re-1: Prognosis 2012 - solutions
Richard Moore
Greetings,
Thanks for all the feedback on Prognosis 2012. I've modified the
article in response, completely rewriting some sections. There are
also comments and responses on the blog itself, below the article:
http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/02/prognosis-2012.html
My attention will turn next to reviewing and updating the Grand
Story of Humanity:
http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/03/grand-story-of-humanity.html
Below are comments on the solutions posting.
rkm _________
From: Robert Gregory Date: 3 March 2010 02:28:39 GMT To: Richard
Moore <r...@quaylargo.com<mailto:r...@quaylargo.com>> Subject: Re:
Prognosis 2012 - re: solutions
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cyberjournal/message/398
Just a thought - link hierarchy with scale! Small local hierarchies
may operate pretty well, it is when the scale increases and the
aberant personality types that need control over others rise to the
top and they become greedy. The shape of the hierarchy is important
too - broad base is better than big and high peaks. Also, movement
or change into and out of the peak or decision making role at the
top is important. Vested interests get to the top and won't yield
when conditions change or over time so that others can rise up when
and as appropriate.
I think long ago I sent you a series of diagrams or drawings that
illustrate this . . .
Cheers - bob g
---
Hi Robert,
I agree there are situations where semi-hierarchical forms are
appropriate.
There have also been many attempts to tame hierarchy which have
failed. One must be very careful in this regard, particularly with
untested theories.
In the Mondragon co-ops, they have a formula that works. There is
a hierarchical structure, in that there are managers and workers
in the factories. However everyone in the co-op is an equal owner,
so managers are in a real sense working for the workers. Also, the
board of directors includes workers, so workers have a direct voice
in overseeing management and operations. And there are councils,
including workers and managers, to facilitate ongoing communication
and mutual understanding. In addition, co-ops are limited to a
certain size, in agreement with your mention of scale, as an important
consideration.
On the other hand, with the US Constitution, we see an attempt that
failed. It was a very valiant attempt, with checks and balances at
the federal level, constitutionally prescribed limits on federal
power, and all unspecified powers delegated "to the States respectively,
or to the people". Devolution, or the principle of holarchy, went
on down further, so that each county and city had its own government,
taxes, and police force. Over time the protections have all been
eroded, and bare hierarchy has remained. Scale, among other things,
doomed this experiment in taming hierarchy.
When it comes to governance -- making the policy decisions for
society -- I'm convinced that the unit of sovereignty needs to be
the local community, and that the process needs to be based on
inclusive consensus. Semi-hierarchies make sense for agencies, like
a fire department, operating under the policies set down by the
community as a whole. And until the community as a whole knows how
to find its voice, there can be no democracy.
rkm _________
From: jeff prager Date: 3 March 2010 04:14:07 GMT To: Richard Moore
<r...@quaylargo.com<mailto:r...@quaylargo.com>> Subject: Re: Prognosis
2012 - re: solutions
I'm a 55 year old retired publisher so it might sound odd to say,
"dude, you're awesome," but it's difficult to think of much else
that expresses my sentiments accurately.
Peace, Jeff
---
Hi Jeff,
Sometimes parochial language is best. Thanks for the encouragement.
I notice you've also commented on the blogs. Hope to hear more from
you, more of your own thinking.
rkm _________
From: Bruce Dyer Date: 3 March 2010 09:10:59 GMT Cc:
r...@quaylargo.com<mailto:r...@quaylargo.com> Subject: PROUT
Hi Richard In case you've not come across it one of the significant
contributions to the direction humanity needs to choose, is Sarkar's
Progressive Utilisation Theory (PROUT) PROUT is a spiritually-based
socio-economic theory that emphasises 1) Guaranteed minimum
requirements of life 2) Increased purchasing capacity 3) Decentralised
planning and balanced economy 4) Three-tier industrial system. The
top tier includes key industries that amount to natural monopolies
such as energy, communications, rail, air travel that are run by
regional or national government. The bottom tier comprises small
businesses of say up to 10 employees. In between would be cooperatives
that encompass housing, manufacturing, distribution, health,
agriculture - in fact across the board.
5) Self-sufficient economic areas 6) Economic democracy and non
material emphasises.
You can find more on it at http://www.proutworld.org or
http://www.prout.org with regards Bruce Dyer New Zealand
---
Hi Bruce,
There are certainly a lot of good ideas in these PROUT principles.
If the principles were adopted by some nation, and implemented
sensibly, I'm sure it would be a major improvement over what we
have now.
However, if we had the power to install new principles, these are
not quite the ones I would choose. There is an emphasis on
decentralization, which is a good thing, but you've still got a
hierarchical government structure, with a national government at
the top. As the American experience demonstrates, written constitutions
and checks & balances cannot maintain decentralization in a large
state: centralized control will eventually be imposed by cliques
at the top of the hierarchy, and the 'nice system' will be destabilized.
Consider this: why need we assume that today's nation states are
natural, god-given units? Consider the example of the EU. It is
easy to see that we could devolve back to sovereign European nations,
and that would not create a problem in terms of 'society design'.
There is no inherent reason why the EU needs to exist, from an
operational perspective. Similarly, I suggest, there is no reason
why the 50 states of the USA could not be sovereign, many of them
being bigger than European nations.
As Robert suggested above, scale is important. If you're going to
have a hierarchy, a smaller one is less dangerous than a larger
one. It's a bit closer to the people, and a bit more transparent
in its operations, with a bit less power at its disposal. There's
a really good book that explores the question of scale, Breakdown
of Nations, by Leopold Kohr. Its discussion of the Swiss system is
particularly interesting, and the book was part of the inspiration
for Schumacher's Small is Beautiful.
We can continue to peel the onion. Why stop with European nations
as a scale?
Why couldn't the provinces of France be sovereign? Why not Wales
and Scotland, and Crete? Why not the counties of Ireland? Why not
every bioregion? What is the best unit of political sovereignty,
and why?
There is of course the issue of war and conflict. Some people see
the EU as a 'solution' to the periodic wars fought among European
nations. But we haven't solved the problem of war and conflict by
moving to larger-scale units. We just get bigger hierarchies, further
from the people, with deadlier arsenals, doing more fighting for
different reasons. As for world government... well, that's why I
wrote the Prognosis, for anyone who thinks that's a good idea.
Elites are already busily usurping a world government before it
even exists!
As regards the 'best' unit of political sovereignty, I suggest the
following:
the largest unit in which it is possible for direct democracy to
exist (and hierarchy to be avoided). I use the term 'community' for
such a unit, what the Greeks called a polis. It needs to be small
enough that everyone's voice can be heard and considered, as we
might hope for in a New England town meeting.
On the other hand it needs to be large enough that it has some
coherence as a social and geographical unit. It might be a town
with its environs for example, or a neighborhood in a city.
This leads to two questions: how would direct democracy operate in
a community, and how would larger scale issues be dealt with? I'll
leave those questions, for the moment, as exercises for the reader.
rkm _________
From: "Brian Hill"
Date: 3 March 2010 21:54:39 GMT To: "'Richard Moore'"
<r...@quaylargo.com<mailto:r...@quaylargo.com>> Subject: RE: Prognosis
2012 - re: solutions
good writings. Have you checked out the CDFI (community development
financial institutions) movement that has been funding local
sustainability since the Mondragon and Grameen examples? It is
very widespread, solid and successful.
Accion International is one of the most successful, maybe getting
a little too big, but still very helpful for local communities. A
major part of what the CDFI movement does is to teach sustainable
business practices which too many local people have been ignorant
of due to their being subjects of the capitalist empire.
---
Hi Brian,
Thanks for the feedback.
CDFI & Accion look very interesting. It seems to me worker co-ops
would be something they could support. Best would be if they would
finance a co-op bank, which could in turn finance local projects.
rkm
---
Brian responds:
yes, that is a good option, esp., including labor unions. I have
wanted to start a credit union for years that would provide revolving
loan funds, and the local community would eventually own the credit
union. For years I have been saying that until communities own
their own money, e.g., credit unions, revolving loan funds, self
sufficient sustainability is be impossible.
One of the things I learned from the Mondragon video was the
importance of the bank in the whole operation. The role of banking
is to facilitate commerce and development. That function is just
as pivotal and leveraged in a 'good' society as in a 'bad' one. The
Mondragon experience makes it even clearer to me why bankers have
managed to hoist themselves to the top of the global food chain.
I believe that the establishment of a community 'bank' -- whatever
the form of the entity might be -- is the laying of the cornerstone,
the foundation, for community empowerment. The critical factors for
such a bank would be:
* maximum freedom in allocating its funding, minimal legal constraints
* able to issue a local currency as well as to deal with official
currency * focused on the mission of developing a strong and
sustainable local economy * seeks ways to involve the community in
development planning and decisions * can be easily put under community
control -- when the community establishes an inclusive democratic
process
rkm _______
From: Caspar Davis Date: 4 March 2010 00:22:13 GMT To:
r...@quaylargo.com<mailto:r...@quaylargo.com> Subject: Re: Prognosis
2012 - re: solutions
Hi Richard, I think this is brilliant and very promising. I have
forwarded it to my list and others with this introduction. I think
you are right about Mondragon being the possible model/engine. I
seem to be hearing more about it lately after hearing nothing for
over 20 years (it is actually 54 years old), and the Transition
Town movement seems to be catching on more quickly than I for one
suspected that it would. M
My intro [excerpted -rkm]:
This is the sequel to a long recent post, Prognosis 2012, from
Richard Moore.
I consider this Solutions article to be of the greatest possible
importance, and have given it five stars, my highest rating. I have
not forwarded Richard's Prognosis because it is so bleak...If you
would like to read and/or comment on the Prognosis, you can do so
at http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/02/prognosis-2012.html In my
view, this sequel is much more important and useful than the
Prognosis.
The remedy that Richard proposes is a fusion of most of the ideas
and movements that I have found promising during the last 30 years
or so, the part of my life that has been awake to such things. Over
the years, I have studied each of these ideas and come away with
the feeling that while each looks and sounds good, none has yet or
probably could produce the necessary change.
Here Richard describes the possibility of a fusion of these ideas
that could be much greater than the sum of its parts:
Caspar
---
Hi Caspar,
I really like the creative way you are facilitating dialog between
our online communities, with your forward and introduction. And
you've since continued to facilitate more back-and-forth exchange.
This gets my grey cells working, thinking about communication among
communities in a direct-democracy society.
I have a great deal of respect for the contributions you've made
to democratic process in Victoria, and for your general good sense,
so your approval of the material is especially encouraging.
rkm
---
'Martin' responded on Caspar's list:
I was struck by how when Captain Cook arrived at remote islands as
the first European he found that these islands had a hierarchy very
similar to Europe.
Kings and priests, nobles, artisans and professionals, workers..
He hung out with the King, the officers hung out with the nobels,
the nco's with the merchants and the crew with the workers. And
of course in tribal times it was ok to rape and pillage the tribe
next door as the US v Them was still a feature of human organization.
It's not like hierarchy is unknown in the animal kingdom - so my
dog tells me!
Yes, the way you put it, it sounds like it's been hierarchy all the
way, with no missing links.
The flaw in that logic is the failure to realize that Hawaii was
already an advanced society, based on agriculture, something that
was only invented 10,000 years ago. We have been fully human for
about 200,000 years. So there is a missing link in your chain, a
gap of about 200,000 years.
---
Caspar then commented:
I still have a great deal of trouble with your dismissal of Global
Warming, which is to me an observable fact, and closely related to
the acidification of the oceans, which is a dire threat to all
marine life -- the great preponderance of the Earth's biomass.
The invention of carbon credits to me illustrates the ingenuity of
Capitalists at transforming almost any issue into a profit/wealth
concentration base (without of course doing anything to actually
address the problem). People like that are certainly reprehensible
and possibly psychotic.
Using carbon credits as you suggest could only be done by the most
extreme psychopaths, since they are obviously already rich beyond
the wildest dreams of the Midases of the past and would gain nothing
from it but the enjoyment of the infliction of untold suffering.
If that is indeed their plan, and if the rest of humankind cannot
stop them, it is pretty clear that we are indeed a failed experiment.
Yes, global warming is observable. We've had two centuries of global
warming, beginning about 1800. That's quite a bit of warming, with
all kinds of records being broken "since measurements began", which
was also about 1800. The warming began before carbon emissions were
relevant, and is part of a natural pattern of warming peaks that
occur about every 1000 years in the Northern Hemisphere.
Current temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere are 2.5 degrees
colder than they've been in the relatively recent past. A sharp
cooling trend has been going on for the past several years, and
that is also in line with long-term patterns. This indicates we are
resuming the decline to the next ice age, a decline that has been
going on (with declining peaks) for the past few thousand years.
There is no evidence of any effect on climate by Co2 in the Northern
Hemisphere, and no evident prospect of dangerous warming. It turns
out that the Earth has very responsive regulatory mechanisms.
Those are the facts. As for acidification, I haven't looked into
it. But I do know carbon credits won't do anything to help the
problem.
Profits are not the issue. Power is the issue. The masters of the
universe want to run the world, and they want to run it their way.
They've had more money than they know what to do with for as long
as their grandaddy can remember. They are the creators of money and
credit. To them it's less something to accumulate than it is a means
of control. The carbon economy gives them more direct control.
There may be sadists among them, but for the most part the suffering
inflicted is seen as eggs that need to be broken when you make an
omelet. It's a culling of the herd, of the useless feeders, the
untermenschen.
We have different understandings of some of the details, but we
agree this is a test for humanity. If we can't stop them, before
they establish the Thousand Year Reich, then we are indeed a failed
experiment. And we need to understand the scope and nature of the
assault before we can pursue an effective counter operation. Global
warming alarmism plays directly into their hands, as it is intended
to, as it was designed to.
rkm _________
From: "Peter Meyer"
Date: 4 March 2010 02:43:29 GMT To:
r...@quaylargo.com<mailto:r...@quaylargo.com> Subject: Community &
self-governance and the rest
Hi Richard, "Prognosis 2012" seems to have scared the bejeezus out
of a lot of people, which, of course, is not a bad thing.
Your message "re solutions" is an antidote to the bleakness of it.
I could publish this, beginning at "Community & self-governance",
or would you prefer to do further work on it?
I doubt Global Research would pick it up, though I doubt you would
expect them to.
Regards, Peter
---
Hi Peter,
I'd say go ahead and use it. I'll be doing a rewrite in the next
few weeks, and then you could update your site.
Global Research isn't concerned much with solutions, it's mainly
aimed at helping people understand the current regime. When the
'solutions' material is ready for prime time, I'd be thinking more
in terms venues related to community activism.
rkm _________
From: "Hill Eshbach"
Date: 4 March 2010 02:59:58 GMT To:
<r...@quaylargo.com<mailto:r...@quaylargo.com>> Subject: Prognosis
2012 - comment
Hi Richard, I always enjoy reading your work! You say hierarchy
is the problem and there was a time when there was no human hierarchy
on earth. Therefore, its possible to have humans without hierarchy.
Regrettably, however, that something was once the case, doesnt prove
that it could ever be the case again. For example, there was once
1950s America. Therefore, there can be another 1950s America? Or,
once all the continents were all together forming a single land
mass. Therefore, they can all be together again? The conclusions
dont follow from the premises. As long as some people are stronger
than others (a given by Nature), why would some not impose their
will on others (short of our all being saints)?
Keep up the great work!
All the best, Hill
---
Hi Hill,
You are right, many processes are irreversible, and things past
cannot always be retrieved. Although it can't come back, 1950s
America does stand as a model of what might happen if capitalist
industrial development were to be pursued elsewhere, under comparable
circumstances. And what has existed in past cultures shows what is
possible, as regards social forms. If anyone says it is impossible
for people to live without hierarchy, that is disproved by the fact
that a great many cultures have not been hierarchical.
Someone can impose their will on someone else only if they have the
power to do so. And being 'stronger', in the physical sense, has
very little to do with power, either in hunter-gatherer societies
or in modern societies. Being a big bully does not typically open
the doors of success to you, except perhaps as a bouncer or rugby
player. I imagine that when you say "stronger", you really mean
"having power over".
Yes, if there are positions of power in society, where other people
can be affected by decisions they have no control over, then some
people in those positions of power would impose their will on those
others. This piece of wisdom exists as a saying, power corrupts.
It is because I agree with this oft-observed principle, that I say
the only answer is to not have positions of power in our society.
To me the conclusion seems inescapable.
rkm _________
From: "Vera Gottlieb"
Date: 4 March 2010 15:17:13 GMT Subject: Re: Solutions (Re Prognosis
2012)
The process of participatory democracy - but WITHOUT ANY POLITICAL
PARTIES - should be advanced much more rapidly. We need to stop
globalization and start relying/promoting on our communities instead.
And we need to question a lot, lot more and be very, very skeptical
of the so-called 'experts' - they are the ones doing us in. Paid
by...???
vg
Hi Vera,
Hear, hear!
rkm
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