system, basically paying off those in power for rights to resources for short term profit without necessarily considering destruction or polluting of the environment, depletion of resources, or the long term sustainability of the communities that grow and thrive temporarily from the short term extractive wealth spend-down.
If you want to be "Amish", you may see your neighbors growing a city on a local gold mine. You have no need for gold, so you ignore them perhaps. A community will grow up for a few decades from the miners and such and finally as depletion is completed, the city is abandoned. Assuming pollution is minimized, you were neither affected by the rise or fall of that extraction.
Alternately perhaps you might have sold your spare food crops to the city, and perhaps even expanded your farms to sell more food. Maybe you even accepted the gold as payment for the food sales. Then you bank your savings, and later on perhaps you'll need something, you have some money/gold to sell for some other product. You didn't "change your lifestyle" for the new wealth, and never considered the income as "dependable", like your land wealth for food which can keep producing year after year.
Now perhaps you're a more experimental Amish community, and while expanding your farms with the new food sales to the mining town, you expand your ambitions. You might hire non-Amish labor to work your lands, and with your profits, your work is decreased, and you have more time to think about the bigger picture and see what you might do that your parents or grandparents can't do.
Maybe you think having access to electricity isn't so corrupting, and get some power lines in, and phones maybe. Heck soon, you gain access to the internet and have communication with other communities and learn from them.
Is it wrong to "invest" in technology that expands your reach and connection to the world? Well, there's still only 24 hours in a day, and lots of good things to do, so admittingly, there's a distracting nature of wealth and influence.
I sometimes tend towards the "destructive" aspects of participating in a larger unsustainable economy, but perhaps the "distractability" aspects of wealth and affluence are the most corrupting?
Is my ambition to pay off my mortgage so bad? That brings up a different aspect of dependency.
My happy Amish community can choose to cooperate with neighbors who have more temporary wealth, and stop when it disappears, but debt opens a whole new can of worms.
The Amish set their ambitions within their resources, living from "savings", but that's not the "optimal way". I mean perhaps an Amish farmer COULD add 500 acres of growings lands with a "gas-powered tractor" in 1 year, OR it could take 10 years to clear by horse and plow. WHO knows how much food the neighbors might buy in 10 years, but they need it NOW. If he doesn't get on the ball to fill the market demand, they'll go elsewhere and his "window of opportunity" will close. SO a clever farmer might borrow money and RENT a tractor and equipment to clear the land in a year, and then HOPE the profits from his food sales will pay for the borrowed money.
This is "smart economics" - take a small risk of debt for a larger opportunity for wealth. Anyone can sit down with some paper and sums and make an educated guess. Perhaps there's a 5% chance of "bust" within 10 years, and a 50% chance of making back 10 times the investment!
Even if you can calculate some good odds, you still have to estimate the risks along the way. WHAT HAPPENS under "bust" - will the farm be forcefully sold to pay the debt? If so, even a 5% chance of bust may be "too high" given a 4 generation farm. Probably a better chance is to scale back your goals so your debt can be paid back no matter what. In the long run, such conservative decisions put you behind your neighbors, but when dealing with short term opportunities, you may outlive their boom and busts.
Let's play the "Leveraged debt" game, okay?
You bet $1, and we flip a coin. If it comes up heads, you get back $2. If it comes up tails, you lose it.
Now comes the interesting part, pretend whenever you win, you can say "double or nothing" and have a chance to double again.
If your luck holds, you might get to $2, $4, $8, $16, $32, $64, ..... all the way up to $1,048,576 perhaps!
That's great wealth from such a small investment right?
Well, yes, but pretty unlikely. Still, perhaps the odds are better. Perhaps rather than flipping a coin, we flip 10 coins, and you win if a SINGLE coin comes up heads. That's pretty good odds, right? You can play THAT game on double or nothing as well!
Specifically your odds of winning $1 million would be (1-1/1024)^20=98.06%
That's all good and fun, but you can go in the opposite way as well, in the abstraction of debt.
I'll lend you $1, and you can bet it in this game. If you win, you can pay back what you borrowed. If you lose, you can borrow more, as much as you like.
Let's say you have a 90% chance of winning each game, if you play 10 times, your chances of winning all 10 times would be 34%, not great. In a double-game, if you lose everything you start over borrowing $1.
But heck, why start with $1 bet if you don't have to? Why not start with a $1 million bet? I mean the odds are still with you.
Lets say you bet $1 million and lost. Well, just borrow another million and bet again, or BETTER borrow $10 million next time. If you're "in control" of when you stop, mathematically you're guaranteed to be a winner!
BUT, the flaw comes when these games are interrupted. WHAT FORCE STOPS you from playing again? If you WIN, you want to play again. If you LOSE, you want to play again! In otherwords, you're going to keep playing, like a rat in a cage with a lever for cocaine injections, you'll stop WHEN the lever stops. When midnight strikes and Cinderella's fantasy with the prince is dispelled into dark reality of poverty.
Our whole economy, based on unsustainable consumption and destruction is a game where the early investors take the biggests risks for the largest rewards and later investors keep trying to play until the game cracks open as a pyramid scheme. It doesn't LOOK that bad because our memories are short and the rewards are high. However much the odds LOOK in our favor, if the game has an ending you can't predict the only way to WIN is to divest NOW whatever your takings.
What does it mean to "divest"? Well, for me it means NOT trying to maximize my debt to maximize my wealth. It means incremental participation, investing ONLY as much as I can afford to lose. It ultimately means no debt is "acceptable."
It is interesting to me. If you're 60 years old now, looking back at 40 years of "hard work" and "prudent investing", along with some marketable skills and talents, you'll probably be sitting on a nice pile of wealth. In such times you'll look to "retire" and "live on the interest" as you can, and "on the principle" as you must. Basically even the "safe bet" can look pretty good then. I mean you might accept more risk for more gain, but you don't NEED to. You might not need interest at all to live on.
However we can compare to a 25 year old today, perhaps with $50,000 in student loans, and another $15,000 in credit card debt you borrowed during school, and maybe another $22,000 car loan. Plus the cool apartments will cost you $1500/month. Well, you've got your education, but all this debt! Will your "education gamble" pay off? Recent history suggests so, but maybe you have "dreams" of joining the peace corps or doing something NOBLE for society BUT such pursuits don't have the income to pay your debts, so you "compromise" and find a job that maybe can make $50,000/year, and "hope it lasts". If disaster strikes, like a recession or your occupation has layoffs, perhaps you'll be forced to take a much lower paying job which will take much longer to pay your debt down. HOW LONG should you work a bad job to pay for a debt?
The young person's options are limited for protecting against risks. A more conservative youth might forgo college and START with the low paying job and SAVE without debt, and take some classes here and there. This "incremental" choice "on average"will leave them behind their higher-risk peers in good times, but allows them "flexibility" for an unknown future. If conditions change, he can "jump", change jobs, find ways of learning skills without needing to get into debt. He can change his mind if he finds his chosen work is unethical or whatever, while the indebted youth is more likely to "compromise" integrity for keeping the income flowing.
Myself, I've been luck to have a little of both, specifically a college education (without debt), and accepted periods of "self employment" where I earned more than I needed and periods of unemployment I lived off my savings. And finally accepted a regular position I felt good about.
I look at my decision in 2003 to buy a house, and however "safe" it would seem to most people, it seemed a big risk for me. I'm used to living on $6000-$12,000/year, and now my mortgage alone costs that much. NOW if I lose my job, I have BIG BILLS - I could lose my house! Okay, calm down, but the risks are there.
I might have tried an incremental approach, saving for 10 years and then buying a house for cash, IF those ten years were fruitful. HOWEVER in those 10 years, the costs of housing may go way up, inflation might send my savings way down. Risks are fuzzy, but overall if things go well, I'll end up FAR ahead for buying in 2003, over 2013, no question.
SO, I'm playing the gambling game - taking debt over waiting, and HOPING for good results. I'm now locked in dependent upon the system to sustain me. Sure worst results, my home is sold and I lose everything, maybe same results as renting and having my savings disappear?
Anyway, I wonder what sorts of decisions a person can make WITHIN an unsustainable economy that can both protect my future AND direct my dependency towards a more sustainable future?
Actually one of the biggest compromise I made for security now is to not have a family. It empowers me financially since I need less and can save more. Perhaps I'll be better able to PROVIDE later for my delaying, or perhaps I'll never have a family, children of my own, and at least I've have more to share with others who have children and taking greater burdens AND risks. Well, it's not like I'm working 80 hours a week. Saving isn't my greatest reason against a family, but having time for myself to explore.
What would it be like to live in a time where children come of age in a world of DECLINING opportunity? I mean a world where generally only a fraction of youth can "make it" into the lifestyles they grew up under? Some people worry about this even now. I don't think we're there yet, except for the "corruptibility" side - young people not being patient to EARN their rewards and compromising too much with debt and spending decades trying to dig themselves out. In short, my hope is that MOST now can get ahead if they hold some prudence in debt and live humbly while they build up their new lives. I can't guess if my hope is reasonable now, or if it'll stay that way, but my guess, along with the "Long Emergence" thoughts of Kunstler, is that things'll get much harder before they'll get better, and there'll be ALOT of belt-tightening, and generally those who accept this earlier will be better off.
Back to the "controlling the end game", the best bet is to stop betting while the game is still good. There's PLENTY if signs things aren't right.
I admit for me there's a FREEDOM issue of work. Even if my time isnt' dominated by work, it does revolve around it. I don't dream of "retiring at 45" or any such thing, but I accept the goal of not needing a high income is empowering, even as I benefit by opportunity now.
I admit I'm blessed and feel very fortuate with my job - very well compensated - good people. The only reason I'd leave is because I know there's only so many hours in the day and week and year and perhaps higher priorities than merely earning money. Biggest reason NOT to jump ship is I'm still a whipper-snapper - still better at imagining I know anything than confidence of a course of action. BUT I figure it's good to have options and WHEN I see a clear direction, I'd like to be able to follow it THEN rather than having to wait 10 years longer to pay off my debt!
Wealth is most about having flexibility, while debt is about waiting to have what you already have! I'm sure wiser people will say there's no difference between wealth and debt except frame of mind. Like the "can't lose gambling games of double or nothing", negatives are as real as positives, and so you can only consider NEGATIVE INFINITY as the actual ZERO wealth, and everything else is PLUS! You can do ALOT when you control the rules!
Sadly I can't seem to think beyond the basic "voluntary simplicity" argument - live simply - incremental risks - pay down debt - invest in the future - invest in what you NEED to live now and what you WILL need in the future.
I live without a car and ride a bike - that seems very empowering to me - and of course I'm blessed to have a good body to transport myself!
I was shopping at the food coop this week, noticed all the fresh fruit was grown far away. Of course all we have now is strawberries so far, but I wonder how to help people "eat locally". Now the apples from Chile costs $3.36/lb, which was more than enough to make me think twice about buying them, but costs still don't always show what's sustainable. What if the coop had a full section on "Local food" that was grown within say 250 miles away? Why do we need to make such artificial boundaries? Partly as "practice" so we can work towards changing our consumption to match what we can hope to have later if energy keeps going up. ALSO we can help DIVERSIFY local production even if costs may be higher. I mean again higher costs are a tricky measure - is growing orange trees in greenhouses in Minnesota a viable source of food? Maybe not?
Anyway that's just one little issue that can make a difference and could use some more people concerned about and working on, and maybe I could help? I mean I don't need to quit my job to make a difference, but maybe if I had no debt, I'd feel more comfortable taking a "6 month vacation" to explore more issues than I can act on now. Seriously somethings are best done as focused effort rather than here and there over years. As-is, I feel like I can't afford a 6-month vacation, not as long as I've got my debt over my head.
Another issue I see is the idea of "intentional households". I expect the biggest place people can "empower" themselves is to make households more diverse and protective. The nuclear family with kids and a stay-at-home mother may finally be a time of the past, and two-income families do have more "security" if they use their extra income to pay down debt and invest, but overall there's value in perhaps larger households working together.
In 1994, 12 years ago I wrote an essay on "What is a household" and started with this set:
What is a household, at a practical and conservative level?
1. It is a small group of people which own land and live upon that land.
2. It is jointly, although not necessarily equally, owned by all occupants.
3. It is able to care for the young and the old.
4. It is able to prepare its own food from relatively basic ingredients.
5. It is able to select services wisely, purchase products wisely, and dispose of wastes wisely.
6. It is able to function with a minimum of regular paid work to people outside the household.
7. It is able to earn at least some regular money without outside employment.
8. It is able to negotiate cooperative work with its neighbors.
9. It values keeping up with the troubles and joys of its neighbors.
10. It values devotion to beautifying the place to bring love and life to it.
11. It values devotion to maintaining traditions and rituals which promote connections.
12. It values stability and permanence; that the place with continue despite the loss of any individual.
Well, ambition of course, but shows "Amish trends" of valuing inner resources first.
In practice still hard to see how it can work. I mean first there's issues of "house size" - my house has 3 bedrooms - how many people could live there? Secondly there's issue of commitment and sharing costs and benefits - how do you know when you've committed your 'fair share' of work, or taken your 'fair share' of benefits? WELL, same issues with any business, and I admit for most "intentional households" there has to be protection for individuals to leave and so "share" like stocks in a company must be considered in some form.
I'm leaning towards the "New tribalism" ideas even as I can't see it fully and that doesn't require shared households. But generally I think a strong household like a business ought to have an external "mission statement" - something it provides to the outside world that can generate income or tradable value. Certainly "rising children" offers benefit to the world, and might not "generate income", but a household can DO things like that BECAUSE it is supported in other ways with income. Well, in this issue specifically, home-day care is the clearest source of income to a household, and a good trade off for a household to keep a "stay at home parent".
I think I must stop, but I'll end just saying that I also have learned that the biggest reason against cooperative affairs is simply freedom to be selfish. The more you share with others, the more demands there are for negociating and fearing your share is too big or too small.
For instance, lets say I want to run a marathon. It'll take hours of training. What GOOD is my personal goal to the community? What is my goal going to take AWAY from the community?
I see my personal perspective as an individual is between wealth and poverty. If I have debt, I'm in poverty. If I have wealth, I'm rich The distinction is made complex between having assets AND debt (with fuzzy equity), but overall my "fear" of a communal arrangement is that I can't as easily "neglect" the needs of others. Now, I don't care if my neighbor has a stroke and needs 80 hours care a week for the next year. I assume THEIR family or insurance or government will provide for them, and whatever LEFT OVER I have is mine to waste or use as I see fit. It's an extravagant position possible in times of abundance.
Anyway, I hope I can find more cooperative arrangements in the future where everyone wins and is better off than had we worked separately.
It's the Amish way, and in tougher times, the only way!
I have an affinity to the "voluntary simplicity" response to a unsustainable economy, even if the Amish themselves have to make continual compromises on where the boundaries lie for self-sufficiency versus cooperation with the wider world.
I lean to thinking every household is at some level open to setting boundaries on how it will interact with the wider community. I think every decision has costts and benefits. I also accept in general benefit of cooperation far outweigh the risks, at least in the short term. The "costs" tend to be more measured as long term dependency and loss of "sovereignty", self-determination.
There's also a bigger idea of responsibility for the "sins" of those you trade with. A simple example, if you buy blackmarket products on the cheap, you must recognize that they are probably stolen goods. Therefore you are partially responsible for these crimes. Similarly the entire markets of exploiting natural resources ultimately come down to power structures - one group lays claims over resources and can defend those claims with military power. They might even defend the claims through a bribery system, basically paying off those in power for rights to resources for short term profit without necessarily considering destruction or polluting of the environment, depletion of resources, or the long term sustainability of the communities that grow and thrive temporarily from the short term extractive wealth spend-down.
If you want to be "Amish", you may see your neighbors growing a city on a local gold mine. You have no need for gold, so you ignore them perhaps. A community will grow up for a few decades from the miners and such and finally as depletion is completed, the city is abandoned. Assuming pollution is minimized, you were neither affected by the rise or fall of that extraction.
Alternately perhaps you might have sold your spare food crops to the city, and perhaps even expanded your farms to sell more food. Maybe you even accepted the gold as payment for the food sales. Then you bank your savings, and later on perhaps you'll need something, you have some money/gold to sell for some other product. You didn't "change your lifestyle" for the new wealth, and never considered the income as "dependable", like your land wealth for food which can keep producing year after year.
Now perhaps you're a more experimental Amish community, and while expanding your farms with the new food sales to the mining town, you expand your ambitions. You might hire non-Amish labor to work your lands, and with your profits, your work is decreased, and you have more time to think about the bigger picture and see what you might do that your parents or grandparents can't do.
Maybe you think having access to electricity isn't so corrupting, and get some power lines in, and phones maybe. Heck soon, you gain access to the internet and have communication with other communities and learn from them.
Is it wrong to "invest" in technology that expands your reach and connection to the world? Well, there's still only 24 hours in a day, and lots of good things to do, so admittingly, there's a distracting nature of wealth and influence.
I sometimes tend towards the "destructive" aspects of participating in a larger unsustainable economy, but perhaps the "distractability" aspects of wealth and affluence are the most corrupting?
Is my ambition to pay off my mortgage so bad? That brings up a different aspect of dependency.
My happy Amish community can choose to cooperate with neighbors who have more temporary wealth, and stop when it disappears, but debt opens a whole new can of worms.
The Amish set their ambitions within their resources, living from "savings", but that's not the "optimal way". I mean perhaps an Amish farmer COULD add 500 acres of growings lands with a "gas-powered tractor" in 1 year, OR it could take 10 years to clear by horse and plow. WHO knows how much food the neighbors might buy in 10 years, but they need it NOW. If he doesn't get on the ball to fill the market demand, they'll go elsewhere and his "window of opportunity" will close. SO a clever farmer might borrow money and RENT a tractor and equipment to clear the land in a year, and then HOPE the profits from his food sales will pay for the borrowed money.
This is "smart economics" - take a small risk of debt for a larger opportunity for wealth. Anyone can sit down with some paper and sums and make an educated guess. Perhaps there's a 5% chance of "bust" within 10 years, and a 50% chance of making back 10 times the investment!
Even if you can calculate some good odds, you still have to estimate the risks along the way. WHAT HAPPENS under "bust" - will the farm be forcefully sold to pay the debt? If so, even a 5% chance of bust may be "too high" given a 4 generation farm. Probably a better chance is to scale back your goals so your debt can be paid back no matter what. In the long run, such conservative decisions put you behind your neighbors, but when dealing with short term opportunities, you may outlive their boom and busts.
Let's play the "Leveraged debt" game, okay?
You bet $1, and we flip a coin. If it comes up heads, you get back $2. If it comes up tails, you lose it.
Now comes the interesting part, pretend whenever you win, you can say "double or nothing" and have a chance to double again.
If your luck holds, you might get to $2, $4, $8, $16, $32, $64, ..... all the way up to $1,048,576 perhaps!
That's great wealth from such a small investment right?
Well, yes, but pretty unlikely. Still, perhaps the odds are better. Perhaps rather than flipping a coin, we flip 10 coins, and you win if a SINGLE coin comes up heads. That's pretty good odds, right? You can play THAT game on double or nothing as well!
Specifically your odds of winning $1 million would be (1-1/1024)^20=98.06%
That's all good and fun, but you can go in the opposite way as well, in the abstraction of debt.
I'll lend you $1, and you can bet it in this game. If you win, you can pay back what you borrowed. If you lose, you can borrow more, as much as you like.
Let's say you have a 90% chance of winning each game, if you play 10 times, your chances of winning all 10 times would be 34%, not great. In a double-game, if you lose everything you start over borrowing $1.
But heck, why start with $1 bet if you don't have to? Why not start with a $1 million bet? I mean the odds are still with you.
Lets say you bet $1 million and lost. Well, just borrow another million and bet again, or BETTER borrow $10 million next time. If you're "in control" of when you stop, mathematically you're guaranteed to be a winner!
BUT, the flaw comes when these games are interrupted. WHAT FORCE STOPS you from playing again? If you WIN, you want to play again. If you LOSE, you want to play again! In otherwords, you're going to keep playing, like a rat in a cage with a lever for cocaine injections, you'll stop WHEN the lever stops. When midnight strikes and Cinderella's fantasy with the prince is dispelled into dark reality of poverty.
Our whole economy, based on unsustainable consumption and destruction is a game where the early investors take the biggests risks for the largest rewards and later investors keep trying to play until the game cracks open as a pyramid scheme. It doesn't LOOK that bad because our memories are short and the rewards are high. However much the odds LOOK in our favor, if the game has an ending you can't predict the only way to WIN is to divest NOW whatever your takings.
What does it mean to "divest"? Well, for me it means NOT trying to maximize my debt to maximize my wealth. It means incremental participation, investing ONLY as much as I can afford to lose. It ultimately means no debt is "acceptable."
It is interesting to me. If you're 60 years old now, looking back at 40 years of "hard work" and "prudent investing", along with some marketable skills and talents, you'll probably be sitting on a nice pile of wealth. In such times you'll look to "retire" and "live on the interest" as you can, and "on the principle" as you must. Basically even the "safe bet" can look pretty good then. I mean you might accept more risk for more gain, but you don't NEED to. You might not need interest at all to live on.
However we can compare to a 25 year old today, perhaps with $50,000 in student loans, and another $15,000 in credit card debt you borrowed during school, and maybe another $22,000 car loan. Plus the cool apartments will cost you $1500/month. Well, you've got your education, but all this debt! Will your "education gamble" pay off? Recent history suggests so, but maybe you have "dreams" of joining the peace corps or doing something NOBLE for society BUT such pursuits don't have the income to pay your debts, so you "compromise" and find a job that maybe can make $50,000/year, and "hope it lasts". If disaster strikes, like a recession or your occupation has layoffs, perhaps you'll be forced to take a much lower paying job which will take much longer to pay your debt down. HOW LONG should you work a bad job to pay for a debt?
The young person's options are limited for protecting against risks. A more conservative youth might forgo college and START with the low paying job and SAVE without debt, and take some classes here and there. This "incremental" choice "on average"will leave them behind their higher-risk peers in good times, but allows them "flexibility" for an unknown future. If conditions change, he can "jump", change jobs, find ways of learning skills without needing to get into debt. He can change his mind if he finds his chosen work is unethical or whatever, while the indebted youth is more likely to "compromise" integrity for keeping the income flowing.
Myself, I've been luck to have a little of both, specifically a college education (without debt), and accepted periods of "self employment" where I earned more than I needed and periods of unemployment I lived off my savings. And finally accepted a regular position I felt good about.
I look at my decision in 2003 to buy a house, and however "safe" it would seem to most people, it seemed a big risk for me. I'm used to living on $6000-$12,000/year, and now my mortgage alone costs that much. NOW if I lose my job, I have BIG BILLS - I could lose my house! Okay, calm down, but the risks are there.
I might have tried an incremental approach, saving for 10 years and then buying a house for cash, IF those ten years were fruitful. HOWEVER in those 10 years, the costs of housing may go way up, inflation might send my savings way down. Risks are fuzzy, but overall if things go well, I'll end up FAR ahead for buying in 2003, over 2013, no question.
SO, I'm playing the gambling game - taking debt over waiting, and HOPING for good results. I'm now locked in dependent upon the system to sustain me. Sure worst results, my home is sold and I lose everything, maybe same results as renting and having my savings disappear?
Anyway, I wonder what sorts of decisions a person can make WITHIN an unsustainable economy that can both protect my future AND direct my dependency towards a more sustainable future?
Actually one of the biggest compromise I made for security now is to not have a family. It empowers me financially since I need less and can save more. Perhaps I'll be better able to PROVIDE later for my delaying, or perhaps I'll never have a family, children of my own, and at least I've have more to share with others who have children and taking greater burdens AND risks. Well, it's not like I'm working 80 hours a week. Saving isn't my greatest reason against a family, but having time for myself to explore.
What would it be like to live in a time where children come of age in a world of DECLINING opportunity? I mean a world where generally only a fraction of youth can "make it" into the lifestyles they grew up under? Some people worry about this even now. I don't think we're there yet, except for the "corruptibility" side - young people not being patient to EARN their rewards and compromising too much with debt and spending decades trying to dig themselves out. In short, my hope is that MOST now can get ahead if they hold some prudence in debt and live humbly while they build up their new lives. I can't guess if my hope is reasonable now, or if it'll stay that way, but my guess, along with the "Long Emergence" thoughts of Kunstler, is that things'll get much harder before they'll get better, and there'll be ALOT of belt-tightening, and generally those who accept this earlier will be better off.
Back to the "controlling the end game", the best bet is to stop betting while the game is still good. There's PLENTY if signs things aren't right.
I admit for me there's a FREEDOM issue of work. Even if my time isnt' dominated by work, it does revolve around it. I don't dream of "retiring at 45" or any such thing, but I accept the goal of not needing a high income is empowering, even as I benefit by opportunity now.
I admit I'm blessed and feel very fortuate with my job - very well compensated - good people. The only reason I'd leave is because I know there's only so many hours in the day and week and year and perhaps higher priorities than merely earning money. Biggest reason NOT to jump ship is I'm still a whipper-snapper - still better at imagining I know anything than confidence of a course of action. BUT I figure it's good to have options and WHEN I see a clear direction, I'd like to be able to follow it THEN rather than having to wait 10 years longer to pay off my debt!
Wealth is most about having flexibility, while debt is about waiting to have what you already have! I'm sure wiser people will say there's no difference between wealth and debt except frame of mind. Like the "can't lose gambling games of double or nothing", negatives are as real as positives, and so you can only consider NEGATIVE INFINITY as the actual ZERO wealth, and everything else is PLUS! You can do ALOT when you control the rules!
Sadly I can't seem to think beyond the basic "voluntary simplicity" argument - live simply - incremental risks - pay down debt - invest in the future - invest in what you NEED to live now and what you WILL need in the future.
I live without a car and ride a bike - that seems very empowering to me - and of course I'm blessed to have a good body to transport myself!
I was shopping at the food coop this week, noticed all the fresh fruit was grown far away. Of course all we have now is strawberries so far, but I wonder how to help people "eat locally". Now the apples from Chile costs $3.36/lb, which was more than enough to make me think twice about buying them, but costs still don't always show what's sustainable. What if the coop had a full section on "Local food" that was grown within say 250 miles away? Why do we need to make such artificial boundaries? Partly as "practice" so we can work towards changing our consumption to match what we can hope to have later if energy keeps going up. ALSO we can help DIVERSIFY local production even if costs may be higher. I mean again higher costs are a tricky measure - is growing orange trees in greenhouses in Minnesota a viable source of food? Maybe not?
Anyway that's just one little issue that can make a difference and could use some more people concerned about and working on, and maybe I could help? I mean I don't need to quit my job to make a difference, but maybe if I had no debt, I'd feel more comfortable taking a "6 month vacation" to explore more issues than I can act on now. Seriously somethings are best done as focused effort rather than here and there over years. As-is, I feel like I can't afford a 6-month vacation, not as long as I've got my debt over my head.
Another issue I see is the idea of "intentional households". I expect the biggest place people can "empower" themselves is to make households more diverse and protective. The nuclear family with kids and a stay-at-home mother may finally be a time of the past, and two-income families do have more "security" if they use their extra income to pay down debt and invest, but overall there's value in perhaps larger households working together.
In 1994, 12 years ago I wrote an essay on "What is a household" and started with this set:
What is a household, at a practical and conservative level?
1. It is a small group of people which own land and live upon that land.
2. It is jointly, although not necessarily equally, owned by all occupants.
3. It is able to care for the young and the old.
4. It is able to prepare its own food from relatively basic ingredients.
5. It is able to select services wisely, purchase products wisely, and dispose of wastes wisely.
6. It is able to function with a minimum of regular paid work to people outside the household.
7. It is able to earn at least some regular money without outside employment.
8. It is able to negotiate cooperative work with its neighbors.
9. It values keeping up with the troubles and joys of its neighbors.
10. It values devotion to beautifying the place to bring love and life to it.
11. It values devotion to maintaining traditions and rituals which promote connections.
12. It values stability and permanence; that the place with continue despite the loss of any individual.
Well, ambition of course, but shows "Amish trends" of valuing inner resources first.
In practice still hard to see how it can work. I mean first there's issues of "house size" - my house has 3 bedrooms - how many people could live there? Secondly there's issue of commitment and sharing costs and benefits - how do you know when you've committed your 'fair share' of work, or taken your 'fair share' of benefits? WELL, same issues with any business, and I admit for most "intentional households" there has to be protection for individuals to leave and so "share" like stocks in a company must be considered in some form.
I'm leaning towards the "New tribalism" ideas even as I can't see it fully and that doesn't require shared households. But generally I think a strong household like a business ought to have an external "mission statement" - something it provides to the outside world that can generate income or tradable value. Certainly "rising children" offers benefit to the world, and might not "generate income", but a household can DO things like that BECAUSE it is supported in other ways with income. Well, in this issue specifically, home-day care is the clearest source of income to a household, and a good trade off for a household to keep a "stay at home parent".
I think I must stop, but I'll end just saying that I also have learned that the biggest reason against cooperative affairs is simply freedom to be selfish. The more you share with others, the more demands there are for negociating and fearing your share is too big or too small.
For instance, lets say I want to run a marathon. It'll take hours of training. What GOOD is my personal goal to the community? What is my goal going to take AWAY from the community?
I see my personal perspective as an individual is between wealth and poverty. If I have debt, I'm in poverty. If I have wealth, I'm rich The distinction is made complex between having assets AND debt (with fuzzy equity), but overall my "fear" of a communal arrangement is that I can't as easily "neglect" the needs of others. Now, I don't care if my neighbor has a stroke and needs 80 hours care a week for the next year. I assume THEIR family or insurance or government will provide for them, and whatever LEFT OVER I have is mine to waste or use as I see fit. It's an extravagant position possible in times of abundance.
Anyway, I hope I can find more cooperative arrangements in the future where everyone wins and is better off than had we worked separately.
It's the Amish way, and in tougher times, the only way!
posted by Ares Olympus at 3:51 PM
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