The Libertarian Lifeboat

I'd like to take a break from considering alternatives to our present breaking corporatist economic and societal systems, in order to tell a couple of stories that need to be told. Also, I have taken a number of pictures of people over the last several weeks, promising those whom I photographed that I would post their pictures on future installments of The Well Run Dry. So, God willing, the next two posts will tell needful stories, and the following post will have pictures relating to bicycle transportation.

The story I am about to tell you is one I heard a few years ago. It is a very strange illustration of the potential for bizarre human behavior. It took place several years back, aboard a double-bottomed, Handy-sized sea-going bulk cargo ship whose name escapes me at the moment. The ship was old, and had seen many voyages, some through very severe weather, both in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Its crew was a volatile mix of quirky, memorable types and experienced, wise, level-headed men. One of the strangest and most quirky characters was the boatswain (or bos'un for the nautical initiates), a big-boned, burly, sandy-haired, square-jawed man of indeterminate age.

The bo'sun was a fearsome sight to the deck crew whom he supervised as he directed sharp glances all around, swiveling his large head on his bull neck while barking commands, muscular biceps flexed as he rested his large hands on his hips. Those who crossed him usually did it only once, as the punishment he dealt was swift and severe. Aside from giving orders, he almost never talked to any other shipmates. This was unusual, since the three licensed officers on board were quite friendly with all the crew, figuring that pleasant voyages contributed to crew effectiveness.

The bo'sun tended to keep to himself when not on duty or at meals, preferring to remain in his quarters rather than mix with the crew. Almost no one ever saw the inside of his quarters, but the one or two crewmen who were able to get a glimpse said that on one wall was a Confederate Rebel flag, and that there was a bookcase underneath containing books such as The Politician by Robert W. Welch; The Way Things Ought To Be and See, I Told You So, by Rush Limbaugh; and Robert Lewis Dabney: The Prophet Speaks by Doug Phillips, along with several copies of The New American, a magazine published by the John Birch Society. He also had a life-sized poster of Rush next to an old VCR with which he frequently played a battered copy of Birth of a Nation. (At times while on watch, other crew members could hear him muttering scenes of the movie from memory.) Somehow amid all the clutter, he had also managed to stash 250 pounds of cast iron free weights, a couple of dumbbell bars and a barbell bar, all of which he used religiously.

His physical training served him well on the particular voyage we are now considering – a voyage that took the ship from the tropics up into the North Pacific during the height of typhoon season. The ship was carrying a load of some grain – rice, I think – and its course carried it right into the path of a tropical depression that was also moving north. The loading of the rice had been supervised by a junior officer without much experience, and as a result, the cargo settled, then began to shift as the ship ran into increasingly rough weather. The depression strengthened into a storm that grew into a typhoon, and began to produce dangerous rogue waves. Most of the crew had experienced typhoons before, and they were therefore not terribly worried, until two rogue waves hit the ship within five minutes of each other and caused her to heel hard to port. This caused the cargo to shift dangerously, making the vessel list. Then a third rogue wave hit and downflooded the engine room, causing the ship to go dead in the water.

The vessel's situation was now serious. Yet even at this point she might have been saved if the engineer had been able to restore power quickly. But by this time the ship, which was old as has been mentioned before, began to suffer the effects of corrosion and metal fatigue as the pounding of the storm proved to be too much for her. Within thirty minutes of losing power the front hold began to flood, and the flooding quickly spread to hold number two. By the time the crew realized their peril it was too late for many to escape. Only one lifeboat could be launched in the minutes before the ship sank, and those who were lucky enough to be nearby piled into it in whatever condition they found themselves, with whatever possessions they happened to be carrying. It was night when she sank.

The dawn revealed that seven men had survived out of a crew of twenty-four. Amid somewhat calmer weather, they looked at each other with mostly frightened eyes. There were two able seamen, the second officer, an oiler, the steward's assistant, an ordinary seaman, and the bo'sun. The steward's assistant shivered in the wind and rain, as he hadn't had time even to put his clothes on before the sinking. One of the able seamen had been able to don a survival suit, as had the bo'sun. The second officer had a fractured leg. The ordinary seaman had suffered a concussion. All were badly shaken – except for the bo'sun.

He had managed to grab several items before getting into the lifeboat. His stash consisted of a number of blankets, some tins of meat, water and hardtack, several Army-style can openers, a solar still, an emergency fishing rod, a knife and a first aid kit. In all he must have carried over a hundred pounds of supplies with him into that boat. Of course, this was in addition to the supplies with which the lifeboat was normally stocked. The other survivors cheered up greatly when they saw the bo'sun's stash in addition to the lifeboat's regular supplies. But their cheer was short-lived.

The steward's assistant spoke first. “Hey there, bo'sun,” he said, “could you pass me one of those blankets? I was in bed when the ship started to sink.” One of the able seamen said, “Say, bo'sun, the second officer's in bad shape. Is there any Advil we could give him?” The oiler chimed in and said, “Oh, no! The launch of the lifeboat caused us to lose all of the can openers in the boat's survival kit. Hey, bo'sun, could you spare an extra?”

Their requests died away into silence as the bo'sun merely stared at them for several seconds. Then he spoke. “You're not expecting a handout, are you? That's socialism!” He spat derisively over the side of the boat. “I earned what I have by my own effort,” he continued. “I won't give handouts, but I will let you earn the privelege to use what I have. That's what our Founding Fathers believed in.”

Now the rest of the survivors were silent in their turn, staring with shocked faces at the bo'sun. Finally, the able seaman who had asked about the Advil spoke again. “But that's totally wacked out, bo'sun!” he shouted. “Look at the second officer! He's in no shape to earn anything! Why are you being a jerk?” An instant later, the bo'sun's fist crashed into his jaw and he crumpled to the bottom of the lifeboat.

“Now hear this,” said the bo'sun in a low, dangerous voice. “I don't give free rides to anybody. If you don't pull your own weight, you get nothing from me. Why, next you'll want me to socialize medical care! Ain't gonna happen. If the second officer is motivated enough, he'll do what it takes to get medicine. You who want the extra blanket!” he shouted, pointing at the steward's assistant. “If you want a blanket, get over here and grab this fishing rod. You gotta catch thirty pounds of fish. That's my price.”

Thus began the miserable journey of the survivors as ocean currents pushed them slowly northward. Needless to say, the second officer died within three days, and the others dumped his body overboard on the bo'sun's orders. The only epitaph the bo'sun spoke was to mutter about “freeloaders on society getting what they deserved.” He also muttered frequently that it was his manifest destiny to be the boss of that lifeboat.

Afterward, all the survivors were kept busy from sunup to sundown catching fish, cleaning fish, sun-drying fish and operating the solar still. In return for their labors they were allowed to eat just enough to stay alive. But the bo'sun ate his fill every day, and his stocky build began to grow chubby. By this time almost everyone in the boat was shirtless, since the weather had entirely cleared and had grown quite warm as the boat drifted out of the tropic zone into Northern Hemisphere summer conditions. The other survivors took notice of two large tattoos across the bo'sun's chest, one of which was an artist's rendition of Ayn Rand's face, and another which was a picture of a gnarled hand with the name “ADAM SMITH” written below.

The bo'sun himself noticed his increasing chubbiness, and began a two-hour regimen of calisthenics and body-weight strength-building exercises every day (although he never used his strength to do any actual work). Meanwhile the other survivors grew weaker and weaker, and one more man died. By now it was late July or early August, and though the boat had drifted north of the 35^th parallel of latitude, it was still quite hot. The bo'sun was bothered by the heat, especially because it made him sweat a lot and grow thirsty during his workouts. But the solar still was slow in producing fresh water and the canned water was by now used up.

One day the bo'sun had a brilliant idea. “We're gonna do things a little different,” he said to the others. “We're all each gonna get his own space on this boat. However much space you get depends on how much you can fight for, and since I'm the strongest guy on this boat, I get the biggest space. Stay outta my space,” he said. Later that morning, he took most of the remaining blankets and made a shade covering over his newly created “space.” But still, he felt hot. Frustrated, he racked his brain for a solution. Then he smiled broadly as a new idea occurred to him. He found a hand drill and some large wood drill bits from the stash he had brought on board, and began to drill a hole in the bottom of the boat under his “space.”

The other survivors looked at him aghast. “Hey man, what are you doing??!” they all shouted at once. “I'm making a little fountain for my space, to cool my feet,” the bo'sun replied. “What's wrong, are you jealous?” “Dude,” they all shouted back, “you'll sink this boat and kill us all!” “What I do isn't gonna kill us or ruin this boat,” he growled, “and besides, what I do in my space is my business, so lay off!”

At this, the man telling the story broke off, overcome by emotion. “That dirty, selfish...” he finally said, then began coughing uncontrollably. The cough turned into a gag as our chief steward turned the man's body to the side and held a bucket up to his mouth. He retched up a last bit of swallowed seawater, then lay back on the steward's bunk, sighing deeply. The steward noticed that the man was still shivering, ten hours after being pulled from the sea. Had we not spotted him at just the right moment, things would have turned out much worse. The ship's doctor gave the man an injection, told the cook to bring more hot water bottles, and told the rest of us to let the man have some rest.

P.S.: The story I have just told is entirely false. Anyone who has actually worked on a ship can probably tell that I haven't. But I told this story in order to prevent it from coming true, if you get my drift. As a very influential Man once said, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”

P.P.S.: The Bo'sun in this story is a caricature of a particular ideology. Yet there are many ideologies of selfishness in the world today, and they must all be guarded against if our society is to successfully navigate the downside of Hubbert's Peak.

A Safety Net Of Alternative Systems - Citizen Media

(Warning: this will be a long post. I am writing this post in a very different frame of mind than the cautiously optimistic frame I held at the end of last week, when the U.S. House of Representatives rejected the first attempt to pass President Bush's $700 billion Wall Street bailout package. That House vote had led me to believe that I still had something of a voice – that the vast majority of Americans still had a voice – in deciding the direction of our country, that our system of participatory democracy still worked, even if only somewhat.

But now the bailout package has passed both houses of Congress and has been signed into law, though some polls and surveys indicate that a majority of Americans still oppose the bailout, and a larger majority believe that it will not solve America's economic crisis. It may be that participatory democracy is essentially dead in the U.S., and that the real rulers of this country are the rich and those connected to the rich. Still, I feel the need to consider this next aspect of safety nets for the small and the poor. Who knows, it may do some good.)

The times now upon us will be very disruptive, due to such things as infrastructure breakdowns and resource shortages, the effects of natural disasters, and efforts by certain interests to capitalize on the opportunities created within society by systemic disruptions. In such times it is vital for small, regular private citizens to have access to good information and high-quality journalism, in order that they may make intelligent decisions in response to the events taking place around them. Yet over the last few decades, standard American media outlets have increasingly become unreliable as sources for useful, informative news. This is seen in recent reports of media bias, inaccurate reporting and fabricated stories. (Sources: http://gaia.world-television.com/wef/worldeconomicforum_annualmeeting2007/default.aspx?sn=19572; http://www.newscorpse.com/ncWP/index.php?p=341; http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2003/feb/17/mondaymediasection.iraq) It is therefore critical for small, regular private citizens to develop their own networks for obtaining news relating to the present economic, ecological and resource-based difficulties – and not just personal stories, but big-picture analysis as well.

Why You Can't Get The Straight Story Anymore

When I was growing up I used to hear that there are always two sides to every story, but the newspapers, radio and television stations available at the time carried many more sides than just two. Nowadays there is what is known as the “mainstream media,” which carries just one side to any story. Most of the outlets of the media “industry” are now owned by a handful of very rich and powerful companies. This wasn't always the case; between 1941 and 1975, the Federal Communications Commission issued a number of rules designed to insure a large number of diverse media voices by preventing the consolidation of media ownership in the hands of a few large corporations. One such rule prevented a corporation from owning both a newspaper and a television or radio station in the same market. This large number of diverse voices served to raise the quality of journalism and hindered any one news outlet from easily spreading false news.

But in the 1980's, President Reagan and the Congress initiated a program of business “deregulation” that reversed the protections of the previous FCC rules. Limits on media consolidation were lifted, as were requirements for a minimum amount of “non-entertainment programming,” One particular rule that was eliminated was the “Fairness Doctrine” which required that any television or radio station that broadcast one point of view had to allow time for spokespersons for an opposing point of view to make their case.

That deregulation really accelerated during the Clinton presidency, with the passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Prior to this law, a radio network could own no more than 40 stations; afterward, gargantuan networks were created, such as Clear Channel which owns over 1200 stations in all 50 states. The current President Bush has accelerated media deregulation even further, leading to the following result:

• Disney, Viacom, Time Warner, News Corporation, Bertelsmann AG, and General Electric together own more than 90 percent of the media holdings in the United States, according to one source. (Independent verification of this statement is not possible, because information on media ownership is not in the public domain.)

• CBS Corporation owns CBS, CBS Radio, Simon & Schuster (a book publisher) and other media assets.

• Time Warner owns CNN, Time Magazine, AOL and other assets.

• Rupert Murdoch owns at least two dozen newspapers, as well as Fox Networks, MySpace, Sky Television and DirecTV, among other assets.

(Sources: “Concentration of Media Ownership,” Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentration_of_media_ownership; “Media Regulation Timeline,” NOW With Bill Moyers, http://www.pbs.org/now/politics/mediatimeline.html; “Media Conglomerates, Mergers, Concentration of Ownership,” Global Issues, 29 April 2007, http://www.globalissues.org/article/159/media-conglomerates-mergers-concentration-of-ownership#Concentrationofownershipiswheretheproblemlargelylies)

Some might say that media concentration in the hands of a few corporations is not a bad thing, and that reliable news is still reaching the American public. But history is full of countries whose citizens were deprived of all sorts of news and perspectives due to concentration of media power in the hands of a small elite. One case in point is Italy under former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, a media tycoon who forced Italian media to broadcast news and propaganda supporting his government. (For a source on this, see the Global Issues article cited above.)

The Story You're Not Getting

The result of this consolidation of media ownership is that most Americans are not getting the whole story on a variety of serious issues, and that when events force major media outlets to cover issues of national importance, most Americans are getting a strongly biased version of the issues. This applies to “crises” manufactured by powerful people, such as the case made for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. However, later events proved that the foundations of that case were largely false.

But it also applies to crises that result from accidents or acts of God. For instance, American petroleum product stocks had begun to drop even before Hurricane Gustav. But the combined effects of Hurricanes Gustav and Ike was to remove over a million barrels per day from American crude oil extraction, and to take several refineries out of service for an extended period. Gasoline shortages resulted throughout the Southeast, extending even to areas in the Midwest. There were no reports from American media for several days after shortages began to develop, and when reports finally came, many initial reports contained statements from state government officials denying that there was any problem. To this day, no one in the media has presented a clear picture of the extent of the problem, and most information presented is merely anecdotal.

This sort of coverage is as bad as media coverage of an accident in Minot, North Dakota in 2002 in which a train filled with anhydrous ammonia derailed. When authorities tried to use local radio stations to issue an alert to nearby citizens, none of the radio stations carried news of the accident. All the stations were owned by Clear Channel. The accident injured 1600 people and killed one person.

This failure of coverage extends to misdeeds committed by corporations or government agencies. In 1997, a Fox Broadcasting Company office fired two reporters for drafting a story about Monsanto's Bovine Growth Hormone. During Super Bowl XXXVIII, CBS refused to air an ad criticizing the federal budget deficit, but aired another ad from a Federal drug control agency.

There is still a strong media bias in describing the struggles and achievements of members of ethnic minorities. This is seen in how blacks are portrayed in news stories, as well as media support for targeted enforcement zones in minority neighborhoods, and the continuing belief promoted by the media that drug abuse is rampant in minority communities and much less prevalent everywhere else. (Sources: “Media and Its Portrayal of Black Americans,” The Black Image in the White Mind, http://racerelations.about.com/od/stereotypesmentalmodels/a/blackimage.htm; “Sirens Vs. Sirens: The Battle for 82^nd, The Oregonian newspaper, 14 September 2008; “The Media's Bias Against Black Men In America,” Newsmax, http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2006/3/30/140755.shtml; “Drug Enforcement Racist?”, The Badger Herald, 8 May 2008, http://badgerherald.com/oped/2008/05/08/drug_enforcement_rac.php) This bias, combined with the “targeted enforcement” tactics of the national “war on drugs” is creating a permanent class of disenfranchised, exploited slave labor and human capital to be exploited by the prison labor and private prison industry.

American media is doing a bad job covering the breakdowns of our present market-driven economic system and the risks posed to that system by climate change and peak oil. And since most local media outlets in America are owned by national or multinational corporations, the quality of coverage by local broadcasters and papers has deteriorated. But just as foreign news outlets often presented a clearer and more informative picture of the crises caused by Hurricanes Gustav and Ike, foreign media is also doing a better job of covering the slower breakdowns in American society caused by the credit and finance crunch. The British newspaper The Guardian has done a particularly good job of describing the blight in Elk Grove, California caused by the mortgage crash, and the continuing blight of Detroit, and has openly discussed these as signs of the fading of American prominence.

These things and many others are a sign that American mainstream media are an unreliable source of news. People in the 1950's and 1960's could get the necessary information for informed decisions by reading the Los Angeles Times or Herald Examiner, or by watching Huntley and Brinkley or Walter Cronkite on television. But nowadays it is not enough to watch TV news or read most major American papers, and those who rely solely on these as sources of information haven't exercised “due diligence” in their decision-making process. Those who rely on mainstream media are being programmed to continue to rely on our breaking American system while fed a constant stream of reassurances that the system continues to work, and are being dissuaded from preparing alternatives for themselves. While this sort of programming benefits the rich masters of the system, it doesn't help people to adjust to sudden breakdowns such as those that occurred with gasoline after the recent hurricanes.

The Solution: Making Your Own Media

Thomas Jefferson once said, “The only security of all is in a free press.” Yet the agencies which we call “the press” in the U.S. are no longer free. This creates a crisis of legitimacy for the official mainstream media when people see things happening with their own eyes, yet find that their stories go distorted or unreported by the mainstream media. The rise of citizen media addresses this crisis of legitimacy.

Motivated citizen journalists can establish themselves as reliable sources of news, as long as they're willing to put some effort into their work and to produce an excellent product. In fact, by good work and excellence they may even establish themselves as a more reliable source of news than the mainstream media. Citizen journalists have a variety of new tools at their disposal. The blog is the easiest to implement, followed by the podcast, the video log, and the community newspaper. Blogs can be started for free. (Google's Blogger site has tools which can produce a very attractive blog that is easy to maintain and free of charge.) The other methods will of course cost more. The means used by any one citizen or group of citizens will depend on the amount of money, equipment and time at their disposal. But whatever the means used, it must be implemented with excellence.

For instance, someone may want to start a community blog. Such a person should establish the geographical boundaries which he or she can reasonably expect to cover during the time they can afford for gathering news. Next, when writing stories, the blogger must make sure that every detail is factually accurate. This cannot be stressed enough. No one will take you seriously if you don't get your facts straight. Grammar, punctuation and spelling are also very, very important. “If you cant spel rite, youl loose readerz!” (And just in case nobody caught it, “loose” should be spelled as “lose” in the previous sentence.) Your aim is to employ as many means as possible to get readers to take you seriously, to establish yourself as someone who knows what he or she is talking about.

If you have a digital camera, use it. When covering issues of concern in your community, be sure to take pictures and post them on your blog. Pictures and quotes humanize the subjects of your blog in the minds of your readers, and reinforce your message. And when you get permission to interview someone or take their picture, tell them the Web address of your blog and that they should expect to see themselves online shortly. It will boost your readership!

Podcasts and video logs (such as amateur YouTube clips) are also useful tools, but they require special equipment and time devoted to learning how to use that equipment. There are good books on these media forms, such as Digital Filmmaking 101 by Dale Newton and John Gaspard, Filmmaking for Teens by Troy Lanier and Clay Nichols, and Podcasting Now! by Andrew J. Dagys with John Hedtke. These are good references for those with the necessary time and equipment, although I realize that money for such equipment is probably tight for most people right now.

A group of citizen journalists can found a community newspaper. Publishing a hard-copy paper requires computers, software and an inexpensive printing house, as well as postage and staffers to mail papers, so this is not for the faint of heart. One good example of a community newspaper is the Fullerton Observer (http://www.fullertonobserver.com), a paper founded by Ralph Kennedy in 1978. Sharon Kennedy is the current editor. Her newspaper has published stories relating not only to Fullerton, California, but also to global warming, peak oil, the Iraq war, and the development of advanced crowd control technologies by the Federal government. She relies on a loose cadre of volunteer writers and columnists for many of the articles published each month. (She doesn't know this yet, but I may ask her one day if I can interview her further about the details of running a community newspaper.)

Lastly, there is the combination of two or more forms of electronic media into a multimedia presentation designed to highlight an issue that needs attention. This was done in 2007 by a team of “alternate reality game writers” who created the World Without Oil “game” website (http://worldwithoutoil.org/start.aspx) with funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. World Without Oil is described as an alternate reality game, but I tend to think of it as much more of a collaboratively written story than a game. It powerfully illustrates some of the societal breakdowns that could occur from a sudden shortfall in world crude oil availability (those living in the Southeast might want to check out the WWO website and compare its projections and stories to their own experiences in the aftermath of this year's hurricanes). WWO was a major influence on the decisions I made early in 2007 in my preparations for a post-Peak future. Collaborative multimedia presentations such as WWO can be an influential tool in raising public awareness of community and societal issues.

Concerned small private citizens can thus provide themselves with a voice and a means to tell the necessary stories that are swept under the rug by our mainstream media. But there is an urgency to this; citizen journalists must act quickly to start making their voices heard. You – be the teller of the story that must be told.

We're Not In A Democracy Anymore, Toto

...Or are we?

Tonight, the United States Senate voted 74-25 to authorize the $700 billion Wall Street bailout requested by President Bush. In the time leading up to the vote, at least one senator was quoted by Bloomberg News as saying that after the Dow's 700-point drop in response to the House rejection of the bill, this senator's office started receiving hundreds of calls in support of the Bush administration's bailout request.

That seems odd, given that most online polls still show that a solid majority of Americans opposes this bailout. Most of the people I know still oppose this bailout. I still oppose this bailout. It appears that perhaps the quoted senator (and Bloomberg News) was stretching the truth. At any rate, it should be abundantly clear that the opinions of the majority of Americans no longer matters to the cronies and kleptocrats now running our country. (By the way, for those who read my post titled, "Pavlov's Politics," I want you to know that both Obama and McCain voted for the bailout, as well as Joe Biden.)

These people are set to try to ram the bailout package through the House, perhaps as early as this Friday. The urgency of this legislative push is what strikes me. It's a play right out of Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine. Only the House of Representatives stands between the American people and the greedy mouths of the rich. Do what you can to oppose this bailout, including e-mails and phone calls, not only to your congressional representatives, but to local media as well. But make backup plans to deal with life in a country whose leaders have become poison.

The Dry Hole of American Finance

Got a call from an old friend, we used to be real close

Said he couldn't go on the American way

Closed the shop, sold the house, bought a ticket to the West Coast

Now he gives them a stand-up routine in L.A.

– Billy Joel, My Life

I fully intended this week to continue what has become a mini-series on the aspects of a safety net of alternative systems for ordinary people to build in preparing for the effects of Peak Oil and climate change. But my plans were “overcome by events,” as they say in the military. The big events over the last two weeks have been the failure of at least two more large investment houses and the Federal “bailout plan” being proposed by President Bush and his economic advisors as a means to stabilize the markets. One major aspect of the impacts of Peak Oil and resource scarcity is the financial aspect, and the present responses of our society to the financial instabilities occurring now will in turn generate their own financial effects, which may hinder the ability of common people to prepare for a post-Peak world.

I will begin with a caveat. First, while there are many things about engineering that I understand, there are many things about finance as it is played at present in the U.S. that I don't understand, since American finance is a shady Las Vegas-style game in which the major players keep changing the rules to keep the rest of us off balance. Secondly, I am a bit late in addressing the financial situation, and other voices have already provided words of great insight and wisdom in explaining what is going on now. (See http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2008/09/adieu-stage-1-collapse.html; http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2008/09/rx-depression.html; and http://sharonastyk.com/2008/09/25/peeling-the-onion-whats-behind-the-financial-mess/ for examples. Warning: some of these posts contain some strong language.)

For the last few decades it seems that the American way has been to pump crony capitalism as much as possible by keeping wages stagnant, deregulating financial markets, outsourcing the manufacture of essential goods to low-wage countries, stimulating economic activity by easy credit, and lowering taxes while borrowing to finance national boondoggles such as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now many Americans have no savings or are upside down on the loans they have taken out to purchase their “stuff” - houses and cars now worth less than what is owed. And the National debt – the amount of money which the Federal Government has borrowed and which it owes to its creditors – is approximately nine trillion, eight hundred sixty billion dollars (Source: U.S. National Debt Clock, http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/).

To put this into perspective, the total U.S. population is 303,824,640 as of July 2008. (Source: CIA World Factbook, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/print/us.html) 67 percent of this population is between the ages of 15 and 64 years old. Assuming that this is the age of employable people, that means that there are 203,562,509 potential members of the workforce. If we further assume that ten percent of these are too poor to be taxed heavily and that another ten percent are so rich that they can escape taxes through legal maneuvering, the total taxable workforce is now 162,850,007. Assume further that 6.5 percent of them are out of work at present due to the present economic crisis and we have a taxable workforce of 152,365,757 people. If we divide the national debt by this number of working people, each wage-earner owes $64,700 on the National debt.

That debt grows every day, thanks to President Bush's war boondoggles and refusal to bring Government spending in line with tax receipts. But over the last eight or nine months a new source of debt has emerged, namely the Government's repeated moves to bail out large, high-flying investment banks who are unable to pay their debts and whose assets are now becoming worthless because of the subprime mortgage crisis. Every bailout has been accompanied by pronouncements from the Republicans that “this bailout is necessary in order to prevent the economy from crashing,” yet after every bailout, the crash has progressed a little more.

What is being protected by these bailouts is the notional “assets” of a number of rich investment bankers. These assets were based on the notional value of I.O.U.'s such as mortgages, which were used as collateral by investment houses to borrow money equal to many times the value of the original I.O.U.'s. Thus the investment banks, whose assets consisted of I.O.U.'s, used these “assets” to write much bigger I.O.U.'s. Now it is being seen that the original assets are rapidly becoming worthless, because the little people whose mortgage I.O.U.'s were counted as certificates of worth are unable to pay their debts. The whole debt structure is therefore in danger of falling apart.

A crash of financial markets is therefore a real possibility, and would be a painful thing to experience, since our society is largely credit-driven, and since most Americans don't produce tangible goods of real value anymore. Such a crash would force us to face the fact that the American economy is worth much less than its worth on paper, and would drive down our standard of living, as well as knocking a few rich people off their pedestals. But things get much worse if the Government becomes the guarantor of this structure of private I.O.U.'s. The Federal government already owes $9.86 trillion.

The significance of that fact becomes apparent when one realizes that that money is owed to someone. Who holds American debt? Right now, at least 25 percent of that debt is held by foreign governments. At the end of 2006, foreigners held 44 percent of federal debt held by the public. China in particular holds over $1 trillion in dollar-denominated assets. (Source: “United States Public Debt,” Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_public_debt#Foreign_ownership)

That debt exerts pressure on all of us, even though this nation has delayed facing the prospect of paying off the debt. And because this nation is past its peak in the production of many natural resources, and has largely outsourced its manufacturing base to other countries, we have increasingly less collateral with which to obtain new credit for the Federal government. To choose at this time to add to the National debt by nationalizing the results of the bad choices of the rich is an incredibly stupid move.

And such a move might soon lead to a time when all Americans - including those who are not in debt and who own their own property - may be required to forfeit all their possessions to service the national debt. This could be via a number of foreign governments demanding repayment of debt certificates issued by the U.S. government, to which the Feds might respond by raising the tax rate on anyone with assessable hard assets (including real estate) to such an extent that no one would be able to afford the tax. Then the Government could foreclose on the personal properties of people who could not afford the tax, and turn those properties over to foreign creditors in an attempt to repay some of the national debt. Is this a farfetched scenario? I'd like to think so, because the present governmental shenanigans are rather spooky.

But there are people who have seen the societal trends now building in the United States and who have tried to act wisely in disconnecting themselves from the present breaking system. Now the preparations of these people may be imperiled – especially if those preparations involved saving money or buying land or reducing debt – due to the real threat of having a crushing tax burden imposed on them, just so that irresponsible rich bankers might continue their high-flying financial games. What then happens to the safety net of the wise?

I will close by mentioning a post by Stormchild on the blog, Gale Warnings, titled “Responsibility and Authority.” According to that post, one characteristic of an abusive leader or abusive organization is the desire for absolute authority coupled with the total evasion of responsibility. This seems to be a characteristic of President Bush, his “bailout plan” and the rich investment houses he is trying to help with his plan. He and the Congress are determined to enact this plan even though a solid majority of Americans opposes it, seeing it for the shock doctrine tactic that it actually is.

A Safety Net Of Alternative Systems - Places To Live

In his thought-provoking book Reinventing Collapse, Dmitri Orlov compares the United States in its present condition to the Soviet Union just prior to the Soviet collapse. He notes a number of similarities between the two countries, including a large military bogged down in useless and harmful adventures, a huge and increasing national debt held largely by foreigners, a negative trade balance due to the collapse of domestic means of meeting basic societal needs and a corresponding reliance on imported goods, the maintaining and expansion of world empires by morally flawed means, and the imprisonment of a large portion of the population. His conclusion is that these conditions precipitated the Soviet collapse, and that they will cause the collapse of the United States as well.

But he also examines those peculiarly Soviet societal characteristics which in his view allowed ordinary citizens in the Soviet Union to survive the collapse without suffering a major societal breakdown. In particular, the communal, state-run, collectively owned nature of all major institutions and of basic assets such as land and housing prevented millions of people from facing the sorts of severe trouble experienced by people without money in the U.S. There were no “Hoovervilles,” no tent cities like the camp for financially distressed people that sprang up in Ontario, California last year as the home mortgage crisis gathered steam (See “Tent City In Suburbs Is Cost Of Home Crisis,” Reuters, 20 December 2007, http://features.us.reuters.com/cover/news/D8C99CD0-AF35-11DC-9E67-616F0DA5.html).

No one in the Soviet Union was evicted from house or apartment because of a lack of funds to pay rent, since housing was free. Land was communally owned and people had for a long time grown kitchen gardens to supplement the goods available from the “official” Communist stores. Therefore, when things collapsed, people had some means of taking care of their basic needs. The collapse was by no means fun or pretty; it was a significant hardship. But it was at least survivable, because of the communal factors mentioned. The same thing can also be said of Cuba's experience after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when Cuba suddenly lost all Soviet material support and had to find homegrown solutions to sudden shortfalls of food and petroleum. The Cuban crisis also was survivable because of the communal nature of Cuban institutions and assets. It is not recorded that there was mass starvation of any kind in Cuba during those years, even though people did not have nearly as much to eat as they would have liked. And Cuba, like Russia, recovered from its crisis.

Our American system is very different. Here, one does not get even basic necessities unless one is able to pay for them. And the quality of the necessities provided is directly proportional to the amount of money paid. Moreover, our economic and political systems are being gamed by the rich elites in order to eliminate any government-sponsored social safety net which exists to protect those who lose the ability to pay for things provided by the “official” economy. Examples of this include a number of Oregon ballot initiatives financed by Oregon multimillionaires Loren Parks, Bill Sizemore and Kevin Mannix, initiatives such as Measure 59, which would allow Oregon taxpayers to deduct the full amount of Federal income tax paid from their state taxable income. This measure would decimate the state treasuries and force cutbacks in essential services provided to children, the disabled and the elderly. Then there is Measure 26, which has not yet qualified for a ballot, which would allow employers to deduct the cost of health benefits from the minimum wage paid to workers.

“Home ownership” has been one of the biggest examples of the risky nature of participation in the American system. To buy a home, a person had to take out a loan to buy a house or condominium, unless that person was able to pay the full price up front. The loan was made at interest, so that the amount of money given to pay off a mortgage was usually at least twice as much as the actual price of the house, assuming that one paid the minimum payment each month on a fixed rate mortgage. And if a “homeowner” who had made several years' worth of payments suddenly lost his or her ability to pay the mortgage for an extended period, that person lost not only the house, but all the equity they had paid into the house.

Renters were not much better off, except that at least renters knew up front that they would never own the properties on which they made monthly payments, whereas home “buyers” were gambling that everything would work out right over a thirty-year period, so that they would eventually be able to throw a “burn the mortgage” party in their golden years. But now as the official economy is breaking, many people are finding themselves homeless or in danger of becoming homeless and searching for alternatives. In this country, those alternatives consist of things like finding relatives who will take you in; finding a cheap slum apartment; going to a rescue mission; moving into a housing project (not recommended unless you want neighbors like the “Bounty Hunter Bloods” of the Nickerson Gardens project in L.A.); getting yourself arrested and checked into the “Gray Bar Hotel”; or finding a shopping cart, a tarp, and a convenient freeway underpass where you can camp out.

This is not very encouraging. One key to maintaining a stable society even in hardship is the availability of reasonably clean and safe places to live. Places which have a bit of land are even better, because they can be used to grow food, herbs and fruit for people who are trying to lessen their dependence on a breaking economic system. The total plot size does not have to be large. Jules Dervaes of Path To Freedom was featured in a 2007 Los Angeles Times article on urban homesteading. He grows over 6000 pounds of food per year on a portion of a 9000-square foot lot. The Oregonian newspaper also printed a recent feature on edible urban gardens. And there are other advantages to the availability of adequate places to live – namely, that if people stay in those places long enough, they begin to form connections with their neighbors and learn to rely on each other and to help each other out. These interconnections become very important as official systems start to break.

I think it's fairly certain that our present government, at a national and state level, will not try to create a safety net of affordable housing for working-class people, since our elected officials are largely the servants of the rich. But what can private citizens do to create their own safety nets?

One answer is cohousing. Cohousing is a communal living arrangement in which a number of people agree to live in a locality, whether a house or a group of homes, and agree to share all the expenses and benefits of such a living arrangement. I have run across the concept over the years while doing Internet research on other subjects, but last week I got to actually see a cohousing arrangement in person. The occasion was a benefit concert for the Portland Fruit Tree Project, held in the backyard of a house which is part of a five-house community. There I had a chance to interview a woman named Katy, one of the founders of the Portland Fruit Tree Project and a member of the cohousing community. We talked about the birth of the Fruit Tree Project as well as the arrangement shared by Katy and the others in her cohousing community.

While the members share responsibilities for chores, their arrangement is not highly structured or hierarchical. Besides chores and chipping into pay bills, the only other obligation is a communal dinner held twice a week. The members of Katy's household are all “active” activists – each is involved in a social cause which is near to his or her heart. Thus they don't have much time to sit and watch television (I did not see a TV when I was there, but I am told that they keep one in a closet somewhere). They do spend time together on occasion to make music together; almost everyone in the household can play a musical instrument.

According to Katy, their cohousing group was founded nearly twenty years ago, and even though some members have moved on to other things, these former members frequently join the regulars for the community meals. Their group has managed to remain remarkably stable, and has even evolved a very small-scale egg and goat milk economic cooperative in which neighbors participate.

Cohousing seems to be a promising answer to some of the uncertainties of our present American crisis. But it takes land and houses and an ability to pay for these. As the economy continues to be squeezed, where can people interested in forming cohousing communities turn for resources?

One answer is to look for properties in areas hit hard by foreclosure or economic blight. Detroit, Michigan is a poster child for such areas. (See http://www.detroitruins.net/ for an example.) One can easily buy a modest two or three bedroom home there for under $50,000. There are places in Los Angeles and Orange counties in California which have been hit hard by the mortgage crisis, where prices of modest (I repeat, modest) homes have fallen drastically. Such places would be beyond both the ability and the interest of those who are addicted to living beyond their means. But these places might be easily affordable by people who have chosen frugality and wisdom rather than allowing themselves to be turned into “consumatrons,” and who therefore have some money saved up. Such people might be able to put up enough money to pay the price of a house right up front, bypassing the need to take out a loan.

People relocating to distressed areas would also need two other things: a vision of the sort of intentional community they would like to create, and a plan or vision of how they as a community could bless, beautify and improve the larger community in which they live. Their impact on the larger community would be especially important, in order to remove any resentment which might spring up because of the threat of displacement of long-time residents due to gentrification. A cohousing community in a distressed area would ideally consist of people with skills suited to meeting the needs of their neighbors – people skilled in local urban agriculture, teaching, medicine, construction, salvage economies and other necessary skills. And this sort of cohousing community would succeed best by living simply, not flaunting wealth in front of the surrounding neighbors, and being ever ready to lend a helping hand to those in need.

I believe that cohousing is a viable safety net for those who are willing to live modestly and to share what they have with others. And cohousing holds great promise as a means to provide stability to neighborhoods that would otherwise be blighted by the breakdown of our present system. But cohousing is like seeds planted to produce a harvest – there is an urgency to the planting season, because the winter of our society may be fast approaching.

Below are a few pictures of the Portland cohousing community I visited. Also, here are two links for those who want more information on cohousing: www.cohousing.org/2003/review and http://www.cohousing.org/cm/Creating+Cohousing. Enjoy!