[Campaignforrealdemocracy] [allgendergroup] Democracy & Full Employment

[fran k]

"it's been reported in the press this week that a quarter of the UK
budget is now being spent on benefits, could we please have some list
discussions about how this money might be harnessed to create a really
democratic society, or to use the phrase previously embraced, greater
local sovereignty (LS)?"

Yes, I have a suggestion.

Buy the land and houses outright, so no-one has to pay for them, now and going forward into the future, so that all present and future humans have the already legislated free right to life., but in real life too.  And realise that land grows our basic needs for free too, and water falls down free upon it.  Get the skills to obtain it, for gods sake, its interesting, and what we live to do, its our reason for living, as well as procreate.   Our basic needs are our life,  inseparable,  We are life, we are nature, we are the earth.  We were born as any other animal to live on that earth to feed from that earth without having to pay anyone whosoever one iota, to do so.

Not all of the earth has to have a 'land for sale' sign dangling from it.

Make the selling of basic food, water, and woodfuel illegal. Or rather promote it to be culturally immoral, and socially damaging. But not luxury food, water and and luxury items.  Who cares about luxuries?  Let them, the exciting adventurous competitives who love there sport and competitions, compete for their luxuries, as they do now.

Just try doing a free give and take stall, without any rules whatso ever, and actually find out that if you give stuff away for free, for all people behind the stall and in front in equality, and rather than find that the stall empties, it actually expands to have more things than you could ever cope with or hope to store.  -   Its community, its friendly stuff, its what you could do, and whats never been done, in all those sorry empty churches, in the centres of our communities.   As well as having sharing stock warehouses at every skip resource site.   So that we are not shoving our individual unwanted, community resources down the pan everywhere, but sharing it to others who will make use of it.

Stop paying lip service to the gift economy, and realise that it is a serious economy.  Which happens now.  and has always happened on a local level, perhaps you have seen the power of open source?

Focus left wing ideology on basic needs.  Focus right wing ideology (the system we live in now), on anything else.  (let them carry on with their sport, but let us start to share the basics)

Stop buying and selling the earth for basic needs, thus excluding people.  Realise that the future of the human race is what it has always been, a race, a competition, of winners to losers, and rather than science being used in an interesting "look and learn" academic future, the stars, the moon, and the cosmos, are really there to be exploited for business.  "Theres gold in them thar stars"    The powers that be are focussed on that.  Just like they colonised other countries to squeeze every last ounce of wealth out of them, they have their hungry eyes, now on the oceans and the stars.



No matter how rich or fat you are, you only have your basic needs to feed. They are what is important, and they are what we are feared of losing, in this economic climate.

So buy them, and finish selling them.  Just the basics, though. We are not greedy, We are not competitive, we are not jealous. Who cares about whether they sell the fat rich posh castles, luxury houses, and useless swimming pool, sauna stuff.    

Are you only motivated now, when there is a credit crunch?  What happens in a few years when the system gets back on track?  Forgotten about?.  God, Goddess, Earth you are so shallow.  We are so shallow. 

Culturally, prejudiciously, stop calling people who live simply, and have enough to live on, as being in relative poverty, as it is a slur, that they come to believe, that we come to believe.   Poverty is absolute poverty, and that is simply going under the level of the sustainance of basic needs, and healing and medical care, and security.

To provide ourselves with free basic needs is a comparatively cheap and simple thing
to do, with plenty of business left for people who wish to buy and sell
all the other 1001 things that wouldnt be included in a free basic
needs economy.   (however the system, relies on a hungry workforce to
be available to have the economic  motivation to provide those other
things, and they wouldnt be motivated anymore, and so the provision of
free basic needs could see the collapse of the whole economy!)

The above can be done by us using legal structures, the mutual IPS,  the CIC company, and the Limited liability partnership.  

Thanks for your well minded proposals Mark. I hope I have made a positive contribution.   I question whether most people would see the topic asked being relevent to feminism.    

(It actually is though, because it is about nurturing. and the empowerment of the oppressed, by the powerful oppressors, who promote the strong, and the demote the less strong, (in their eyes) but it depends on what your definition of feminism is)





Frank.





Then everyone can be assured of the basics. 


Money economy, exchange,  = scarcity,starvation of needs.       exchange is about me,me,me ,  about  winning, it socially excludes people and it physically excludes people.  Its death, death to the body, the spirit, and the soul.  Gift economy, sharing, = abundance, all fed.            sharing is about us,   it is  
The gift economy, is community, voluntary work, family, co-operatives, open source, scientific knowledge sharing,matriarchical societies, free cycle, green movement,  permaculture, forest gardening, the earth.  www.gift-economy.com 

--- On Tue, 4/8/09, Mark Barrett <marknbarrett at googlemail.com> wrote:

From: Mark Barrett <marknbarrett at googlemail.com>
Subject: [allgendergroup] Democracy & Full Employment
To: project2012 at googlegroups.com, civilisation at lists.riseup.net, campaignforrealdemocracy at lists.aktivix.org, allgendergroup at lists.riseup.net
Date: Tuesday, 4 August, 2009, 10:32 AM

Hi everyone 
 
As it's been reported in the press this week that a quarter of the UK budget is now being spent on benefits, could we please have some list discussions about how this money might be harnessed to create a really democratic society, or to use the phrase previously embraced, greater local sovereignty (LS)?

 
I've sent this message to the three lists above as I've found them to be the most fruitful in terms of discussions on the topic of building a just society. If anyone has any other lists they can recommend for this end, pls let me know. On this subject please can people hit reply to all so that all three lists can take part in any debate that ensues?

 
Benefits & Productivity 
 
For me this is the next stage of productivity in the industrial economy, the pursuit of a really democratic culture with full employment, freely chosen. So I had this idea that people could do a few hours work each week - what one colleague has dubbed a 'mini-job' - in return for payments. Say, an hour for every £10-15 they receive. Key thing is that this work should be chosen BY the recipient, in collaboration with a local community of their choice, so that the work allows the individual to do what they would rea;y like to do rather than have the state force something on them as is the case with neo-liberal workfare programmes now being experimented with. Obviously these kinds of decisions would need different, decentralised benefits 'purse-string' structures - essentially a breakdown of the currently unwieldy and wasteful nationalised benefits programme into a really democratic, ie each local community owned, public service. Of course there
 will be lots of questions about how this will work in practice, which is why I am posting about it now, but for me the huge benefit (sic) in this is that it will allow state expenditure to be directed towards the development of locally based creativity, community fabric building, green jobs, real democracy, individual and collective entrepreneurialship, and a re-embrace of the dignity of work. It will also allow people to wean themselves off benefits as they develop new skills, improved CVs, greater self assertion and confidence, not to mention the huge health benefits in terms of tackling isolation, depression, social breakdown at the root. It will get people off their backsides but not Tebbit "On Yer Bike" style, rather Rumi "Let the beauty that we love be what we do"..

 
The way I see it, alongside the present economy, communities should be able to compete with one another for labour, by simply embracing a cultural stance. A mixed economy, two parallel economies inteplaying with one another rather than this monoculture of labour everywhere competing for capital, or else the indignity of the dole. 

 
Here's the story about 186 billion benefits.     
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/5962510/Unsustainable-social-security-spending-equal-to-a-quarter-of-goverments-budget.html

 
Thoughts anyone?
 
Love 
Mark
 



      
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