Nelco
New member
www.western-sky-loans.com
Lol. Seems like they're still holding on to that thought.[/quote]
i'm in there with you brother
been waiting to here someone else say it...you just won me over...check your messages
What would life without money be like?
- Thread starter TheUndeadPhoenix
- Start date
www.western-sky-loans.com
Lol. Seems like they're still holding on to that thought.[/quote]
i'm in there with you brother
been waiting to here someone else say it...you just won me over...check your messages
P
Pheonix
Guest
capitalism, communism, socialism, monarchy they are all good sound systems in principle. the flaws in the system doesn't come until you add humans to the system and destroying the system won't stop the flaws of human nature. I.E. you can destroy capitalism but you'll never destroy human greed.
TheUndeadPhoenix
The Necromancer King
I concur. Every system will always have flaws, just some are bigger.
P
Pheonix
Guest
like how bush jr turned out to be a bigger flaw then his father was.
TheUndeadPhoenix
The Necromancer King
No shit. He was put there as a puppet.
zephyr23
New member
this to funny i just wrote a paper on the idea of gift economy.
From Free Market Values to the Values of the Gift Econo
There are those who have come to believe that the free market system is not sustainable because of its dependence on eternal economic growth. The continual process of turning natural resources into products has led to pollution of the environment and global warming. In addition, capitalism has created an inequitable distribution of wealth and worldwide debt that appears to be growing. Each step in the process of industrialization and each technological advance have further hidden the truth from us; that we are all dependent on the natural world that freely gives its bounty to us. In seeking an alternative to the free market economy, the value system that supports it must be challenged and a new one established. In this paper some of the flawed beliefs of our current free market system will be examined and an alternative vision will be offered.
Jean Bethke Elshtain wrote in the year 2000 before the United States’ greatest recession about the discontent that many Americans had with every day life. “Why is it that our presently heralded economic boom rings so hollow to so many? With the foes of freedom bested or on the defensive around the world, and the fearsome power of America’s engine of production and consumption churning out products and profits around the clock . . . this should be a time of optimism for Americans. But it is not.” She goes on to speak about the low trust that Americans have toward each other (two thirds who think you cannot trust anyone) and in government (three fourths who do trust elected officials). (Elshtain) To make the American Dream a possibility today, most families need two wage earners. Those with well-paid jobs do not feel safe because the work place is a highly competitive and insecure environment where personal loyalty is not much of a factor. There is a generalized anxiety about whether families can keep their financial security. This recent recession has proved their fears to be real. Unemployment is high and one out of six Americans is currently living in poverty. (Censky)
How has the “free market” economy led to such an inequitable distribution of wealth where, in the United States, one percent of the population has forty percent of the wealth? Some say that it is greed that creates such gross accumulation of wealth at the cost of the ‘have nots’. Eisenstein, the author of Sacred Economics sees the creation of such wealth inequality as built into the free market economy. On the subject of wealth distribution Eisenstein says, “In our current money system, it is mathematically impossible for more than a minority of people to live in abundance, because the money creation process maintains a systemic scarcity.” (122) According to him the main problem is usury or interest. “Usury is the antithesis of the gift, for instead of giving to others when one has more than one needs, usury seeks to use the power of ownership to gain even more - to take from others rather than to give.” (Eisenstein, 101) Borrowing money is not the problem. When one borrows money without interest one is saying “I will take now and pay back the same amount in the future”. To be able to lend money and expect to collect interest, the money supply has to be expanded. Therefore, interest bearing debt comes with all new money. At any given moment the amount of debt exceeds the amount of money that exists. “To service debt or just to live, either you take existing wealth from someone else (hence, competition) or you create “new” wealth by drawing from the commons.”(Eisenstien, 103).
What is meant by the commons is, that which has yet to be taken from the natural world and humankind and turned into a commodity to be bought and sold. In today’s world things that once belonged to the commons, like child care and even water have been made into commodities for the market place. The negative impact on our environment is lamented by noted scientist David Suzuki. “We’ve contaminated the air, water and soil, driven wild things to extinction, torn down the ancient forests, poisoned the rain and ripped holes in the heavens. Prosperity of the industrial world has been purchased at the expense of our children’s future.” (Jamal and Mckinnon, 150)
Another reason to look to an alternative economic system is that we are reaching a limit to what can be taken from the earth. We are running out of resources from which to make products. Many believe we have reached peak oil and that the economy that we have created from cheap oil is coming to an end. In his book Eaarth, Bill McKibbon, a prominent environmentalist, writes of the devastating changes taking place on the planet. He warns us that if we are to have any hope of keeping the planet a habitable place for humans, we must limit economic growth. (McKibbon)Limited growth does not work with the demands of a capitalist system.
Another negative outcome of the free market system is what it does emotionally to the members of society. We are social beings that do best when living in community and in relation to another. Yet, individualism in the extreme is the order of the day. Gregory Bateson, a systems thinker and psychologist, calls our view of ourselves as isolated individuals, “the epistemological error of Occidental civilization.”(Pinchot, p.1) The competitive struggle to get to the top has led to an encouragement of workaholism, which cuts off our relationship to ourselves and to others. “Addictions to shopping, to money and to acquisition arise from the same basic source as do addictions to food: both come from loneliness, from pain of merely existing cut off from most of what we are.” (Eisenstein, 51) This is in spite of corporation’s motivation to have the economy grow by creating needs for the newest products. This separation from one another has created an emptiness that cannot be filled with things. Gabor Mate MD, an expert on drug addiction speaking of our consumer society writes, “Many of us resemble the drug addict in our ineffectual efforts to fill in the spiritual black hole, the void at the center . . . with those sources of meaning and value that are not contingent or fleeting. Our consumerist, acquisition, action, image mad culture only serves to deepen the hole, leaving us emptier than before.” (272) A society that bases its economic interactions on an exchange mentality and values profit over human need and acquisition over environmental sustainability, is one that denies our spiritual and emotional longing for connection and our physical dependence on the natural world.
There are different metaphors authors use as a way to envision a gift economy for today’s world. One feminist view put forth by Genevieve Vaughan in her book For-Giving, considers a mothering orientation to be the guiding principal that is missing in what she calls the patriarchal capitalist system of today. Her view puts the emphasis on giving to satisfy needs as most essential. Vaughan’s model, based on the practice of mothering, is needs oriented more than profit motivated, other oriented rather then self-promoting and evaluates success in terms of quality, rather than in terms of measurements like money.
Vaughan points out that the word economics originally meant “care of the household.” (p. 31) This understanding of the word shifts the focus from the more impersonal business orientation of an economic system to a more personal sense of nurturing, guardianship and creating rules for the good of all. These days every television nightly news program begins with showing the daily stock market results. We have been led to believe that if the stock market is going up the economy is doing well. This is particularly untrue because only 54% of Americans have any money in the stock market. (Jacobe) However for most people there is very little relationship with where the stock market is and their own economic wellbeing. Vaughan also points out the root meaning of community and communication, saying that “munus” comes from the Latin word for gift.(p.32). Therefore, community is about co-giving and the act of communication becomes an act of giving.
Gifford Pinchot refers to the philosopher Lewis Mumford when he makes the point that “fundamental change in civilizations comes when the culture changes its vision of what it is to be a human being”. (Pinchot) By re-thinking the meaning of the words economy, community and communication and placing them within the context of the mothering paradigm, Vaughan is able to establish a new understanding of our purpose in life as individuals, a country and a world. She believes that how we create meaning and measure success cannot be based on profit and personal gain but must be placed on giving and considering the good of all.
In putting forth a model for a gift economy, Eisenstein explores the roots of money. Like Vaughan, he believes that giving is an essential part of our human nature and that institutionalized greed is a corruption of our innate gratitude for the gift of life and the abundance of nature. While conventional wisdom is that money began with a barter economy of exchange meaning giving to receive, Eisentein suggests it was actually based on the principle of gratitude and faith that more for you is more for me.(9)He points out that in early cultures, the words buying and selling were the same word because ancient people did not look at goods in a possessive way. Giving was not linear, it was more circular in nature, in that you give to me, I give to someone else, I receive and there is a constant flow of giving, making buyer and seller equal. Giving, seen as a sacred bond between giver and receiver, was a process of participating in something greater than oneself. (10) When talking about indigenous gift economies, Rauna Kuokkanen states that the gift is a way to “actively acknowledge a sense of kinship and coexistence with the world without which survival would not be possible”. (Kuokkanen)
Eisenstein states that as societies grew, developed and centralized, the nature of the gift economy was replaced by money. (12) This shift represents just one of the ways we have been separated from the natural world and our human nature. To understand that the first forms of transaction were based on communal giving and a deep appreciation of the web of life, is to reframe our understanding of money. The challenge of today is to restore the sacred meaning behind money as a means of transaction and to regain a sense of gratitude for what has been freely given to us by nature. The gift affirms our sense of responsibility, respect and shared community. It should not signify ownership of the land. For a gift economy to work there must be an awareness of abundance rather than scarcity. As long as we all live in fear of not having enough, we will never be able to give freely to others.
It is important to understand that the gift economy is an expression of a worldview that sees the interrelationship and interdependence of all beings and the land. Incorporated into the mindset of a people that are a part of a gift economy, is that no one owns the land and that we are here to take care of nature and each other just as nature takes cares of us. This worldview is in opposition to what is valued in a capitalist system. In a gift economy it would be looked down on to get rich at someone else’s expense. Wendy James, a British anthropologist writes about the gift giving practices of the Udek in Northwest Africa. “Any wealth transferred from one sub clan to another, whether animals, grain or money, is in the nature of a gift, and should be consumed and not invested for growth. If such transferred wealth is added to the sub clan’s capital and kept for growth, the sub clan is regarded as being in an immoral relation to debt to the donors of the original gift.” (Hyde, 4) In addition, if a sub clan kept a pair of goats to breed, they would be seen as getting rich at someone else’s expense and viewed as corrupt. In a patriarchal capitalist system it is not only acceptable to make a profit at the expense of another but it is the accepted practice. The ancient practices of the gift economy provide us with a vision of how to reclaim a sense of gratitude for the land and a needed perspective on our place in the web of life. As Kuokkaamen states in her article “Reclaiming Indigenous People’s Philosophy”, “In this system one does not give primarily in order to receive but to ensure the balance of the world on which the well being of the entire social order is contingent.” (258) This is the worldview that is needed as we begin to heal our planet and reestablish our own place in the web of life.
Eisenstein looks at our relationship to the earth to speak about where humankind is in terms of our spiritual evolution. He states that up to now we have seen the earth as a mother who we can just take from, without concern of consequence. Now it is time to grow up and see the planet as Lover Earth, with whom we must now enter a conscious relationship of mutuality and taking care of one another.
hope you all enjoy it
From Free Market Values to the Values of the Gift Econo
I believe that to pursue the American Dream is not only futile
but self-destructive because ultimately it destroys everything
and everyone involved with it. By definition it must,
because it nurtures everything except those things that are
important: integrity, ethics, truth, our very heart and soul.
Why? The reason is simple:
because Life/life is about giving and not getting.
Hubert Selby Jr.
Requiem for a Dream (Preface, 2000)
but self-destructive because ultimately it destroys everything
and everyone involved with it. By definition it must,
because it nurtures everything except those things that are
important: integrity, ethics, truth, our very heart and soul.
Why? The reason is simple:
because Life/life is about giving and not getting.
Hubert Selby Jr.
Requiem for a Dream (Preface, 2000)
There are those who have come to believe that the free market system is not sustainable because of its dependence on eternal economic growth. The continual process of turning natural resources into products has led to pollution of the environment and global warming. In addition, capitalism has created an inequitable distribution of wealth and worldwide debt that appears to be growing. Each step in the process of industrialization and each technological advance have further hidden the truth from us; that we are all dependent on the natural world that freely gives its bounty to us. In seeking an alternative to the free market economy, the value system that supports it must be challenged and a new one established. In this paper some of the flawed beliefs of our current free market system will be examined and an alternative vision will be offered.
Jean Bethke Elshtain wrote in the year 2000 before the United States’ greatest recession about the discontent that many Americans had with every day life. “Why is it that our presently heralded economic boom rings so hollow to so many? With the foes of freedom bested or on the defensive around the world, and the fearsome power of America’s engine of production and consumption churning out products and profits around the clock . . . this should be a time of optimism for Americans. But it is not.” She goes on to speak about the low trust that Americans have toward each other (two thirds who think you cannot trust anyone) and in government (three fourths who do trust elected officials). (Elshtain) To make the American Dream a possibility today, most families need two wage earners. Those with well-paid jobs do not feel safe because the work place is a highly competitive and insecure environment where personal loyalty is not much of a factor. There is a generalized anxiety about whether families can keep their financial security. This recent recession has proved their fears to be real. Unemployment is high and one out of six Americans is currently living in poverty. (Censky)
How has the “free market” economy led to such an inequitable distribution of wealth where, in the United States, one percent of the population has forty percent of the wealth? Some say that it is greed that creates such gross accumulation of wealth at the cost of the ‘have nots’. Eisenstein, the author of Sacred Economics sees the creation of such wealth inequality as built into the free market economy. On the subject of wealth distribution Eisenstein says, “In our current money system, it is mathematically impossible for more than a minority of people to live in abundance, because the money creation process maintains a systemic scarcity.” (122) According to him the main problem is usury or interest. “Usury is the antithesis of the gift, for instead of giving to others when one has more than one needs, usury seeks to use the power of ownership to gain even more - to take from others rather than to give.” (Eisenstein, 101) Borrowing money is not the problem. When one borrows money without interest one is saying “I will take now and pay back the same amount in the future”. To be able to lend money and expect to collect interest, the money supply has to be expanded. Therefore, interest bearing debt comes with all new money. At any given moment the amount of debt exceeds the amount of money that exists. “To service debt or just to live, either you take existing wealth from someone else (hence, competition) or you create “new” wealth by drawing from the commons.”(Eisenstien, 103).
What is meant by the commons is, that which has yet to be taken from the natural world and humankind and turned into a commodity to be bought and sold. In today’s world things that once belonged to the commons, like child care and even water have been made into commodities for the market place. The negative impact on our environment is lamented by noted scientist David Suzuki. “We’ve contaminated the air, water and soil, driven wild things to extinction, torn down the ancient forests, poisoned the rain and ripped holes in the heavens. Prosperity of the industrial world has been purchased at the expense of our children’s future.” (Jamal and Mckinnon, 150)
Another reason to look to an alternative economic system is that we are reaching a limit to what can be taken from the earth. We are running out of resources from which to make products. Many believe we have reached peak oil and that the economy that we have created from cheap oil is coming to an end. In his book Eaarth, Bill McKibbon, a prominent environmentalist, writes of the devastating changes taking place on the planet. He warns us that if we are to have any hope of keeping the planet a habitable place for humans, we must limit economic growth. (McKibbon)Limited growth does not work with the demands of a capitalist system.
Another negative outcome of the free market system is what it does emotionally to the members of society. We are social beings that do best when living in community and in relation to another. Yet, individualism in the extreme is the order of the day. Gregory Bateson, a systems thinker and psychologist, calls our view of ourselves as isolated individuals, “the epistemological error of Occidental civilization.”(Pinchot, p.1) The competitive struggle to get to the top has led to an encouragement of workaholism, which cuts off our relationship to ourselves and to others. “Addictions to shopping, to money and to acquisition arise from the same basic source as do addictions to food: both come from loneliness, from pain of merely existing cut off from most of what we are.” (Eisenstein, 51) This is in spite of corporation’s motivation to have the economy grow by creating needs for the newest products. This separation from one another has created an emptiness that cannot be filled with things. Gabor Mate MD, an expert on drug addiction speaking of our consumer society writes, “Many of us resemble the drug addict in our ineffectual efforts to fill in the spiritual black hole, the void at the center . . . with those sources of meaning and value that are not contingent or fleeting. Our consumerist, acquisition, action, image mad culture only serves to deepen the hole, leaving us emptier than before.” (272) A society that bases its economic interactions on an exchange mentality and values profit over human need and acquisition over environmental sustainability, is one that denies our spiritual and emotional longing for connection and our physical dependence on the natural world.
Even after all this time
The sun never says to the earth,
“You owe Me.”
Look what happens
with a love like that,
It lights the whole Sky.
Hafiz
Offering the gift economy as a value system needs to be revisited. From the point of view of a person living in a free market system of today, it may seem too idealistic and maybe even naive. However, there is historical evidence that the gift economy existed in matriarchal and hunter gatherer cultures before the more self interested exchange model came into being. (Eisenstein, 5) As the disparity between rich and poor grows and as the environment on which we depend is depleted, it is clear that a value system based on another model is needed. The sun never says to the earth,
“You owe Me.”
Look what happens
with a love like that,
It lights the whole Sky.
Hafiz
There are different metaphors authors use as a way to envision a gift economy for today’s world. One feminist view put forth by Genevieve Vaughan in her book For-Giving, considers a mothering orientation to be the guiding principal that is missing in what she calls the patriarchal capitalist system of today. Her view puts the emphasis on giving to satisfy needs as most essential. Vaughan’s model, based on the practice of mothering, is needs oriented more than profit motivated, other oriented rather then self-promoting and evaluates success in terms of quality, rather than in terms of measurements like money.
Vaughan points out that the word economics originally meant “care of the household.” (p. 31) This understanding of the word shifts the focus from the more impersonal business orientation of an economic system to a more personal sense of nurturing, guardianship and creating rules for the good of all. These days every television nightly news program begins with showing the daily stock market results. We have been led to believe that if the stock market is going up the economy is doing well. This is particularly untrue because only 54% of Americans have any money in the stock market. (Jacobe) However for most people there is very little relationship with where the stock market is and their own economic wellbeing. Vaughan also points out the root meaning of community and communication, saying that “munus” comes from the Latin word for gift.(p.32). Therefore, community is about co-giving and the act of communication becomes an act of giving.
Gifford Pinchot refers to the philosopher Lewis Mumford when he makes the point that “fundamental change in civilizations comes when the culture changes its vision of what it is to be a human being”. (Pinchot) By re-thinking the meaning of the words economy, community and communication and placing them within the context of the mothering paradigm, Vaughan is able to establish a new understanding of our purpose in life as individuals, a country and a world. She believes that how we create meaning and measure success cannot be based on profit and personal gain but must be placed on giving and considering the good of all.
In putting forth a model for a gift economy, Eisenstein explores the roots of money. Like Vaughan, he believes that giving is an essential part of our human nature and that institutionalized greed is a corruption of our innate gratitude for the gift of life and the abundance of nature. While conventional wisdom is that money began with a barter economy of exchange meaning giving to receive, Eisentein suggests it was actually based on the principle of gratitude and faith that more for you is more for me.(9)He points out that in early cultures, the words buying and selling were the same word because ancient people did not look at goods in a possessive way. Giving was not linear, it was more circular in nature, in that you give to me, I give to someone else, I receive and there is a constant flow of giving, making buyer and seller equal. Giving, seen as a sacred bond between giver and receiver, was a process of participating in something greater than oneself. (10) When talking about indigenous gift economies, Rauna Kuokkanen states that the gift is a way to “actively acknowledge a sense of kinship and coexistence with the world without which survival would not be possible”. (Kuokkanen)
Eisenstein states that as societies grew, developed and centralized, the nature of the gift economy was replaced by money. (12) This shift represents just one of the ways we have been separated from the natural world and our human nature. To understand that the first forms of transaction were based on communal giving and a deep appreciation of the web of life, is to reframe our understanding of money. The challenge of today is to restore the sacred meaning behind money as a means of transaction and to regain a sense of gratitude for what has been freely given to us by nature. The gift affirms our sense of responsibility, respect and shared community. It should not signify ownership of the land. For a gift economy to work there must be an awareness of abundance rather than scarcity. As long as we all live in fear of not having enough, we will never be able to give freely to others.
It is important to understand that the gift economy is an expression of a worldview that sees the interrelationship and interdependence of all beings and the land. Incorporated into the mindset of a people that are a part of a gift economy, is that no one owns the land and that we are here to take care of nature and each other just as nature takes cares of us. This worldview is in opposition to what is valued in a capitalist system. In a gift economy it would be looked down on to get rich at someone else’s expense. Wendy James, a British anthropologist writes about the gift giving practices of the Udek in Northwest Africa. “Any wealth transferred from one sub clan to another, whether animals, grain or money, is in the nature of a gift, and should be consumed and not invested for growth. If such transferred wealth is added to the sub clan’s capital and kept for growth, the sub clan is regarded as being in an immoral relation to debt to the donors of the original gift.” (Hyde, 4) In addition, if a sub clan kept a pair of goats to breed, they would be seen as getting rich at someone else’s expense and viewed as corrupt. In a patriarchal capitalist system it is not only acceptable to make a profit at the expense of another but it is the accepted practice. The ancient practices of the gift economy provide us with a vision of how to reclaim a sense of gratitude for the land and a needed perspective on our place in the web of life. As Kuokkaamen states in her article “Reclaiming Indigenous People’s Philosophy”, “In this system one does not give primarily in order to receive but to ensure the balance of the world on which the well being of the entire social order is contingent.” (258) This is the worldview that is needed as we begin to heal our planet and reestablish our own place in the web of life.
Eisenstein looks at our relationship to the earth to speak about where humankind is in terms of our spiritual evolution. He states that up to now we have seen the earth as a mother who we can just take from, without concern of consequence. Now it is time to grow up and see the planet as Lover Earth, with whom we must now enter a conscious relationship of mutuality and taking care of one another.
hope you all enjoy it
TheUndeadPhoenix
The Necromancer King
Somebody remind me to read this later. Looks interesting.
From Free Market Val/quote]
dolittle
New member
s what about us with kids we hold the future and they take children to negoiate finacial garbb in trade..our kids for accumiltion and all the accesories that come ...for the ones not saying it...yes t people in the bushes with a famili they always get busted..so what about our future genera about our families..the system get the first 18 years, to brainwash th where does that leave all of us?... alone in bushes, while we blame ? yeah i'm good on that shit..i just kid deosn't run away when he's 1 did..than i gotta worry about the s taking him down instead of the hi system..what about the rest of us w
I guess if one guy can find happyness on his own terms, I don't see why a whole family couldn't. I still think that to live independently requires mostly a shift in thought. Stop thinking like the herd & start thinking like the herdDog.
I guess if one guy can find happyness on his own terms, I don't see why a whole family couldn't. I still think that to live independently requires mostly a shift in thought. Stop thinking like the herd & start thinking like the herdDog.
TheUndeadPhoenix
The Necromancer King
Yeah, right? lol
starfish prim
New member
currency is elder than caesar but anyway you cant turn back time. or who would want to try that ?
i know of three initiatives all in all that follow the general goal to provide exchange markets in which whatever goods can be traded. one of which and the eldest is located in Brazil where people successfully established an alternative to national currency; the other two smaller ranged ones are located in my immediate local neighbourhood, say me quarter.
the one of the latter i got aware of some months ago. its an Umsonstladen thats open few hours a week, where you can bring what you dont need anymore but still is of use and take away what may fill in your current needs. the other is an interesting initiative of local middle range entrepreneurs who follow the brazilian example in its attempt to establish an alternative local currency in gestalt of credit points that enables citizens to purchase food, goods as well as service, in exchange for investing either food, goods or service.
i know of three initiatives all in all that follow the general goal to provide exchange markets in which whatever goods can be traded. one of which and the eldest is located in Brazil where people successfully established an alternative to national currency; the other two smaller ranged ones are located in my immediate local neighbourhood, say me quarter.
the one of the latter i got aware of some months ago. its an Umsonstladen thats open few hours a week, where you can bring what you dont need anymore but still is of use and take away what may fill in your current needs. the other is an interesting initiative of local middle range entrepreneurs who follow the brazilian example in its attempt to establish an alternative local currency in gestalt of credit points that enables citizens to purchase food, goods as well as service, in exchange for investing either food, goods or service.