[p2p-research] Fwd: 20 Theses against green capitalism

[Kevin Carson]

On 8/8/09, Paul D. Fernhout <pdfernhout at kurtz-fernhout.com> wrote:

>  You might want to look at this talk by Bruce Stirling: :-)
>
> http://video.reboot.dk/video/486788/bruce-sterling-reboot-11
>
>  He suggests we not focus too much on stuff that dead people can do better
> than us. :-)
>
>  Sure, efficiency and voluntary simplicity is a great idea. But it really is
> not much of a goal of life as much as a facilitator of living well.

I think it is, if it's understood not as a sacrifice but as a way to
eliminate the unnecessary extra hours we waste to pay for stupidity.
Building stuff to last instead of for a two-year tour through our
living rooms on the landfill  is not a sacrifice or asceticism, it's
being less stupid.  And working a tiny fraction of the hours to get
something from the thrift store or Craigslist, that it would take to
buy it new, is freeing yourself from that many hours of slavery to pay
tribute to the overlords who live off the rents of waste and
artificial property.

I think efficiency,  in the sense of drastically reduced entry costs
and overhead, and drastic "STEMI compression" (or productive
recursion, to use Nathan's term) in use of inputs is at the heart of
what's revolutionary about the new economy.  The old one was set up as
an endless series of baffles and toll gates to create as much noise
and loss as possible between our efforts and our consumption, to feed
those who live off waste and artificial property rents.  I know it's a
metaphor I've driven into the ground, but we're the rats in the
dinosaurs' nests.

-- 
Kevin Carson
Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org
Mutualist Blog:  Free Market Anti-Capitalism
http://mutualist.blogspot.com
Studies in Mutualist Political Economy
http://www.mutualist.org/id47.html
Organization Theory:  A Libertarian Perspective
http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/12/studies-in-anarchist-theory-of.html