Occupy Cafe
New Economy Working Group
A group hosted by Haiz Oppenheimer, focused on exploring ways that Occupy can promote/embody "a new economy."
Economies as Forums for All Voices
Dave commented
I think there could be two strands to this:
1) Local pragmatic ideas
2) Global economic systems
This group may focus on the local schemes and the Positive Alternatives group can look at the Global.
Both could examine what the faith and belief perspective is on this.
Number one is the only one that feels worthwhile to me. I believe the foundation of global anything-of-consequence is abundant, affordable ancient sunlight (fossil fuels), and I do not have faith in that foundation. Even if it holds for twice the time projected by the most cautious analysts, it is wise to (be able to) rely on what is reliable. Plus, people on the ground will together conclude one day that fouling their surroundings and sacrificing lives of some and health of many both to obtain the fuels and by using the fuels is intolerable. Global will be recognized by all to be synonymous with entitlement, narrowly defined and selectively allowed, as it has been.
When we go local or perhaps bioregional, we can mimic ecosystems, all of which are place-based and gravity- and solar-powered, using both present income and that which beings paid forward (legacies; soils, most importantly). When our systems better mimic ecosystems, we will rely on complementarity more than conformity, compliance, cooperation and even collaboration. We will arrange our economies as forums for all voices (read productive, full expressions of whole people, not just articulated demands and opinions). Because people are multidimensional and everything rises and falls, all out of sync, complexity will not be lacking. These forums will be necessarily (naturally) dynamic manifestations of who/what is present and contributing. In time, appropriate traditions of being-in-place will return to serve.
Voice in the limited sense simply cannot go as far.
Kevin Parcell
I think such communities might also be the natural outcome of the transformation, as I propose at http://reconomy.net.
Dec 8, 2011
Kevin Parcell
I offer as a local pragmatic idea Reconomy at http://reconomy.net, which is a model that establishes a money-energy value loop to develop community-controlled local energy resources. I'm finding the utility of this approach is quickly grasped in developing regions, but not so much in developed communities. The difference seems to be that "developed communities" are living easy by exploiting resources from less developed communities and so have little general interest in changing that gravy train to develop their own.
This experience has led me to focus on recruiting the help of those whom get it rather than on changing minds. Or, in other words, I don't find much benefit in talking about the reasoning behind this in western developed communities. People are moved by self-interest, enlightened or otherwise, and enlightened self-interest is lacking where self-interest is lavishly fed; so spending my energy on raising the consciousness of the affluent isn't profitable, not to say that reaching out to those whom are already tuned in is always a waste of time.
Dec 10, 2011
Kevin Parcell
Dec 12, 2011