Ron Paul & Dennis Kucinich 2012
How to improve our quality of life:
Site devoted to developing best practices in governance and wealth creation on the West Coast, the US and the World
AN ALTERNATE FUTURE - From the foreward to 1984 by Walter Cronkite, 1983
"1984 is an anguished lament and a warning that vibrates powerfully when we may not be strong enough nor wise enough nor moral enough to cope with the kind of power we have learned to amass. That warning vibrates powerfully when we allow ourselves to sit still and think carefully about orbiting satellites that can read the license plates in a parking lot and computers that can read into thousands of telephone calls and telex transmissions at once and other computers that can do our banking and purchasing, can watch the house and tell a monitoring station what television program we are watching and how many people there are in a room. We think of Orwell when we read of scientist who believe they have located in the human brain the seats of behavioral emotions like aggression, or learn more about the vast potential of genetic engineering.
And we hear echoes of that warning chord in the constant demand for greater security and comfort, for less risk in our societies. We recognize, however dimly, that greater efficiency, ease, and security may come at a substantial price in freedom, that "law and order" can be a doublethink version of oppression, that individual liberties surrendered for whatever good reason are freedoms lost.
Can there be a revival in our status as present day americans to be at least the equal of the Jeffersonian free holder in America at the time of the Revolution?.
http://homepage.eircom.net/~odyssey/Quotes/History/American_Colonies.html#8
At the beginning of the 1800's, A New England Family did not need to work outside of the home to have sufficiency. Could you say the same?
The theft of money by corruption in this country is astronomical, in the 10's of trillions, and we must either wipe the board clean of debt, or get back all the money stolen by the govt and mal redistributed, all the corrupt subsidies, all should be returned.
#8 NEW ENGLAND
Diligent and realistic, most New England families sought an 'independent competency'. Independence meant owning enough property - a farm or a shop - to employ a family, without having to work for someone else as a hired hand or servant. A 'competency' meant a sufficiency, but not an abundance, of worldly goods: enough to eat, adequate if simple clothing, a roof over their heads, some consumer goods, and an ability to transmit this standard of licing to many children. Although no land of riches, New England provided many independent farms and a secure household competency to hard and persistent labor.
Compared with those in the Chesapeake or West Indies, social gradations were subtle among the New English, who overwhelmingly belonged to the middling sort. Their modest and diversified farms produced less wealth than did the staple plantations of the Chesapeake and the West Indies, but the New England economy distributed its rewards more equitably among many farmers and tradesmen.
Because New England had the most decentralized and popularly responsive form of government in the English empire, royalists depised the region as a hotbed of 'republicanism'.
These are examples of communities who
take care of themselves.
1. Oneida
2. Amana
3. Amish
4. Mondragon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation
The MONDRAGON Corporation is a federation of worker cooperatives based in the Basqueregion of Spain. Founded in the town of Mondragón in 1956, its origin is linked to the activity of a modest technical college and a small workshop producing paraffin heaters. Currently it is the seventh largest Spanish company in terms of turnover and the leading business group in the Basque Country. At the end of 2009 it was providing employment for 85,066 people working in 256 companies in four areas of activity: Finance, Industry, Retail and Knowledge. The MONDRAGON Co-operatives operate in accordance with a business model based on People and the Sovereignty of Labour, which has made it possible to develop highly participative companies rooted in solidarity, with a strong social dimension but without neglecting business excellence. The Co-operatives are owned by their worker-members and power is based on the principle of one person, one vote.[1]
The Oneida Community was a religious commune founded by John Humphrey Noyes in 1848 in Oneida, New York. The community believed that Jesus Christ had already returned in the year 70, making it possible for them to bring about Christ's millennial kingdom themselves, and be free of sin and perfect in this world, not justHeaven (a belief called Perfectionism).
The Oneida Community practiced Communalism (in the sense of communal property and possessions), Complex Marriage, Male Continence, Mutual Criticism andAscending Fellowship. There were smaller Noyesian communities in Wallingford, Connecticut; Newark, New Jersey; Putney, Vermont; and Cambridge, Vermont. In Putney, the authorities attempted to have Noyes arrested for his unorthodox sexual practices.[1] The community's original 87 members grew to 172 by February 1850, 208 by 1852 and 306 by 1878. The branches were closed in 1854, dates except for the Wallingford branch, which operated until devastated by a tornado in 1878. The Oneida Community dissolved in 1881, and eventually became the giant silverware company Oneida Limited.[2]
The Amana Colonies are a group of settlements of radical German Pietists in Iowa, USA, comprising seven villages. Calling themselves the Ebenezer Society or the Community of True Inspiration, die Gemeinde der wahren Inspiration, they first settled in New York state near Buffalo in what is now the Town of West Seneca. However, in order to live out their beliefs in more isolated surroundings they moved west to the rich soil of east-central Iowa (near present-day Iowa City) in 1855. They lived a communal life until the mid 1930s. Due to this, the Amanas are sometimes mistaken as Amish.
A striking feature of the Amana Colonies is that for eighty years they maintained an almost completely self-sufficientlocal economy, importing very little from the wider, industrializing U.S. economy, and at the same time the level of physical comfort, housing, possessions, education, and social and cultural amenities were comparable to that enjoyed by average middle class American office workers, factory workers, and tradesman of the time. The Amanians were able to achieve this independence and life style by adhering to the specialized handcrafts and farming occupations which they had brought with them from Germany. Master craftsmen passed on from one generation to the next, the knowledge, techniques, and skills of the artisan iron and copper smiths, woodwrights, weavers, shoemakers, cheese makers, etc., in the old fashion. They used hand, horse, wind, and water power, and lived a sustainable, pedestrian community life.
The Amanians were proud that they produced, right there in Amana and its surrounding villages and farms, everything they felt they needed for a good and honest life. "If we couldn't make it ourselves, we believed that we just didn't need it!" proclaims a smiling eighty-six year old woman, reminiscing about life in Amana, in the permanent video exhibit at the Amana Museum.
There were no middle-men or business executives in Amana. Its residents enjoyed the full fruits of their labors, locally. Until 1935, Amanians made their own furniture, clothes, blankets, dishes, utensils, childrens' toys, tools, candles, candy, etc., and made it well, as one can see in the extensive museum in Amana. Many of the things made during Amana's eighty years can still be found in antique shops in Amana and the eastern Iowa area; their current high prices reflect the durability, beauty, and individuality.
Today, Amana is a major tourist attraction known mainly for its restaurants and craft shops. Included in the shops are woodworking shops, wine shops, and even a brewery called Millstream. The colonies as a whole have been listed as a National Historic Landmark since 1965.[2][3][4]
Thought of the Day September 19, 2010
The progressive approach: To address the problems of our nation requires a government response.
The Conservative approach:Let people take care of themselves through returning to the limited Jeffersonian Government, allowing the Yeoman Farmer to enjoy the fruits of his own labor.
How this speaks to the Libertarian: Limited National and State Government, an opt in community enterprise that ensures all receive what is needful through volunteerism
STRIP THE Mandatory Economy to its basics to create the least burden on the citizen to "reproduce their own existence".
Only 25% of the workforce is necessary to supply all of our basic needs:
Food, Clothing, Housing, medical care and education, put another way, you should be able to obtain all these things by working 1/4 time.
The remaining 75% of our time can be sent in the "Voluntary economy" and opt in economy.
By restructuring the economy into a mandatory component, and a voluntary component, we see the work we have-to-do as service, suitable for volunteerism and further the add-on economy also is transformed into an area that can enhance volunteerism, as the 75% of our energies not spent on necessary work does not necessarily need more money.
Even if the figure 25% was today 75%, we know with technology and automation, it will eventually be possible to do so. For example developing self paced computerized learning curriculum's may not employ teachers, but it might well be more or as effective.
In 1993 I developed an economic theory to deal with massive deficits and recession, discovering in that research that work that does not create real value or wealth is harmful, because it consumes resources and prevents the people engaged in non productive work from actually creating wealth. Wealth/Value creators reduce deficits, pay taxes and reduce social blight. Those are their byproduct. Occupations and industries such as poverty management (welfare, police and corrections) generally consume resources that perpetuate their existence.
2. WikiPolicy: Best Practices and analysis of problems and affecting wealth creation such as crime, poverty, pollution, education and corruption.
3. US and California Politics: scandals and breakthroughs.
4A. The Conservative-Progressive alliance for real wealth creation