The paper I wanted to write...

>Samuel Levesque

Position Paper 1: Taking Sides

On the issue of whether or not sustainable development is compatible with human welfare my answer is a resounding “yes”, though not for any of the reasons put forward by Dinah M. Payne, Cecily A. Raiborn, or Ronald Baily. While the authors question if sustainable development is compatible with human welfare, they fail to ask if industrialized capitalist corporatism is compatible with sustainable development.

Both articles are based on the premise that Globalist corporate capitalism and the so-called free market are inevitable, unchangeable, and therefore a given. While Baily argues that continuing the current course of development will result in the system curing the very ills it produces, Raiborn and Payne argue that while the system produces ills, it can be reformed from within and without into a higher-minded force for ecological and social good. In essence Raiborn and Payne argue for the physician to heal himself, where as Baily argues that smoking cures cancer.

It is my contention that any system in which a relative few control the vast majority of available resources in order to further profit those who own shares of said resources will never lead to a socially just, ecologically sound, and economically prosperous future for the vast majority of humanity. Instead the continued accumulation of resources necessary for life (land/soil, water, food, etc) into the hands of a select elite will result in a continuance of manufactured scarcity (which drives up profits) and manufactured needs (which increase consumption and drive up pollution) with all the human and ecological degradation that such a system entails, no matter how sustainable the practices of individual institutions become.

From my point of view, the authors of both works are simply engaged in greenwashing a toxic rainbow of capitalist dogma. Capitalism, at least in its current corporate form, works on laws that stand in stark contrast to those of sustainability, requiring infinite “growth” within the confines of a finite planet, requiring profitability no matter what the ecological cost, and concentrating wealth and power into tiny pockets, leaving a vacuum of the sort nature abhors everywhere else. Payne and Raiborn try to skirt this issue with a bit of semantics, using the word “business” when most often they mean “corporation”, the difference being that a business owned by a single individual, small cadre of partners, or cooperative members can legally take actions that are unprofitable if they feel the ethical need to do so, a corporation answers to its shareholders, who are legion, and is required by law to make decisions based not on the general good, but on how to maximize profits for their shareholders. If that can be achieved with sustainable practices, fine. However, if an ecologically unsound but more profitable option opens up, they are required by the rules of the market to take advantage of it.

Under capitalism “human welfare” is defined primarily in monetary values, and we humans are factored in as just another resource. True sustainability would (within the limits of human ability) strive to ensure that an empowered, prosperous humanity lives within its means as part of the nature world. Any system founded on the idea that some should gorge while others starve, that a distant elite should have the “right” to dictate local livelihoods based on their supposed ownership of local resources, and that “a rising tide lifts all boats” (which ignores the fact that it drowns all the boat less) cannot achieve the sort of sustainability that I feel is necessary for a just and fulfilling existence.

Boring, busy, and long

Seems to me that much economic thinking is buggered and blinded by prevailing myths about what life was like before the industrial revolution and the rise of capitalism. Which is why articles like this, drawing heavily from Sahlin's brilliant Stone Age Economics should be required reading.

An increasing consensus among anthropologists that hunter-gathers did not live lives that were "nasty, brutal, and short", in fact they tended to live lives of relative plenty, prosperity, and leisure.

We modern, industrialized consumer types, buried under a landslide of labor and stifled by a false sense of scarcity are in many ways far worse off, living lives that are busy, boring, and long.

One would think that with the increase in human knowledge over the course of history we could find a happy medium, but even amongst those that are working on major societal changes (sustainability, social justice, labor rights, etc) seem unable or unwilling to stare the truth in the face, namely that for nearly every wonder "progress" has wrought, said wonder has birthed a legion of evils.

This is not to say that I advocate the sort of return-to-Eden primitivism that certain lefty-greens seem enamored of (especially a lot of "deep" ecologists). What I advocate is the movement towards a society that enjoys the benefits of Sahlin's stone age economy along with the liberating (as opposed to enslaving, but that's another blog) technologies developed over the last few centuries.

Thinking that industrialized capitalism is going to solve the problems caused by industrialized capitalism is like thinking that tobacco cures cancer.

When in the course of human events…

It’s been a strange couple of months over here on the Lava Lump. Exhilarating, infuriating, frightening, inspiring, but most of all, tantalizing.

I’ve long complained about the tendency of my adopted countrymen to bend over and take blatant injustices without comment or public complaint. Oh sure, they’d complain in private, or in longwinded obtuse articles to the newspapers, but the rarely if ever simply took to the streets in force to demand justice.

Now they have.

Sadly, as proud as it makes me, as much as it fills me with a sense of solidarity and wild, apocalyptic joy, it all-to-often seems too little too late.

Judging by the reactions of the various ministers (including the ruling duo, the Prime Minister and Minister of State) at Monday’s open meeting, the ruling elite of Iceland not only don’t much care what we think of them, they don’t give a flying fuck what we think.

Sitting on their massive pension funds (that they half-jokingly “reformed” last week”), secure in their sense of superiority, they have the unmitigated gall to claim that they and they alone can solve this mess they are largely responsible for causing. They claim that the newly activated public that flooded Haskolibio and fills the square in front of Parliament every Saturday “doesn’t represent the will of the people”. What’s worse, they claim that they “cannot” step down as they and they alone are capable of carrying out the financial aid package from the IMF.

Hiding behind the skirts of a corrupt capitalist vulture is not fucking leadership people.

Hell, if the IMF is going to pull out if the current government steps down, that makes it all the more desirable.

Meanwhile, its becoming increasingly clear that the banks, and by “the banks” I mean the clique of bankers and financiers that control them, were doing some incredibly shady deals, deals that in just about any other country would have them up on charges facing serious jail time. They loaned themselves and their cronies money to buy shares in their own banks, with no collateral save the shares purchased in order to artificially inflate the worth of said banks.

And the government helped them out, by neither investigating, nor, as far as I can tell, even bothering to pass any regulations against such dubious dealings.

The end result is that the capitalist class and the ruling class joined hands to sell the Icelandic public in to debt slavery at the hands of a non-representational, undemocratic cabal of banking and corporate interests called the IMF.

Enough already!

People are loosing their homes and livelihoods while the government scrambles to shore up the crumbling corrupt banks. While the general public is stuck with price insured loans that continue to grow no matter how much you try to pay off,* the banks get bailed out, even though they themselves are in massive debt.

Does this seem just to you? The banks borrowed in excess of their means, and then, under the cover of secrecy and fraud, loaned that money out to the public at loan-shark interest.

This cannot stand.

The simple fact is that until the banks themselves are solvent, until they’ve paid off their debts, including those debts incurred in artificially inflating their stock prices, they have no fucking right to expect us to pay. They took the risk in borrowing from Peter to loan to Paul, and those who took out a loan in good faith, thinking that they were borrowing against real assets instead of fictional finances, are under no ethical obligation to pay anything back, let alone price-fixed high interest loans that lead to company-town indentured slavery.

Meanwhile, the IMF deal is already showing its true face, as across the board budget cuts begin to shut down healthcare centers around the country, and as the already swamped and under-funded social services try to point out that they need more funding to deal with this crisis instead of less.

Of course, if the IMF stays true to form, less is what they’re going to get. The last decade has seen a prolonged and active effort on behalf of the neo-liberal government to purposely under fund and mismanage the Ministry of Health, of Education, and all the programs that make (made?) up Iceland’s welfare system in order to give them the usual excuses of “efficiency” and “free market capitalism” for selling off these public assets into the hands of their cronies.

Just like they sold off the fishing rights.

Just like they sold off the Postal Service.

Just like they sold off Siminn.

Just like they sold of the banks.

I think it’s high time we refuse to be sold into debt slavery to protect those responsible for most of the debt. I think it’s high time to refuse to be punished for fraud perpetrated by others.

Those currently being held hostage by their debts to the old banks should refuse payment until a just and equitable solution can be found. In the meantime, they should band together to prevent, by force if necessary, the coming wave of evections and repossessions. People are more important than property.

Every fishing crew of every ship should refuse to pay the kvota kings the tithe they were granted by a corrupt Parliament. The fish in the sea are a communal property, and no-one has the right, or can be granted the right, to demand payment from those doing the work for the right to work.

Those who work the land should band together, defy regulations, and sell their produce directly to the people, without going through the government-mandated middlemen who profit from their appointed positions regardless of the harm they do their own people with inflated prices for consumers and deflated prices for producers, or the price-gouging corporate supermarkets run by a cabal of career con artists.

Anyone needing shelter should simply move into any of the multitude of empty buildings scattered around the country in the wake of the building bubble’s bust. There is no fucking excuse whatsoever for homelessness in a nation as small as Iceland.

And finally, if Parliament will not bow to the will of those they were meant to serve, if they will not step down, then We the People of Iceland, native and foreign born, men, women, children and youths, elders, mothers, fathers, sons, and daughters, irrespective of faith, creed, or political leanings should rise up and establish new, more just, more equitable, more practical institutions to replace those we shall overthrow.

Declare your independence!

You don’t even have chains to lose.

They’ve been repossessed.

*A good friend of mine purchased a car two years ago by taking over a loan. The car is a good, fuel-efficient, cheap vehicle, and the loan was, at the time, very reasonable. After two years of paying more than the minimum payments, she now owes more for the car than when she took over the debt. The same sort of financing was used on indentured servants sent to British colonies to prevent them from ever paying off their debts and hence enslaving them for life, if not the life of their children as well.

Jú sey jú vant a revólúsjón?

I’m getting weirded out folks.

Seriously.

I’m used to the news pissing me off, and even more used to the op-eds in the Icelandic papers making me foam at the mouth.

For years now my friends and I have been crying out in the proverbial wilderness, shouting “Sustainability!”, “Self-Organization!”, “Economic Equality!”, and occasionally “Rise the Fuck Up Already!”

To absolutely no avail.

Then everything went straight to shit, as most of us knew it would.

Now the op-eds are filling up with intelligent discourse about sustainable economics, about the cronyism and corruption amongst Iceland’s elite. People are calling for a sea-change in how Icelanders make their living, calling for diversification, self-organization, and economic equality. They’re shooting their well aimed barbs at the white knights of aluminum and fish and the E.U.*

They’re even flirting with the idea of rising the fuck up.

Which is encouraging, if a tad disconboobalating.

That’s my own word by the way.

I mean, what the hell am I going to blog about now?

But I thought about it for a bit, and decided that I’d indulge in some magical thinking. Seeing as so very many of the issues and ideas I’ve blogged about in the past have sudden appeared on television and in print, I’m going to throw a few of my wilder ideas out there and see if they make it into the collective consciousness.

For starters, this Saturday will see the third major protest downtown in as many weeks, which is downright shocking by Icelandic standards. Originally a call for Davið Oddson to step down as head of the Central Bank, they’ve now (better late than never) become a call for new elections ASAP, aka kicking the bastards out. All fine and dandy. I’ll be there, I’ll meet you half way.

But consider for a moment a couple of points. Right now the Icelandic State is in deep financial doodoo, and in order to pull themselves out, they’ll need to slash public spending. This will mean less money for students, children, the disabled, fewer social services, increased fees for supposedly “free” healthcare, and more than likely a package of tax hikes and the downsizing of many a public employee.

Public employees mind, not public officials.

So how about we save ourselves a lot of money, and simply dissolve parliament? We’d save on their over-inflated wages, their retirement scam, their “day-money” that would take me two weeks to earn, their gas-guzzling official cars, private jet vaca…I mean meetings abroad, and their teams of sycophantic yes-people hired at public expense to do their jobs for them.

We then declare the Icelandic public to be the legislative power, giving the average Jón and Anna the right to propose laws, gather support for them, and then vote on them in twice yearly democracy days.

Meanwhile, we vote on who gets the ministerial positions, for a four year term. Instead of being political cake for unqualified politicos, they’d become administrative positions for people who can make them work, instead of purposely running them into the ground so that they can be gobbled up by Mammon. So we get healthcare professionals in charge of the Ministry of Health, and maybe, just maybe, a FUCKING ECONOMIST IN CHARGE OF THE CENTRAL BANK!

Likewise, let’s save some more tax money by teaching the State to stop eating itself. Student loans are not, repeat not, income. It’s a fucking loan. You have to pay it back. Why the hell do you have to pay income tax on it? The same can be said for disability payments. The State taxes the public to pay disability payments to those who cannot work and then taxes those same payments??? The same is true of pensions. What the fuck? Not to mention taxing the interest people make off of individual savings accounts.

How ‘bout this? Just declare disability payments, student loans, and pensions to be tax free. Then lower the amount paid out by the amount of taxes levied. Everyone gets the same amount of money and the state saves on the costs of processing all those unnecessary taxes.

Individual savings deposits should be tax free. Period.

Not only will this encourage people to save instead of borrow, but any government that is already charging me taxes on the money I bring in should keep its filthy corrupt piggy fingers out of what I manage save of the money I have left.

After all, like most of us, I can’t just vote myself a raise.

I know, I know. I’ve ranted this before. Doesn’t make it any less of a good idea.

Another thing I’ve been happy to hear is people talking about CSA, or Community Supported Agriculture, whereby farmers sell directly to the public, hence cutting out the middlemen and getting a better price for themselves, while also providing the public with fresher, less processed, higher quality, and often cheaper food.

The problem with this is that when it comes to everything but vegetables, this is illegal in Iceland. You cannot, repeat cannot, legally sell dairy products, meat or fish direct from the producer. Instead you are required by law to sell (at an artificially low price) these products to State mandated middlemen who then sell them on to retailers who then sell it on to the consumers.

At an artificially high price.

Not to mention that because it has to go through the middlemen the food has to be shipped to the processing centers, often times located well away from the farms and communities it was produced in, processed, shipped to the retailers (through a series of warehouses), and finally comes back to the community either unripe and tasteless in the case of vegetables, or with all the fresh yummy goodness removed (in the case of many of the dairy products).

This is also why, up until the current foreign currency crunch, the cheapest fish you could buy in Iceland was frozen Peruvian cod sold under a Danish label.

From a supermarket located across the street from the fishing docks.

My solution for this is simple. BREAK THE DAMN LAW! If you are a producer, and you’re tired of selling your produce cheap, only to see it mixed in with other, possibly lower-quality produce, labeled with no information on where it came from, and then sold at a ridiculously high price to consumers who then blame you for their empty wallets, STOP!

Sell it direct to the public. Screw the law.

Just because something is legal doesn’t make it right

And just because something is illegal doesn’t make it wrong.

Witness the guys who have been out fishing without a kvóta to protest the privatization of a national resource. Fishermen have started it, farmers can join the parade.

Likewise, anyone who is currently paying full price for electricity to run their greenhouses or software companies should immediately subtract 95% from their electric bill, so they pay the same rate as Alcan and Alcoa.

Personally, I’d love it if I could get away with subtracting the percentage of my taxes that goes into the pockets and retirement funds of parliamentarians. Not to mention the percentage that goes to the State Church and a law enforcement and immigration authority run by a person who anywhere with actual free speech (where one can state an opinion without being dragged into court for libel) could be described as a paranoid fascist bootlicker with a uniform fetish.

But hey whatcha gonna do?

While we’re at it, let’s renationalize the kvóta system, and grant each and every community that has a harbor a percentage of the total catch, based on population and infrastructure (meaning that communities with limited economies would get a bigger share, not smaller). Said community can then split their percentage amongst those who wish to fish, charging a small percentage of the gross profit to fund public services. Sound good?

Let’s start up a few companies while we’re at it. And by “companies” I mean Sf., not Ehf. and definitely not Hf. Cooperative companies that recycle paper, aluminum, old tires, plastics, etc and sell their products back into the Icelandic market, helping to balance out our trade deficit. Cooperative companies producing food, clothing, building materials, energy, tools and hardware, electronics, software, electric vehicles (trains trains trains!), and tourist/recreational services.

Cooperative companies, wherein all employees are partial owners, and more importantly wherein all owners are required to be employees. Co-opts in which all decisions regarding capital and profits are handled democratically and hence are intrinsically more egalitarian, and thereby inherently more stable, than companies run from the top down, whereby people with no real talent for massive responsibility reward themselves with massive bonuses and take massive ill-considered risks to justify said unequal pay. Co-opts are also more egalitarian that State-run companies, where the ruling elite reward their loyal toadies by appointing them the head of a national bank or television or other such foolishness…

So that’s it. A bit of constructive civil disobedience, a bit of self-organization, and a bit of reform, whereby we reform the institutions responsible for fucking us over for years now right out of existence, and bingo! Revolúsjón bæbí!

Dónt jú nó its góíng tú bí all ræt?

*'And I looked, and behold, a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him...'

Society's Core Values: Redux

Miriam Rose, the young woman facing deportation form Iceland for "threatening society's core values" was on the local current-events show Kastljós last night. One of the better points she made was that if she is threatening the core values of Icelandic society, then those values are the values of the market place, not of a civil society.

Kudos to her.

Thing is, the state of Icelandic society has been getting me down the last couple of months, as is abundantly evident in this blog.

A sizable chunk of this is down to yours truly. I've had a worse than usual case of my autumn-induced malaise/melancholy, coupled with a deeply rooted pile of pissed off due to the events of last July. I should move on, but I'm still pissed, and its coming out in all kinds of ways.

But my dissatisfaction is not entirely due to my currently pissy attitude. There are things that need addressing here on the Lump, and even if no one actually reads this blog, it means something to me to voice my dissent. If "most men live lives of quiet desperation" I think its about fucking time for our desperation to get really FUCKING LOUD!

The Miriam Rose case is highly illustrative of several issues that desperately need addressing and redressing in this society.

For starters, there's a distinct level of xenophobia at play. Icelanders arrested for acts of civil disobedience are not held in solitary confinement during their incarceration. Ms. Rose was. Icelanders arrested for acts of civil disobedience are not required to hand their passports over to the authorities. Ms. Rose was. Finally, while an Icelander arrested for civil disobedience would have their day in court, Ms. Rose's deportation does an end-run around justice, as the deportation is being handled by the Icelandic Immigration "Service" (that actual translation is closer to "Authority" or "Police", they don't service folks that well) who when it comes to matters of immigration and immigrant rights, act largely as a power unto themselves, unchecked by the courts.

Then there's the glaring example of the nepotism, cronyism, and jingoism at play when it comes to the powers that be. Several months ago, a young Central American woman was granted Icelandic citizenship after only a year or so in the country. This was newsworthy because, as far as the rules usually apply, it takes at least a year to get citizenship (if you're married to an Icelander, which the young woman wasn't) but usually takes anywhere from 5-7 years. The young woman in question just happened to be living with the son of a prominent member of Parliament, which we've been assured has nothing to do with her super-sonic entry into Icelandic society, but was seeking Icelandic citizenship so that she could then be eligible to study economics in the U.K.

After her interview on Kastljós, she was active in her "mother in law's" party's election campaign.

So the lesson is, as long as you are politically connected, interested in something conservative and respected like business or economics, speak Icelandic (Ms. Rose put on a brave show, but Ms. Speedy Entry had obviously spent alot of time in the language lab), and play by the unwritten rules (don't rock the boat, only act within the system, etc.) then the written rules can be bent or even broken to allow you to stay here, even if you're active in politics.

If your not politically connected, not conservative, don't speak much Icelandic, and challenge the status quo, you'd best tread very carefully, especially if you're active in politics. That's when they hammer the rules into a nice rigid rod to pummel you with.

But the Miriam Rose Case has another side to it as well. Just like the WAR IN CITY CENTER, its part of an ongoing campaign of misdirection and coercion on behalf of the authorities.

Case in point, just a few weeks ago, Iceland hosted a major NATO conference.

Not a protest to be seen.

Which is the whole point. Deporting "troublemakers" like Ms. Rose isn't just an end in and of itself, it's also a handy means of stifling dissent. By channelling the dialogue to make it look like the only people who protest anything are foreigners (not far from the truth sometimes, but I digress) you can make Icelanders feel less inclined to support them. After all, "þetta fólk" are "bad mouthing" the beloved homeland. Label them a "threat to the basic values of society" and people will be even less inclined to support them, and the government gets a green light to kick out all the foreigners who aren't perfectly happy being "erlent vinnuafl", aren't busy taking care of the elderly and the young, doing the building and the cleaning and the cashiering and the dish washing or touring around and drinking at bars and going to music festivals all the other "legitimate" things that foreigners can do here.

All this is to protect the basic values of Icelandic society.

If so, then the following is sadly a much more likely list of core values than whatever's written down at Alþingi (that is, if its written down, and not just left up to whoever is in charge at the time):

1-Money is more important than people.

Therefore people with lots of money are more important than people without. People who
work with money are more important than people who work with people. Hence bankers, investors, business owners and investment groups deserve better service from the government, tax breaks, and more say in the organization of society than teachers, nurses, child-care workers, municipal employees, or people in the (non-financial) service industries.

Money being the most important thing, it must therefore be good. Hence anything that increases the amount of money (business, GNP, tax revenue, etc) no matter the cost to people must be good. Hell, its practically holy. Anyone or anything that seeks to limit, prohibit, or otherwise impede the accumulation of wealth, especially the accumulation of wealth by the already wealthy is therefore evil or misguided and certainly a threat to society. After all, we're not "gamaldags kommatittur".

Likewise, monetary crimes are more serious than crimes against people. Especially monetary crimes against the State. Hence drug offenses, which entail making money in a way unsanctioned, and therefore untaxed, by the government, or smuggling (ditto) are prosecuted more harshly and with more zeal than crimes like assault, rape, and sexual abuse, which after all, only harm people.

2-Laws must be obeyed no matter how asinine, intrusive, or unjust they are. Civil disobedience threatens the stability and sanctity of the status quo.

Therefore people like Martin Luther King, Gandhi, and Henry David Thoreau should never be allowed into the country, as they threaten the very foundations of Icelandic society. Remember: Með Lögum Skál Landið Byggja. Seriously, if people went around protesting and challenging laws, it might not be illegal to be gay, or women might be guaranteed equal pay under then law!

Likewise, if you have a problem with an asinine law, you shouldn't seek to change it publicly (unless your an elected politician) rather you should try to get around it via subterfuge. Challenging it outright on moral, ethical, or even legal grounds will get you in trouble, best just to grow the pot in the basement and not bother with rallies, protests, or petitions. This also gives the authorities the ability to catch you, punish you, and use you as an example of how they are protecting the public from you. Do your duty, break the law in private!

If a law is so universally ignored that not even the most rabid policemen will enforce it, it should remain on the books as a way of selectively targeting people for prosecution. (Why do you think porn and sex toys are still technically illegal?)

3-Thou Shalt Be Mightily Apathetic!

The last thing a perfect society like Iceland needs is malcontent trouble-makers wanting to change or fix things. You can't fix things. Það er vónt en það venst. Don't try. Don't strive. Fólk eru fífl, og þú ert fólk. Be unhappy inside and smile to the world. The unhappy buy more, and money matters. Buy yourself into debt. Keep up with trends. Go abroad once or twice a year to someplace sunny and cheap. Buy buy buy. Consume consume consume. Work work work. Don't question why you're depressed, tired, stress out. Don't wonder if a world where you actually spend time with your kids is possible. Whittle your dreams down to things you can find in a catalogue. Repeat the mantra "Ísland best í heimi! We have the most cleanest nature, most beautifullest women and strongest men! We are hip of kúl and all the Hollywood stars think we rock!" until you believe it!

And yes, for the record, if these really are (and I deeply hope they are not) the basic values of Icelandic society, then throw my ass out too, 'cause I'm definitly threatening them!

Poscript:

If you feel the need to give me any "Iceland, love it or leave it" shit, please click here. If you feel the need to point out that I'm being very negative, please check the title of the blog and ask yourself "what part of rant did I not get?"