one option

Scott Santens:

What underlies a question like this is that it’s okay to force people to work by withholding what they need to live, in order to force them to work for us. And at the same time, because they are forced, we don’t even pay them enough to meet their basic needs that we are withholding to force them to work.

What is a good word to describe this?

…

My favorite story is Garrison Frazier. It’s a story I first learned about from Karl Widerquist, and included in this article. He was a freed slave and chosen as the spokesperson for other freed slaves. He was asked about slavery and how he could be truly free from ever being enslaved again.

Slavery is, receiving by irresistible power the work of another man, and not by his consent. The freedom, as I understand it, promised by the proclamation, is taking us from under the yoke of bondage, and placing us where we could reap the fruit of our own labor, take care of ourselves and assist the Government in maintaining our freedom… The way we can best take care of ourselves is to have land, and turn it and till it by our own labor…”

This is to say that without owning a minimum amount of land, it is not possible to truly live by your own labor. One must have this ability in order to not be forced to work for others. If you can’t grow your own food or build your own house, you can’t live by your own hands. This option must exist. But does it make any sense in this day and age to give everyone land? How would we even accomplish this? How would it be universal and equal in quantity and quality? What if some land didn’t grow food? How would this work in cities where our markets have created the dense populations of labor required for them to exist?

Universal basic income is how …

[link to full article]

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People have long been coerced to work by denying them access to resources that let them survive otherwise. The shorthand for this is “enclosure of the commons,” that is, fencing people off from what they can use to sustain themselves. The image of the engraving in the tweet embedded below is of forcible enclosure and expulsion, from Commoning, a Resilience post by Brian Davey.

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selling war: “it works the same in any country”

Hitler and Goering, Berlin, 16 March 1938 (Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-2004-1202-504) / CC BY-SA 3.0 de, (wikimedia)

eight years later, in Nuremberg:

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“the pain you feel is capitalism dying”

Samuel Alexander wrote:

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climate troll vaporized by Katie Mack



Short bio:
Dr Katherine (Katie) Mack is a theoretical astrophysicist. Her work focuses on finding new ways to learn about the early universe and fundamental physics using astronomical observations, probing the building blocks of nature by examining the cosmos on the largest scales. Throughout her career as a researcher at Caltech, Princeton, Cambridge, and now Melbourne University, she has studied dark matter, black holes, cosmic strings, and the formation of the first galaxies in the Universe. Katie is also an active online science communicator and is passionate about science outreach. As a science writer, she has been published by Slate, Sky & Telescope, Time.com, the Economist tech blog "Babbage", and other popular publications.

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bearing witness: the story of StoryCorps


TED Talk by Dave Isay of StoryCorps [deyv AHY-sey ov STAWR-ee kawr] in March 2015
All we know is stories. Some are helpful, some not. These are.

at 14:45, from the transcript:

I'm going to tell you a secret about StoryCorps. It takes some courage to have these conversations. StoryCorps speaks to our mortality. Participants know this recording will be heard long after they're gone. There's a hospice doctor named Ira Byock who has worked closely with us on recording interviews with people who are dying. He wrote a book called "The Four Things That Matter Most" about the four things you want to say to the most important people in your life before they or you die: thank you, I love you, forgive me, I forgive you. They're just about the most powerful words we can say to one another, and often that's what happens in a StoryCorps booth. It's a chance to have a sense of closure with someone you care about -- no regrets, nothing left unsaid. And it's hard and it takes courage, but that's why we're alive, right?


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being well

see footnote

being well is doing well by doing nothing more than need be done to be and let be*

if you know that already, you also may know this:

All we know is stories. Some are helpful, some not. None are reality. Reality is not a story. Reality is what is. And this is beyond words.

that said, want nothing, be well, tweet or retweet this, and otherwise spread the word – paradox alert! – however you want to

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image: juvenile barn swallow being fed – Magnus Kjaergaard [CC BY-SA 3.0 or GFDL], via Wikimedia Commons
*with loving-kindness, compassion, empathic joy, and equanimity

there is no other …

there is no other being than this being: all that is happening now

thoughts of past and future and of whatever else is thought are in the mind, recalled – or not – only in this moment, the present

there only ever is this moment, the present, this being: all that is happening now

nothing is other than this

no one is

there is no other being

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want nothing, be well

Abenomics enters new phase

In early August, Abenomics entered a new phase as the government detailed a fiscal stimulus package of 28 trillion yen (US$265.3 billion), roughly six per cent of Japan’s economy.

Compare with $100 billion as reported in the July 31 post on this topic, infrastructure: finance as everyone’s business


two-thirds of all Canadians back a guaranteed income of $30,000

Pierre Trudeau and Richard Nixon flirted with guaranteed minimum
income plans. Canadians of 2016 skeptical about cost

As many as 67 per cent of respondents backed a guaranteed income set at $30,000, provided that the payment would “replace most or all other forms of government assistance.”

However, nearly as many (66 per cent) said they would not be willing to pay more taxes to support such a program, and 59 per cent said it would be too expensive to implement. 

A further 63 per cent said it would “discourage people from working.” Among Conservative voters, this sentiment jumped to 74 per cent of respondents. But even in the NDP camp respondents were split 50-50.

Finland will soon be debuting a plan to pay every citizen $1,100 per month, and scrap all other benefit programs.

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