We hope we may be seeing signs that those who believed in govt as part of the solution to our economy's problems, via protest to get policy to do the job needed, are beginning to see the futility of that route and hopefully reserve recourse to government and protesting strictly for the events where putting the brakes on the latest outrage is all that's sought.
A recent post at Signs-of-the-Times very nicely identifies the reason for this futility as 'organized psychopathy' and then proceeds to seek a way to break the grip of the forces involved.
Some are accepting now that our daily purchasing activities are empowering exactly those forces that are the cause of our problems and advocating more cognizance of and responsibility for re-directing our own spending. An economic version of think globally, act locally. The suggestions however get murky at that point, with few specifics on proceeding beyond politically correct affiliations such as CSAs (community supported agriculture) and salutes to anti-Walmart.
Having explored CSAs and found them inappropriate for anyone selective in what greens they want to eat, and having reason to believe that Walmart not only holds the key to leveraging our escape from Big Oil but also seems to be targetted primarily for 'class' reasons, I would suggest that a more thought out strategy be developed.
Our approach has consisted of patronizing those sources that promote serious DIY efforts, and those sources that keep the lid on prices of foods, basic groceries, tools and such. Those two agendas seem crucial to the functioning of free people, including the working class. Under this logic, we regularly patronize Home Depo, Krogers and Walmart, AutoZone, etc.
The second segment of the plan is sustainability. We target our expenses very carefully and study the results. We have concluded that energy use and food and healthcare are key areas for improvement in quality while simultaneously reducing quantity. The other element is eliminating isolation, the demon that makes us vulnerable. We advocate the multigenerational household because we can marshal more knowledge, more connections, more work-sharing, more commonspace and tool sharing, while respecting personal privacy.
Further I maintain that people have major misconceptions about how effectively they're performing in these areas and the only way to clear our collective vision is to discuss *numbers*. Then people can identify appropriate targets and devise implementation routes to get them to aggressively doable goals instead of wishful thinking while drowning in depression, victims of expert 'organized psychopathy'.
Our household budget for living expenses, even while living temporarily on rent in preparation for our mortgage-free home, is under $7000/person/year and includes some of our business expenses that get mixed in, yet we live very well, high-speed connectivity of all sorts, top quality foods, plenty of comforts, pets and a sense of ease about possessions. We're doing very well with this sort of agenda and have sustained it for the 5 years at this location even though these sorts of figures would be classified as poverty level and an invitation to intrusion even though the lifestyle clearly is not. With the coming elimination of the rent that figure will drop even further back to half, $3,500/person/year.
Energy is coming in at about $27/person/month and is greatly facilitated by the berm-to-window-level that surrounds this apt. And the figures go on for other budget items, each whittled down over the past 15 years. Food now is running at $120/person/month, using healthy raw foods and bulk buying.
If the entire american workforce lived like this, they'd be healthy, well provided for and competitive on the world market. In addition we would have reigned in the disease of affluenza that consumes our innards, reduced the corporate monsters to serving us instead of being our masters, and empowered our activists to pursue the criminals that stole our voting rights.
So we wholeheartedly support the direction of the posting and think it's time to get some serious focus on implementation. We welcome comparisons in this forum and would like to probe where we could take advantage of even more strategies, because these define the foundations for pursuing our goals of liberty through economic choices.
