Brian Gallimore's Blog

I enjoyed this conversation between Paul Wheaton and Toby Hemenway (author of Gaia’s Garden).  They explore human behavior of wanting to take something that does not belong to you.

• Toby explains that he is annoyed when an “able bodied, intelligent person with a good skill set wants a discount simply because they have chosen to live simply”
• He says “we need a sustainable future, not a subsidized future“.
• When people talk about ‘the gift economy’ they are often actually talking about ‘the theft economy’
• “A ethic is not something that benefits you, that’s not how ethics work, ethics are really to benefit the larger community”
• How companies like Monsanto could be operating under the understanding that they are ‘doing good’.  The problem is that because they refuse to accept the feedback of their actions, they are failing.   Accepting feedback and observing consequences is essential to permaculture design.
• People use ethics as weapons to do unethical things!

OK.  This hit on something big.  To me these two guys are saying to comply with the third ethic of permaculture, you need to respect liberty, especially the personal property of individuals.  …AND, socialistic/statist actions like redistribution of wealth and state control of production are in direct conflict with the ethics of permaculture.