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 -----
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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