Robert Paterson's Weblog

A measure of why we are F**ked

The system is rigged to divert our wealth into the "Casino" - why do anything worthwhile if you can make money by playing the game?

More here

This is also a huge driver of the health epidemic - More here

So what to do?

Disconnect yourself as much as possible from the system which is run as part of the game. For instance look at how the health system itself is run in America:

"Mercy Hospital is owned by an organization under the umbrella of the Catholic Church called Sisters of Mercy. Its mission, as described in its latest filing with the IRS as a tax-exempt charity, is “to carry out the healing ministry of Jesus by promoting health and wellness.” With a chain of 31 hospitals and 300 clinics across the Midwest, Sisters of Mercy uses a bill-collection firm based in Topeka, Kans., called Berlin-Wheeler Inc. Suits against Mercy patients are on file in courts across Oklahoma listing Berlin-Wheeler as the plaintiff. According to its most recent tax return, the Oklahoma City unit of the Sisters of Mercy hospital chain collected $337 million in revenue for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2011. It had an operating profit of $34 million. And that was after paying 10 executives more than $300,000 each, including $784,000 to a regional president and $438,000 to the hospital president.

That report doesn’t cover the executives overseeing the chain, called Mercy Health, of which Mercy in Oklahoma City is a part. The overall chain had $4.28 billion in revenue that year. Its hospital in Springfield, Mo. (pop. 160,660), had $880.7 million in revenue and an operating profit of $319 million, according to its federal filing. The incomes of the parent company’s executives appear on other IRS filings covering various interlocking Mercy nonprofit corporate entities. Mercy president and CEO Lynn Britton made $1,930,000, and an executive vice president, Myra Aubuchon, was paid $3.7 million, according to the Mercy filing. In all, seven Mercy Health executives were paid more than $1 million each. A note at the end of an Ernst & Young audit that is attached to Mercy’s IRS filing reported that the chain provided charity care worth 3.2% of its revenue in the previous year. However, the auditors state that the value of that care is based on the charges on all the bills, not the actual cost to Mercy of providing those services — in other words, the chargemaster value. Assuming that Mercy’s actual costs are a tenth of these chargemaster values — they’re probably less — all of this charity care actually cost Mercy about three-tenths of 1% of its revenue, or about $13 million out of $4.28 billion."

Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2013/02/20/bitter-pill-why-medical-bills-are-killing-us/#ixzz2LpNHXe6u

If you play in the system, you will be squeezed - it is how it all works today.

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Can a conventional organization become a network? A Case Study

I have been posting a lot recently about how networks work. My new book is all about why and how the Network model will take down all those that organize traditionally. So what to do?

You have a traditional organization. Can you change to become a network and so survive the revolution? I think in most cases the answer is no. But with the right leadership - FROM THE TOP - you can do it. This post is about the context of one organization that had had the right leadership and has made this transition.

It is The Nine Network for Public Media in St Louis - Formerly KETC Channel Nine.

TV as we know it is the typical traditional organization. You watch what we think is good when we choose and all you do is watch. Appointment media like that is dying. But The Nine Network of Public Media in St Louis is no longer that kind of station. Yes they still do TV but the choice is massive and you can watch it all on your terms and you can also participate. But this is still nothing.

The Nine Network is much more than a TV station that has taken advantage of the digital realm. It is doing more.

First of all it is becoming the local community convenor to deal with important local issues. It started by helping people tell their own stories such as what they did in the war. The breakthrough project was when Nine took on ther Mortgage Crisis at the outset. It called the meeting of all who could help and created the space to help the community help itself. This was so successful that CPB funded a national program where stations, radio and TV, in the worst hit parts of America became the local facilitator of the community. Now Nine is involved in Education and Healthcare.  Many other stations see this role as Connector as their future too. Here is Ideastream in Cleveland - another leader. 

Secondly it is putting the public into Public TV. It has a school that teaches the public how to tell stories on video. 

Thirdly it is connected to the St Louis Public Radio station. St Louis Public Radio. The two stations are physically linked in adajacent buildings and are building a Commons between them to enhance their role as Connectors of the Community.

Fourthly, 9 hosts the local online newspaper - The Beacon - that is full of journalists who could no longer work for a paper!

These local relationships are not one organization but are a real network. They are separate but together. They share resources. They look after each other.

So what was the context for this change? First of all there was the leadership issue. Jack Galamiche at then KETC was a man who saw what had to be done. Tim Eby, who had been chair of NPR, was the new leader at St Louis Public radio. He had sponosored the project that had all the stations in the NPR system look into the digital future. It is my experience that without the right kind of leadership at the top, traditional organizations have no chance.

The second was having the right kind of context. What would success look like? What could be the goal and so what then was the work to get there.

This was the context that we worked from. I think that any traditional organization can look at these slides and find a goal and so a path for themselves - provided that the leader wanted to do this AND could bring their board along too.

You will see that at the heart of this work is a shift in culture. There is no harder work. You will also see how, if you can agree to make this shift, how you then schedule work to help you make the transition. For we cannot change our culture by an act of will. We can only acquire new habits. We have to work our way into the new.

Culture map copy from Robert Paterson

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Maybe the Mayans were right - Is this the end of the world for the Corporate Age?

What is the End of the World? Does it have to be the total destruction of the planet or might it be the end of a worldview?

For the Soviet system, the world did end in 1989. This was remember a cultural system based on an ideology strictly enforced and top down. A small elite controled the system.

Prior to 1989 powerful economic forces rooted in the costs of empire has eroded the base of this system. The Soviet economy and society had to keep pace with America spending on defence. It could not do this and was bankrupted as a result. It had to show off its imperial power and had a major adventure in Afghanistan. Where it was soundly defeated.

All that was needed was a tipping point moment.

Are we in the west in the same place now?

We too have a totalitarian regime in control of an ideology. We did not know that until 2008, when the regime became exposed. Since the meltdown, the regime is now in full sight of most people. Our illusions of living in a democratic state have been shattered. 

Like all totalitarian regimes, the power of the elite has been maintained by offering us an eternal crisis with enemies to fight. So the regime in the guise of protecting  us, takes away our domestic liberties and involves us in massive foreign wars. The defence budget is seen as essential.

Meanwhile, as in the Soviet Union, austerity is the new reality. The people pay and pay.

I think that we will be able to look back and see 911 as the start of the end. 2008 as the time when the full vision of the regime became obvious to too many people to ignore. I think that the preconditions for a bifurcation are here now. 

More and more people feel that the contract between them and the government is broken. On the left, people look at the DOJ and see how it persecutes people like Aaron Swaz and leaves the bankers alone. This is seen as being illegitimate. On the right, the gun folks look at gun control and see that too as illegitimate. There is a weird intersection of opinion about legitimacy taking place.

   

When the end comes it does not have to be a big event. The system is so brittle now. And when it comes, there will be no going back. The illusion will shatter for all and the regime will be left exposed on the balcony. This is how it happens.

All the king's horses and all the king's men will not be able to put Humpty together again.  

Spain - If you are young - No Jobs - What about here soon?

My nephew Tristan is just back from a trip to Spain. It's worse there on the ground than we hear on the media. No one can see a way back to the old days. Here are some perspectives. As I read read Tristan's words, I wondered what was coming here. Is this stage part of our own future? What chance do our young have here at home?

"I spoke to one Spaniard on my flight, who in his late 20s, and who said that of the four men in his family, his father, himself and his two brothers, only he had a job. He added that his job was actually in London and that he worked as a waiter in a restaurant in London for 3 weeks per month and then came home for a few days.  He said that in his small village of 1,500 people he would be exaggerating if he claimed that 100 people had a job.  Of those that had a job, many would work for the police or the army and a large number would work for the government....."

"The question that people in Spain ask themselves is where will the new jobs come from?  With jobs there is income, with income there are taxes, with taxes the government can provide services and pay off its interest payments and debt.  With no jobs there is nothing."

I think that Spain and Greece are the harbingers what is to come. The final stage of the old economy shuts us all out of the game. I don't see either a reform or a way back.

But I do see an alternative. A much better life. A life we can all chose now. You Don't Need a Job is here on Amazon

The end of ideology - the awakening

 

Nature is speaking through us - ideology has prevented us from being in touch with out nature and with nature. 

As Paul shows us - the reaction to ideology is emerging itself naturally. OWS is another part of this deep feeling. 

We are the Lantern Bearers

Rosemary Sutcliff is my favourite author. Imprisoned in a shattered body, she wrote novels about loss hope and adventure in ancient times. Her most popular being about the time of the great transition as the Roman Empire fell. Her mind took her from her room to a wild place.

The Lantern Bearers is a book set as the last of the Legions leaves Britain for ever. Aquila deserts and lights the fire at the lighthouse as the ship and Rome leave. The book is about the loss of all he knew and his finding hope and a new life. Many of her books have this theme, not the least the Eagle of the IXth and my favourite - The Sword at Sunset - the greatest Arthur book you can read. In theory she wrote for young adults. If so aged 61 I am proud to be one. 

Here is my favourite quote - I feel that it speaks to our own time

‘I sometimes think that we stand at sunset … It may be that the night will close over us in the end, but I believe that morning will come again… We are the Lantern Bearers, my friend; for us to keep something burning, to carry what light we can forward into the darkness and the wind’

Gutenberg, Galileo and Luther - Portents of our own Time?

I wrote this for a book back in Feb 2005 - I think what I said then is even more relevant today than then - do you too?

Back to the Future - Going Home!

We are going back to the end of the Middle Ages. We journey back to the beginning of the time that gave birth to our own culture. We go back to Europe of the early 16^th century. We go back to the beginning of our own pattern. A great cultural system is in terminal decay and a new cultural system is being born.

Like now, this is a turbulent time. War has been constant. Plague has killed 25% of the people. A new world had just been discovered that is going to pump money into Europe and will pull adventurers away. Islam has just been driven out of Europe. There has been a tidal wave of social and religious unrest that has been crushed utterly by an invincible combination of a universal church and by Kings that are gaining in power.

More powerful than the sword of the King is the power of the media. 

The pulpit is the mass media. It is the only source of information for the mass of people. Literacy is confined to the Church. Books are rare and very expensive. They are written in Latin or Greek. Knowledge is locked up. Not only does the church control the processes of communication but it has a tight control on message as well. Its two main messages are that salvation is only possible if you give the church your total obedience and much of your worldly wealth. The other message is that God himself has appointed the temporal rulers over you. 

Then on October 31^st 1517 Martin Luther nails his 95 theses to the door of a church in Wittenberg. At the heart of these theses was a big idea. That people did not need an institution between them and God. 

A hundred years later, in 1633, the Inquisition convicts Galileo of heresy.  His crime was to use evidence to refute the dogma that the earth was the centre of the universe. 

These are powerful ideas. But when faced with all this power against them, to spread they needed a viral vector. With all this power lined up behind the establishment, open war would have been suicide. Only a virus could get though the immune system of the time.

The viral vector began humbly in Frankfurt, in 1455 at the Frankfurt Book Fair, 

In that year, Johann Gutenberg sells the first copies of his mass-produced German Language Bible.  He sells them for 300 florins each. This was the equivalent of approximately three years' wages for an average clerk. However it was significantly cheaper compared to a handwritten Bible, which could take a single monk 20 years to transcribe. The viral vector was out and the ideas that it carried could not be stopped! The lock on communications was broken. 

Who would have known then that a priest with a big idea, a man with a telescope and a man with a new communication tool would come together to shake the world?  

Who would have known then that the vast power of the universal church and of the divinely empowered monarchs would be soon challenged and be overthrown? Who would have known then that science would be born? Who would have known then that the individual would soon have greater power to communicate than the church or the King?

Can we see our own predicament in this light today? Is this not our pattern too? 

Is not our great problem that the great institutions of our time, government, healthcare, education, arts and entertainment, even business, no longer serve us but only themselves? 

Is not their organizational doctrine based on a dogma of control? Have they not divorced their world-view from observable reality? Is not this split from the laws of nature their dogma? Are they not prepared to fight to the death to preserve this dogma? Do we not see the entertainment industry as an Inquisition? Do we not see the IP industry as the agent of the controllers and not of the creative?

Is not the new “big idea” of our time to disintermediate the institutional middleman and to enable direct relationships? Are supermarkets eternal? Do we need factory universities to learn? Is our health dependent on a doctor? Is the news what we see on TV? 

Is this idea of going direct, the same for us as Luther’s big idea that man could talk directly to God?  Is not the new doctrine for organizations based on the observable working laws and designs of nature the same as Galileo’s observations?

Is not the enabling vector, a new type of communication device that is so simple and so inexpensive that it will give voice and hence power back to individuals and to their communities?  Did not the printing press give men back their voice in the 16th century? Was not pamphletting the blogging of their time? Was not a consequence of printing, mass literacy? Did the use of this new media topple the power of the old media system? Did it not change politics? Did it not push Alchemy aside and give birth to science? Why would we expect less of Social Software?

Are we not standing at the beginning of a new reformation? Has the wheel of history turned full circle?

True Health - Part 4 - The Push Back to Paleo and what it means

First they ignore you - then they laugh at you - then they fight you - then you win.

Today I am going to explore how we are about to experience all of this as we see the power of the Corporate World - more powerful than the Empire in India - go down. We see it now in media but we will see the final battle in the arena of health and food.

It is going to be in this area where the public will awake and discover how they and their children have been betrayed. I will show you today how betrayal is the key flash point of revolution that spreads the meme beyond the initiating cadre to the mass. 

All Imperialists from Rome to Britain and the Institutional/Corporate World have had the best of intentions. For after all Rome did actually do a lot good things. But the price of Empire is loss of freedom. And in the end this is what we all want. Espcially if Empire can no longer offer good roads, peace and justice etc.

The road to Freedom often starts with a funny man in a dhoti. How the Titans of the Empire laughed at Gandhi then. 

This process of ignoring - laughing - fighting and losing is what happens to the establishment in any paradigm shift. Who in 1935 could imagine the British Empire leaving India?

Who can imagine the Corporate Titans of our own time losing control of us?

Today time speeds by - what took decades now takes years. The Mad idea of working with nature and using her models, is very new. Maybe only 20 years old. In terms of a coherent way of eating and its relation to food maybe a decade. Blogging about this began in 2005!

In less than 6 years, millions are involved. The time of "Ignoring" has past.

The old system's immune system has been alerted. And the laughing and the attacks have begun.

"Paleo" is being talked about by the mainstream media as a joke - the Caveman Diet. Just another fad. Ignoring the point that this is not a diet but part of a larger context of health - that of aligning how we live to our evolutionary past.

Expect more "Jokes".

The "Attack" is all about Food Safety.

We are seeing concerted attacks on people who raise animals in a truly safe way - small egg flocks - people growing veggies in their front yard. They tell the mainstream that this food is not safe. Ignoring that the factory systems food is at the centre of our long term chronic health crisis.

Expect more attacks designed to raise the fear of the public and fear among the pioneers.

They will "burn" them as heretics. In modern terms they will humiliate us and take away our livliehood. And do it all in the context of keeping the rest of us safe from heresy. 

The establishment are powerful not just because they have a few Titans at the top but because there are so many functionaries below them. People who make their living and have their power as a result of being in the system. 

But the smart revolutionary does not attack this group. They depend utterly on the Titan. When he goes they go too. The News of the World staff get fired and cannot be rehired. The Mubarak inner circle and support melt away when their man falls.

But they cannot be ignored - they will be the ones who attack the new. Not the Titan himself.

You cannot win by attacking this system directly. They will crush you.

You win by allowing them to commit an outrage on you! It's very Zen!

The Titans destroy themselves by going too far in their attacks. At some point they outrage the sleeping people. 

In India, the innocents were killed at Armritsar. 

Look at what is going on in England now. The entire political class in the UK now has to step back from Murdoch. His henchmen/women have gone too far.

The people did not mind the Hugh Grants of the world or the Royals being hacked. But they cannot tolerate the families of war dead, of murdered children being the targets. And now that Gordon Brown has been seen as being defiled by the Titan, all can see that the only way ahead now to to sweep Murdoch away.

The people move when THEY feel the injustice and the betrayal.

So now to us. What will be the moment?

I see two tracks tnat interact. The power of social media and the increase in awareness that we are all being betrayed by the system.

The power of social media means that the secrets of the Titans can no longer be hidden. The big betrayals are amplified by social media. The power of social media means that dictators can no longer oppress their people without the world looking on. The more they assault their own people - such as in Libya and Syria - the more inevitable it is that they lose.

So what about us in the west. The scale of the deception and so betrayal builds every day.

• The War in Iraq was based on a lie
• We have also lost in Afghanistan trying to support the unsupportable
• The press is being shown to be mainly in the pockets of its owners - it has done its best to hide the truth
• Wall Street owns the recovery and the people are bereft - there is no growth in employment
• The young in Europe and the old are shut out
• The Euro zone and America's credit are on the knife edge but we were told that we have to pay back the bankers

Meanwhile the old contract is being destroyed

• The pensions that boughtv our obediance when we worked for them are going
• The schools and roads that we paid for are in ruins
• The justice system is being gamed
• Even our water system is for sale
• We don't own our homes annymore
• Our children did all we asked and there are no jobs
• We are told that we are not safe and our liberties are removed

You can add to this list - the reasons for consent are melting.

All of this is coming out of the New Media and the stories get bigger and get more traction every day - the Titans are shown not to care about us. They are shown to be cynical manipluators.

And now we come to the big lie - that our health and old age will be looked after by a Ponzi scheme of the transfer payments. 

This demographic and fiscal crisis will be the battle ground where the revolt will take place.

Rising oil and food prices and the debt crisis will all come together and the people will have nothing to lose by taking the risk of leaving the system. 

The entire basis of the western deal with its people will unravel and the people will be betrayed just when they are the most vulnerable.

So what to do? What do you and I do? Not easy question to answer but just as there are patterns of history that show us how true paradigm revolts take place, there are patterns that can help us see our best choices and what will happen in a pattern sense as the revolt gets under way.

Check back in a couple of days.

 

True Health - Part 3 - The Rules of the New World#2 - The revolution of our time

This post is written in July of 2011 - The Murdoch New Empire, the Police in the UK and the Tories in the UK are being rocked.

I think that we are living through a period where the Network is destroying the Hierarchical power of the establishment.

We can see now that this revolution began in the Arab world but now, this July, we are seeing that the Network is a real threat to the most powerful in the west as well.

I think that history will show that power is shifting from the Machine Institution to the Network.

This will be a real revolution unlike 1917 that merely replaced one top down regime for another. 

This is more like 10,000 years ago when a new food system changed everything about how humans lived and their place in the world. 

I think that the forces that will take us there are now in motion. Not the least that millions of people have been cast out by the old system. That many of these millions are well educated and have the personal power to act. These are the kind of people that drove the French and the American Revolutions that in their own day also cast down the old power system.

They are likely people just like you my dear readers. We are the immigrants in the brand new world that we will make for ourselves  - not in a new place but in a new "Space" that we create ourselves.

Without knowing it, you have just left Ellis Island and you are in this strange New World.

How strange this all is. 

Fortunately the pioneers have been here for some time and this post will show you what the new rules are and how best to get around in this new place and to realize its potential. 

In essence - people here in the New New World - or New World#2 - live the lives of the Hunter Gatherers - they live lives much like all hominids and Humans have lived for millions of years. But with a difference, now we know how all of this works. We know the science and we have tools that empower us to be this old way anew.

So let's wander around NW#2 and see how they live and work. Let's see the models they use. 

And by the way - all of this exists for real today - just in a very small and scattered form. It just needs organization to come to life.

Home and Work - Home is that old fashioned Home where we all live and work.

For in NW#2 we mainly work from home for ourselves or in tribal groups - some partners are next door but some are the other side of the world. 

We don't just do one thing either - the bigger cash generating deals are like a hunter bringing home an elk and get paid in cash by the larger system. But we do a lot of gathering for no money. We trade services with each other - I do some work on your site, you give me veggies. We offer up our place for rent and move in with our sister who lives down the road and we split the money.  

We don't just sell services either. With our network of 3D printers and jigs we can make almost anything locally. Hey we even make cars using the Wiki Car Company - an open source design for cars that uses a series of chassis's that we then adapt to create unique one off cars. For less cost than a mega car plant - we don't have their fixed costs.

More than 50% of the things we need - we make locally. All are built using Open Source designs.

The result is that there is work here for all. 

What were hobbies become "Livings". Your weaving, your knitting, your soap making, your talent for music or knowledge of astronomy, your mechanical genius, your coding, your cooking, your green thumb, your strong back, your relationship with children - your real skills - the real you.

No one gets super rich but all can be very comfortable and secure. Secure because no outsider can take away your living. For we are so interconnected. The gap between producer and consumer has been closed. We are always both.

Our children grow up in the middle of all of this. They see what their parents do to make a Living. They participate early too - either to help the family or to play their own role. Many children have their own Living. The gap between helpless child hood and being a participant is tiny. 

For the kids too are not shunted off into a world separate from life called school or youth.

Nor are our babies and infants given away to strangers. In our physical community we help each other a lot with the little kids. We spend very little money on daycare or nannies. We have family close, we have other families in the same boat - we have a good system. The kids also have access to tremendous resources from all over the world. They have lots of mums and dads - as kids always used to have. There are lots of Eyes on the Street in our place.

Our teachers are very different too. They are not "professionals". They are largely us.

Our older kids meet in study groups and use materials from the web. If they have a question that they cannot solve themselves - they can access the local learning network for advice. This local Network extends all over the world. Our kids can talk to the best teachers in the world and they do. 

We used to pay a lot of money to educate our kids for not very good results. We now pay a fraction of this and our kids have learned to learn and they mix with really talented people. They don't need a piece of paper to show what they have learned. They have a reputation that has been earned.

Food

So where did all the teachers go? Where did all the people with non jobs go?

In the old country almost no one did any work to get or prepare food. In the NW#2 food and energy is where most of the work is done. Everybody contributes here. In 2000, less than 5% of people worked to produce food and most of them were no more than slaves.

Now 85% of us participate in one way or another in food and energy.

About 30% of the food we eat is grown locally - and we are in Montreal. There are gardens on roofs - front yards - back yards in public spaces. Small animals too - chickens are everywhere and there are goats and sheep in town.

Nearly everyone spends time on growing and preparing food - we grow a lot on our own or in local groups in the community and we also help out in the country.

The rail service to the surrounding farm land is working well again and 50% of our food comes in from the direct hinterland. Many also go out there and help work for food. We help with the cultivating and harvest - for the Community Ag Model that we use, integrates the customer into the producer. That way we we keep the costs down for all. No immigrant slaves here - we belong to farm groups as helper/consumers. CSA on steroids.

Consequently, we pay very little money for food. But food growers do well. We all benefit from the Network Effect.

Farming itself is very different too. We also work WITH nature and not against her. She does more and more of the work as a result.

Farms tend to be small - about 100 acres and worked by a family and by the neigbours.

Those growing veggies mainly use Permaculture that needs no external inputs and that has yields that rise every year and where the work also falls. In many of these mini farms, the main work of the year is harvest.

Almost no machines are required. Almost no external inputs and certainly no agri chemicals.

Those with animals use a pasture system made famous by Polyface farms where grass and woodland provide the base and we rotate animals on the grass thus building up the base year by year.

In our food system, vitality grows every year. The natural capital increases and our need for external energy reduces.

We used to have no time and so had to pay cash for everything - now we have time we don't need as much cash. THIS is the central big idea in New World#2.

Like Open Source Software we trade goods and services a lot for no money - we do have an exchange now - so the Ledger can be converted into currency of needed. This was how the old country store used to operate. 

Energy/Travel - You cannot replace oil as a convenient source of energy - but oil is very expensive in the New World#2. So how do we still have a great life? We have redesigned how we live to reduce the need for oil.

This is why the home and the local community has become the centre. We had to go far away every day to work and school and to get anything. Now most of those routine trips in the car are not essential any more. The need to drive everywhere has been designed out of the system.

Some of us do go to face to face distant meetings now and then - it is always vital to meet face to face. But these occasions tend to be rare and are often largely social - the point is to bond again.

When we travel we mainly take some time and we tend to stay with each other or rent a place from a person. Co Working places are ubiquitous. Few have offices that are exclusively theirs except at home. Why would you pay to have an office all for yourself?

The Global Co Working Network also allows you to have an office in any town, city our country. 

Energy/Climate

Heat in the winter up north and cooling in the summer in the south demand significant energy. Here design has helped too.

Much of the sunbelt, short of water and boiling hot has lost much of its population. Those that remain have gone back to building design that fits this climate. Adobe is common again. Even here permaculture works and, as was tested in the desert in Israel, is able to produce food and this practice is gaining ground on the desert itself.

Here up north in Montreal, the typical co-housing of Montreal East was designed with winter in mind. With neighbours alongside and above and below, heating demand has been reduced further by insulation.

Community heat and stoves using waste fibre are common.

Large scale and long Distance Energy

The truck is no longer the centre of the system. Most things are made locally - much is recycled locally - even steel. We trade things we can't grow or make.

As back in time - water is the way that really heavy goods are carried. The seaboards and river and canal systems are the new/old highways for heavy goods. 

We have time now so we too use the trains and ships. 

Health

Big Industrial food no longer makes sense with very expensive oil. In the old country we used to spend a fortune on health. But now we eat so much better, we are so much more active, so much less stressed, we are naturally mainly very healthy and fit.

Grains depend on factory farms, serfs or slaves. Oil is too expensive and no one wants to be a slave anymore. So very little grain is grown anymore. We eat meat, that is grass fed, veggies fruit and nuts. This was and is our ideal diet.

So Big Pharma has little place here either. We are all working hard at breeding better animals and seeds that fit our local enviroment.  We share this knowledge around the world. Big Ag has no place in this vast cooperative effort - for if we fail here, we starve. The IP issue has gone away for the system that could enforce it has collapsed.

Most research now uses an Open Source Model - for we all benefit.

So what about the  Medical professionals?

Of course, if you have an accident, we use the Dr's. Specialists operate all over the world too. Even a small community hospital can have a world class surgeon operate - for she is in her community and telemedicine is the norm now.

But there are not that many doctors - and the ones we have are oustanding. But we don't need a lot of them, because so few of us are ill. 

The frontline healthcare system is now run by Health Facilitors who help us in groups work out how to get control of our health back. We pay them to keep us healthy. Health is all about matching our lives to our design.

Media

We get our news and information from each other. The old highly centralized media system was show to be what is was a shill for ther old system. They were largely made irrelevant as their role was exposed. And then their costs brought them down.

Most people have a voice now. A profound shift in human consciousness.

There is still an entertainment business but it is more of an aggregator. We don't need as much distraction as we used to. With a more full real life, we need to depend less on a fantasy life.

So how did we get here?

No social engineering brought this about. Much of the pioneer work was done in the 1990's. But it will be desparation that takes us here. Cities that can go no lower such as Detroit are along the path now. 

We will get here because the people who were cleared by the landlords will have no choice. We have to eat. We have to have work. We have to raise our kids. We have to have our health. In the old world all of these things are provided by the institutions. They are shutting us out. We either cannot afford them - such as healthcare or what they offer - such as public school - is rotten.

So we will do what we have to and create an alternative world alongside the old world.

In this new world, by using the network effect and open systems we will dramatically undercut the sunk costs and rigidities of the old world. We will drive them out of existence.

This weekend as I write this - we can see this process in action. The Bastille has been stormed. It's early days but we can feel our power and sense the weakness of the regime.

BUT they will not go quietly and the attacks we see on local food systems and the massive effort to protect IP in things such as seeds is a sign of their fear.

In my next post - The Inquisition and how to defeat it.

Going Home? Might Japan give up its experiment with modernity? What about PEI too?

So, I can see the Japanese people - a deeply homogenous society - veering toward an as yet un-articulated consensus: let's just get out of the modern world. Let's go back home. Let's don the kimono and the hakama, get us some horses, sharpen the katana, and kick back in the chaniwa garden with a bowl of green tea - and forget about all that dirty, disgusting, dangerous, heavy manufacturing-for-export (to an insane world) nonsense. History may record their industrial adventure as a weird blip of activity in a much longer timeline. As it will for us and everybody else, I believe. In fact, this fantasy about the Japanese shrugging off the toils of modernity is exactly what all the other so-called advanced nations of the world will find themselves doing sooner rather than later as we all take the road back to a world made by hand. The Japanese may just be the pioneering exemplars of the universal process.

     What we're seeing these days is an epochal unspooling of hypercomplexity. The world just can't take anymore of it. The world is telling us to cut it out or it is going to kick our upright bipedal asses. Of course, America may be absolutely the last society to get this message. We'll receive it in the car-wash, no doubt. On our iPhones.

via kunstler.com

This is the punchline of a very interesting article that is worth reading in full.

I am thinking much the same for myself and PEI right now. A bit like Monty Python's Life of Brian - "What did Rome give to us?"

So what has been the result for PEI to join the global economy?

Most people on PEI are systemically unemployed or under employed - for we make nothing that we need here. 60% of the GDP is government. We don't even eat the food we grow.

We have a Disney tourism industry without Disney's capital.

What was the main source of our real economy is on the ropes.

Our food producers cannot compete. The fishers are hanging on by their finger nails. The pork producers are gone. The beef producers are almost dead. Our vaunted potato producers are seeing the processors withdraw.

With the prospects for the future dim, our smart kids leave and our problem kids - well they create more problems.

No wonder PEI does so badly at school - why bother?

With a population that will be mainly old soon - who will do what work is left and who will pay the taxes for us old folks who will use more and more health care?

PEI has not done well out of this system. Being small and on the edge means that you cannot do well in a system that is all about concentration.

So why pretend that we should? How will still playing this game help us? Tell me how the trends will change if we do stick with it?

Kunstler suggests that there may be a wistful feeling in Japan about a return to the 18th century.

In the 1850's with a population not far from ours today, PEI was entirely self sufficient. Nearly all it consumed it produced. Most people had a place in society based on their contribution.

I am not now saying lets go back to exactly what we had then. But I am saying that a desire to make PEI self sufficient might be a great path to go down. What could we lose? I think that we could gain so much.