From Thugs to Hugs....

1. From a blog post at http://steadystate.org/remembering-history/
   
   
   Mark R. says:

February 3, 2011 at 10:08 am
The focus on immigration is an excellent example of tunnel vision and a philosophy of accounting which externalizes costs . US and other corporations have lead the “growth” vision through their compulsive profit maximizing ideology, and by rampaging in societies like Mexico´s, many African countries, and around the world, have dispossessed and destabilized small farmers and others who then emigrate.
Including nature in our accounting and economic philosophies is only part of the challenge. The employee-ownership and socially responsible co-operative business model as a basis for social democratic policies European style can make a difference. Fair Trade certification has opened a living and breathing alternative to the exploitive corporate market model. I like to refer to Michael Conroy´s Branded and Jared Diamond´s Collapse, but FT itself is discussed dynamically in a range of books already, such as Dan Jaffee´s Brewing Justice and Nicholls and Opal´s Fair Trade.
The refreshing views of Aldo Leopold can be intertwined majestically with those of John Muir and even the late Chico Mendes of Brazil to recall Doc Daly´s earlier forays into Whole Cost Accounting economic indicators. Enough FT and co-ops in Mexico, from Chiapas to Cancun, would make Mexico like some version of the Mondragon Co-op Corp. of Spain and the Buerger Windparks and Naturkosten natural food stores of Germany; that would stop emigration to the US and Canada, and reverse the direction. In fact, many would be amazed at the extent of the co-op business model in the US, Canada, and around the world already. According to the ICA- international co-operative organization, the total revenue is almost a trillion dollars. In Europe, co-op banks serve 20% of the market already. The UK co-op bank in particular is heavily involved in initiatives like promoting solar panels. See ShoreBank Pacific for a great eco bank model in the US.

2. vera says:
   February 3, 2011 at 4:51 pm
   Good points, Mark, except I would add all of central America to your model. :-)
   But then again, it’s easy to say Mexico should be a land of coops, and another one to tell how. How do you propose to convert the land of the druglords into the land of the coops?
   You seem to forget that American business profits by the masses flooding over the border and undercutting local wages. I mean, look at them… they can’t even say clearly to Mubarak to get the F out of Egypt. In fact, they have been propping him up all these years. You think they’d say yes to your vision?

Hi Vera (from LeavingBabylon.wordpress.com)

Thanks for your interested response, and extending my model to CA. By all means, and the rest of Latin America, Africa, Asia, and the whole wide world.  Full speed ahead!

As for the land of the druglords, your concerns are based on the conventional rationale that they are evil people, perhaps uncivilized brutes.  However, those people in those networks have to be understood as spurred by the excluding policies of savage capitalist corporations and their co-conspirators (politicians, etc.)  That is to say, the dispossessed don't all become immigrants, desperate and otherwise.  Some become drug thugs.  Some stories I know must hint at some possible scenarios for reform. Brazil's Afro-Reggae is a home-grown movement within a Brazilian slum that showed some forms of impunity in numerous encounters, shown in the film Favela Rising, for example. In addition, some evangelical ministers have entered into violent areas without harmful incident.

From the US, William Greider in his book The Soul of Capitalism writes about an employee-owned temp agency in Baltimore, MD formed mostly by members of a 12 Step group that helps drug addicts.

As for American business executives response to my vision, they are already engaged in massive advertising and philosophical propaganda. My strategies are guided by a focus similar to groups like Slow Food, Voluntary Simplicity, and Ralph Nader's strategy from his Nader's Raiders organizational and movement building days.  Corporate power in the US is built on a range of established resources like public libraries and universities which have not yet disappeared.  Moreover, the number is large of non-profit group NGOs involved in tracking legislation and promoting grassroots enterprise and resoursefulness.  Anyone can wake up to the truth, but those on the excluded side of the socioeconomic divides have some clearer interests at stake. As with the rise of co-operative Windpower in Denmark, Germany, and the UK, the elites have not prevented those people and those industries from advancing impressively.

http://steadystate.org/remembering-history/