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Are Cities Becoming As Obsolete As Farms?
Gene Logsdon, The Contrary Farmer
Listening to the news from Haiti, I was surprised to hear officials in its earthquake-leveled capitol say what a blessing it was that thousands of people have left the city seeking refuge in rural areas, and how it would be better if they stayed there.
That sounds heartless, but I agree. The movement of population has been throughout history from rural areas to cities and inevitably that migration proves fatal. The “growth” of the dispersed but strong Etruscan economy to the final rot of ancient Rome is a great example. But that kind of migration goes on always, and still today, all over the world. The Chinese are the latest to flock naively from farm to city in search of a better life.
I can’t understand why people always opt for crowding together in cities. The easy explanation is that they are just following the money trail. All my life, I have responded:
“But you can make money in the country, too.”
Answer: “Most people don’t want to work that hard.”
“But it isn’t really any harder work. Once I worked as a furniture mover. I’d a thousand times rather make hay and pitch manure.”
Answer: “You only have to work eight hours a day in town and get your weekends off.”
“Since when? And even if farmers do work longer some days, they also are free to take days off in the off seasons. ”
Answer: “City workers have job security. A farmer doesn’t.”
“Don’t make me laugh. No one has job security.”
Answer: “City workers make more money on the average.”
“Their cost of living is higher too.”
Answer: “City workers have more cash, regardless. They can more easily afford new cars, fancier clothes, and vacations to Florida.”
“I like my rusty pickup, my old clothes, and I don’t want to go to Florida.”
Answer: “Well, you’re just obstinate. Everyone knows that.”
As far as this obstinate person can figure, people leave the countryside because they are encouraged to do it. Social prejudice says that only “yokels” stay out in the “backwaters” of society. The good jobs are all in cities. But why can’t good jobs be out in the country, too, especially in this computer age?
People streaming from the rural areas to cities do so by government and business fiat, in my obstinate opinion. In every civilization’s early days, even poor people own land. The rich people want it and can get it every time by offering enough money. The poor people take it: the fatal bribe. An economy that loves building bank towers into the clouds is happy about that. It needs a large population of consumers, people who don’t produce anything of their own but must buy all their food, clothing or shelter.
This all works very well for awhile. Some people get continually richer; a far greater number get continually poorer. It will never make the papers, but I bet many Haitian leaders are secretly thankful for earthquake. It is helping to solve an acute overpopulation problem for them. Better than people doing the genocide, as in Somalia.
Yes, let us hope that the Haitians will have enough sense to stay out in the countryside and build a life for themselves there. But of course they will need help, real help. The money powers of Haiti will have to come out in the countryside too and help build a true economy with and for these people.
Can it be done? I think so. Here in the U.S., we are starting to reverse the usual trend of civilization. We are building a kind of dispersed society where rural can’t be distinguished for urban. Urban agriculture and rural office buildings are both on the increase.
(20 February 2010)
Jeremy Rifkin: The third industrial revolution
Amanda Gefter, CultureLab
In The Empathic Civilization, Jeremy Rifkin argues that before we can save ourselves from climate change we have to break a vicious circle and embrace a new model of society based on scientists’ new understanding of human nature. I asked him how we can do it.
What is the premise of The Empathic Civilization?
My sense is that we’re nearing an endgame for the modern age. I think we had two singular events in the last 18 months that signal the end. First, in July 2008 the price of oil hit $147/barrel. Food riots broke out in 30 countries, the price of basic items shot up and purchasing power plummeted. That was the earthquake; the market crash 60 days later was the aftershock. It signaled the beginning of the endgame of a great industrial era based on fossil fuels. The second event, in December 2009, was the breakdown in Copenhagen, when world leaders tried to deal with our entropy problem and failed.
That’s the context of the book. Why couldn’t our world leaders anticipate or respond to the global meltdown of the industrial revolution? And why can’t they deal with climate change when scientists have been telling us that it may be the greatest threat our species has ever faced?
What do you think the problem is?
My sense is that the failure runs very deep. The problem is that those leaders are using 18th century Enlightenment ideas to address 20th century challenges. I advise a number of heads of state in Europe and over and over again I see how these old ideas about human nature and the meaning of life continue to cloak public policy. The Enlightenment view is that human beings are rational, detached agents that pursue our own self-interests and our nation states reflect that view. How are we going to address the needs of 7 billion people and heal the biosphere if we really are dispassionate, disinterested agents pursuing our own self-interest?
A lot of interesting new discoveries in evolutionary biology, neuroscience, child development, anthropology and more suggest that human nature might not be what Enlightenment philosophers suggested. For instance, the discovery of mirror neurons suggests that we are not wired for autonomy or utility but for empathic distress; we are a social species.
(17 February 2010)
I Am Scared
Hans Noelder, Entropic Journal
I am scared to death of scared people who “overcome” their fears by surrounding themselves with automobiles.
I am really scared of scared people who don’t realize – or won’t admit – that by “solving” their fears with power and speed and crash-resistant steel, they force this “solution” on everyone who lives in their midst.
I am scared of you. I am scared of many people in my own family. I am scared to say anything, because when I am scared, I nearly always scare other people. I am terrified of how scared we are.
Sometimes, in my fear, I have struck out with angry words at people who force their vehicular “solution” on the world. I have found myself surrounded by people who vociferously condemn my words. I have found myself bereft of allies in the battle against those who “speak” with a metallic force that often maims and kills. Or perhaps I should say, in the battle against the fear that drives the speakers.
Sitting comfortably on our rear ends inside a room and talking and or watching a video will make exactly zero (0) difference where it matters – on the streets and sidewalks of our communities. Nor will casting a ballot once every two or four or six years. No one else is going to make Change happen for us.
Solvitur ambulando.
(19 February 2010)
Hans Noelder is a mechanical engineer and cofounder of the Madison Wisconsin Peak Oil Group.
The Price of Environmental Destruction? There Is None
Andrew Simms, Guardian/UK
The economy is no stranger to creating its own fantasy world with little or no relation to the real one. We witnessed the damage that can cause when the banks thought they had stumbled on financial alchemy and could transform bad debt into good – economic base metal into gold.
Now it’s possible that a much bigger error is coming to light. The rise and rise of global corporations lifted on a wave of apparent productivity gains may have been little more than a mask for the reckless liquidation of natural capital. It’s as if we’ve been so distracted by our impressive speed of economic travel that we forgot to look at the fuel gauge or the cloud of smog left in our wake.
A new UN report estimates that accounting for the environmental damage of the world’s 3,000 biggest companies would wipe out one-third of their profits. Any precise figure, however, is a matter of how risk is quantified and of where you draw the line.
… Yet in exercises like this, we quickly hit the paradox of environmental economics. By putting a price on nature, hopefully it makes it less likely that we will treat the world, and its natural resources, as if it were a business in liquidation. Yet there is a point when it becomes meaningless to treat the ecosystems upon which we depend as mere commodities with a price for trading. For example, what price would you put on the additional tonne of carbon which, when burned, triggers irreversible, catastrophic climate change?
(18 February 2010)
Also at Common Dreams.
