The Calculus it is a-Changing

aka CG as Benign Dictator

aka Stop and Pick the Berries

I listened to W’s talk on energy today (thus “the calculus is changing” -- it was my favorite line), as oil shoots up to another new high, as does corn. I’ve also listened to our candidates vying to replace W. None of them, none, speaks the truth, or anywhere near to the truth.

Here I give you my plan for energy and the future of the US.

• Stop all, that is ALL, subsidies. None to energy, none to agriculture, no more EIC, none to green anything, none to big business, no highways to nowhere, no around the bend mountain cooperatives, nothing.
• Re-start government stockpiling of commodities, including energy but mostly food. You may be unaware that there are nigh unto no stockpiles currently. Last source I saw for it said there was enough wheat for ½ loaf of bread per person in the US and that’s all.
• Once we have some commodities in, stop food stamps and start commodities. At a minimal level measured in calories. And make people work for them. Everyone can do something useful.
  
• Stop the freaking mowing. And road building.
• Ok, I’m going to try to not say “stop” anymore. Just assume stop everything.
• By executive order I allow any direct consumer of anything (that is not otherwise illegal) to buy it from the direct producer. So milk and cheese and meat and such is legal, period, on a direct level. Buyer beware, but the buyer only need beware his neighbor, not a multinational corporation trying to stick it to him.
• So is all health care legal and non-regulated on a direct level. If you want to see a quack and can afford to, go for it. But government needn’t pay for your high tech stuff either -- it is as much quackery as the other. And besides, we have to die of something.
  
• But vaccinations and teeth cleaning, toothbrushes and soap are government provided.
• As are “funeral home” fans -- cardboard on a wooden paddle. This replaces the “cooling assistance” program. That is a joke. The fans will once again be advertisement for funeral homes and churches, no doubt. Government should not do anything that can be done privately.

You get the idea. Don’t encourage anything except personal responsibility, and thus community responsibility.

What individual people have to do is, one, garden. Two, use less energy. Three, start seeing the possibilities.

I’ve heard a lot of people say that this will wreck our economy. Yes it will, so long as we are talking about the economy powered by oil in particular, and fossil fuels in general. But (and this is where “see the possibilities” comes in), it doesn’t have to be that way. People could take the economy and turn it to subsistence , manual labor based, human scaled, stable, community based economy, choosing to make things of real value. They could choose to stay home and pick the berries.