Section 08: Economics
Community is a sign that love is possible in a materialistic world where people so often either ignore or fight each other. It is a sign that we don't need a lot of money to be happy — in fact, the opposite. — Jean Vanier, Community And Growth
A proper community, we should remember also, is a commonwealth: a place, a resource, an economy. It answers the needs, practical as well as social and spiritual, of its members — among them the need to need one another. The answer to the present alignment of political power with wealth is the restoration of the identity of community and economy. — Racism and the Economy, Wendell Berry, The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays
There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning. — Warren Buffett
Section 8 Table of Contents
08011 The Money Games — Unit of account, store of value, medium of exchange, method of theft, measure of energy flow, system of oppression, driver of environmental degradation, measure of criminality, invisible structure. Money encompasses many games.
08021 Financial Permaculture & Slow Money — 8 forms of capital, new concepts of wealth and investing, how to get there from here.
08031 The Essentials of Economic Sustainability — Sustainable economies grow from nature and society. Living systems, holistic, dynamic, individualistic, context specific, purposeful, resourceful, regenerative, constant, persistent, resilient.
08041 Alternative Economic Systems — Planting and cultivating seeds of a new economic future.
08051 Cooperatives — The number one economic "pioneer plant" available for colonizing the damaged and disturbed economic ecologies of our era.
08061 Economic Survival Strategies — Defending yourself and all you love against the predatory politics and economics of our corrupt elites.
08071 Frugality Fundamentals — Frugality is the strategy associated with weaning us away from this perpetual cycle of consumption, waste, excretion, and more consumption. It closes the door on the economy of scarcity and plants the seeds of the good-life living of an economy of abundance.
08081 Design for Abundance and Economy — Resourcefulness. Regeneration. Money pits and traps. You get what you design. Managing wants, greeds, needs.
08091 Alternative Currencies and Investment Structures — From Ithaca Hours to Time Banks, and on to Crowd-sourced Finance. A quick overview of non-traditional alternatives for capital formation.
08101 Job and Career — The perils of putting the cart before the horse, which always annoys the horse and gets you nowhere fast. How much work do you need to do anyway?
08111 Why student loans and other debts are dangerous — The borrower is the slave of the lender. Why it is best to pay cash. The most dangerous debts? Student loans and credit cards.
08121 Design for Regeneration — Keeping surplus in circulation so that over time prosperity increases and decentralizes.
08131 Macroeconomics and the subjugation of peoples — How to live a good life that isn't subsidized by wholesale death and destruction elsewhere.
08141 The Unplugged — "A society is just individuals and families, and sometimes families of families, all the way up to States and Governments and the International Agencies and so on. If you solve the problem for a single family, and it's something which can compete in the evolutionary marketplace of ideas, then eventually you can solve the entire problem."
08151 Unplugging as a Lifestyle Strategy — Turning fiction into reality.
08161 Tools for Economic Sustainability — Open Source Ecology and why it is so important.
08171 Economic Inventory — Understanding where you are with your economics is the first step towards a better situation.
08181 Design your household economics — Areas of important design for your personal economic system.