It was started by Litha, Stella and Marc in January 2007 when we realized that we wanted a place to learn and discuss what is wrong with Economy in the modern world.
Economy isn't a science, it's more like a state of mind or a belief system, a meme. We want to understand this meme and what is happening, and make others learn this too.
There are many ways to interpret this world, many ways to value Earth and Life, many ways to deal with valuable things. The modern world economy has proven that it cannot deal with and measure invaluable items. There is no way to put a price tag to something with an unmeasurable value - it turns into something worthless, like fresh air, laughter, clean water, non-toxic food, health etc. (Yes, we are ironic.) This is because Economy isn't economical in its true sense any more. Economy has become a system to turn real values into symbolic values in the shape of money. Economy isn't ecologically sound, because it has turned into a game. It has turned into something that should be called CHREMATICS.
Taste the words; Ecology - Economy. Aristotle was the first one to distinguish between the use and abuse of the Earth. When we use it sustainably with caring and husbandry in mind, it's ECONOMY. When we abuse Earth just to make a profit, it's a technique of dealing with symbolic values; Chrematics - Capitalism. If we don't even have words to distinguish between the two, it will be very hard to discuss them.
This is the starting point. Please read the INFO threads before starting discussions. Please tell us who you are and what you want to learn here. Please use the tag "DISC:" if you start a new discussion. Once again, welcome!
It led me to change career into Environmental Science, and further into the realm of Political Science. I'm now well into my fourties and I still haven't got a "normal" job, doing "normal" stuff. I'm still learning to be able to put old knowledge together in a new way, and to teach this to anyone who is listening.
Starting this group is an opportunity to put the knowledge I have gathered in this field since 1990 into a comprehensive form together with like-minded souls. I hope you'll enjoy it!
I always flunked in economy at school. It didn’t catch my interest, nothing could. I was however able to think logically when they wanted to sell me shares from the factory where I worked a few years later. My thoughts where ‘Why should I buy shares when it would mean for me; always having to work harder with less pay and less job security for a little dividend that didn’t weigh up to the hardships it would bring me. The ones with the most shares would profit of my sweat without having to do anything.’
But this also didn’t get me interested in economy.
I got interested in economy when I became involved in the preventive health care. My learning evolved around the essence of illness. There where so many factors that made people ill. The most important where our way of thinking and the effect of this way of thinking on the environment (pumping all the toxins in the air/water/soil/products and sucking the Earth dry of its resources for a profit based on blood and sweat). The thinking behind it is: ‘we don’t have enough and need more and when we have more we need to secure it so no one else will take it away.’
I found this a rather silly thought, especially because people where getting bigger, had bigger and more expensive cars, houses, equipments, more useless stuff lying around, food wasted on the one side of the world, while people starved on the other side of the world and nobody seemed to care, or ask questions about that. People did get more aggravated and hostile, depressed and suicidal, cheating on taxes and each other seemed more norm then exception.
They didn’t value what they had and where somehow programmed to want more. I learned about a lot of subjects (to much to list out now), but when I started to study the debt based money system, where money grew steadily out of money, while natural growth knows its ending, I knew I found the essence of the problem in our world.
The way we valued the world, was the way we valued our money. It became worth less and less, while we needed to do more and more. Ultimately leading to an economic, environmental and humanitarian crash. People need to know why the world works how it works. I hope I can play a part in spreading the knowledge.
I guess I'm the odd ball, not because I am an economist or accountant, but because I grew up with one. My Dad was an accountant, independant life ensurance salesman and bussiness owner several times. As a result his basis for how economics works rubbed off on me.
When I went to College in 1988 for Ecology and Environmental Technology I did well in theories concerning economics of the environment. I even got an A+ in maro when I returned to college in 1992 for my bachlors in environmental science. The teacher asked me why I wasn't persuing a degree in economics. My answer was simple, that is what my Dad did, I want something more.
I hope that my input can be of use and that I will gain some insight into how others are dealing with the economics of environmentalism. I know all of the industries I have delt with/worked for were utilitarian in their methods if not just basic plunderers! Oddly, looking back it was the ones who claimed the greatest environmental accomplishments that faided the most miserably.
