{"id":9690,"date":"2015-07-03T09:23:25","date_gmt":"2015-07-03T14:23:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=9690"},"modified":"2015-07-03T09:23:25","modified_gmt":"2015-07-03T14:23:25","slug":"what-choice-do-we-have","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=9690","title":{"rendered":"What Choice Do We Have?"},"content":{"rendered":"

What Choice Do We Have?<\/a><\/h3>\n

<\/i>As systemic solutions fall short, we must grasp the nettle of making our own arrangements in a time characterized by burgeoning demands and diminishing resources, capital and security.<\/i><\/p>\n

The idea that our large-scale problems could be fixed with systemic reforms is enticing:<\/b>\u00a0replace the thousands of pages of tax code with a simple flat tax without deductions, for example, or the replacement of\u00a0too big to jail\/fail<\/i>\u00a0banks with community-owned banks that served the public, not shareholders.<\/p>\n

But the attraction of reforms is a siren song, because our system is run by vested interests for vested interests, period.<\/b>\u00a0Any real reform is Dead On Arrival (DOA) because any real reform threatens the swag and security of vested interests.<\/p>\n

One person’s livelihood is another person’s vested interest.<\/p>\n

Toss in\u00a0The Enchanting Charms of Cheap, Easy Credit<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Our Spoiled-Brat Economy<\/a>and we have a toxic resistance to systemic reforms that require any\u00a0degrowth, direct democracy, writedowns of debt, devolution of centalized power<\/i>, i.e. any real reforms of the unsustainable status quo.<\/p>\n

So where does that leave us? With no choice but to submit? No, it leaves us with\u00a0private solutions<\/i><\/b>, by which I mean arrangements made on the individual and household level that do not assume the unsustainable status quo will magically continue to issue us our “we wuz promised” share of the swag.<\/p>\n

Private solutions subdivide into practicalities<\/b>\u00a0(securing multiple income streams, choosing where to live, arranging access to healthcare, food and energy, proximity to friends and family, like-minded colleagues, etc.)\u00a0and what we might term self-fulfillment:<\/b>\u00a0aligning our internal goals, priorities, personality traits, values and skills with the practical externalities of daily life.<\/p>\n

Longtime correspondent Bart D. recently responded to an email in which I expressed the all-too common sense of being overwhelmed–by work, duties, responsibilities.His response gives us a starting place for choosing our priorities and goals:<\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What Choice Do We Have? As systemic solutions fall short, we must grasp the nettle of making our own arrangements in a time characterized by burgeoning demands and diminishing resources, capital and security. The idea that our large-scale problems could be fixed with systemic reforms is enticing:\u00a0replace the thousands of pages of tax code with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[127,6964,4924,1302,769,6856,3721],"class_list":["post-9690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-survival-2","tag-charles-hugh-smith","tag-diminishing-resources","tag-oftwominds","tag-status-quo","tag-sustainability","tag-systemic-collapse","tag-systems"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9690"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9690\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9691,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9690\/revisions\/9691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}