The mission of Mutual Aid Society of America, LLC (MASA) is to create a national partnership which provides its members with a high standard of living in rural America. Consistent with this goal, is to create economically robust rural communities on a self-sufficient, sustainable basis. MASA will achieve this goal by the vertical and horizontal integration of the entire chain for food production, distribution and retail sales; light manufacturing products; and intellectual services. “Reap what you sow” could well be MASA’s motto. What MASA will reap is a net high standard of living for its members and dependents, greater health, longer life, sustainable income, less dependence on the Private and Public Sectors and the engagement and development of the Ethical Sector. The “inputs” will be the MASA structure, “social glue” and our own mental, emotional, intellectual and physical resources. We will embrace biodynamic farming methods, sustainable and earth-friendly technology and the eco-village concept. The “outputs” will be sustainable high profits from niche markets for both agricultural products and light industrial products. The most important “output” will be vastly improved interpersonal relationships -- “permaculture” of both mind and body.

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Saturday, March 27, 2010

THE JOURNEY HOME – THE EXPONENTIAL POWER OF COMMUNITY

THE JOURNEY HOME – THE EXPONENTIAL POWER OF COMMUNITY
  • We can plan ahead and survive, or we can not plan ahead and not survive. Your choice.
  • By Jim Miller
  • September 29, 2009

We need a system which reduces the family's cost of living, yet increases the annual net positive cash and product flow to the family. The eco-village promotes this result. The Industrial Revolution provided much of the answer to old problems of production, wealth and poverty by expanding production to meet market demands for new products or more of the old products. Years ago, a person starting as a janitor, and possessing the will and skill to aspire to high paid jobs, could often ascend the ladder and maybe become the CEO. Now managers are in a race to use impoverished labor (here and abroad), and by banks which are complicit by withholding loans to innovative start-up and grow-up businesses.
This approach to personal and corporate industrial transition was dealt a mortal blow when company managers replaced skill and unskilled workers with newer and better machines. The blow even fell harder as many USA industries shut down and moved to China and other slave labor lands. The only “bright spot” was the transportation industry and the middlemen. Sea-going container ships reaped a healthy profit on the transport of a loaded cargo containers from China to the ports of the world at a charge of $3,000 a few years ago, from China ports to, say, Portland, OR. Now the charge is $15,000.
“Cheap Oil” initially provided the lubricant for the $3,000 cost and when it became “not cheap”, higher transportation prices cost the Chinese companies and the buyers a great deal more, which dug into profits and raised prices to the consumer. This trend drove companies to seek even cheaper labor and replace labor with machines. Most of the rise in oil costs benefit the oil producing nations, the oil refiners and shippers, and, of course, the middlemen and speculators. Middle East kingdoms have so much money, they are now buying vast crop lands in poor countries as a hedge against the decreasing agricultural products produced in their homelands.
Cheap oil also had a major impact on the population. As has been pointed out by many well-informed authors, cheap oil produced massive pollution, grid-lock rush hour traffic, and our “throw-away” rampant consumerism. Cities have for the past 80 or more years, been designed for the benefit of the internal combustion-powered vehicles, not people. Read: Hard-wired Traffic, by George Monbot, http://masallp.wetpaint.com/page/HARD-WIRED+TRAFFIC.
Municipal and rural planners and their legislative cohorts, have so resolutely subscribed to the “Ghettoization” approach to planning, that most cities will have to depopulate in order that most of the cities can be re-planned and rebuilt along the Eco-village concept. Current planners attempt to “fix” the problems of intra-city transportation by building more and wider roads, by creating expressways for buses, light rail and multi-passenger cars. Please read: Planning as if People Mattered: http://masallp.wetpaint.com/page/PLANNING+AS+IF+PEOPLE+MATTERED. These expensive, stop-gap measures are bound to fail, as the residential suburban sprawl proceeds along the path of the expanding freeway system. Please read: Dumbbell Planning versus Integrated Community Planning: http://masallp.wetpaint.com/page/DUMBBELL+PLANNING+VERSUS+INTEGRATED+COMMUNITY+PLANNING
The thesis of this article is that we need to change the “leadership” at all levels. A good start is the election of Barack Obama, but this step is not sufficient. We need to change the local leadership which has control of land use regulations, and extend that change to include the state levels. We need to “make a place at the table” for a different style of earning and having a decent living, that of the intentional community (IC), or Eco-village. Please read: History of Worker Cooperation in America: http://masallp.wetpaint.com/page/HISTORY+OF+WORKER+COOPERATION+IN+AMERICA
Now, the eco-villages are few and far between and have little economic, social, and political impact on the greater society. The “popular mind” dismisses these experimental communities as “hippie towns” or “cult villages”. If you want to know how small, worker cooperative “capitalist” (the bottom-up variety) businesses work rather well, please watch the Rainbow Grocery and the Cheese Board video: http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=rainbow+grocery&emb=0&aq=0&oq=rainbow+groce#q=rainbow+grocery&emb=0&aq=0&oq=rainbow+groce&start=10
This characterization only proves that the “popular mind” is grossly uninformed. By not allowing for change, our populations are headed into the coming “perfect storm” that of a global economic meltdown, a global Katrina. Please read: Lester Brown’s new book, Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization, http://www.earth-policy.org/index.php?/press_room/C68/pb4_ch6_datarelease/
In reality, most of the ICs are well managed communities. The Anabaptist communities of the Amish, Mennonite, and Hutterites, have been self-sufficient and sustainable over 400 years. Economic-based, worker cooperative, Mondragon Cooperative Corporation has been very successful over fifty years. Please watch: The Mondragon Experiment by BBC: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7565584850785786404&hl=en# For an even deeper look at Mondragon and how it can be used as a model for a USA equivalent, please read: http://masallp.wetpaint.com/page/Mutual+Aid+Society,+Mondragon+and+More. Findhorn Foundation, Scotland, has been successful for over 50 years. Please visit http://www.findhorn.org/index.php?tz=240 and watch the video: http://www.facebook.com/findhornfoundation .
Most, if not all, of the Intentional Communities have had scant capital upon which to build an economic infra-structure. Those which have survived, have grown slowly and depended on outside income brought in by members who also have a job or a business “outside” the community (where permitted) and have had to fight local zoning and land use regulations.
Rural America, especially the family farm, has suffered most from the “industrialization” of agriculture. Please read: The Evisceration of Rural America: http://masallp.wetpaint.com/page/THE+EVISCERATION+OF+RURAL+AMERICA Rural America must under go massive transition from mono-cropping, industrialized chemical treatment of plants and soil, to a holistic foundation for food and feed. Please read: Heartland Renaissance: http://masallp.wetpaint.com/page/HEARTLAND+RENAISSANCE
Local governments and some state authorities have created and continue to maintain massive regulatory barriers to the formation and operation of ICs. Please read: Cluster Development: http://masallp.wetpaint.com/page/CLUSTER+DEVELOPMENT. Regulations must be changed to allow for the creation of multiple eco-villages, such a suggested by the Eco-Campus. Please read: The Eco-Campus: http://masallp.wetpaint.com/page/ECO-CAMPUS. This status quo must change. Please read: Transition United States: http://www.transitionus.org/ . We need to re-create an ebullient America in the form of thousands of Coherent Communities. Please read: The Coherent Community: http://masallp.wetpaint.com/page/A+COHERENT+COMMUNITY. Thanks to: The MASA Plan B which is likely to work (still in the thinking-out, design and funding raising stage) is the World Plan for the Garden of Eat'n. If you want to start your personal Journey Home, please read:
Jim Miller jimmiller5417@yahoo.com September 29, 2009
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