"I love that you've brought this to attention. An extensive database of uncommon but resistant and hardy plants/foods could be developed and organized by climate. Ease of growth and processing should also be taken in to account. I will try to…"
A crash course in changing the world.
Western Philosophy of Money
In the late 1600's...
John Locke had a philosophy of money. It's now the Western philosophy of money.
In the notoriously imprecise state known as the 'state of nature' everyone was entitled to take what they could use.
The argument goes:
You are entitled to yourself. That's axiomatic. Your labour is an extension of yourself. So you get to keep your labour. Yonder apple tree is no one's. Harvest an apple, though, and it's yours. Yonder river is everyone's; everyone can drink from it. But scoop a litre with your pitcher, and you have a right to be angry when someone drinks from your pitcher rather than the rest of the river.
And so there was a natural limit on how much you could own. You can't harvest the wh*** orchard, you can't scoop the wh*** river. But let's say you put up a fence around the orchard, and did manage to harvest it. This extra labour does not entitle you to the goods of that labour like it normally does. Your entitlement to your labour is constrained by what you can use. If you harvest all the apples, they will spoil; they will have no use. And so taking too great a share would naturally be unfair.
Until you invent coin. Now you harvest the orchard and sell what you cannot (otherwise) use; coin is use incarnate. Your harvest can be transmuted into coin, and then more comfortable living arrangements.
Locke's theory of entitlement has had a huge influence on us. And it is plain to see that problems of fairness and equality are built right into the concepts of the argument. It allows that one person could own it all, -all the orchards, all the rivers- and that that would be fair.
Looks to me like we need more than practical action plans to create a wise future of money. We need a an updated philosophy of money.
If there's any interest, I will make another post about a more contemporary -- although not necessarily popular -- philosophy of money.
Update: Here is a contemporary alternative to the entitlement philosophy of money.
John Locke had a philosophy of money. It's now the Western philosophy of money.
In the notoriously imprecise state known as the 'state of nature' everyone was entitled to take what they could use.
The argument goes:
You are entitled to yourself. That's axiomatic. Your labour is an extension of yourself. So you get to keep your labour. Yonder apple tree is no one's. Harvest an apple, though, and it's yours. Yonder river is everyone's; everyone can drink from it. But scoop a litre with your pitcher, and you have a right to be angry when someone drinks from your pitcher rather than the rest of the river.
And so there was a natural limit on how much you could own. You can't harvest the wh*** orchard, you can't scoop the wh*** river. But let's say you put up a fence around the orchard, and did manage to harvest it. This extra labour does not entitle you to the goods of that labour like it normally does. Your entitlement to your labour is constrained by what you can use. If you harvest all the apples, they will spoil; they will have no use. And so taking too great a share would naturally be unfair.
Until you invent coin. Now you harvest the orchard and sell what you cannot (otherwise) use; coin is use incarnate. Your harvest can be transmuted into coin, and then more comfortable living arrangements.
Locke's theory of entitlement has had a huge influence on us. And it is plain to see that problems of fairness and equality are built right into the concepts of the argument. It allows that one person could own it all, -all the orchards, all the rivers- and that that would be fair.
Looks to me like we need more than practical action plans to create a wise future of money. We need a an updated philosophy of money.
If there's any interest, I will make another post about a more contemporary -- although not necessarily popular -- philosophy of money.
Update: Here is a contemporary alternative to the entitlement philosophy of money.
Views: 19
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Comment by Evo on April 25, 2010 at 6:49pm
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Please post more.....
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Comment by Chris Ke Sihai on April 26, 2010 at 1:13am
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Keep it coming. I've sent a friendship request so you can let me know as you publish.
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Comment by Catherine Gentry on April 30, 2010 at 6:51pm
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I've been reading about enclosure in Raj Patel's The Value of Nothing. I had learned of such enclosure laws in English history and in Russian history with all resulting in popular revolts by the peasants (or people of the land)--but was too young then to understand the implications which we still suffer today because of the displacement of people from the land. So many of our "economic" problems might be traced to the stealing and commodifcation of the land (and then of course the commodification of us all). The Charter of the Forest which was the twin of the Magna Carta assured rights to the forest and thus to food, herbs, wood, etc. Our ancestors were once like the native Americans, stewards of the land, but the land belonged to no one. This is a major issue. I recently became aware of a resource which I've yet to read, which catalogues who owns the Earth:Who Owns the Earth: The Surprising Truth about Every Piece of Land on the Planet by Kevin Cahill.
In checking out the resource online, I noted that the British monarchy owned a bunch. We in the states think we own our homes, but really we are only tenants. Once we all truly understand the real land grab which has accompanied the colonization of our planet, then we can in truth demand our unimpeded rights to the land back and sustain ourselves without the current oppressive economy which is a direct result of the land grab. Displaced peasants were forced to move into towns where they became the proletariat of the industrial revolution. The offspring and physical artifacts of this revolution are destroying the environmental integrity of our planet.
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Comment by Jeremy Laird Hogg on April 30, 2010 at 7:48pm
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2catherine - yeah, land owning and property rights is a really messed up field. Here's just one more thing that goes wrong with traditional property rights:
USA property rights (basically locke law-a-fied) were written and passed before there was a glimmer of social consciousness about global environmental problems. Land rights were practically a lung of the constitution! (although I'm no expert on the USA constitution - I'm Canadian, for one thing). Now we find the constitutional right to land makes it hard address global problems - we have to ask individuals to pretty please do differently. (well, I believe some incentive for some problems have been administered - but the basic form of the problem remains).
The requirement for a new attitude toward land rights has been an emerging necessity since global environmental problems rose on the horizon of our awareness.
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I've been working on some ideas to reverse this trend, but of course, as in anything awareness is needed too. I'll be writing about these ideas soon. Probably on posts related to missions regarding the Urban resilience. (Which I hope to get to in the next few days. I'm still formulating my ideas.)
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