regarding victory gardens

Friends, citizens, patriots: Please join the nationwide movement for greater self-sufficiency and improved life satisfaction by planting a victory garden. In the past, during episodes of perpetual war and stagnant economic possibility, our parents and grandparents rolled up sleeves and sunk fingers deep into the cool and blessed soil. They did not moan, they did not wail, they did not complain – they planted victory gardens.

We – you, I, and all of us – currently endure wars on multiple fronts, wildly fluctuating food prices, foodstuffs genetically modified and contaminated with pesticides and petroleum-based fuels and chemicals, and environmental degradation caused by poor political policies and by short-sighted agricultural and business practices. With the global food-supply-chain growing ever less sustainable, and with food manufacturers seeking to maximize their profits at all cost by saturating their products with fillers such as salts, sugars, and fats, now is the time, and today is the day, to take fate into your own hands and to sew for yourself the seeds of a brighter and more independent future. (Solar, wind, or water generated electricity used to run a water pump or the like can be stored in 12 volt, direct-current batteries, which can themselves be tapped to heat water, to cook, and to recharge the batteries of cellphones, netbooks, headlamps, and tablets; renewable resources abound, coal or crude oil do not.)

Anyone, anywhere, of any age and activity level, has the capacity to plant a garden, and, thereby, to liberate her own little slice of America from self-imposed reliance on foreign food producers, corporate farms, and plasticized, processed foodstuffs. For persons living in urban areas: Research square-foot-gardening (or square-meter-gardening); for persons living anywhere: Research methods of gardening using raised-beds; for persons with available acreage: Research closed-cycle systems, hydro-culture, drip irrigation, and methods for feeding hydroponic crops from a Tilapia pond's runoff. Tips and strategies for planting a victory garden of your own can be found motherearthnews.com, freecycle.org, or at many other gardening, off-the-grid, and self-sufficiency websites.

We cannot wait any longer to free ourselves from our current slavery to petroleum products, corporate farms, corporate food processors, the idea that things are easy, or the idea that someone else must grow our food for us. We must act now, each one of us breaking a single chain in the ever-tightening, ever-restricting bonds of the capitalism-driven enslavement of hard-working, crop-producing people around the world; building a victory garden on your balcony or in your backyard is an easy and fun first step in the process. So join us, fellow Americans, join us, and celebrate increased food Safety and greater personal Happiness by living, and eating, well.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit

on dating & economics

  The intricate dance within a romantic relationship can be compared to the efforts of economists struggling to contain erratic market fluctuations. In either situation, the party that responds to the sweeping changes taking place in his counterpart will find himself on the losing side, forever racing to keep up, forever implementing new methods to bring to heel the unfathomable maelstrom he thinks he has the capacity to control. Whether this unfathomable maelstrom be the mind of a woman or the global crude-oil market, the economist, an outside observer inherently blind to the vast and incalculable influences that shape the mood of his counterpart, will enact measures he hopes will soothe the fury of that which he holds dear, often sacrificing long-term stability for the brief elation of short-term gain.
  I have learned one thing about relationships, one truth I have had to relearn time and again: the less you try to control your counterpart, the better off you both will be. When done with patient persistence, attempts to fathom your lover and to steer him in a direction you think best can indeed effect change; the nature of this change, however, will likely range from intensive introspection, over increased volatility, culminating in full-blown systemic meltdown. It is impossible to predict accurately how your counterpart will react to the pressures you have applied – any action will have an appropriate and equal reaction, but its full scope will forever remain known only to the reactive party.
  Imagine for a moment your closest friend, the innumerable events and countless little decisions that helped to mold him into the person you (think you) know today, the environmental and gentic forces that influence continuously the shaping of his being. Now imagine hundreds, thousands, millions of individuals of similar complexity who by going about their daily rounds become what we call markets, with every act shifting the fortunes of various businesses, with each transaction affecting the cycles of supply and demand, their every decision impacting and being impacted upon by unique and innumerable forces. It is all but impossible to know the mind of your closest friend – how could anyone claim to know the minds of thousands of strangers in thousands of different locations across the globe?
  Controlling your lover is a Sisyphean struggle full of complications that subside one day only to reappear the next, a cruel practice that will gut your lover's soul, leaving behind a mindless and docile golem content to do your bidding, within her no room for independent thought, no capacity for abiding Happiness, the dark promise of future abuse her only constant. The controlling lover exhibits deep insecurity and persistent self-loathing every time he endeavors to bend another to his will; the controlling economist exhibits appalling arrogance and damnable small-mindedness every time she endeavors to shape the course of markets influenced by forces far beyond her ability to reckon.
  Just as in dating, attempts to control the market are bound to cause unforeseen complications, new trials that slither forth from the stumps of those just severed, new issues that reduce the economist to the point of mindless docility, her energies sapped by the despair that comes with the realization that, as a single piece of an enormous, shifting puzzle, her actions are unlikely to have the desired affect. In a romantic relationship, the supposedly dominant party can achieve an approximation of control, whereas in the economic arena, a market will defy all attempts at subjugation, the sheer number of influencing factors contributing to its enduring volatility.
  Every economic theory, be it that of John Keynes or Adam Smith, Milton Friedman or Joan Robinson, has proven incapable of condensing the markets into manageable and predictable entities – invariably, each falls short of stabilizing that which cannot be stabilized, causing long term damage greater than the short term benefits with which it is credited. In the romantic as well as in the economic relationship, the method that promises the greatest liberty to the individual is that which disposes of all restrictions on thought and deed, the one that allows for the unfettered fluctuation of markets, the one preferred by humanity since we stood upright and learned to use our thumbs: anarcho-capitalism.

Ultima Ratio Regum - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp