[p2p-research] economic abundance textbook

[Paul D. Fernhout]

Nathan Cravens wrote:
> as it is
> understood that markets are good at capturing wealth, but lacks the ability
> to nurture that which surfaced its wealth.

Great point.

If you look at the Jane Jacobs version of how cities came to be, it was as 
trading points for people extracting things from the surrounding area 
(hunters and gatherers). (Cities, more like towns by our current standards, 
then developed agriculture of plants and animals through the process of 
temporary storage.) A place like the Netherlands, where key ideas of 
capitalism emerged, also was a trading hub of things brought back in ships, 
extracted from other places whether agriculturally or by stealing humans 
from other countries to use as slaves. So, historically, yes, markets are 
all about trading what you took from nature, not about nurturing nature or 
humanity itself. Nurturing our surroundings will be a big conceptual leap 
when we make it as a society (and I feel space habitats are part of that, 
because they get people to focus on maintaining the basic infrastructure of 
life support in a formal way). But in more crowded places like the 
Netherlands, especially with a common issue of water management, you can see 
that concept has emerged somewhat; example:
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polder_Model

I agree with the rest of the comments by you and Smári on this book, that it 
is not under a free license and that it is intended for schools, which are 
both practices being in general anti-abundance, no the book does not 
practice what it preaches in that sense. Of course, we have this p2p list 
and others like open manufacturing and so on, plus related web sites and 
blogs, so there are lots of places now to learn about these things with 
information under free licenses (sometimes) or in communities. So, we can 
see this book as important in being a "trailing edge" thing for the FOSS/p2p 
movement. :-) Even if the book might be "leading edge" for academia, and 
very important in that sense. :-)

Yes, it may get stuff wrong, like that full employment issue. Still, "full 
employment by "make-work" in wars, schooling, and prisons might be used by a 
society as a means of social control that intentionally destroys abundance, 
(as I've pointed out before with my jobs equation). So, technically they are 
right that "full employment" by telling people "do make-work or starve" is 
an option as opposed to a basic income, a gift economy, and local 
subsistence production by 3D printing, robotic organic agriculture, and so 
on). So, they are right in a way to talk about "full employment" as a final 
solution, as one can see in the image with the words "Arbeit Macht Frei" at 
the top of this version of Bob Black's essay on "The Abolition of Work": :-(
   http://deoxy.org/endwork.htm
I usually otherwise link to the version of his essay here:
   http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html

Wonder what else is misleading or biased? :-)
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies_My_Teacher_Told_Me
"Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got 
Wrong is a 1995 book by James Loewen. It critically examines twelve popular 
American history textbooks and concludes that textbook authors propagate 
factually false, eurocentric, and mythologized views of history. In addition 
to critiquing the dominant historical themes presented in textbooks, Loewen 
presents a number of his own historical themes that he says are ignored by 
traditional history textbooks."

Do they have a discussion of how one type of how mass production is 
interwoven with Prussian-derived compulsory schooling, for example?
   http://www.disciplined-minds.com/
   http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/toc1.htm

Of course, without the text being online, it is hard to analyze it and 
critique it.

--Paul Fernhout
http://www.pdfernhout.net/