By: Magpie

Magpie — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 16:22:54 +0000

Hrmm… firstly, I had actually meant to come across as saying that journalism is necessary for a society, but perhaps I hadn’t made that clear. I’ve been thinking a lot about our conversations of last fall, too, about the role of art, etc. in a society. I think that perhaps it is up to the community, to see what they consider necessary. To see what kind of abundance there is. I expect that in times of severe famine, not even doctors and waste-managers would be off the growing food expectation, but that it would rather quickly loosen up to allow more professions.
As for the localized economic system, I was talking to one of the asheville LETS organizers, and she pointed out that the one here differed from many of the others with the degree to which is worked to prevent capitalism from growing within it. First of all, a negative balance is not considered a bad thing. It’s not “debt”, and the social considerations encourage someone to have a fluctuating number of LETS. I haven’t wrapped my brain around that 100% yet, and apparently it’s one of the harder concepts to get across to new members. I think that there are controls in place to prevent most of the things you spoke about, as well… if they aren’t physical barriers that are able to be put in place, they are certainly outside the guidelines of the system, and I think that the inherently small-scale nature of the project would prevent people from doing it.

By: David S D

David S D — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 14:48:28 +0000

Devil’s advocacy:
We’ve talked about this before, but this post makes me want to raise a few points which I’m not really convinced about, but bear consideration.
First, while arts and journalism are certainly not necessary for the survival of a species, they are absolutely essential to the intellectual life of a critical, informed society. To function in any way as self-determining and autonomous, a society needs information, critique, and dissent. Arts and journalism are to a large part whence this food for thought comes. While it is certainly possible for that work to be done on a non-professional basis, art and media do require specialized skills, time and dedication. Probably more time and dedication, really. But I imagine the quality and depth of both reporting and arts would suffer if it was only being generated on the side as a hobby, just as I’d be hesitant to go get my teeth drilled by a hobby dentist.
Gift economics I really do believe in wholeheartedly, in theory. In practice, I have no idea how to insulate a system of exchange with no record from greed and exploitation. There will always be opportunists.
Local economies I believe in as well, and they serve well as an alternative to capitalism in a capitalist society, but are really just one step away from being capitalism. If one person could horde enough LETS either through cunning or generating high demand for their skills, they could certainly use those LETS to hire other parties to make LETS for them, or fund an upstart’s business in exchange for a return on the LETS, or lend LETS for interest. Which is back to capitalism, no?
Thoughts?

Comments on: Why Anarchist Economics Are Inevitable*

By: Magpie

By: David S D