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Great interview. I'd love to hear more from both of you about the double-edged sword of "technology" in sort of a round-table/plenary type session. I'd be very happy to mediate.
Emanuel Pastreich, Thank you for this elucidating compilation of Chinese history through the '3rd Opium War, The nature of the epidemic', which brings together important aspects of the fake 'money' (Greek 'mnemosis' = 'memory') oligarchy violent command & control western colonized humanity has been, step-by-step, subjected to for 7000 years since Babylon's capture.
I came to your work (here-I've read some of your posted work & commented the same on your http://circlesandsquares.asia website I've listened to your insightful interview with Jeff Brown of China Rising. I made a video with Jeff B. about a month ago on 'Indigenous' (Latin 'self-generating') 'Economy' (Greek 'oikos' = 'home' + 'namein' = 'care-&-nurture').
I'd like to offer you a Multistakeholder Participatory cultural-economy alternative to false 'Co-operatives' (originally 'co' = together' + 'operatives' = 'multi-stakeholders'), which according to all humanity's worldwide 'indigenous' heritage of valorizing 'economy', revolved around the collective Domestic Economy of the ~100 (50-150) person Multihome-Dwelling-Complex (eg. Longhouse-apartment, Pueblo-townhouse & Kanata-village) & secondarily around Industrial & Commercial Economies. The Participatory company tradition is closer to Hua-Wei the Chinese multistakeholder Information Technology company. https://sites.google.com/site/indigenecommunity/structure/7-participatory-companies
As you allude to false co-ops as 'One-member/One-vote' were imposed on Russia in 1917 through New York Wall Street's Jacob Schiff etc. with millions of $ of money's transferred to Lev Davidovich Bronstein aka 'Trotsky' & the same million $ from the German Warburg to Lenin, which bureaucratically retarded the Russian economy for 75 years & its inefficiencies led to the breakup of the 'Soviet' (Russian 'local-parliament') system of nations. The problem with One-member/one-vote, being the lack of recognition for expertise gained in specific contributions, experience & decision-making acumen specific & progressive over one's working career.
From 1969-80 I helped organize the British Columbia BC Fed-up Natural Foods network & helped manage 1981-90 on the Board & as staff at the Quebec La-Balance network. From 1971-80, I lived among Russian Doukhobor, German Mennonite & English Quaker Communities of the West Kootenay region of BC. From this decade amongst these co-op communities & particularly among elders, I leant how difficult their co-op method of decision-making had been & ultimately led to their abandoning a couple of billion $ worth of economic businesses after about 70 years of operation.
By 1973, a group of us as BC co-op organizers, met in a study group concerned with our failure to attract & keep founders, workers, managers, consumers, suppliers & municipal partners in our work. Our study focused on all humanity's worldwide 'Indigenous-Economy' with its employment of the Time-based, equivalency accounting upon the String-shell Value systems (eg. Wampum on Turtle-Island / N. America, Quipu in S. America & Cowrie in indigenous Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia & all islands). You might be familiar with the Chinese Character 'Bei', for 'money', which is a graphic representation of the Cowrie shell. https://sites.google.com/site/indigenecommunity/relational-economy
The false 'co-op' movement in both BC & Quebec because of certain ideologues, by typically well-off consumer members, rejected involving all stakeholders in investment ownership & decision-making.
However, I was able to bring these practices to a Pulp mill called Celgar in Castlegar, BC, where I worked in the Technical Department in Quality Control testing as well as having launched a Pollution Control committee based on Multistakeholder 'Participation' (L. 'part' = 'share'). Both union & management (combination of mostly Doukhobor & Mennonite) as well as townspeople enthusiastically adopted & implemented Multistakeholder Participatory progressive investment, ownership & representation on the Board of Directors. This mill as part of Canadian Cellulose became a model for its network of mills across BC. We sistered with a similar pulpmill Tembec in Temiscaming Quebec, which I visited in 1979 to talk with the President of the Employee Association. This invested interest & empowerment of diverse stakeholders led to a huge increase in both ecological design improvements & economic performance in both networks. Participatory system are still only a part of the indigenous practice, so in future communications i can share how participation applies to the domestic economy of the average ~100 (50-150) person Multihome-Dwelling-Complexes (eg. apartment, townhouse & village-cluster) where 70% of people live today. https://sites.google.com/site/indigenecommunity/relational-economy/extending-our-welcome-participatory-multihome-cohousing
I was raised in my family with active regular formal equal-time 'debates' (French 'de' = 'undo' + 'bate' = 'the-fight'). I started apprenticing with my father in: building, design, machining, mechanics & repair at 3 years old & then have been able to pursue high level apprenticeships in a host of scientific research, industry etc. since 1968.
I study & practice Zen Meditation (more culturally than from the Zendo, practice Tai Chi, Yoga, some forms of Chinese medicine & am vegetarian now 50 years as well as Vegan for the last 35 years of these. My primary inspiration of the last 60 of my 70 years is collaboration with 1st Nations of Turtle-Island (N. America) & 'indigenous' (Latin 'self-generating') peoples worldwide, through working on projects, living & working with.
I also began reading Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Hegel, Marcuse, authors from the German School of Economics, starting 59 years ago reading 'The Communist Manifesto' & other material including 'Das Kapital' & more recently Engels 'Origins of the Family, Private-Property & the State', which draws heavily on Lewis Henry Morgan's writing on the 'Haudenosaunee' (Iroquois 'People-of-the-extended-rafters' aka 'Welcome') Confederacy of 5 & then 6 nations around his home in Upstate middle New York, Finger Lakes country. 'Communism' is supposed to be a 'Community' (L. 'com' = 'together' + 'munus' = 'gift-or-service') movement from the bottom-up. 'Socialism' (L 'socius' = 'friend') is supposed to entail a 'fractal' ('fraction, multiplier, building-block, where-the-part-contains-the-whole'). False 'co-ops' is primarily where these movements failed at the bottom. As false 'co-ops' failed in Russia & the Soviet bloc, management decision-making, centered higher & higher till the ultimate failure of the Soviet-Union. Although China has other mitigating factors, the false co-op approach was as well mostly abandoned (it takes 70-80 years for generations to realize the contradictions). I would hope like yourself that real Multistakeholder, Participatory 'co-ops', like Hua-Wei can hold real dialogues & stakeholder investment for the success inherent in collective intelligence. https://sites.google.com/site/indigenecommunity/structure/both-sides-now-equal-time-recorded-dialoguesdouglasjack@indigenecommunity.info
Great interview. I'd love to hear more from both of you about the double-edged sword of "technology" in sort of a round-table/plenary type session. I'd be very happy to mediate.
Cool idea, Hmachine. Please contact me via WeChat.
Emanuel Pastreich, Thank you for this elucidating compilation of Chinese history through the '3rd Opium War, The nature of the epidemic', which brings together important aspects of the fake 'money' (Greek 'mnemosis' = 'memory') oligarchy violent command & control western colonized humanity has been, step-by-step, subjected to for 7000 years since Babylon's capture.
I came to your work (here-I've read some of your posted work & commented the same on your http://circlesandsquares.asia website I've listened to your insightful interview with Jeff Brown of China Rising. I made a video with Jeff B. about a month ago on 'Indigenous' (Latin 'self-generating') 'Economy' (Greek 'oikos' = 'home' + 'namein' = 'care-&-nurture').
I'd like to offer you a Multistakeholder Participatory cultural-economy alternative to false 'Co-operatives' (originally 'co' = together' + 'operatives' = 'multi-stakeholders'), which according to all humanity's worldwide 'indigenous' heritage of valorizing 'economy', revolved around the collective Domestic Economy of the ~100 (50-150) person Multihome-Dwelling-Complex (eg. Longhouse-apartment, Pueblo-townhouse & Kanata-village) & secondarily around Industrial & Commercial Economies. The Participatory company tradition is closer to Hua-Wei the Chinese multistakeholder Information Technology company. https://sites.google.com/site/indigenecommunity/structure/7-participatory-companies
As you allude to false co-ops as 'One-member/One-vote' were imposed on Russia in 1917 through New York Wall Street's Jacob Schiff etc. with millions of $ of money's transferred to Lev Davidovich Bronstein aka 'Trotsky' & the same million $ from the German Warburg to Lenin, which bureaucratically retarded the Russian economy for 75 years & its inefficiencies led to the breakup of the 'Soviet' (Russian 'local-parliament') system of nations. The problem with One-member/one-vote, being the lack of recognition for expertise gained in specific contributions, experience & decision-making acumen specific & progressive over one's working career.
https://sites.google.com/site/indigenecommunity/relational-economy/participatory-accounting
From 1969-80 I helped organize the British Columbia BC Fed-up Natural Foods network & helped manage 1981-90 on the Board & as staff at the Quebec La-Balance network. From 1971-80, I lived among Russian Doukhobor, German Mennonite & English Quaker Communities of the West Kootenay region of BC. From this decade amongst these co-op communities & particularly among elders, I leant how difficult their co-op method of decision-making had been & ultimately led to their abandoning a couple of billion $ worth of economic businesses after about 70 years of operation.
By 1973, a group of us as BC co-op organizers, met in a study group concerned with our failure to attract & keep founders, workers, managers, consumers, suppliers & municipal partners in our work. Our study focused on all humanity's worldwide 'Indigenous-Economy' with its employment of the Time-based, equivalency accounting upon the String-shell Value systems (eg. Wampum on Turtle-Island / N. America, Quipu in S. America & Cowrie in indigenous Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia & all islands). You might be familiar with the Chinese Character 'Bei', for 'money', which is a graphic representation of the Cowrie shell. https://sites.google.com/site/indigenecommunity/relational-economy
The false 'co-op' movement in both BC & Quebec because of certain ideologues, by typically well-off consumer members, rejected involving all stakeholders in investment ownership & decision-making.
However, I was able to bring these practices to a Pulp mill called Celgar in Castlegar, BC, where I worked in the Technical Department in Quality Control testing as well as having launched a Pollution Control committee based on Multistakeholder 'Participation' (L. 'part' = 'share'). Both union & management (combination of mostly Doukhobor & Mennonite) as well as townspeople enthusiastically adopted & implemented Multistakeholder Participatory progressive investment, ownership & representation on the Board of Directors. This mill as part of Canadian Cellulose became a model for its network of mills across BC. We sistered with a similar pulpmill Tembec in Temiscaming Quebec, which I visited in 1979 to talk with the President of the Employee Association. This invested interest & empowerment of diverse stakeholders led to a huge increase in both ecological design improvements & economic performance in both networks. Participatory system are still only a part of the indigenous practice, so in future communications i can share how participation applies to the domestic economy of the average ~100 (50-150) person Multihome-Dwelling-Complexes (eg. apartment, townhouse & village-cluster) where 70% of people live today. https://sites.google.com/site/indigenecommunity/relational-economy/extending-our-welcome-participatory-multihome-cohousing
I was raised in my family with active regular formal equal-time 'debates' (French 'de' = 'undo' + 'bate' = 'the-fight'). I started apprenticing with my father in: building, design, machining, mechanics & repair at 3 years old & then have been able to pursue high level apprenticeships in a host of scientific research, industry etc. since 1968.
I study & practice Zen Meditation (more culturally than from the Zendo, practice Tai Chi, Yoga, some forms of Chinese medicine & am vegetarian now 50 years as well as Vegan for the last 35 years of these. My primary inspiration of the last 60 of my 70 years is collaboration with 1st Nations of Turtle-Island (N. America) & 'indigenous' (Latin 'self-generating') peoples worldwide, through working on projects, living & working with.
I also began reading Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Hegel, Marcuse, authors from the German School of Economics, starting 59 years ago reading 'The Communist Manifesto' & other material including 'Das Kapital' & more recently Engels 'Origins of the Family, Private-Property & the State', which draws heavily on Lewis Henry Morgan's writing on the 'Haudenosaunee' (Iroquois 'People-of-the-extended-rafters' aka 'Welcome') Confederacy of 5 & then 6 nations around his home in Upstate middle New York, Finger Lakes country. 'Communism' is supposed to be a 'Community' (L. 'com' = 'together' + 'munus' = 'gift-or-service') movement from the bottom-up. 'Socialism' (L 'socius' = 'friend') is supposed to entail a 'fractal' ('fraction, multiplier, building-block, where-the-part-contains-the-whole'). False 'co-ops' is primarily where these movements failed at the bottom. As false 'co-ops' failed in Russia & the Soviet bloc, management decision-making, centered higher & higher till the ultimate failure of the Soviet-Union. Although China has other mitigating factors, the false co-op approach was as well mostly abandoned (it takes 70-80 years for generations to realize the contradictions). I would hope like yourself that real Multistakeholder, Participatory 'co-ops', like Hua-Wei can hold real dialogues & stakeholder investment for the success inherent in collective intelligence. https://sites.google.com/site/indigenecommunity/structure/both-sides-now-equal-time-recorded-dialogues douglasjack@indigenecommunity.info