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Voluntary Simplicity and the Steady-State Economy

February 1, 2022

Voluntary Simplicity and the Steady-State Economy

Voluntary simplicity is most basically characterized by the practices of mindfulness and material sufficiency. Through bringing mindfulness to our daily lives, we seek the maximum of well-being achievable through the minimum of material consumption. Well-being applies to all life forms on Earth, not just people.

The practice of sufficiency implies conscious moderation of material consumption to some admittedly flexible limit discerned by weighing both physical needs and ethical principles. Voluntary simplicity is about enough, for everyone (including other species), forever. The practice of sufficiency replaces the pursuit of affluence in consumer culture.

There are a number of synergies between voluntary simplicity and the social arrangements conducive to a steady-state economy. There are also some differences and divergences.

First, voluntary simplicity traditionally takes an individual household or “microeconomic” perspective of the good life. Most of the literature about simple living is addressed to individuals and how they can exercise choice within the scope of their personal lifestyles and families to improve quality of life through reducing material consumption. Steady-state economics is a set of macroeconomic policy recommendations. There is a discontinuity of scale between these two ways of looking at life, though certainly not a discontinuity of the values that inform both perspectives.

Both steady-state economists and practitioners of voluntary simplicity care deeply about ecological limits and social justice. Both see conserving ecosystems and reducing inequity as intimately tied up with decisions about consumption. The steady-state goal of limiting the scale of the economy relative to the ecosphere would probably be endorsed by many practitioners of simple living.

Second, there is little reference in the simplicity literature to population issues. But I would suggest that among most practitioners of voluntary simplicity, limiting population as a necessary condition for a good life is a concept so taken for granted that it scarcely gets mentioned…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Keep it Simple

August 26, 2019

Keep it Simple

Markets blow up on Friday on a series of tweets, markets jam higher on the pronouncement of dubious phone calls on Monday. The rapid back and forth has many heads spinning and makes for dramatic headlines as people are searching for explanations. To which I say: Keep it simple, especially in the age of the great confusion.

Background: In 2019 market gains have been driven by pure multiple expansion resting on 2 pillars of support in the face of deteriorating fundamentals: 1. Hope for rate cuts and Fed efficacy 2. Trade optimism. But in process little to no gains are notable since the January 2018 highs, in fact most indexes are down sizably since then.

And when markets are purely reliant on multiple expansion the risk for accidents increases when confidence gets shaken. Friday’s escalation on the trade war front again highlights this point.

And in context of global growth slowing an escalation in the trade war is akin to playing with fire as it risks being a trigger to nudge the world economy into a global recession. After all 9 economies are either in recession or on the verge of going into recession.

This morning I was speaking with Brian Sullivan and he asked me what matters most here, the China trade war, the Fed, or technicals. The short answer is they all matter as it is a battle for control, but how to delineate a complex interplay of conflicting forces into some clarity?

Let me give you my take on all 3 fronts. Before I do, for background here’s the clip from this morning:

China:

Occam’s Razor: The simplest explanation is often the best one and that’s really what’s happening on the China trade war front as far as I’m concerned.

 …click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Ockham’s Razor as a Guide to Slicing Nonsense Away

October 3, 2018

Ockham's Razor as a Guide to Slicing Nonsense Away

Ockham’s Razor as a Guide to Slicing Nonsense Away

Why “razor”? Because it cuts away the unnecessary and redundant. Several Latin versions but this is the one I remember: noli multiplicare entia praeter necessitatem. Literally: “do not multiply essences without necessity” which is Medieval for “don’t make your theory any more complicated than it has to be” or “the simplest explanation is the best”. Or Newton (another Englishman, four centuries later): “Nature is pleased with simplicity, and affects not the pomp of superfluous causes“. The modern American equivalent would be KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid.

On the anniversary of 9/11 we were again inundated with theories about “controlled explosions“. A great deal, if not almost all, of the “evidence” that 9/11 was an inside job is the presumed “free fall” of the buildings, jet fuel can’t melt steel, thermite and many many other supposed “proofs” that the buildings were actually collapsed by a planned implosion. I have never found this convincing and am perplexed why so much energy is spent arguing back and forth.

A more productive approach is to turn the question upside down which is the practical application of “Ockham’s Razor”. “Turning the question upside down” is a technique I recommend. And there is much relevance to an intelligent and independent-minded assessment of the Western propaganda war: Litvinenko, Skripal, US election interference, Assad and chemical weapons. If the West really had evidence for its accusations, it wouldn’t be relying on Bellingcat. Ockham’s Razor slices off the nonsense.

The essence of the “conspiracy theory” conspiracy theory is that everyone is so busy arguing over minutiae that they never ask whether the fundamental assumption makes sense. Does it fundamentally make sense that Putin would try to kill Skripal years after he was traded? No it doesn’t; so why are we arguing about perfume bottles?

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

A Simpler Way: Crisis as Opportunity

June 7, 2016

A Simpler Way: Crisis as Opportunity

Jordan Osmond and Samuel Alexander Image from ‘A Simpler Way: Crisis as Opportunity’ 2016
On July 27 2015, I posted a 2-hour interview with Nicole Foss that was recorded when we were in Melbourne in April that year. The interview -though not the full two hours of course- was always meant to be part of a documentary by our friends Jordan Osmond and Samuel Alexander. The documentary is now out.

Below, you can find the trailer, the full documentary, as well as a re-run of the full interview with Nicole. I haven’t had time to watch the documentary, just got the mail from Sam, but I will later today. No doubt, it’ll be worth your while and mine. I remember complimenting them on the sound- and picture quality of the interview last year. Plus, get the likes of our dear friend Dave Holmgren together with Nicole and Ted Trainer, amongst others, and you can’t very well go wrong, can you?

(NOTE: Saw some rushes, and it may contain a tad much hippieness and/or reality-TV semblance for some)

The trailer:

With the text published with it: 

The overlapping economic, environmental, and cultural crises of our times can seem overwhelming, can seem like challenges so great and urgent that they have no solutions. But rather than sticking our heads in the sand or falling into despair, we should respond with defiant positivity and try to turn the crises we face into opportunities for civilisational renewal.

During the year of 2015 a small community formed on an emerging ecovillage in Gippsland, Australia, and challenged themselves to explore a radically ‘simpler way’ of life based on material sufficiency, frugality, permaculture, alternative technology and local economy. This documentary by Jordan Osmond and Samuel Alexander tells the story of this community’s living experiment, in the hope of sparking a broader conversation about the challenges and opportunities of living in an age of limits.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

“Simple Offers Freedom”: Building a $500 Cabin Without a Permit

February 18, 2016

“Simple Offers Freedom”: Building a $500 Cabin Without a Permit

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How to make it in the wilderness certainly has its difficulties, but so does living in modern society.

Whether you are taking shelter from the elements and the harsh realities of nature, or from the stresses, panic and emergency crises of the city.

Building a cabin is a classic, timeworn and reliable way to build a shelter that can be made simply by a few men, or if necessary, by a single man alone.

It is enough to survive, but no guarantee of an easy life.

But it provides a path to a simpler life – away from the busy conundrum of idle and mostly meaningless existence inside the system.

As the man in the below video notes, “Simple offers freedom.” Indeed, the cabin life may be about as free as it gets.

He built the cabin at 10×10 deliberately, and cheaply – for $500 – allowing him to build without a permit, and enjoy the freedom of living off of his own land.

Practically everywhere in the country – suburban communities and rural lands alike – places restrictions on building that requires approval and permission. But most codes make an exception for temporary structures and those under a certain size – and that’s where you’ll have the most room to work on the project on your terms and outside of most restrictions.

For bigger projects, and the right to build without a permit if you are willing to stand up for it, see what patriot Tom Hyland did to live free.

Like other things in life, there is no one way to do it, but it’s a time honored tradition that offers its own advantages – for survival, independence from debt and life of self-reliance and preparedness.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Retrotopia: A Gift to be Simple

December 17, 2015

Retrotopia: A Gift to be Simple

This is the eleventh installment of an exploration of some of the possible futures discussed on this blog, using the toolkit of narrative fiction. Our narrator ventures out of Toledo into a tier one rural county and sees one of the alternative cultures taking shape in the Lakeland Republic.

***********

We changed trains in Defiance. The station wasn’t much more than a raised platform running along each side of the tracks, with a shelter of cast iron and glass overhead to keep off any rain that might happen along. The day was shaping up clear and cool; the town looked like old county seats I’d seen in parts of upstate New York that hadn’t been flattened during the endgame of the Second Civil War, a patchwork of clapboard and brick with the county courthouse rising above the nearby roofs. I could see only two obvious differences—first, that the only vehicles on the streets were pulled by horses, and second, that all the houses looked lived in and all the businesses I could see seemed to be open.

The train west to Hicksville came after we’d waited about fifteen minutes. Colonel Pappas and I weren’t the only people waiting for it, either. Something close to a hundred people got off the train from Toledo with us, some in olive drab Lakeland Army uniforms, some in civilian clothing, all of them with luggage and most with long flat cases that I guessed held guns. Once Pappas rolled up the ramp onto one of the cars and I followed him, I found that the train was already more than half full, and it was the same mix, some soldiers, some civilians, plenty of firepower.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Find Freedom in a Tiny House

May 5, 2015

Find Freedom in a Tiny House

What is a house? I feel this is a dangerous question, which holds within it the seeds of a disruptive innovation, so read on at your own risk.

Rethinking what a house is could change your life, and perhaps the world. Let me explain through my own experience.

Voluntary simplicity

When I was an intellectually promiscuous doctoral student my eyes happened to fall upon a copy of Henry Thoreau’s, Walden, a fiery “simple living” manifesto, first published in 1854. This book, like no other before or since, ignited in me a shift in consciousness that I can only describe as an earthquake of the soul.

It shook me awake from a deep slumber, opening my eyes to how consumerist cultures were foolishly celebrating a mistaken idea of freedom, leaving people materially rich but too often empty and twisted inside.

Thoreau’s writings also offered poetic insight in the alternative way of living now known as “voluntary simplicity”, a living strategy that seeks to minimise material needs in order find enrichment and purpose in non-materialistic sources of meaning and satisfaction.

The ancient Chinese philosopher, Lao Tzu, advised that “He who knows he has enough is rich”, with Thoreau arguing a similar line that those of us who have enough, but who do not know it, are poor.

The real price of houses

What struck me most about the writings of Henry Thoreau was his penetrating analysis of housing. “Most men appear never to have considered what a house is,” he declared, “and are actually though needlessly poor all their lives because they think that they must have such a one as their neighbours have.” What was he getting at?

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

Olduvai IV: Courage
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Olduvai II: Exodus
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