As both of my regular readers know (Hi, mom!) I've been reading and commenting on the Scott and Helen Nearing book, Living the Good Life, a book on simple and sustainable living written in the middle of last century. My first comment on the book can be found here.
I highly recommend the book and want to offer another quote for your reading pleasure and discussion if you so choose.
In Chapter 6, they discuss Livelihood - what we do with our time and how we make our living. They suggest seven procedures to maximize sustainability and security of livelihood. I suppose these are rules that they would suggest apply at the community as well as the individual level. They are:
1. Regulating the sources of livelihood in such a manner that all able-bodied adults will render a service in exchange for income, thus eliminating the social divisions which develop when a part of the community lives on unearned income while the remainder exchanges labor power for its livelihood.
2. Avoid gross and glaring inequalities in livelihood status.
3. Budget and plan community economy.
4. Keep community books, and open the accounts to public inspection.
5. Pay as you go, either in labor or materials, thus avoiding inflation.
6. Practice economy, conserving resources, producing and consuming as little as necessary rather than as much as possible.
7. Provide a wide range of social services based upon specialization and cooperation.
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Well, there's a little something there to make most of us uncomfortable. What say ye?
5 comments:
The Nearings are, of course, dead. This gives their work an excellent uncluttered perspective because from our vantage point we can see the sum of the matter in a way that even they couldn't.
Points 1 & 7: These two points have to be taken together to understand the Nearnings model. In their system, everyone, that would be EVERYONE, did what they called bread labor. Everyone spent on the average 4 hours a day providing for their own physical necessities in the world: growing food, making clothes, building buildings, procuring fuel, etc.
Then everyone did something as their "profession". Again, everyone. They might teach, preach, write, play music, etc.
The two paradigms were not mixed. They did not, as it were, deal in unlike coin. You might help a neighbor build his barn and later he might help you pick your fruit, all on an equal basis. You might help someone file legal papers and later they might play music at your gathering. But in the Nearings' system you do not mix the two. You do not trade legal help for potatoes nor pay back picking apples by playing music.
EVERYONE does both.
Points 5 & 6 are the real pearls of Scott's legacy and the ones most ignored now of days. He was an economist by profession and put his finger squarely on the source of almost all our economic and social ills: credit and interest. By not trafficking in those, it is impossible to have a wealthy class, inflation is impossible, real material inequity is very difficult to bring about or maintain.
Points 2, 3, & 4 deal with community. Here we have the clear vision of hindsight, or as it says in Ecclesiastes, better is the end of a thing than the beginning thereof.. Nearing very dearly wanted to create community in his lifetime and in that he failed miserably. There never was a community, neither in Vermont nor Maine.
The lesson gleaned from this is that Nearing's principles are a solid basis on which to base an individual economy, and even a family or homestead. But NOT a community. The only way such a community works is if each individual or family in that community is incorporating and realizing those economic principles independent of the other individuals of families. And at that point "community" becomes almost moot.
That is, if a person thinks a community would function and thrive on these principles, try it first individually. If it doesn't work individually, it isn't going to work as a community. And if it DOES work individually, the urgency for community wanes.
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By the bye, I was amused by the photo with the rototiller. Nearing "farmed" a 100' x 100' garden, when he was quite elderly, entirely with hand tools.
As I'm amused by your humility and graciousness.
Or lack thereof.
Otherwise, thanks for the additional insights.
It sounds like mostly commonsense advice for not overstreching one's financial resources. Like this old Saturday Night Live sketch of Steve Martin, where he promoted his book on personal financial management. It consisted of a single sentence "Stop spending so much."
Sounds like a recipe for oppression.
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