ECONOMIC JUSTICE
The people who have enough to eat in this world, either produce
the food, hunt and gather it, or pay others to provide it. In
few instances do these people produce meaningful surplus for
those who do not have enough to eat. Until the well fed care
about the hungry and starving, there will be no economic
justice, only privilege. That is how simple or complex the issue
is. The minute an individual takes on the responsibility to feed
her or himself, s/he begins creating low cost surpluses for
those unable to do so. It makes sense to grow more plants in a
global greenhouse. The more surplus an individual produces, the
more likely starving people will eat. Economics affect every
aspect of life, including spirituality, yet it is the least
understood of the sciences because economics are poorly taught
or not taught at all. Most economists have little understanding.
That little understanding makes them the experts.
The global value system determines economics. That value system
is based on scarcity, commonly called the law of supply and
demand. Thousands of years ago the arbiters of value and wealth
decided that gold, silver and precious stones were the rarest
and therefore, the most valuable. Of all resources, people were
the least scarce. So people have the least value in this old
system. This is foolishness of the highest order and creates
disposable people. There are few people living today, who cannot
in their lifetimes, produce more value than their own weight in
gold. Use yourself as an example. Multiply the current market
price of gold by your body weight. Divide that by a typical
productive life of 40 or 50 years. Are you earning more or less
than this dollar value each year? Keep in mind most folks are
paid less than half their market value or earnings.
The economic system we support undervalues life, because life
is not scarce. The corporate world would rather have your weight
in gold than you, even if you can produce five times that value.
That corporate world might not harvest twenty percent of your
lifetime value, unless you support their system. If you do
support it, you will probably give them a big cut in your home
mortgage or business loans and every paycheck. But they will
always treat you as expendable, because your kind is never
scarce. If we want to be fairly valued in the market place, we
must be scarce in that market place. A coming labor shortage
will help. Becoming scarce means lifestyle changes people do not
want to make. Therefore, people will continue to support the
system that makes them the least valuable commodity in it and be
thankful to do so. There is little evil in this world that is
not supported by the Western lifestyle. As long as we embrace
it, there will be no economic justice.
Nowhere on this planet are people more capable of self
sufficient living, than in the modern West. Yet these people are
taught to be dependent on others for the very basics of life -
wage and salary slaves. Had the back-to-the-land movements of
the 60s and 70s caught on, the West would now have great models
to share with poor world cultures. New technologies like fuel
cells will be ideal for home and neighborhood power systems that
will end dependencies on grid supplied electricity and scam
artists like Enron.
In the West, we pay a dollar for a ten cent loaf of bread,
because we are willing to pay the other ninety cents to have it
at hand when we want it. Much of the rest of the world can't
afford the same bread at ten cents a loaf. Who do you suppose
the bread makers would rather sell to? This means no bread for
the hungry at any price. If we really want to help the rest of
the world, we make a personal commitment to slash our
consumption and increase production. This creates a glut in the
corporate market and forces prices down. Third world producers
will complain because this drives down export prices and makes
exporting unprofitable. The focus then must shift away from
global trade to local trade and that is a major step toward self
sufficiency and economic justice.
I heard a radio report last week that India is doing well in
this global recession because ninety percent of their domestic
production is sold in domestic markets. Before the great
corporate marketing chains drove the mom and pop operations out
of business with their economies of scale, local industry and
markets were well understood as markers of economic health.
Nothing prevents us from returning to local production and
marketing. We can even use global marketing to subsidize the
transition - transformation.
Food is a good example. The knowledge is now available that
allows anyone to produce superior food at less than typical
market prices. If I decide to raise food crops on an acre or
two, I can also plant high dollar cash crops that can be sold in
a nearby city or sent anywhere in the world, as a mail order
business. The wealthy purchase these valuable crops and provide
profits that allow me to obtain more land. I can then expand
inexpensively on adjacent land and split the crops with the
owner, or market some on her behalf. I can always expand my
local production, marketing and my high dollar global and nearby
marketing.
Local production and marketing allows us to hire local labor.
The unemployed and under employed get some paid work, free food
or both. The idea is to reverse the centralization of 20th
Century production and marketing, which in turn, decentralizes
other aspects of our lives. We save the costs of heavy farm
machinery, bank loans, transportation, taxes, processing,
packaging and pay it out to hand labor instead. We also adopt
production methods, such as Square Foot Gardening, which reduce
water, fertilizer, land and labor costs by as much as eighty
percent. The savings can then be invested in expansion and we
can market in nearby communities. We can encourage more small
scale production, teaching the techniques we have successfully
applied in our own production and marketing.
As local marketing returns in the West, corporate food
producers lose their markets, reduce their production
accordingly and poison much less land and water. That is, unless
taxpayers continue to subsidize them. When an individual only
produces the value of the food s/he consumes, s/he can now live
with ten to twenty percent less income. If s/he produces a
surplus, other income could be cut in half. Should s/he lose the
main source of income, s/he eats well as s/he increases
production with mostly personal labor, which essentially removes
this person from the corporate value system and all its hidden
costs. Economic justice becomes a lifestyle.
Food is so basic to life and health as to be the first need
addressed in the Lord's Prayer. So it is in any economy also. It
is the foundation of economic prosperity. Food has usually been
grown so inefficiently, only people who loved the work or
immigrants would do it. Making agriculture a chemical and
machine operation was one of the huge mistakes of the Machine
Age. Individuals are now in a position to make it right and
would be wise to do so. I understand about nine million people
are out of work in America. Use those unemployment benefits to
grow and store food and have more money for housing.
As local agriculture replaces corporate agriculture and
hydrogen becomes the new fuel for power, water becomes very
valuable. Rainwater, which is superior to ground water in so
many ways, for plants and people, can be collected. Large
storage containers, such as swimming pools are not only
justified but necessary to food production and home security.
Use enough water gathering capacity to weather three years of
serious drought. A back up well can be a handy thing for a
neighborhood association. Indoor and outdoor water can be stored
conveniently and provide thermal mass for moderating home and
greenhouse temperatures. It can be raised to high temperatures
and pumped through radiators in winter. We could all live in
cozy, clever, greenhouse homes. Eat fresh strawberries year
round and earn lots of money for as long as it is worth anything
to do so. Feed your neighbor. Feed your community and encourage
others to grow. Food independence is true independence for an
individual, a group, a town, a nation.
When we love our neighbors more than we love our money, we
create economic justice. We move the least valued things to the
top of the old value system. We know there is great intrinsic
value in the other. We want to know each other's thoughts on
world issues and be free to respond. Freedom exists in service.
If we love our neighbors, we include them in our work, as time,
need and desire requires. Who do we wish to exclude from
relative prosperity in global crises? What if the world demands
win - win solutions for every problem, instead of win - lose?
Can we not create such a world by increasing our chances of
surviving its plagues? Green plagues would be a perfect reason
to keep and produce much of your food in your home, where you
can have environmental control and protection. This is
especially so in the city where cultivating land may be
impractical.
What is wrong with living with one's food as a lifestyle? How
many people need to choose this to make a positive change in the
balances of external, material power? One thousand? One million?
Ten million? They don't have to congregate in Idaho, though it's
good for like minded folks to congregate anywhere. Most folks
can be far more independent in their choices than they are. It
helps when they know they have the choices, regardless of
corporate, political and bureaucratic systems. When there are
people starving anywhere, someone has made poor choices and it
might be you and me that made them. Governments feed people in
emergencies. Will you be needing government food in the future?
What will you do to get it?
Stored grains, nuts and seeds provide ready food you can eat
dry, while sprouting pounds of tender, delicious, baby plants;
in anywhere from one to seven days. These are fine food storage
items when vacuum sealed to keep insect eggs from hatching. Add
water, increase nutritional value and eat, fresh, live food.
Meat, fish and poultry can be stored in cans for quite a while
if desired. Jerkys will also satisfy a taste for meat and keep a
long time. Build stacking sprout trays according to your
available space and begin indoor food production. Go meet your
neighbors with samples. They will soon be your customers.
It is the Boy Scout motto to Be Prepared! It applies to all of
us today. The hard times are so much writing on the wall. Who
will you and I help through them? When will we begin to practice
economic justice in our personal lives? When will we divorce our
old world corporate masters?