Doug…I am new here to the boards. I applaud what you have said here about ZH. I try to start using them again every so often as they do call out the horse sh*t going on in Wall Street and DC. Just as soon as I start to keep them on my radar they slip back into the ultra alt-right ilk they were born from. I also applaud your denouncement of Trump and the people surrounding him.
You give far too much credit to Democrats. They are wolves in sheeps clothing. They have consistently voted with the republicans on defense and financial matters. The Progressives need to leave the party and form their and the DNC is just a dead shell of what it once was. Even the great Obama was an Obummer. Repackaging Republican ideas such as Obamacare, immigration inaction, kissing up to Wall St, etc.
On the news front today is Antartica’s ice melt is increasing more rapidly than predicted and that the M/E leaders are becoming less skeptical of Trump. I wonder which of those two will be featured in MSM news? Pretty sure the latter. Climate cange is apparently to controversial for them to give any more than a small sound bite to. That is my nonsensical rant. I suggest finding someone that is a progressive and is not beholden to anyone on Wall Street or special interests.
Thank you for your time.
For the moment the library’s internet seems to be working again so I’ll try some replies. Petey1, great to hear you have been on this path as well!
Health insurance is a problem. Personally I just don’t see how the current system can go on with double digit rate increases every year along with increasing deductables. It seems like something has to happen one way or another.
For myself I’ve decided to give up health insurance. I cancelled mine this year after hearing the individual mandate had been removed. Though I then later learned that won’t go into effect until next year… So I guess this year I will end up paying the fee/fine for not having it. I’m ok with that as I was seriously considering it anyway as the cheapest rate I could get was more than I wanted to spend and didn’t seem worth what I’d get.
Again, for myself I decided long ago that the one most responsible for my health is me. To that end in the past few years I’ve worked hard to change my ways and live a healthier life, drastically reducing my meat consumption and dramatically increasing the consumption of whole plant foods. I’ve also nearly eliminated heavily processed foods vacent of nutrients. I make an effort to get some amount of exercise daily, though it doesn’t always happen when I’m too busy with work. I’ve stopped using my car for trips less than 7 miles unless there is a real need such as moving large heavy objects. Instead I will walk or bike. With all this I’ve been able to lose about 55lbs from my high weight several years ago, and keep it off.
I’m not generally inclined to go to the doctors to begin with for reasons far too long to get into here. It’s been a couple decades since I’ve been so insurance for me felt like just throwing thousands of dollars away for next to nothing. The question of course is what happens if I do come down with some chronic disease? From what I’ve learned it’s pretty much a given that I have heart disease since autopsy studies have shown that 95% of Americans (which I am) over the age of 10 (which I am) have at least some stage of heart disease already. What I’m doing is what I’d do first if actually diagnosed. Treat it with diet and exercise, which is one of the more effective ways to deal with many of the chronic diseases that plague western populations.
Could I get injured with an acute injury for which I do think the modern medical field is highly skilled at treating? I certainly could, but I feel like this is more of a rare thing. Car accidents and workplace accidents are probably the most common causes for such acute injuries. That’s just my guess, I don’t know this for sure. As part of my frugal living and efforts to take responsibility for my own health I don’t spend much time in a car these days. I also work for myself so there is no one pushing me to do unsafe things in the workplace except for me. I have to own that responsibility.
In short I don’t see a great solution for health insurance. I suppose if I did retire early on $500 a month passive income ($6000 a year) then I probably would qualify for health care subsidies if I wanted to work the system. I’m not sure I’d feel right doing that myself, again because I am trying to take responsibility for my own health.
I realize everyone’s situation is different. This is just how I’m trying to live more lightly on the earth. Part of that is accepting that I may die earlier than I might have otherwise. At the moment I’m ok with that if the efforts I’m directly taking to care for myself aren’t enough and I’m unable to pay the fees for professional care.
Howard Zinn (A People’s History of the US) writes,
All of us have become hostages in the new conditions of doomsday technology, runaway economics, global poisoning, uncontainable war. … We may, in the coming years, be in a race for the mobilization of middle-class discontent. … All this, at a time when the middle class is increasingly insecure economically. The system, in its irrationality, has been driven by profit to build steel skyscrapers for insurance companies while the cities decay, to spend billions for weapons of destruction and virtually nothing for children's playgrounds,…. Capitalism has always been a failure for the lower classes. It is now beginning to fail for the middle classes. (pp. 636–637, HarperPerennial, 2003)Maybe it is. But did we ever have capitalism qua capitalism, or has the economic and financial system always been perverted by the elites? I especially like his adjective "runaway" which I think is a very good alternative term for "exponential," and easier for people to understand. Runaway economics. Runaway resource consumption. Runaway pollution. Yes! This may help us in our quest to enlighten the general public and hence their elected representatives. I'll be using this word in the future. As an aside, we know that in the geological column the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary is marked by a thin line of sediment abnormally high in iridium — and an extinction event above it. Maybe the boundary between the Anthropocene and whatever comes next will be marked by a thin layer of plastic — and another extinction event above that.
Michael, I’m not sure I fully understand what you are trying to say, or perhaps I just don’t agree with what I think you are saying. You seem to be saying it’s impossible to live on $15,000 if you are making $150,000. Granted I’ve never made $150,000 in a year, or anywhere close, but I have no trouble at all living on considerbly less that what I bring in. Yes, I would be paying more in taxes if I was earning more, but I could also be saving more because I’m earning more. In fact so far this year my largest expenses by far have been my quarterly estimated taxes. I view this as a positive sign that I am saving much more than I had been prior to rededicating myself to a lower cost of living and thus a lighter impact on the earth.
I agree that if you make more money you can find yourself being hounded by family and friends less able to manage money. In the past I did run into this and it caused my savings rate to drop considerably. I had also made the mistake of living in a more extravegant manner thus advertising the fact that I had loads of income beyond what I needed for monthly expenses. I do feel like saving for potential retirement is a legitiment thing to do that I should feel bad for doing. Most of the people who came to me for money had some sort of retirement plan through their jobs. I’m self-employed so I must take responsibility for my own future. If I can retire on a modest amount of passive income then I would be in a much better position to help others out. These days I don’t give away serious sums of money, but as I always did before I will do my best to help those in need learn how to manage what money they have, or find ways to make more or spend less.
As far as dealing with my country’s behavior that is exactly what I am trying to do. I’m seeking to find and model other ways of living. To demonstrate that you can have a fabulous life with relatively little in the way of material resources. It may not be an effective strategy in the end. You may have your own way of trying to address these issues, but this is what I’m doing. I’ve been sharing ideas behind frugal living for many years now. From time to time I do hear back from people that it opened their eyes and made a difference in their life so I keep doing it. It’s something I can do to effect change.
Bytesmiths, I don’t entirely disagree with you that passive income is an illusion. I do understand that our money system is based on endless exponential growth and obviously can’t go on as it is forever. This is why I tried to make the point that this is something that can work where we are right now. How long can it last? I don’t know. Will things collapse fast or slowly? I don’t know.
If everybody did this right now we’d be in a fabulous place! I say this because why I’m presenting it as an idea is not to get everyone to early retirement. That is just the potential incentive that exists now to encourage people to start living way below their means. So if everyone started doing it we would suddenly be using way fewer resources and living much lighter on the planet. Hopefully most would also discover that high consumption lifestyles are also not needed or perhaps even good for happy fulfilled lives. If everyone did this right now we would have that movement and radical change Chris was talking about. It’s not really about early retirement it’s about moving to more sustainable practices. I’m trying to help people do that by driving home the point that you can get economic benefit NOW and in the future by learning to live on less and being more sustainable. I sense that many people feel like making such choices means giving things up and having a lower quality of life. I don’t find that to be the case.
Certainly finding ways to live without a need for tertiary wealth focusing instead on going directly with secondary and primary wealth is a great way to go. I’ve certainly been doing that myself. It’s one of my ways to live on less income! I do have a small amount of property I’ve been working for years to develop with food producing plants. Last year I finished building a small greenhouse and this year it has been providing so much food I’ve been able to drastically cut back grocery shopping. Before the end of the year I hope to have a rocket mass stove built for my home. If it works as I expect then my property should be able to sustainably provide all my home heating fuel for as long as trees can grow here. I did invest in a couple off-grid solar systems so this is now providing all my electric needs. In hindsight this might not have been the most sustainable thing to do for the planet. Just the initial step of learning to use very little electricity may have been the best place to stop.
Anyway, the library is closing. Hopefully my internet is working at home again. If not I will be disappearing from cyberspace for a while.
sorry duplicate post.
But will not be true in all cases. Nonetheless, in general it is true. The looters loot as effectively as they can, not caring about what destructrion they do – or sometimes deliberately adding to the destruction. Look what the Chesapeake Police department did to the sweet little old black lady who lives behind me, three days after a black man shot at them, and then ran into our trailer park.
They came in to Portsmouth, bashed in her windows, teargassed the place, then tore apart the insides of her apartment.
I can’t not help; but I also can’t help. The destruction is more than I know how to handle. She’s living there now, but showing seizures. The cost is more than I know what to do.
Those who war on their neighbors do this regularly. The result is a huge human need that drains those who DON’T war on their neighbors. But as far as I can tell, it is by design and intent.
I kindof think that the problem is that although we instituted courts, we never bothered to institute courts of justice.
If current rates of global soil degradation continue, it’s estimated we may only have 60 years of farming left.
PM sent. Others who are interested, please PM me.
For reasons I’m willing to discuss privately, I cannot put the details in a public forum at this time.
… until the good soil farms get reassigned to industrial farms because they steward their land better, producing more food for the industrial-military complex.
It’s sixty years of farming left.
I fully expect the gov. to indenture us to our farm to produce for them.
I fully expect the best way to avoid starving in the future is to start right now to put yourself in control of your own food supply.And that is exactly what the majority of us here and in similar groups are doing. The thing is, boots on the ground might look different for each person/family's unique situation. There are so many variables that need to be taken into account for the choices one makes about how to do this: age, gender, physical/mental capabilities, persona, financial status, family status, location, skill sets, and so on. We are successful when we do what works best for ourselves. What works well for some does not work well for others. Some will thrive in co-op or communal type situations, others will not. But that does not mean they cannot thrive using a different model that better aligns with their own particular life situations. I loved the Eliot Coleman quote as it cogently captures what I think we here all believe and are actively working towards, albeit in different ways. And that is okay because we need diversity in our approaches in order to provide as many options as are possible to as many people as is possible. When there are more choices in how one wants to go about living and growning their own food supply, perhaps more will be inclined to do so. That does not however solve the issue of general ignorance as to why we need to be food self-sufficient. We could pass laws everywhere enabling people to use all available urban space such as along roads and on medians for growing food, and to have backyard chickens and other small animals. But until they see the need for it I surmise most will still be inclined to go buy food. Those things are enacted here where I live, but walks in my environs, a hotbed of eco-minded people, reveals few are taking advantage of this. And this in region where approx. 60% of the population are renters. There is opportunity to grow food, but few takers. There are many reasons I suspect, theft being one of them. But at the end of the day there is simply no sense of urgency or feeling that there is an imminent crisis. I do not think people in general will do these things until they have to. Attitudinal change remains the biggest barrier. That is hard to stomach because those who will not change, the vast majority, are taking us, the slim minority, down with them. And try as we might, I really do not believe anymore that there is a damn thing we can do about it. I used to believe, but I don't anymore. This will not change what I do or the efforts I make. I cannot go back to the land of ignornance is bliss. I can however work harder to live in the present moment and enjoy my life as much as is possible now; and worry less about that outside of my sphere of influence which I cannot control. Jan
I’m actually more hopeful than I’ve been for some time. The source of my hope is the new understanding of the potential for restoring the carbon and water cycles that we have so disrupted through our impact on land over thousands of years, particuarly since we put that impact on steroids with fossil fuels and chemicals.
Soil is an incredible leverage point. A focus on restoring a healthy soil carbon sponge can flip a system into a positive feedback that sequesters carbon, increases water holding capacity and infiltration, reduces or eliminates input costs, produces more nutrient dense foods, increases biodiversity, and increases profitability.
So much of our focus in terms of ecological issues is to reduce our impact, be less bad. We must INCREASE our impact in positive ways. We must act with agency to produce a world worth inheriting as Chris and Adam have so eloquently challenged us.
Our understanding of the soil beneath our feet has increased tremendously in the last few decades. This new knowledge has shown not only how we’ve damaged systems through our ignorant, though well meaning, interventions, but also that we can reverse this process. The exciting part for me is that we have examples of practitioners who have been leading the way in implementing these methods and being more profitable.
The question for me is how do we accelerate the implementation of these practices? How can this be scaled to the point that it can actually move the needle? There are many wonderful people who have been teaching these strategies. But we’re asking a lot of our farmers to accept all the risk of changing their management from the accepted and subsidized existing practices to something new. It takes a long time for a new paradigm to be accepted, it took a couple of hundred years for the germ theory of disease to become accepted!
Even though we have examples of farmers producing comparable yields, at lower costs, of higher nutrient density and selling at higher price points, it’s very slow to attract new converts from established farmers with so much at risk and working on slim margins. So what do we do when confronted with the difficulty of switching paradigms?
For me and my partners the answer is to start an Agroforestry project that aims to produce perennial staple food crops with livestock and annuals in a manner that improves the resource base, sequesters carbon, increases biodiversity and improves water resilience. We’re doing it by planning to acheive the scale necessary to make it work by partnering with investors through an equity rather than debt model.
I don’t have any delusions that what we are doing will fundamentally shift anything in our wider picture. I’m sure the chances of this kind of approach being adopted at a wide enough scale, in time, are slim. However, I can’t think of a better way to spend my remaining years. No matter what, we will be planting tens of thousands of trees, producing healthy food, providing jobs, and increasing biodiversity.
Encouraging this type of change is possible for all of us.
Search out regenerative farmers and support them by buying their products. It may be a bit more expensive but you’ll probably come out ahead when you factor in healthcare costs.
If you are at a place and time in your life that allows for it, try working on these farms.
If you have more capital than time or energy, partner with those who have those but lack the means.
We must all be active in supporting what we want to see. We don’t need to wait on more studies in peer reviewed journals. We will make mistakes, that’s how we learn and improve. We have no choice but to try. If we can establish more successful models with processing and marketing channels it will be easier for others to plug into and increase their adoption.
I’m hoping to leave a legacy for my kids and their kids of a productive perennial agriculture of chesnuts, hazels, fruits and livestock that once established will persist for generations. The inputs on these systems will drop largely to harvest with periodic disturbance. Let’s use the fossil fuels that are readily available now to establish systems that can thrive without them later!
Kevin