the definitive history of stuff

In a consumer-led economy, buying useless stuff (from China)
is doing harm to us in two ways, at least.

Lost jobs. The need for a bigger house for our stuff.


check it and see:

ANATHEMA TO STUFF

Guest Post: Is Anybody Else Tired Of Buying And Owning Stuff?

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 09/07/2012 11:56 -0400

Submitted by Charles Hugh Smith from Of Two Minds

Is Anybody Else Tired Of Buying And Owning Stuff?

We are suffocating in stuff, physically, psychologically and spiritually.

I know this is a sacrilegious question, but is anybody else tired of buying and owning stuff? Is anybody else tired of dealing with all the junk cluttering up every corner of the room/house/nation?

Has anyone else noticed we have surplus stuff coming out our ears? And that therefore we don't really need any more stuff? Has anyone noticed the psychological consequences of constantly buying and managing possessions? Here is how correspondent B.D. recently put it:

    Kids have a melt-down when they don't have the latest iteration of the (insert trendy electronica here) or if they are asked to tidy up the gargantuan collection of "stuff" they are slowly suffocating themselves with. Most kids these days don't have bedrooms anymore ... they have a small warehouse of goods in which they have a sleeping space.

Everybody has a warehouse of goods, even "poor" households. Of the four households on my block with one-car garages, we're the only ones who actually park a car in the garage. Everyone else's garage is jammed with stuff. And this is not an upscale neighborhood, it's working-class/renters.

Have you been to one of the many gigantic swap meets recently? You know, the kind with hundreds of sellers hawking everything under the sun. Our young friends (newlyweds renting one bedroom in a house, they don't own a car, both seeking fulltime work but currently living on one-part time job) recently described their visit to just such a sprawling cornucopia of over-consumption.

People are selling any and everything to raise some cash: birds, snakes, used iPhones, laptop computers, clothing, furniture, you name it. A guy was selling a guitar for $15. Our friend offered $5. The seller took $8. $8 for an acoustic guitar. Granted it was a cheap one, but $8? Was it even worth hauling it to the swap meet for $8? A set of strings costs $4.

"Almost new" bicycles--again, cheap, poor-quality versions--were being sold for $35. You can't even buy a replacement bicycle wheel for $35.

Were these stolen goods? Our friend asked the seller how he could sell bikes for so little money. The seller replied that he buys the contents of abandoned storage lockers for a few dollars and then sells the contents. (Apparently there is a reality TV show based on this process of acquiring the contents of abandoned storage lockers.)

This raises an interesting question: why bother stealing stuff when it is basically worthless? Smash-and-grab burglars are only stealing electronics (and jewelry if it is laying around in plain sight). Nothing else is worth stealing. Bicycle thieves abound, of course, but they're picky as well: a rusty made-in-China bike with a cheap (and easily snipped) cable lock will be left untouched; only the expensive bikes will be ripped off.

As I keep saying: what's scarce is not stuff, it's cash and reliable income streams. People are trying to convert stuff into cash, but it's tough because there is a surplus of stuff.

No wonder organizations that promote giving stuff away such as Freesharing.org are so popular. People are giving up trying to get any cash at all for old TVs, etc.; they are delighted if someone hauls it away for free.

Is anyone else sick of the "buying experience"? No wonder online buying has become so ubiquitous--the experience of shopping to acquire stuff is a form of torture, at least to some of us. Getting there is a nightmare (unless I can bike to the store), parking is a hassle, clerks generally don't know much, and the selection is often limited or skewed to the high end. The "fun" is in leaving empty-handed.

I suppose other people can't wait to get a new mobile phone; I live in dread that my old "dumb" phone will expire and force me into buying another one. Ditto for everything else we own.

There is so much stuff floating around America that we end up with stuff we didn't buy or even ask for--old laptops, bicycles (abandoned on our property, left by neighbors moving away, left to us by elderly neighbors who passed on, etc.) and clothing, to mention but a few of of the things that we have "inherited."

I make a point to be a "good citizen" by taking outdated printers, modems and other electronics to the recycling yard; others aren't so civic-minded, as proven by the piles of high-tech detritus that litter street corners and dumpsites around the nation.

When the university students leave town in May, dumpster after dumpster is filled with broken Ikea furniture and old mattresses, many of recent vintage. It isn't worth hauling any of it home. They will buy more future-landfill at Ikea when they settle down somewhere else.

My new mantra is "please don't give us anything we won't consume in a few days." What with all the insecurity in the world, a lot of people have assembled stashes of precious metals. Quite frankly, I don't want physical wealth I have to store, manage, protect, etc. I am not at all sure I want any "wealth" at all other than the "wealth" of productive land, a functioning infrastructure / civil society, and the "wealth" of freedom of movement and choice.

I just want to get rid of stuff, not acquire more. I welcome the digital age because "entertainment" no longer requires physical collections. I have already accepted that most digital stuff will be lost with time, just like physical stuff. Who wants to lug around 50 years of digital files? Yes, it might fit on a small drive, but who will sort through it all or even look at it/listen to it?

The clutter of all this stuff, physical and digital, clouds the mind and spirit. I think it was Sartre who noted that our possessions own us, not the other way around. I am tired of being possessed by possessions, of any kind or nature. I would be delighted if the can of WD-40 in the toolshed lasts the rest of my life. If it doesn't, then I will replace it, grudgingly.

More than likely, I will find an almost-full can in somebody's trash, along with everything else anyone could possibly want. The only thing missing from sorting through all that's been abandoned is the drug-like "hit" of the purchase. Sadly for a consumerist society, some of us are immune to that potent drug.

Many others will suffer consumerist withdrawals as the cash and credit needed to complete the purchase become increasingly scarce.

redpill

I fucking hate shopping.  I'd rather spend the money on a massage.  I could throw 3/4s of the shit in my house in the garbage tomorrow and not miss it a bit.  And then there's the kids toys....arrrggghh grandparents constantly giving them big bulky plastic shit.

Anyway, there is a solution to this.  Repeal the 16th amendment and replace the income tax with a revenue-neutral consumption tax on new retail goods and services.  Poor people can save money buy buying things second hand.  People would save more, and think more before they consume because they would have a choice in how and where they would pay tax.  They would take better care of things and sell them to others who would take better care of them.  People would be rewarded for saving, and punished for being wasteful.  It would not only help solve our addicted-to-Chinese-crap problem, it would be a boon for our economy to have more savers.

Rick Blaine

Absolutely...

It's now at the point where I specifically ask my family not to buy me anything for my birthday or Christmas...well, besides a gift card or cash.

Even a lot of the stuff I buy for myself, which I initially think I want/need, basically gets wasted.

One of my favorite things to do now is look through my stuff for things to give to charity...

...which is a solid indicator of how meaningless my life has become.

FEDbuster

Checks and gift cards to restaurants is what we exchange.  Once and a while some wine or interesting food items.  NO MORE STUFF! 

If something we use breaks, we fix it or replace it.  That's it.  Stuff we don't use or wear we get rid of, sell it or give it away.

The only exception is long term storage food (seems like you never have enough).  The accumulation of Chinese made McShit is over for us.

i_call_you_my_base

Everyone can be poor if you define it as a matter of degree. Poor to me means you can barely afford food and are constantly on the verge of being thrown out of your rental. That is poor. Poor people do not have "a surplus of stuff". Poor people don't have shit, and if you want to see what that looks like, you can go to Detroit, Philly, or Baltimore, or the backwoods of West Virginia if you prefer a more natural setting.

Umh

Many poor people have a surplus of stuff. Mostly because they can't resist the urge to buy stuff they can't afford when they should be paying their rent and buying better groceries.

ParkAveFlasher

The concept of minimal possession resonates within me as well, trust me.  I'd rather build than buy, I'd rather sweat than hire.

However the problem is not in "materialism", the problem is the manipulated view on the real value of anything.  Blaming it on "materialism" is obfuscation.  Like blaming our economic woes on "capitalism". That's like blaming "geometry, mass, and conservation of motion" for stubbing your toe on the coffee table.

You should want things.  You need things to live. Cats have claws and fur, and sharp eyes and ears, we do not. You need practical things.  You need practical things of a certain material quality that makes them practical for a long time.  In fact it is in the practice of proper valuation that wealth is unlocked.  You can not behold this unless you first crawl, walk, fly, limp, or lurch through materialism.

Western society has forgotten what "value" is.  Our food comes in boxes.  Our lives come in boxes.  Our work is on paper, theoretical.  We export time.  Our manufacturing is done elsewhere.  Our "wealth" paradoxically equals our "debt".

"Value" is further confused with "price", itself the victim of that arbitrary, sliding-scale denominator of  fiat money.  "It is a high price, therefore it is valuable".  In this statement, lies the great confusion of our times.  The confusion of "value" is enforced and dispersed via fiat currency.

There are material things that have value.  This value must be unlocked.  It is an active process.  It is soul-searching, it is experimentation, it is study. However in the value of things, upon unlocking this, what may be reflected is the value of endeavor, the value of human action.

laomei

Here's a tale from when I lived in the US.

I had a cheap decent Jetta.

I lived in a neighborhood that I believed was incredibly convenient. 5 large supermarkets. 2 western, 1 discount, 1 chinese, 1 korean.  Great food at good prices.  Go a little bit further and hey, even more great supermarkets that are even cheaper.  Cheap clinics, pharmacies nearby, basicaly lots and lots of options... even a Fry's!

One day, the alternator dies and just my luck, there is a sale at the local autoparts store.  I can get a recertified, trade in the old one for credit on the core charge and another $20 off.  $35 for an alternator? Score!

Just so happens that my housemates are all away for the week.  No biggie I think, I'll just take the bus, it's only a 5 minute drive. After walking 40 minutes to the nearest bus stop, I find that I missed it by 5 minutes according to the schedule that is only posted at the bus stop and nowhere else.  Next bus? 1 hour later.  I wait.  The bus finally comes, I have to take that bus to another station so I can transfer onto another bus that will get me where I'm going.  The hitch in my plan however is that the second bus wasn't running that day.  After getting off at the station and learning from the schedule (which is only posted there) that it's not running, I wait 30 minutes for a different bus which will take me another 5 miles down to road to meet up with a 4th bus that IS running and makes that stop.  3rd bus gets there just in time to meet up and I don't have to wait. 4th bus gets there after doing a stupid route that takes an hour.

So after 4 hours I am finally there.  Fortunately they knew me from the last time I was in, and as they were closing up shop anyways, I scored a ride home from someone who worked there for $5... the buses were stopped for the night anyways, so I was kinda screwed.  Only takes 5 minutes in a car going 85 (which is typical there), but that's 7 miles each way.  Sorry, zero intention to walk 14 miles in the summer cali heat.

It was this experience that got me to realize how utterly retarded the system is.  Not a city bus either, it was privatized.  They just killed all stops and routes that they deemed unprofitable.  Try to go shopping when you have to rely on the bus.  Taxis will eat you alive.

Over here, subways are everywhere and being built up further.  Buses are everywhere.  No stupid time schedules either, they come when they come and you are rarely left waiting more than 10 minutes for one.  Taxis are cheap and everywhere as well.  The taxis actually receive a subsidy from the government to keep the fares low in light of inflation and gas prices.  The buses operate at a net loss, as does the subway system, but they are state-owned and operated and are public services.  Their existance enables far more commerce and economic activity than the operating loss created.  Our highway system has distance-based tolls.  Add in the cost of gas, and unless it's a car of 4, it's just cheaper (and faster) to take the train or fly... or even take a long-distance bus for stupidly cheap.

Driving here is a luxury and it's really not required until you get really really remote and most small villages will have regular buses and motorcycle taxis to the nearest town and neighboring villages.  A personal car SHOULD be a luxury, not a requirement of basic life.  In the US you are slaves to cars with the rare exception of a handful of cities that actually have semi-functional mass transit.  Actually living in those cities, you are either rich as hell and can afford property, or you are renting a slum and/or sharing with a roommate or two, or three, or more.

laomei

I advise investing in learning all about molding/casting and welding.  Tools are cheap, materials are cheap.  And there's something that's just satisfying about it.  Don't even need top-of-the-line tools to do it either.  Basic soldering skills and learning how to etch are also great investments.

NotApplicable

Reminds me of a coworker who, "OMG, I just saved $100!" after paying $120 for a Coach purse.

Carlin stuff

Detroit, Bush league

I've been following Detroit history of late, and it had a
great time in the 20th century with the car factories,
and then some over-zealous
cops ruined it all and started the riots, and gave us
some of the most Gi-normous FUNK and PUNK
music the world has ever seen.

MC5, Stooges, Parliament Funkadelic

The city was probably the first major city to be 

largely evacuated, and slowly it became derelict,

then burned out, then forest land.

Enjoy this nature spectacular
let's cut to the video:

Detroit prairie on cbc
Detroit ville morte .
Ανέβηκε από NewWorldOpposition. - Ανακαλύψτε περισσότερους webcam χαρακτήρες.

OOPS. in this next video, you can see the bush-ification
of the city and the boarded-up houses, and the fire that
claims so many parts of the city.



This having been seen, woodland creatures are all the more 
entering cities because we've stolen their habitats and 
food supply. They'll evolve into garbage eaters, and thus
children will learn about those "creatures in our garbage" 
and learn to fear nature. 

Every last gamma ray

In these post-Fuku-me days, it takes a
bald-faced cheeky oligarchy to push for more Nukes.
Thatcher went for it because while it looked like
private investment, everybody knows that nukes
are so heavily subsidised that they're worse than
if it were a public enterprise. But we gotta give
cushy jobs to lazy friends.
Well, more of the same these days.

It is telling of the racial differences between the UK
and Japan and Germany.

After Fukushima, once the dust settled, the Japanese
stopped all their isotope-shacks, and the Germans
put forward the plans to stop their plants as soon as
is practicable. NO OTHER NATIONS even
considered changing their tack. Tell you something?
I would rather be led by those kinds of people.

Then there's the whole why-not-thorium nukes?
the benefits are amazingly obvious, except that thorium
doesn't go BOOM. Therefore, no Western governments
want it. Neither does Iran, but that move may cost the
Persians.

Anyway, here's  story of how French power-brokers
have somehow paid off the UK's box tickers:

checkit: slog
How Britain’s energy future is dangerously compromised

EDF is foisting second-rate nuclear technology onto Britain, and we can’t stop them

Slog exposé of Britain’s woefully hands-off ‘secure energy’ policy is a tale of clever government omission in what it puts out about energy. A brief history of the inane reasons behind the UK’s choice of nuclear reactor type. A classic example of having no control over our own national destiny any more. The continuing story of the unaccountable obviating their responsibilities. And the obsession of governments throughout the world with nuclear development in terms of weaponry. this means "We dicked about with the energy football under New Labour, but now we need to get on with it, even though we can’t afford it. So over to you, EDF The Coalition Government which took power in May 2010 has backed the plans for new nuclear,and progress to new build remains on track. Uranium is the 92nd element in the periodic elements table that baffled us all at school; but the 90th place element in that table is Thorium. Never heard of it? Probably not, but Western scientists estimate that the nuclear energy available in thorium is greater than that available from all of the world’s oil, coal and uranium combined.

Thorium is approximately three times as abundant as uranium in the earth’s crust. In addition, thorium is present in higher concentrations (2-10%) by weight than uranium (0.1-1%) in their respective ores, making thorium retrieval much less expensive and less environmentally damaging per unit of energy extracted. Countries with significant thorium mineral deposits include: Australia, India, Brazil, USA, Canada, China, Russia, Norway, Turkey, Venezuela, Sri Lanka, Nigeria, South Africa, and Malaysia. Its availability is both broader and deeper than uranium, and it produces a fraction of the nuclear waste left after using uranium for electricity generation.

But it is a minority choice for reactors round the  world. A senior researcher explains with refreshing bluntness why:

“Ah, that’s easy. You can’t make bombs out of it. Bombs should, of course, have zero importance in the decision about which material to use for nuclear electricity generation. Thorium is plentiful, easier in terms of disposal, and vastly – hugely – more efficient than uranium. But you can’t make bombs out of it. So nobody uses it. It’s insane”.

A specialist media source tips me off by email as follows:

“I am not a rabid anti-nuclear person – I would not oppose new nuclear plants on condition they were based on thorium technology, which is (potentially at least) vastly superior to current uranium technology in terms of safety, clean-up costs, waste storage and nuclear proliferation risks. But we are not being offered thorium, and nobody anywhere seems to know or care about the difference between the two….the main difference between uranium and thorium is its thermal efficiency. Uranium’s is pitifully bad, which means there is lots of waste and lots of bad stuff left after the reaction, some of which remains radioactive for tens of thousands of years. Thorium’s thermal efficiency is – if I remember rightly – 97%, which means there is a fraction of the waste, and that waste is non-radioactive within 300 years.”

And finally, this from the US – source must remain vague I’m afraid:

“The major reason why thorium use for energy production has not made more progress over the past decades is that thorium is not nearly as easy to weaponize. The principal reason thorium hasn’t been used more widely to date is that the ore contains no fissile isotope.”

.... [GM BLOCK OF PROGRESS]

But EDF energy remains committed to diversifying the energy it has on hand to sell. Before the Delingpolar one at the Torygraph has an attack of the vapours, let me quickly review the “CETO” wave energy device being developed by Carnegie Wave Energy. It is a joint Australian-British endeavour, and its main plus point is having most of the equipment based on land – which makes it easy to maintain and cheap to run. The technology is also very power-dense, and capable of producing something like five gigawatts of energy per square mile. Astonishingly, it can also be turned into a desalination device when it is not needed for energy generation. No more standpipes for Britain, then. Amazing.

However, the exclusive rights to use the technology in the northern hemisphere have been sold to….EDF....
2

FRENCH NUKES ARE A BIG LOBBY. Testosterone pit
Russia’s Gazprom Tightens Its Stranglehold On Europe, France Falls: The Natural Gas War Gets Dirty Friday, August 31, 2012 at 5:19PM Why would France suddenly prohibit shale gas exploration? Sure, there are environmental issues with horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, the methods used to extract gas from porous shale deep underground: flammable drinking water, earth quakes, cows that die, radioactive sludge in sewage treatment plants.... But French governments have had, let’s say, an uneasy relationship with environmentalists. Its spy service DGSE, for example, sank Greenpeace’s flagship, the Rainbow Warrior, in the port of Auckland, New Zealand, killing one person. No, there must have been another reason why the government of Nicholas Sarkozy prohibited shale gas exploration in 2011, after having already issued permits in 2010. A mini hullabaloo had broken out, stirred up by the European Ecologists and The Greens (EELV), the fringe on the French left. And Sarkozy caved! Without a fight! Enthusiastically. The government of François Hollande just confirmed the prohibition when Environment Minister Delphine Batho declared: “Hydraulic fracturing remains and will remain prohibited.” The clue: Sarkozy suddenly visited Japan on March 31, 2011, a couple of weeks after the horrific earthquake and tsunami, and the subsequent nuclear accident at Fukushima, to declare in front of shell-shocked Japanese that there was “no alternative” to nuclear power. He’d been dispatched by the almighty state-owned nuclear industry to tamp down on the growing anti-nuclear sentiment at home. Owned by the government, nuclear power plants produce 75% of France’s electricity and export some of it. No one who wants to be politically viable is allowed to hamper the industry. If someone strays off the reservation, he or she is dragged back soon. While Hollande campaigned on a vague promise to reduce dependency on nuclear power to 50%, it was understood as one of the bones he had to toss to environmentalists. Nothing would come of it. So when Batho, who wants to add more renewables to the portfolio, toed the party line by saying, “Nuclear power is an industry with future,” then qualified it with a “but,” it caused an outcry even among the Socialists. That’s the power the nuclear industry has over the political machines. But now another powerful entity turned up: Russia’s Gazprom. It’s the world’s largest gas producer, gas exporter, and gas distribution company with nearly 100,000 miles of gas trunk lines and branches. The Russian government owns 50.01% of it. At home, it has to sell gas under cost, one of the Soviet leftovers. It relies on high-profit sales from Europe to make up for it. But Europe is diversifying away from its single most important supplier. Competitors include Russia’s number two, Novatek, and Norway—the second largest natural gas exporter in the world. So, in April, Gazprom had to lower its European sales guidance for 2012. Its market share in Europe was 27% last year, and it’s shooting for 30% by 2020, but if the US shale-gas boom ever infects Europe, those plans would become a pipedream—and if the high-profit sales from Europe tapered off further, it would have to raise prices at home, a political nightmare. Hence its fight by hook or crook against shale gas in France. Gazprom’s “underhanded tactics” and “scaremongering about a new technology” have Moscow’s nod of approval and are designed to dissuade governments from developing their own shale-gas reserves, according to a report by Platts, a global provider of information on energy, petrochemicals, and metals. Efforts include all manner of operations, online and through encouraging demonstrations, but also paying public relation firms to spread “myths and misconceptions,” said Aviezer Tucker, assistant director of the Energy Institute at the University of Texas. A “European Union-wide ban” on shale-gas production, he said, would be the “holy grail.” With France already knocked off, Sergei Komlev of Gazprom Export has been bouncing around the world in his fight against European shale gas. At a meeting in Qatar, according to Platts’ report, he gave a presentation. “Multiple Handicaps Will Retard Shale Gas Development Outside US” was the title of one of his slides. “Fortunately, it claimed, “European shale gas development faces numerous economic, regulatory, and political barriers before there are significant amounts of shale gas production, not sooner than in ten or more years.” Breathing room for Gazprom in the natural gas wars. In the US, natural gas may be the most mispriced commodity these days. Its price has been below the cost of production for so long that the industry is suffering billions in losses. But demand for natural gas by power producers has been booming—and it’s killing coal, one powerplant at a time. Read.... Natural Gas Is Pushing Coal Over The Cliff.

don't wanna give up my toys

Global warming denial has just been decisively connected

with childish selfishness in a new study.

One big finding of the study of Ego University is that

rich boys want their toys, and so do poorer ones
whose toys are of lesser quality.

They interviewed a new lobbying group called 

Big Boys' Toys, who were only too happy to 

respond:

BBT: You know, all this taxing of pollution will just 
stop us from the unlimited use of our toys, 
not because we can't afford, but because 
our shphincters will slam shut and we're going
throw hissy fits.

Here we see Mitt Romney's newest toy which he needs in Tampa Florida

for his future campaign for president of the Cayman Islands.
 

Every last drop of oil

Not being ones to waste stuff, be sure that businesses will
use every last drop of oil on, or inside the planet. You do
understand that, OPEC notwithstanding, the oil business
is a mafia, run by the US. Well, try to get them to turn
green, like Greenpeace.
Exactly

This is a trompe d'oil, for anybody who thinks that oligarchs will
stop before the last drop is gone.

It's up to you to find other means. Stiff them by biking.
Use an electric car.

Here's what Mark Jaccard has to say about the use of the
good-to-the-last-drop oil:
"my evaluation of the primary energy alternatives leads me
to predict that fossil fuels will not be abandoned and indeed
will sustain their dominant role through this century and
perhaps well beyond"
even though subsidies for Nukes and Oil are "$150 B per year
in the 1990s" and probably more today.
 --
Major oil companies around the world pay negative taxes.
If they were not subsidised, even more people would be
chucking their cars. Governments and companies are
colluding to keep the price at a particularly high level
whatever the world oil price is, but they know not to
go too high, because it will cause a revolution. If people
cannot get to work, they'll freak out.
So, governments subsidise the companies who pay
negative taxes, but not consumers.

the Book
Sustainable Fossil Fuels: The Unusual suspect in the quest
for Clean and Enduring Energy.

surfing on garbage saves the planet

No, no, nein, non

When the icebergs melt, we will not have the planet flooded
in a neo-Noah incident.

Indeed, the millions of tons of garbage that we produce
every day will come to save us from sinking.

 [source is in the file name]

This is how your plastic garbage comes back to your doorstep.


This goes as an epilogue to the story I compiled last year on
the plastic island floating around the Pacific, apparently, now,
on a tide of radiation from Fuked up Fukushima.

Garbage as an economic indicator. Guess what?
When people are afraid of recession, they throw away less
garbage. I suppose they sleep with their chicken bones
buried in the garden. Garbage to GDP.
A new economic indicator (I got it from Ritholz Big Picture)

You may think that what comes from the planet is merely recycled.
But you'd be wrong. What about oil? We dredge it up
and then make garbage with it. The garbage gets piled
up above the waterline. Ergo, we get saved by our garbage.
However, we may end up floating in it, and our fecal matter.

How to prevent cyclist squashing in London

Put your bike in one of these.


plan b
scare drivers to death

crush protection

make yourself conspicuous

I think being meek and out of the way is just one step towards being ignored and
then killed. So, get in their faces. Hogg a lane. They won't forget you then.
However, the may then have other reasons to kill you.

a major rethink of human culture

I'm not a big fan of philosophising, prefering to think and act,
and think again.

However, Chris Hedges gives me a lot to think about,
and allows thinkers to think outside the gilded cage
that has been set up around our political leaders.

Some ideas:
- Indians in America were killed as much for their  

egalitarian political economics of subsistence

as they were for the land they were sitting on.


IshitUnot: Truthdig

By Chris Hedges  
Hedges: How Our Demented Capitalist System Made America Insane

When civilizations start to die they go insane. Let the ice sheets in the Arctic melt. Let the temperatures rise. Let the air, soil and water be poisoned. Let the forests die. Let the seas be emptied of life. Let one useless war after another be waged. Let the masses be thrust into extreme poverty and left without jobs while the elites, drunk on hedonism, accumulate vast fortunes through exploitation, speculation, fraud and theft. Reality, at the end, gets unplugged. We live in an age when news consists of Snooki’s pregnancy, Hulk Hogan’s sex tape and Kim Kardashian’s denial that she is the naked woman cooking eggs in a photo circulating on the Internet. Politicians, including presidents, appear on late night comedy shows to do gags and they campaign on issues such as creating a moon colony. “At times when the page is turning,” Louis-Ferdinand Celine wrote in “Castle to Castle,” “when History brings all the nuts together, opens its Epic Dance Halls! hats and heads in the whirlwind! Panties overboard!”

The quest by a bankrupt elite in the final days of empire to accumulate greater and greater wealth, as Karl Marx observed, is modern society’s version of primitive fetishism. This quest, as there is less and less to exploit, leads to mounting repression, increased human suffering, a collapse of infrastructure and, finally, collective death. It is the self-deluded, those on Wall Street or among the political elite, those who entertain and inform us, those who lack the capacity to question the lusts that will ensure our self-annihilation, who are held up as exemplars of intelligence, success and progress. The World Health Organization calculates that one in four people in the United States suffers from chronic anxiety, a mood disorder or depression—which seems to me to be a normal reaction to our march toward collective suicide. Welcome to the asylum.

... The war on the Native Americans, like the wars waged by colonialists around the globe, was waged to eradicate not only a people but a competing ethic. The older form of human community was antithetical and hostile to capitalism, the primacy of the technological state and the demands of empire. This struggle between belief systems was not lost on Marx. “The Ethnological Notebooks of Karl Marx” is a series of observations derived from Marx’s reading of works by historians and anthropologists. He took notes about the traditions, practices, social structure, economic systems and beliefs of numerous indigenous cultures targeted for destruction. Marx noted arcane details about the formation of Native American society, but also that “lands [were] owned by the tribes in common, while tenement-houses [were] owned jointly by their occupants.” He wrote of the Aztecs, “Commune tenure of lands; Life in large households composed of a number of related families.” He went on, “… reasons for believing they practiced communism in living in the household.” Native Americans, especially the Iroquois, provided the governing model for the union of the American colonies, and also proved vital to Marx and Engel’s vision of communism.

Marx, though he placed a naive faith in the power of the state to create his workers’ utopia and discounted important social and cultural forces outside of economics, was acutely aware that something essential to human dignity and independence had been lost with the destruction of pre-modern societies. The Iroquois Council of the Gens, where Indians came together to be heard as ancient Athenians did, was, Marx noted, a “democratic assembly where every adult male and female member had a voice upon all questions brought before it.” Marx lauded the active participation of women in tribal affairs, writing, “The women [were] allowed to express their wishes and opinions through an orator of their own election. Decision given by the Council. Unanimity was a fundamental law of its action among the Iroquois.” European women on the Continent and in the colonies had no equivalent power.

Rebuilding this older vision of community, one based on cooperation rather than exploitation, will be as important to our survival as changing our patterns of consumption, growing food locally and ending our dependence on fossil fuels. The pre-modern societies of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse—although they were not always idyllic and performed acts of cruelty including the mutilation, torture and execution of captives—did not subordinate the sacred to the technical. The deities they worshipped were not outside of or separate from nature.

... The demented project of endless capitalist expansion, profligate consumption, senseless exploitation and industrial growth is now imploding. Corporate hustlers are as blind to the ramifications of their self-destructive fury as were Custer, the gold speculators and the railroad magnates. They seized Indian land, killed off its inhabitants, slaughtered the buffalo herds and cut down the forests. Their heirs wage war throughout the Middle East, pollute the seas and water systems, foul the air and soil and gamble with commodities as half the globe sinks into abject poverty and misery. The Book of Revelation defines this single-minded drive for profit as handing over authority to the “beast.”

... The Native Americans understood there are powers and forces we can never control and must honor. They knew, as did the ancient Greeks, that hubris is the deadliest curse of the human race. This is a lesson that we will probably have to learn for ourselves at the cost of tremendous suffering.

... “Ethnological Notebooks,” Morgan’s insistence on the historical and social importance of “imagination, that great faculty so largely contributing to the elevation of mankind.” Imagination, as the Shakespearean scholar Harold C. Goddard pointed out, “is neither the language of nature nor the language of man, but both at once, the medium of communion between the two. ... Imagination is the elemental speech in all senses, the first and the last, of primitive man and of the poets.”

short-sighted architectural waste

Why is it that humans waste the most resources building houses or factories,
and then when they're done, they just leave a shell there? I think it's horrible.
There are homeless people and lots of empty buildings.
Homeless? meet your new home. Or just squat [did  a story on that, once]

Now there are entire streets in neighbourhoods that are empty because of the
mortgage debacle in the US. The banks keep foreclosing, illegally, and then
they can't take care of the houses, or sell them. What a waste of resources,
not just money.

This is like a story in Spiegel about ghost towns, that came to be because
industry moved on.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/berlin-exhibition-explores-modern-ghost-towns-a-835282.html

Japanese coal island of Hashima [may be needed again, since nukes switched off]

Varosha, Norther Cyprus. victim of war

see also: Detroit train station

What a grand beast of a building.


see also

Foreclosure Ghost Towns Likely?


Foreclosure Ghost Towns Likely?

By: Kirk Haverkamp
January 07, 2011

Although many housing markets are expected to fully recover from the impacts of the economic downturn within a decade, others may remain mired in decline for years to come, perhaps even coming to resemble Old West ghost towns.

That’s among the conclusions of a new study from the Mortgage Bankers Association, looking at the long-term impact of what it terms the “Great Recession” on metropolitan areas that are in the midst of a severe decline due to job losses and a shrinking population.

In addition to industrial cities like Detroit, which fell on hard times due to declines in the auto and steel industry, the report identifies a new type of declining city that experienced strong growth during the housing boom and now is seeing unprecedented declines in housing values and rising foreclosures, such as the Las Vegas, Phoenix and Miami markets.

"The future viability of these areas may be threatened by recent economic events," said Jame Follain, a senior fellow at the Rockefeller Institute and the report’s author. "This is a critical point that should be well understood by potential home buyers and lenders who want to avoid places plagued by high foreclosures, vacancies and a deteriorating housing stock due to deferred maintenance.” [why not try RITUAL BURNING of "underwater" or substandard houses, just to KEEP WARM- Cosine67]

The report suggests that choosing the right neighborhood will be critical for homebuyers in the years ahead, especially in metropolitan areas that were hard-hit by the recession, as neighborhoods with elevated vacancies and foreclosures are expected to continue to struggle for an extended time to come. Even previously stable neighborhoods or communities within such regions could find their viability threatened, according to report.

Indeed, even in metropolitan areas where economic prospects are relatively good, some neighborhoods or submarkets may remain in decline for an extended period to come, the report says.

The basic problem, according to the report, is that people tend to leave an area as jobs decline, creating more vacant housing stock, which drives down property values, further weakening the local economy. The problem is likely to be particularly acute in regions where a growing housing market was a big driver of the economy prior to the recession, such as parts of Nevada, Arizona, Florida and California.

The report compares the situation to that of Old West ghost towns, communities that lost their reason for existing, and so the people went away, leaving empty buildings behind, although it says modern communities are not likely to reach so extreme a stage.

Indeed, the foreclosure and vacant housing stock has gotten so severe that some are urging that surplus and decaying housing stock and commercial buildings be demolished to boost surrounding property values and open up green space. A public-private venture, Red Fields to Green Fields, is already seeking to do that in 12 U.S. cities, examining how unused or underutilized property could be acquired by parks agencies or public-private partnerships for demolition and conversion to parkland or to be held in land banks until the economy recovers.

chemlab menu is saving our health

I'm quite proud that my campaign (look at the twitter thing, on the right)
about testifying to the sh*t that factories call "food" has perhaps
helped, every so little, in the return to real food.

IshitUnot: Guardian
Nestlé removes artificial ingredients from entire confectionary range


Firm claims it is first major confectioner in UK to remove all artificial preservatives, flavours and colours from its products

Caroline Davies

* The Guardian, Friday 2 March 2012

Nestlé, manufacturer of KitKat, Aero and Smarties, has removed artificial colours, flavours and preservatives from its entire confectionery range. Nestlé Crunch is the last of 79 products to become free of artificial ingredients since the company began to replace more than 80 additives with alternatives six years ago, it said.

The company, which was responding to consumer demand, says it is the first big UK confectioner to remove all artificial products. Concentrates of fruit, vegetables and edible plants such as carrot, hibiscus, radish, safflower and lemon are among ingredients used to provide colour. David Rennie, managing director of Nestlé Confectionery UK, described the move as a significant milestone.

"Nestlé is proud to be the only major confectionery company in the UK to announce it is 100% free of artificial preservatives, flavours or colours across its entire portfolio," said Rennie.

American Tent City

In-tents-city in Ten Cities




This is a story about how people have been coping with the stress
of modern life when the money dries up. Do you end it all,
or beg, or work as a slave, stacking shelves?
Or do you see this as an opportunity to take yourself off
the hamster wheel that the Man has you on?

Here's a community with its own society, rules and
social support, in the middle of a desert.

IshitUnot: Yahoo

Slab City: Living Off the Grid in California's Badlands
By JASON MOTLAGH / SLAB CITY | Time.com – Fri, Feb 3, 2012
chicago" Joe Angio and his wife Anna did everything by the book to secure their slice of the American Dream. They earned college degrees, started a small business, bought a house and pair of cars, paid their taxes and credit-card bills on time. But when the economy tanked, so did the dream. Between two jobs they could barely pay their mortgage, reaching a point where they had to choose which creditor to shortchange at the end of the month in order to keep the lights on. With foreclosure no longer a matter of if, but of when, the couple looked on the Internet for the ideal place to lay low, spend less and experiment with solar power to "get more for our buck out of our environment." They bought a used RV and went off the grid. Way off.
Slab City, their home for the past three months, is a squatters' camp deep in the badlands of California's poorest county, where the road ends and the sun reigns, about 190 miles southeast of Los Angeles and hour's drive from the Mexican border. The vast state-owned property gets its name from the concrete slabs spread out across the desert floor, the last remnants of a World War II–era military base. In the decades since it was decommissioned, dropouts and fugitives of all stripes have swelled its winter population to close to a thousand, though no one's really counting. These days, their numbers are growing thanks to a modest influx of recession refugees like the Angios, attracted by do-it-yourself, rent-free living beyond the reach of electricity, running water and the law. And while the complexion of the Slabs, as the place is locally known, may be changing in some ways, the same old rule applies: respect your neighbor, or stay the hell away.
"It's pretty much as close to the Old West as you're gonna get. Most of us don't own guns or none of that garbage, but if we have problems, we take care of [them]," says Ray, 56, a former drug addict turned born-again Christian who has traversed the country six times with a giant wooden cross on his back. Katie Ray, 30, a perennial visitor from Oakland, Calif., calls the place a "postapocalyptic vacation zone." (PHOTOS: After Foreclosure: A Photographer's Requiem for the American Home)
Although Slabbers tend to defy easy characterization, de facto neighborhoods ("Poverty Flats," "Lows") and tribes have emerged. There are Year-Rounders who brave the 120°F summer inferno, and Snowbirds who land from as far as Canada with their souped-up RVs and pensions, soul-searching Gypsy Kids who arrive by train with little more than the ragged clothes on their back, Spaz Kids and their electro-psychedelic outdoor parties, and Scrappers who risk life and limb to collect shrapnel from the gunnery range that flanks the camp, where Navy SEAL teams train year-round (and where rumor has it they prepared for the Osama bin Laden raid). That's to say nothing of the rowdy bikers who pass through, or the meth-addled loners on the outer edges inclined to greet a trespasser with a gunshot. If the Burning Man festival were a permanent settlement instead of a weeklong escape -- remixed with a hard dose of reality -- this might be it.
"The Last Free Place in America" lives up to its nickname. Want to hang out nude in thermal mud baths or skateboard stoned in the bowl of an Olympic-size pool? Go for it. In the mood to construct outlandish pieces of art with scrap metal, dig an SUV-size trench for no particular reason or play 18 holes of golf on a grassless course to the sound of bombs in the distance? This is the place. Yet despite the anything-goes reputation, those who stick around the Slabs long enough insist they are made to feel welcome, provided they have the right attitude. Free meals and entertainment are on offer, capped by Saturday-night concerts at the Range, a clapboard venue that showcases live acts of varying quality. This bohemian aspect was featured in the 2007 film Into the Wild, rare mainstream attention that drew a surge of newcomers to Slab City.
One of them is Sandra "Sandi" Andrews, 61, a nomadic mother of eight without a retirement plan. Her daughter saw the film and figured it was her mom's kind of place. She was right. "When I first got here, I thought this is a whole new planet, there's no place like it," she exclaims. Initial concerns about her safety as a woman alone did not last long. Three years on, she's surrounded by friends and lives on less than $100 a month, supplementing her Social Security check with paintings she sells to tourists that stop by her studio, a converted school bus. Among her neighbors are two widows in their 90s and an 89-year-old who jokes that she'd die as soon as she set foot in a retirement home. "We've all chosen and like Slab City," Andrews says, "so the caring and sharing is always there." (MORE: The Tale of a Lost Mortgage)
Well, it depends on whom you ask too. "Builder Bill" Ammon, 63, a year-round resident who manages the Range, says that when he moved from San Diego to the Slabs back in 1999, the community was more tight-knit. "In those days, you could be poor and be separate from the engine of the world and still be all right," he says, fondly recalling how most everyone talked to one another on their CB radios and exchanged services and goods at regular swap meets to support themselves. "People had skills to offer." These days, he grumbles, a new generation of youngsters is turning up ill equipped for the sobering demands of life off the grid, looking for handouts. No one is left to go hungry, he notes. But if they don't adapt, they are given the cold shoulder, which may help explain the rise in petty theft at the camp. "A kind of segregation has developed here" between young and old, he says.
No one would disagree that the Wild West element has its darker side. Hang around the evening campfires a while and strange stories pour out: disappearances, mysterious drownings in the mud baths, the man who showed up in camp with his finger apparently bitten off, claiming he'd been attacked by a cannibal. The border patrol keeps a visible presence, searching for illegal immigrants that ply the region. When there's serious trouble, though, firemen must drive over from Niland, a derelict town five miles to the west that boasts the closest grocery store and post office. In 40-plus years on the job, Michael Aleksick, 63, the recently retired fire marshal, says he's been repeatedly shot at, stabbed and gotten in too many fistfights to remember, often with people he knows. Crime has worsened. "The crystal-meth influence," he says, "has been huge."
"There's the good, bad and the ugly," says "Shotgun" Vince Neill, 38, a newcomer who got his nickname partly for stopping a man from stealing a friend's solar panels with a blast of rock salt. He first visited the Slabs as a boy and returned this winter with his wife and six children in tow after he lost his audiovisual business and their home in Northern California. Sometimes he worries about his family's safety, but Neill reckons that Slab City's problems are proportionate to any normal city in the country. And he has no regrets about bringing his kids (ages 2 to 18). In this case, math and English lessons are rounded out with training on catching scorpions and rattlesnakes. "They're much happier learning in the great outdoors; it's the best school," he says. Still, Slab City is more of a parking spot than a long-term solution: come summer, the family will head to Los Angeles so he can look for full-time work. (VIDEO: The New Poor of Fresno)
Others, like "Radio" Mike Depraida, 60, keep choosing to return. The native New Yorker was living the fast life as a consultant and photographer but grew weary of the hectic pace and an apartment building where he didn't know his neighbors. A chance visit with friends three years ago got him hooked on the Slabs, and he's since become the perpetually tan guy in a polo shirt who operates a radio station and greets travelers with a gin and tonic at his makeshift tiki bar. The freedom and mix of people keep him coming back, a dearth of single women notwithstanding. "Why are these some of the most intelligent people I've met in my life?" he asks aloud. "I came to the conclusion that if you're smart enough to get out of the rat race, well, then, you're pretty damn bright."
Chicago Joe and Anna are proof positive. They ended up parking their trailer in East Jesus, a renegade open-air art space with Mad Max accents. The view outside their window features a half-buried coach bus and, beyond that, a giant mammoth made of tires; their neighbors include an ex-chef, a documentary filmmaker and a wandering magician cum tattoo artist. What started as an adventure has settled into a routine filled with solar projects and other odd jobs that will keep them busy and fit. Joe's already lost 80 lb. "People back home still think we're crazy for doing what we've done," he says. "It's not for everyone, but this lifestyle has grown on us, tremendously." The couple swear their relationship has also improved because they no longer fight about money. It's not hard to understand why: their living expenses have dropped from about $4,000 to $200 a month. Less than their electricity bill when they owned a house.