Good grief,

Why does everything have to appear black or white? equity does NOT mean equality.
Equity means fairness....clearly a foreign concept to some.

*Nobody least of all me* is saying make everybody equal and paid accordingly. What I am saying a fair day's work for a fair day's pay.
Not this exploitist BS Feral Capitalism which pays a worker $6k while the execs claim Millions.

Business ran in Australia for years where the MD got 10 times the average wage. The execs now get golden parachutes when they or the businesses fail and the employees get Zip and no parachute.

I have no problem with profit motive, only when it goes feral and creates GFC, which lead to 1/10 extra unemployed in the US. One year out, the bank execs who caused the problem, are awarding themselves millions in bonuses. Because with handouts they are now facing less competition therefore easier profits.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8455603.stm
Read the news not the comics! although sometimes they seem interchangeable.

BTW I'm not advocating we go back to the 60s but there is a figure in between then and the obscenity now.

This is not socialism! This is common sense. Add to that the debt bubble is still with us and all hell could break loose. There is still $600 Trillion toxic debt out there somewhere.
What happens if China decides it wants its money back

Thanks Bronwyn, Pelican and Mitchell :)

I like your suggestions Pelican, <"... the system can be tweaked to ensure more power is handed down to the people ... ">

I believe it would be a really positive exercise to envision how things could look post-capitalism-as-we-know-it-now.

For example, I have often considered how small community clusters could be strengthened and a lot of industry wound back to local scale.

Another way that power and activity could be promoted at community level would entail removing a lot of petty bureaucratic controls like egg boards. Allow small local producers to provide locally without government imposition so that we can expect creatures to be treated more considerately.

We have a lot of rural hospitals in disrepair but they are still salvageable buildings and they have operating rooms and all. Instead of everyone flocking to cities to queue for even minor work; why can't city folk travel by train out to rural centres to obtain some types of medical care.

Hospitals once had fully staffed kitchens using produce from local suppliers. Having all the food mass packaged in coastal cities and trucked to country facilities destroyed local jobs and markets. It wouldn't take much to reverse that to alleviate pressure on large city centres and rejuvenate rural communities.

Those are just a few thoughts - but I reckon we could have a whale of a time thinking creatively about how things could be reorganized.

The things that unions could achieve! - but they haven't taken a prominent role for a long time now. In health services jobs at executive level have expanded over the last 10 years while other jobs have been whittled away to too few maintenance workers, kitchen staff and hospital assistants. We need those jobs restored. I figure we could employ about 3 wardsmen; kitchen workers or maintenance workers for every single executive or high level administrative position or overpaid professional. Maybe if our facilities were in better repair, workers from the health professions wouldn't be so hard to recruit and keep.

Anyway, ...just a couple of random ideas.

Any others ?

Houellebecq: "Isn't this the little Green Left Weekly corner of OLO!"
Yes. I think you and Col are looking for the National Socialist section?
.....................

Benk,
I think feminism was and is a legitimate radical movement whose aspirations go beyond merely getting an equal slice of the cake. But having achieved so much (though it's still, comparatively, a man's world) initially, instead of gaining momentum radical feminism has shrunk, or gone offshore, and melded with identity politics generally. Politically, feminism has been co-opted, and culturally it's been betrayed by its own sorority--though to be fair, I don't think it ever enjoyed broad support. And as we've seen also with gay and green politics, minority politics gets absorbed.

Pynchme,
I still think global capitalism has to go the course--that is over the cliff. The kind of commune lifestyle you're talking about's been tried, and once again, assimilated. It'd be as divorced from reality as Amish society is imho. In any case modern westerners couldn't handle life in the raw; they've been bred as hot-house plants, used to a controlled and stable environment, as well as a conviction of their individual preciousness. Even those who could handle it don't have the option; we are part of modern culture and subject to its laws whether we like it or not.
Only a popular groundswell movement along the lines you suggest would have any hope, and we'd have to roll our political masters first.
Then we'd need a raison d'etre--that opening premise again, that we're headed for a cliff--before anyone joined in. Besides, the majority would never believe it, or choose not to believe as easily as they deny AGW, peak oil or their own pig-ignorance. The boardrooms and shopping malls and all the comforts and conceits to which we've become accustomed, are just to hard to give up :-(

Hiya Mitchell.

I didn't picture communes; but economic units emphasizing production of local goods for a local market. A localized community in a rural area could be a whole region with several towns in it. I am not entirely opposed to globalization - like of communication. I just don't see why every major institution has to be conformed the same way.

With everyone clinging to the coast in large conglomerates, I can see them being dependent on food, for one thing, that isn't even produced in the same country. If that supply is compromised a lot of city softies are going to be living in environments reminiscent of post cold war Russia. The trouble is that by then a whole generation or more of people with the knowledge and skills in animal husbandry and farming will have lost their skill base.

Our household made a mutual decision some years ago to be anti-materialist. It's very liberating to free oneself from the consumer treadmill.

As to Unions - see I believe that they have a lot of latent power that could be roused to construct family friendly work arrangements. We could adopt working hours with a start time anywhere between 7 and 10 am as long as 8 hours work is done. Or we could work four 10 hour days per week. Maybe people could do one day a week (at least) working from home. There would be a lot of work tasks that could be done from home and emailed back to the work place; phone calls and the like. It would also reduce pressure on office space.

If both parents were doing something like that with flexible work times and locations, there would be much less need for child care round the clock. Life could be so darned interesting. We haven't gone over the cliff yet and we still have the chance to reconstruct our living and working arrangements. I hope we don't need a massive crash before we get smart and creative; though I agree with you that if we don't do something, a crash is virtually certain.

Seems like you're at least walking the walk pynchme, kudos to you.

How does this anti-materialist lifestyle work? How far do you go in defining a want over a need? You could actually survive living 6 to a room and eating lentils and never washing or changing your clothes.

I would like to buy a shaver that lasts 30 years. Just an old style razor that can be sharpened (It could double as a weapon or for psychotic play). I have bought 2 electric razors in the last 3 years and they were both crap, and I hate shelling out for disposable razors or the $15 for 3 blades type ripoff.

This concept needs to be made fashionable. Products could be advertised as 'this is the last one you'll have to buy'. Of course it's a pipe dream. Nobody believes anything any more (quite rightly), every shop always has a sale sign out front and some cant afford to buy quality anyway.

On construction sites I hear builders no longer buy any good tools, they just buy that $20 nail gun and throw it away and get another one when it breaks. But I wonder if you could sell a 20 year lasting one whether they'd prefer it. I suppose nobody has the confidence the company will still be around in 20 years for a replacement.

It would never work with technology as it changes too fast, and fashion ensures quality clothes will never be bought. But little black dresses never go out of fashion. I think some company must have bought millions of them 50 years ago, so they've made a pact to designate them always to be in fashion.

I've long dreamed of your workplace flexibility. Actually if feminists could pull off workplace flexibility for men I think they'd be surprised at how it helps women. They work hard not smart those chicks.

The problem is no boss believes people do any work when they 'work form home', and they're right in most cases.

Pynchme

<< Our household made a mutual decision some years ago to be anti-materialist. It's very liberating to free oneself from the consumer treadmill. >>

We've also become much more frugal and I agree it's a liberating way to live. I walk into a shopping centre now and find very little of it has any real appeal, unless I'm specifically looking for something I need. I can go weeks without shopping, apart from food and basic household items and I love the freedom it gives me. Even with C/mas shopping I buy most of it from Amnesty and Fair Trade catalogues. That way I feel I really am giving, not merely feeding some corporate conglomerate's bottom line.

It's frustrating though that our best individual efforts are so often thwarted by the way our economy is organized. The profit imperative rules, and conservation comes a poor second. As pointed out by Houellebeqc, we often have little choice but to purchase throw-away items where we once could have bought something repairable. So much of what we throw away is environmentally toxic too, but it takes a deal of determination to have things recycled, repaired or reused. I'm often forced to throw away things that I know should have lasted much longer or that should have been repairable and kept in usage.

As much as I hate to admit it, I think Houllebeqc's claim that nothing will change until it's seen to be 'fashionable' is pretty much spot on. Being the 'right' thing to do is not going to cut it for most people, at least not until we get much closer to that inevitable collapse. But therein lies the rub, how do you make any worthwhile concept fashionable without getting advertising and big business on side? And how do you get them to market an idea contary to their short-term profit motive?

It seems that even though we know it's killing us we're still all locked into this wasteful consumptive lifestyle. Will individual decisions to exit the treadmill ever be enough to effect real change? Or are collective more radical options needed?