Thomas:
Can I join your society, please.
Interesting Robert,
But where are the great towering human achievements beyond the cows? You have to imagine both. Can you imagine orchestras and great architecture from the stories below?
But if we are just imagining a pastoral future, here is mine.
The American Indian version:
You sell the dumb cows
Pool all of your land with your neighbors and buy buffalo.
Develop a family system where the entire family cares for the children.
Make the family responsible for infractions having to do with death but
individuals responsible for infractions having to do with property.
Teach that people are not good or bad but can do good or bad things.
Develop the justice system around healing by agreement of the community.
Plant corn, beans and squash near your house
and regularly burn the forest to incourage grass, large trees and open prairies.
Encourage all of the animals to return.
Form a council to plan for a central grainery for over production,
Study the complete plant and animal ecology of the region.
Plan for both systemic and individual balance as the ideal of the culture.
Develop a time schedule that encorporates the cycles of the rain.
Develop your spirituality around the truth of the sacredness of all life,
balanced with the necessity to eat and clothe yourself and your family.
Plan for the lives of all of the animals and plants as members of the family network.
Develop taboos as teaching tools. Such as incest, cannibalism, etc. Even though we are all life and meat,
certain meat we won't eat. Not because its special but because its taboo.
Study nature intently to understand the ways that you should fit comfortably within it and florish.
Teach health as an alternative to healing.
Consider that everyone must find their own vision for their own life and that the community serves the facilitation of that purpose.
Teach that without the community, the individual is alone.
Develop an integration of the education of your children with the cycles of the plants/animals so the children won't bust the system,
Teach the relationships as a part of the spirituality,
Develop status based upon who is strong enough to give the most.
Develop a give back from the poor to the strong so no neither strong or disadvantaged are enslaved.
Form all reality around the natural cycles of life and existance.
Develop trade with your neighboring nation based only upon excess production and political games.
Hold no more than you can acumulate in your house, giving away the excess.
Work three of four hours a day and spend the rest of the time with your families
and contemplating the nature of the Great Mystery of life.
Give at least a couple of hours to communicating with the rest of the world on the internet.
Ray Evans Harrell, Cherokee
----- Original Message -----
From: Robert E. Bowd <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: Ray Evans Harrell <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Saturday, December 13, 2003 9:09 AM
Subject: Re: Slightly extended (was Re: [Futurework] David Ricardo, Ca vema n Trade vs. Modern Trade
As there is sometimes an ideological mix-up going on, on the list, I thought you might be amused by this post from the TOES list:
Those economic scenarios you sent were probably written by somewhat callous Royalist Libertarians who think that non-regulated capitalism is the best system. So I have written the following, comparing the RL to the Geo-Libertarian, and modified the one on CAPITALISM, AMERICAN STYLE.
Royalist Libertarian
You have two cows and several acres of land.
Your neighbor is a single mom, has no cows, no land and works a minimum wage job.
You tell your neighbor that if she works longer and harder she could buy one of your cows and become an enterprising capitalist.
Your neighbor takes on the night shift in addition to her day job, leaving for work after the kids are in bed and arriving home just in time to get them dressed for school. After a year she has saved enough money to buy one of your cows. Realizing that she needs some land for the cow she asks if you will lease her some of your land which you are happy to do at the highest possible land rent.
She pulls back to a regular 40 plus hours a week of work in order to take care of the cow and market its milk, soon realizing that she has to feed the cow steroids to produce more milk to pay the land rent to you.
Your neighbor tries hard to become a successful cow milk merchant, but in just a few months the cow dies of exhaustion and soon thereafter she dies of a stress related illness, leaving her children to fend for themselves in the streets because libertarians have dismantled all social services including those for orphans.
Meanwhile you have been earning dividends from the stocks you bought with the cash your neighbor paid for your cow plus the land rent she had been paying to you on a monthly basis. The milk from your cow is supplemental income.
You buy four more cows, dupe another poor neighbor and quadruple your wealth in one year,
Geo Libertarian
You have two cows and several acres of land.
Your neighbor is a single mom, has no cows, no land and works a minimum wage job.
You understand that there is a deep structural injustice in the economic system, you know what to do about it, so you become an activist.
You share your economic justice knowledge with your neighbor and then get to work changing the tax laws so that (1) your neighbor can keep all of her hard-earned income and (2) those who have enclosed substantial amounts of land for their own private domain now pay a fair land rent to society.
Your tax bill arrives and you realize you have been holding more land than you really need, so you put some of your land up for sale which your neighbor buys with the additional income she has because of genuine tax relief.
Your neighbor, whose "can-do" attitude is now fully operative having acquired a secure place to stand on her own land, soon builds her own home from the timber from the fast-growing species of trees she planted. She then develops her talents as a visual artist painting pictures of cows, much more to her liking than having to milk them.
You realize that you have found true happiness and inner peace by helping to build a world that works for everyone.
LIBERAL
You have two cows.
Your neighbor has none.
You feel guilty for being successful.
Instead of giving your neighbor one of your cows, you write to your congressman, demanding that he pass legislation for more government programs to help your neighbor get a cow. You hold a concert to raise awareness for the cow-lessness. Barbara Streisand sings for the cow-less, who couldn't attend because ticket prices are so expensive that only people with 3 or 4 cows can afford to attend. You wear a ribbon that signifies that you care about cowless people, even though you really haven't done anything to help them at all.
CONSERVATIVE
You have two cows.
Your neighbor has none.
So?
SOCIALIST
You have two cows.
The government takes one and gives it to your neighbor.
You form a cooperative to tell him how to manage his cow.
COMMUNIST
You have two cows.
The government seizes both and provides you with milk.
You wait in line for hours to get it.
It is expensive and sour.
CAPITALISM, AMERICAN STYLE (The obscuring myth)
You have two cows.
You sell one, buy a bull, and build a herd of cows.
CAPITALISM, AMERICAN STYLE (The real story)
You have two cows.
You sell one, buy a bull, and build a herd of cows. You put your cows on your previously acquired piece of choice real estate and take a tax write-off for agricultural land. You sell some of your land (the rest you keep for speculation) to middle class working people who are now mortgaged for life and you put your profits into offshore accounts, further avoiding taxes. You lobby for a bigger military budget and a national policy of full spectrum dominance so that you and other bullish elites can grab other peoples land all over the planet.
DEMOCRACY, AMERICAN STYLE
You have two cows.
The government taxes you to the point you have to sell both to support a man in a foreign country who has only one cow, which was a gift from your government.
BUREAUCRACY, AMERICAN STYLE
You have two cows.
The government takes them both, shoots one, milks the other, pays you for the milk, and then pours t he milk down the drain.
AMERICAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You sell one, lease it back to yourself and do an IPO on the 2nd one. You force the two cows to produce the milk of four cows. You are surprised when one cow drops dead. You spin an announcement to the analysts stating you have down sized and are reducing expenses. Your stock goes up.
FRENCH CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You go on strike because you want three cows.
You go to lunch and drink wine.
Life is good.
JAPANESE CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You redesign them so they are one tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk. They learn to travel on unbelievably crowded trains. Most are at the top of their class at cow school.
GERMAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You engineer them so they are all blond, drink lots of beer, give excellent quality milk, and run a hundred miles an hour. Unfortunat ely they also demand 13 weeks of vacation per year.
ITALIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows but you don't know where they are.
While ambling around, you see a beautiful woman.
You break for lunch.
Life is good.
RUSSIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You have some vodka.
You count them and learn you have four cows.
You have some more vodka.
You count them again and learn you have eight cows.
The Mafia shows up and takes over however many cows you really have.
TALIBAN CORPORATION
You have all the cows in Afghanistan, which are two.
You don't milk them because you cannot touch any creature's private parts. Then you kill them and claim a US bomb blew them up while they were in the hospital.
IRAQI CORPORATION
You have two cows.
They go into hiding.
They send radio tapes of their mooing.
POLISH CORPORATION
You have two bulls.
Employees are regularly m aimed and killed attempting to milk them.
CALIFORNIAN ( This is the Goodwin Special....RWN)
You have a cow and a bull.
The bull is depressed.
It has spent its life living a lie.
It goes away for two weeks.
It comes back after a taxpayer-paid sex-change operation.
You now have two cows.
One makes milk; the other doesn't.
You try to sell the transgender cow.
Its lawyer sues you for discrimination.
You lose in court.
You sell the milk-generating cow to pay the damages.
You now have one rich, transgender, non-milk-producing cow.
You change your business to beef.
PETA pickets your farm.
Jesse Jackson makes a speech in your driveway.
Cruz Bustamante calls for higher farm taxes to help "working cows".
Hillary Clinton calls for the nationalization of 1/7 o f your farm "for the children".
Gray Davis signs a law giving your farm to Mexico.
The L.A. Times quotes five anonymous cows claiming you groped their teats.
You declare bankruptcy and shut down all operations.
The cow starves to death.
The L.A. Times' analysis shows your business failure is Bush's fault.
bb
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