This is true only in the UK. In the rest of the world, tho...
― hstencil, Tuesday, 15 April 2003 13:28 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Jarlr'mai (jarlrmai), Tuesday, 15 April 2003 13:30 (twenty-one years ago) link
But given the list you're making it sound like a certain kind of bourgeois existence is what is proven by history more than anything else. Marx might have approved (as the last step but one) but I think he was too locked into his own particular framework.
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, 15 April 2003 13:32 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Ed (dali), Tuesday, 15 April 2003 13:40 (twenty-one years ago) link
― James Blount (James Blount), Tuesday, 15 April 2003 13:41 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Stuart (Stuart), Tuesday, 15 April 2003 13:43 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Ed (dali), Tuesday, 15 April 2003 13:45 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Tuesday, 15 April 2003 13:49 (twenty-one years ago) link
well, i'm not sure about this. but perhaps this is kind of irrelevant? because, in the absence of a tangible structure, how do you stop the more powerful interests of society (the oligarchy is you like), taking care of business early on. i think the utopia you're positing wouldnt last long, it seems like total laissez-faire-ism to me, without a proper structure i dont see how you prevent the stronger and more powerful interests shaping society to their end? ie, are the oligarchy interested in schools?
ah, tracer has posted now. yes, this is totally on point tracer. and why i cant understand why ed thinks such a situation could possibly be a utopia, even potentially
― gareth (gareth), Tuesday, 15 April 2003 13:53 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Ed (dali), Tuesday, 15 April 2003 14:03 (twenty-one years ago) link
"The practical benefits of LETS are best seen in Argentina. The country's economic crisis has led it to depend on them. Called "Trueque Clubs" ("Exchange Clubs"), they have nearly replaced the national money system. With strict government limits on bank withdrawals in an attempt to prevent the collapse of the financial system, barter became the only way to survive. Turmel reports that LETS systems in Argentina have grown exponentially, and are a good example of how the system works. "In Argentina, the last estimate was eight million members. It's that or starve." While LETS will probably never replace our entire economic system, it could very well become a popular secondary system. If nothing else, it connects people, and makes giving and taking a little more fun." da full txt
concerning higher levels of organization like defense, it would help if not totally solve problems if their neighbours would adopt "pacific chaotic" frontiers with them by adopting similar politics (at least near their common frontiers). I think it is very likely that this is what would naturally happen anyway due to the memes exchanged by a dense population. If only tracks concerning such strategies could rain on irak and this info could be played on their national radio...
― Sébastien Chikara (Sébastien Chikara), Tuesday, 15 April 2003 14:05 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Ed (dali), Tuesday, 15 April 2003 14:10 (twenty-one years ago) link
the clown on the street corner with an AK47 carries his legitimacy in his hands.
he is subject to no due process, his decisions are completely unappealable, if he decides to riddle someone with bullets there is no comeback whatsoever.
that's very different from the situation in a country with an unarmed police force.
― DV (dirtyvicar), Tuesday, 15 April 2003 14:13 (twenty-one years ago) link
― nabisco (nabisco), Tuesday, 15 April 2003 14:37 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Ed (dali), Tuesday, 15 April 2003 14:42 (twenty-one years ago) link
― chris (chris), Tuesday, 15 April 2003 14:42 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Ed (dali), Tuesday, 15 April 2003 14:44 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Tuesday, 15 April 2003 14:49 (twenty-one years ago) link
I think humanity is not condemned to fall back into the same patterns over and over again especially when I think about communication technologies that are is getting more powerful and cheaper. Optimize anarchy now!
― Sébastien Chikara (Sébastien Chikara), Tuesday, 15 April 2003 15:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Sébastien Chikara (Sébastien Chikara), Tuesday, 15 April 2003 15:12 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Tuesday, 15 April 2003 15:20 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Sébastien Chikara (Sébastien Chikara), Tuesday, 15 April 2003 15:23 (twenty-one years ago) link
― nabisco (nabisco), Tuesday, 15 April 2003 15:27 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Sébastien Chikara (Sébastien Chikara), Tuesday, 15 April 2003 15:30 (twenty-one years ago) link
― nabisco (nabisco), Tuesday, 15 April 2003 15:46 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Mr Noodles (Mr Noodles), Tuesday, 15 April 2003 16:10 (twenty-one years ago) link
mondragon cafe proves this wrong:"The Mondragón collective was inspired by the successful examples of participatory workplaces already employed at South End Press and Z Magazine (in the United States), as well as the visionary writings on workplace democracy by Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel.
A central organizing principle of the collective is the notion of a job complex. A job complex is simply a grouping of jobs and job types that strikes a balance between creative and empowering types of work on the one hand, and more rote and menial tasks on the other. Unlike a traditional business, there is no hierarchical division of labour, based on ownership or management rights. Each worker-member shares in the decision-making process, as well as the different job tasks that the business requires - from book-keeping, ordering, and desktop publishing, to cooking, waiting on tables, and cleaning. One of the goals behind this is to raise each member's knowledge and skills, and prohibit conferringpower and privileges on the basis of one's specialized knowledge or training. How we operate at Mondragón, based on the parecon model, is laid out in our policy handbook*.
We feel that a participatory, democratic workplace such as ours is a revolutionary alternative to both traditional business practices, and traditional leftist workplaces (which often replicate the structural inequalities inherent to capitalist enterprise). It's a simple concept really, one that assumes ordinary people are capable of making the hard decisions that affect their lives (as producers, consumers, and citizens of the world). More than this, it assumes that we are capable of making these decisions in ways that foster cooperation and solidarity among all people, rather than requiring an economy based on competition, greed, exploitation, and massive inequalities of both opportunity and condition. Just the fact that we exist, and operate in a fairly organized manner, demonstrates that these ideals are not utopian fantasies, but very real (and desirable) possibilities"
Too bad I can't locate their Adobe PDF policy handbook.a network of such projects could replace the state.
― Sébastien Chikara (Sébastien Chikara), Tuesday, 15 April 2003 16:40 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Ed (dali), Tuesday, 15 April 2003 16:45 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Sébastien Chikara (Sébastien Chikara), Tuesday, 15 April 2003 17:20 (twenty-one years ago) link
― nabisco (nabisco), Tuesday, 15 April 2003 17:45 (twenty-one years ago) link
― nabisco (nabisco), Tuesday, 15 April 2003 17:49 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Sébastien Chikara (Sébastien Chikara), Tuesday, 15 April 2003 18:16 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Mr Noodles (Mr Noodles), Tuesday, 15 April 2003 18:22 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Sébastien Chikara (Sébastien Chikara), Tuesday, 15 April 2003 18:28 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Tuesday, 15 April 2003 18:30 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Tuesday, 15 April 2003 18:33 (twenty-one years ago) link
No, it didn't, because this sort of business model is an anomaly. This is a statistical fact. If it weren't an anomaly their press material wouldn't keep saying it's "unlike a traditional business" and "revolutionary" and "visionary" and harping on "just the fact that we exist."
It's also, as I mentioned, a business, which is the main reason why I don't see its relevance here in the least -- unless you're the rare anarcho-syndicalist who, like a pre-election George W. Bush, believes in the "government is like a business" trope!
― nabisco (nabisco), Tuesday, 15 April 2003 19:32 (twenty-one years ago) link
yes!! Seconded!!
― Pashmina (Pashmina), Tuesday, 15 April 2003 19:36 (twenty-one years ago) link
you repeat that this is an ordinary business but it's not! Go at it starting from the citizen then: the citizen inscribes viself into a network of communications and a large part of vis time is spent working. that's all I'm saying. I could have also talked about the importance to hold this anarchist model to the family structure: where everybody is equal and the tasks and decisions are shared equally.
Radical decentralization can maintain the equivalent of sociaist "nationalized ressources". Inspiration left me for now
― Sébastien Chikara (Sébastien Chikara), Tuesday, 15 April 2003 20:04 (twenty-one years ago) link
― nabisco (nabisco), Tuesday, 15 April 2003 20:09 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Tuesday, 15 April 2003 20:14 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Sébastien Chikara (Sébastien Chikara), Tuesday, 15 April 2003 20:49 (twenty-one years ago) link
― H (Heruy), Tuesday, 15 April 2003 20:52 (twenty-one years ago) link
the 'fun' bit was a gauche way to relate to the readers coming from a culture of leisure.
― Sébastien Chikara (Sébastien Chikara), Tuesday, 15 April 2003 21:02 (twenty-one years ago) link
Anarchy is stupid.
― Marcel Post (Marcel Post), Tuesday, 15 April 2003 21:08 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Sébastien Chikara (Sébastien Chikara), Tuesday, 15 April 2003 21:14 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Ed (dali), Tuesday, 15 April 2003 21:19 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Sébastien Chikara (Sébastien Chikara), Tuesday, 15 April 2003 21:20 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Sébastien Chikara (Sébastien Chikara), Wednesday, 16 April 2003 17:35 (twenty-one years ago) link
― oops (Oops), Wednesday, 16 April 2003 17:38 (twenty-one years ago) link
you seem much more utopian/rose-glasses wearing about how ppl will behave in a situation than i am. guess, approach to world
― H (Heruy), Wednesday, 16 April 2003 22:37 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Ed (dali), Thursday, 17 April 2003 09:38 (twenty-one years ago) link
FWIW.
― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Thursday, 17 April 2003 12:26 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Kerry (dymaxia), Thursday, 17 April 2003 13:15 (twenty-one years ago) link
Well, yeah, but looking over the history of the twentieth century, this has been all the harder to do when dictators are involved, to put it mildly.
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 17 April 2003 13:31 (twenty-one years ago) link
― oops (Oops), Thursday, 17 April 2003 13:43 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Thursday, 17 April 2003 15:48 (twenty-one years ago) link
* - this is not automatically a good thing.
― Stuart (Stuart), Thursday, 17 April 2003 16:40 (twenty-one years ago) link
― nabisco (nabisco), Thursday, 17 April 2003 17:26 (twenty-one years ago) link
Getting way off-topic, but... don't do that. Your tip is your vote. Don't throw it away. I mean, don't be a dick, but if you feel you've gotten truly substandard service, don't tip well. By doing that, you're sending your message either to the waiter ("maybe you should consider temping") or to the restaurant owner ("you know that guy who's always complaining about how he doesn't make any money? guess why.").
― Kenan Hebert (kenan), Thursday, 17 April 2003 17:32 (twenty-one years ago) link
― oops (Oops), Thursday, 17 April 2003 17:34 (twenty-one years ago) link
― nabisco (nabisco), Thursday, 17 April 2003 17:36 (twenty-one years ago) link
― nabisco (nabisco), Thursday, 17 April 2003 17:40 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Thursday, 17 April 2003 17:45 (twenty-one years ago) link
The museum's comprehensive collection was unprecedented. Saddam's secularism and his long-term interest in Iraq's archaeological legacy—in part self-serving; he inscribed his name next to Nebuchadnezzar's in the Hanging Gardens of Babylon—had enriched the National Museum's collection. (According to a Financial Times piece from 2000, Saddam reportedly made extensive suggestions in the margins of all reports filed by Iraq's archaeological director, Donny George. He also made antiquities smuggling punishable by death.)
The military's inaction doesn't seem to have been a question of choosing between protecting civilians and guarding gold jewelry. The Chicago Tribune reported that the U.S. military successfully assigned men to chip away a disrespectful mural of former President George Bush on the floor of the Al Rashid Hotel, even though it failed to protect the museum and library from being plundered.
Only two of the thousands of pieces of art that were stolen after the first Gulf War were recovered, McGuire Gibson, who teaches Mesopotamian archaeology at the University of Chicago, has said. Even if a sculpture of a bronze Akkadian king isn't important to the Bush administration, you'd think its own self-interest would be: In the eyes of the world, the war's success will be measured as much by what happens now and over the coming months as by the shock and awe campaign. And the United States now has a black mark that it could have avoided.
― Amateurist (amateurist), Friday, 18 April 2003 14:42 (twenty-one years ago) link