Roman citizens often realized that things were bad, and unsustainable, but such are the stultifying aspects of perceiving one's place as being "on top," that the citizens did little to move for effective change. Many Romans took a view (perhaps willful delusion) that things would "somehow work themselves out," and that, after all, Rome had been on top for seemingly endless decades and would always be so.
And so, instead of facing squarely their society's challenges, they far too often gave themselves license to either retreat to leisure or fixate on sporting contests. And many were bought off by some measure of the dole, or even by empty promises and irrelevant ideologies.
Long before the barbarians knocked at the gate, they witnessed the transformation of Rome from within.
Monday, October 25, 2010
Piece One, Step Two
End subsidies. To soft drink makers, to fossil fuel companies, to financial “services” corporations, to agribusinesses. We are subsidizing our own destruction! It is bad enough that costs do not reflect reality, but we are PAYING them to get a good deal at our expense. Paying them to have tens of billions in profits!
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Piece One, Step One
Tax restructuring.
We need to tax environmentally harming activities and products, and correspondingly, WE NEED TO REDUCE AND EVENTUALLY ELIMINATE TAXES ON INCOME, ESPECIALLY WAGE INCOME (thought that might get your attention). This would be a revenue neutral proposition in all likelihood.
We then need to tax health harming activities and products, and even societal harming activities and products. We need to do this for, among other reasons, to pay down our gargantuan debt that is choking us to death.
In short, we need to tax the things that are harmful and quit taxing the things that are beneficial. To paraphrase Ronald Reagan: If you want to have less of something, tax it; if you want to have more of something, un-tax it.
Right now, the market does not reflect the ecological or social costs of many things, hence skewing our decisions because we are either making them without correct information, or getting an apparently free ride. But those costs are borne by us regardless, just in an irrational and absurdly twisted and abusively wasteful manner.
So, step one of piece one is to gradually, but quickly, raise taxes to their true cost level on environmentally damaging things like oil, coal, etc. while correspondingly reducing income taxes. Making this a carbon tax is the easiest to understand and the easiest for the market to adjust to, unlike complex cap and trade systems which are wonky at best and subject to much more perversion. Making it a carbon tax also means that the most damaging things that produce more carbon, like coal, get taxed more, while less damaging things, like natural gas, get taxed less. You also then don’t have to get into expensive (and, once again, more easily perverted) systems of tax credits and the like. The market will do all that for you as it flows to what are the least costly alternatives once the true costs have been factored.
We need to tax environmentally harming activities and products, and correspondingly, WE NEED TO REDUCE AND EVENTUALLY ELIMINATE TAXES ON INCOME, ESPECIALLY WAGE INCOME (thought that might get your attention). This would be a revenue neutral proposition in all likelihood.
We then need to tax health harming activities and products, and even societal harming activities and products. We need to do this for, among other reasons, to pay down our gargantuan debt that is choking us to death.
In short, we need to tax the things that are harmful and quit taxing the things that are beneficial. To paraphrase Ronald Reagan: If you want to have less of something, tax it; if you want to have more of something, un-tax it.
Right now, the market does not reflect the ecological or social costs of many things, hence skewing our decisions because we are either making them without correct information, or getting an apparently free ride. But those costs are borne by us regardless, just in an irrational and absurdly twisted and abusively wasteful manner.
So, step one of piece one is to gradually, but quickly, raise taxes to their true cost level on environmentally damaging things like oil, coal, etc. while correspondingly reducing income taxes. Making this a carbon tax is the easiest to understand and the easiest for the market to adjust to, unlike complex cap and trade systems which are wonky at best and subject to much more perversion. Making it a carbon tax also means that the most damaging things that produce more carbon, like coal, get taxed more, while less damaging things, like natural gas, get taxed less. You also then don’t have to get into expensive (and, once again, more easily perverted) systems of tax credits and the like. The market will do all that for you as it flows to what are the least costly alternatives once the true costs have been factored.
Friday, October 15, 2010
Got Courage?
The quote above is going to stay until we get off the present path. We CAN get off it, you know. It requires a decision to no longer live in denial, to, in my father's no mincing words, "get your head out of your ass."
Plan B 4.0 is an eminently doable, profoundly sensible, plan that restores hope to a world and its people that desperately need it. If you want to feel good about something, feel good about getting behind it. It is a turn away from the irrational road of doom we're on, and one toward a brighter future. We've got a lot of problems; if you want this civilization to have the opportunity to work on those problems, to have a chance, it needs this as a basis. Your children will thank you for working, really working, toward a definably brighter and sustainable future. You've been wanting to do that for a long time, haven't you? You'll feel good about it too.
Because that will mean a whole helluva lot more to you than any amount of material wealth or comfort or entertainment.
Plan B 4.0. Buy it. Read it. Talk about it with people, including YOUR local, state, and national leaders.
Because spectating on this one is a vote for the end of our civilization. The closing paragraph of the book states it inescapably:
“The choice is ours—yours and mine. We can stay with business as usual and preside over an economy that continues to destroy its natural support systems until it destroys itself, or we can adopt Plan B and be the generation that changes direction, moving the world onto a path of sustained progress. The choice will be made by our generation, but it will affect life on earth for all generations to come.”
Plan B 4.0 is an eminently doable, profoundly sensible, plan that restores hope to a world and its people that desperately need it. If you want to feel good about something, feel good about getting behind it. It is a turn away from the irrational road of doom we're on, and one toward a brighter future. We've got a lot of problems; if you want this civilization to have the opportunity to work on those problems, to have a chance, it needs this as a basis. Your children will thank you for working, really working, toward a definably brighter and sustainable future. You've been wanting to do that for a long time, haven't you? You'll feel good about it too.
Because that will mean a whole helluva lot more to you than any amount of material wealth or comfort or entertainment.
Plan B 4.0. Buy it. Read it. Talk about it with people, including YOUR local, state, and national leaders.
Because spectating on this one is a vote for the end of our civilization. The closing paragraph of the book states it inescapably:
“The choice is ours—yours and mine. We can stay with business as usual and preside over an economy that continues to destroy its natural support systems until it destroys itself, or we can adopt Plan B and be the generation that changes direction, moving the world onto a path of sustained progress. The choice will be made by our generation, but it will affect life on earth for all generations to come.”
Monday, October 11, 2010
GET YOURS
There is a disturbing pattern across the nation: excessive individualism combined with denial. People think that if they can somehow beat the odds, and get THEIR money, THEIR job, THEIR house, THEIR retirement, etc., that all can be well with them. Utter delusion. Not only are they tied to a government that is going into a swirling Charybdis, but their society is heading for one all its own. You will not escape, citizen. If those “others” go down, i.e., if there is not enough hope and basic survivability of the general population, YOU AREN’T MAKING IT EITHER. You rely on them far more than you know. Everything from your food, to your house maintenance, to your car, to your infrastructure, to your clothing, and a whole lot else.
It would be ironic that we have become, at a time when it is harder than ever for the individual to get by (let alone flourish), so maniacally socialism-phobic that the cooperation we so urgently need is swallowed up in selfishness and divisiveness. I don’t think it’s a coincidence, however; I think it’s by design. It serves certain power centers for us to be this way, and for us to think there can be no other way.
Those who think that they don’t need to attempt to do anything or learn anything about what’s happening to this society: What good is it going to do you to get all your retirements lined up, get your house all set, get your future all planned, if the general population you rely on to support that future can’t make it, and more importantly, the government itself implodes in some fashion from unsustainability or external forces gain inordinate leverage?
Granted, the dogs and cats aren’t raining yet, but when someone can demonstrate to me how our present course can lead to anything but deep pain and perhaps ruin, I will lift my skeptical assessment. Relying on fortunate unforeseeable circumstance (pure wild dumb luck) is no rational prescription, but right now, that’s almost all there is, and that’s moronic.
If the extended recession really did drive great changes that extended much beyond coping, I would be encouraged. As of right now, there's not enough sign of that.
It would be ironic that we have become, at a time when it is harder than ever for the individual to get by (let alone flourish), so maniacally socialism-phobic that the cooperation we so urgently need is swallowed up in selfishness and divisiveness. I don’t think it’s a coincidence, however; I think it’s by design. It serves certain power centers for us to be this way, and for us to think there can be no other way.
Those who think that they don’t need to attempt to do anything or learn anything about what’s happening to this society: What good is it going to do you to get all your retirements lined up, get your house all set, get your future all planned, if the general population you rely on to support that future can’t make it, and more importantly, the government itself implodes in some fashion from unsustainability or external forces gain inordinate leverage?
Granted, the dogs and cats aren’t raining yet, but when someone can demonstrate to me how our present course can lead to anything but deep pain and perhaps ruin, I will lift my skeptical assessment. Relying on fortunate unforeseeable circumstance (pure wild dumb luck) is no rational prescription, but right now, that’s almost all there is, and that’s moronic.
If the extended recession really did drive great changes that extended much beyond coping, I would be encouraged. As of right now, there's not enough sign of that.
Monday, October 4, 2010
The Mixed Bag of AC
My great-grandfather told my father: "Air conditioning can be a great thing when a man can get some sleep because of it. A man can do a lot of work if he gets a good night's sleep."
Yes indeed. My great-grandfather, who may have provided bloodline inspiration for much of this writer's own life paths, was on to something. I will leave aside for now the part about getting a good night's sleep, and that (and why) we don't do enough of that anymore.
My thought here is about the air conditioning.
When air conditioning brings true relief from deeply stifling heat and/or humidity, or offers some protection from adverse air quality of one sort or another, air conditioning is serving a clearly and demonstrably good purpose. When it is merely providing slight additional comfort, and in the process insulating us in an artificial environment that divorces us even further from nature (or even just prevents us from breathing fresh air), it is doing us a disservice.
Or rather we are doing ourselves a disservice. We not only wimpify ourselves, but we also disconnect ourselves from what is "out there" and that we need to be a part of physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.
So unless there's a compelling reason not to, open a window. Or better yet, take a walk. You might inspire others to do the same. The long road back from this artifical bubble life begins with just that. A single action.
Yes indeed. My great-grandfather, who may have provided bloodline inspiration for much of this writer's own life paths, was on to something. I will leave aside for now the part about getting a good night's sleep, and that (and why) we don't do enough of that anymore.
My thought here is about the air conditioning.
When air conditioning brings true relief from deeply stifling heat and/or humidity, or offers some protection from adverse air quality of one sort or another, air conditioning is serving a clearly and demonstrably good purpose. When it is merely providing slight additional comfort, and in the process insulating us in an artificial environment that divorces us even further from nature (or even just prevents us from breathing fresh air), it is doing us a disservice.
Or rather we are doing ourselves a disservice. We not only wimpify ourselves, but we also disconnect ourselves from what is "out there" and that we need to be a part of physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.
So unless there's a compelling reason not to, open a window. Or better yet, take a walk. You might inspire others to do the same. The long road back from this artifical bubble life begins with just that. A single action.
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