WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO?

People don’t want to own things. People want to do things.

The other day I overheard a conversation between students. One of them had a new cell phone. It suddenly struck me that the others weren’t interested in the phone, but in what it could DO.

Isn’t that why people buy boats, campers, hot tubs, swimming pools, fishing rods, duck blinds and whatever? People like to do things. They even often enjoy puttering around with cleaning the pool and maintaining the camper. After all, there is no farm to care for.

At first I thought about how people like movies, television, and entertainment. But then I realized that what those things do is make you believe you are doing something. The sounds, visuals, conflict, romance, and even news reports convince us for awhile that we are doing those very things. For a little while, we think we truly matter.

Of course, when the movie ends we discover that we haven’t done anything at all, we feel even more useless than before. That is the danger of modern entertainment.

There was always something to do on the farm. One could do something different every day of the week and still have things to do. But in the urban setting it is much harder to find things to do that are constructive and productive.

I am not sure how to use this insight productively. People need things to do. Do you have any ideas?

GROSS NATIONAL PRODUCT (GNP) AS DISEASE INDICATOR

Can a country survive when it is more profitable to be sick or broken than to be well or repaired? Soon the major portion of our Gross National Product will not be about production but about health care. No one can make money out of keeping people healthy, so we are worth more to our country sick and well. What if you stop receiving unemployment benefits? Will the GNP go down because you have nothing to spend. Of course, these ideas are only true if the only measure of value is the economy.

This is true of almost everything. For example, instead of talking about the life of one person, what if we examine the value of one marriage and family. If a husband and wife are united in their goals and committed to their marriage, they will work diligently to purchase a home, care for it properly, raise children, educate them, and try to be productive in the community. They will be of great worth that community as will their children as they grow into responsible adults. But they will not be very worth as much financially to the community because they will be frugal and consume less.

But they will be worth more, financially, to the economy, if they divorce. They will no longer be able to help each other out. There won’t be two people to help with the children and there will have to be two houses instead of one. Instead of producing part of their own food they will have to purchase more because there is no time to garden. They will have to purchase more processed foods because there is less time to cook. They will eat out more often. There will be legal bills, and trips back and forth to share children, and more cell phones so the children can stay in contact. More computers, TV’s, stoves, refrigerators, furniture, cars and such will be needed for two households.

The divorced family is worth so much less to the community generally, but so much more to the financial economy. Could the same thing be said for neighborhoods, communities, counties, states, and countries?

Perhaps the GNP could be used as a measure of just how bad and inefficient our nation is: the higher the GNP the worse off we are in all the things that matter most. Is the GNP a direct predictor of divorce? Could it be used as an indicator of ill health or failing communities? What happens to the GNP when people are paid to not work? I haven’t done the statistics, but it sort of seems like someone ought to look at that.

AGRICULTURE POLICY

In the last fifty years government policy has favored large agriculture which has displaced the population off of the farm and into cities. Now we find:
• the mega-farms in trouble,
• environmental contamination and degradation due to industrial farming practices,
• agricultural subsidies a huge drain on the government money (mostly to large corporate farms)
• increasing difficulty with food safety,
• and a huge regulatory industry on production and processing.

Of course, the displaced farmers all moved to the cities. They went to work in large industrial factories. The result has been:
• crowding in cities,
• expansion of suburbs onto farm land,
• increased demand for city services,
• increased taxes to pay for city services,
• increased land cost as land competed with housing,
• urban decline.
• And, as the economy falters, joblessness.

This change could, only come at the price of cheap energy. For under the US agricultural system for the last fifty or sixty years:
• food had to be produced in mass requiring greater energy and fertilizer,
• food had to be shipped long distances to processing plants,
• often food had to be shipped again for packaging,
• and then shipped again to the consumer
While this was going on:
• the factories required increased energy of operations,
• commuters required increased energy for traveling to work,
• and cities required cheap energy to meet the demands of growth.

Now one of the nation’s greatest concerns is joblessness, and it is the small businesses of the United States that are the greatest employers. Obviously government policy has promoted, even required, these changes, resulting in our present predicament. Yet these policies have destroyed one of the most successful small businesses available to men, the small farm. We now talk about farms and business as if they were separate things. A FARM IS A BUSINESS.

There is no question about whether we will run out of oil. The only debate is about when. If the earth is a hollow ball filled with oil we will run out in several hundred years. If that is not true it will be sooner. Either way, we will not see cheaper energy again. Can the present system, based on available and cheap energy, be maintained? Of course not!

So what kind of government policy could help us move into the future? While it will take many years and enlightened leadership to resist the existing establishment, policy that moved production, processing, packaging, and consumption back into local and regional centers would provide additional small businesses, employment, food, places to live, and use less energy. Present policy makes these changes impossible.

For example, a bill was proposed in the Colorado legislature in the spring of 2011 that would have allowed certain home businesses to sell food products under reduced regulations. These were low risk products such as honey, jellies, and fresh baked goods. The bill was defeated, presumably on public safety grounds. But the major opponents were supported by large agricultural producers, processors, packagers, and retailers.

Yet this bill would have been a step towards relieving financial suffering for many families, especially on the western slope, and would have been a step towards local production, consumption, energy savings and economic stimulus.

I do not wish to return to an earlier day. I would hope that changes in agricultural policy would create a more thriving economy, but one that was decentralized, regionalized, efficient, and economical. America does not need jobs. America needs work: meaningful, productive, satisfying, and rewarding work.