(Untitled)

[paganunshaven]

Yesterday on BART I wrote a bunch of notes on some of the stuff I was talking about last time. Not anything about the big enlightenment/action question, just the stuff I was talking about with Mark. Some words on why I think that what they would write off as "lifestylism" is valid action against the system. Not opinions or positions, just ideas

Comments

[coolmrkev]

yo, good stuff man. i've always enjoyed hearing you talk about these topics. on a semi related note, have you read or heard anything about the book, "Parecon: Life After Capitalism" by michael albert? i've briefly skimmed some of it and its pretty interesting, he goes into a lot of detail about how to create an alternative to capitalism. any way, just thought i'd share that.
peace dude

[paganunshaven]

The name michael albert sounds familiar. Did you get a snese of what kind of system he's proposing?

well

[coolmrkev]

the main idea is creating a classless,self managing, egalitarian economic system which is more productive then capitalism.
here's a good link to simply compares parecon to capitalism
http://www.zmag.org/parecon/capvsparecon/html/main2.html

Re: well

[paganunshaven]

Intersting, I cruised the site for a while and checked out the full book they put online. What I haven't found yet is what the overall mechanisms of organization would look like. Decision-making is done by those who are effected, but who decides who it is who is effected and how would these decisions be made (I mean how are people polled, besically?). I was wondering if you'd come across this inforamtion. I can appreciate that Albert wants to leave things open, adaptable, fluid, so that it can fit the situation properly, but I think that the element of how it is decided who has say in a given issue is missing from what I read (which was admittedly only a perusal of a bunch of different part).

[davehansen]

the problem with a shift of the population to the country lies in the fact that such a decentralized shift of location results in a decentralized shift in power. this results in lawlessness and thus instability.

in the past, when populations have shifted to the country from the city, things like feudalism spring up in every occasion. this is not to say that it could not somehow work, just that one must figure out a way to maintain stability while establishing a new system.

[paganunshaven]

Long time no see, Dave.

I recognize that I am talking about decentralizing power. And while we will lose standardization, I don't think feudalism is the result. How do you think things went in the bulk of man's history before centralization had been dreamed up?

Stability is overrated when it comes from the top down. Is it really what you want? Are things stable now? Do you like it this way? And what price are you willing to pay for stability?

[davehansen]

likewise, jake. nice to talk to you again.

i'm definitely not trying to say that the current amount of standardization is a good thing, just pointing out the fact in historical context.

feudalism isn't necesary the result, but it is the result of the world's only mass migration from urbran society to agrarian society. the bulk of man's history prior to centralization was within nomadic societies. this type of society most definitely is not sustainable without massive amounts of land for each person to subside upon, subsistance being only one of the issues with such a shift.

[prucatanef]

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