May 16, 2023·edited May 16, 2023Liked by Tereza Coraggio
I confess to having Bad Thoughts about AirBnB, after seeing what it's doing to my little town here in Vermont. More and more houses are being bought up by flatlanders (our dismissive term for people from out of state) and converted into what are essentially small hotels. This is coupled with the decades-old trend of outsiders buying vacation homes here that are occupied for two weeks per year.
This has led to a situation where at least half the houses on some of the streets here are unoccupied much of the time, and where there is very little housing available now for people who want to live and work here full-time. House prices have also gone up about 80% in the last four years, some of which may be due to this hotel-izing trend, but some of it is probably due to Covid-related panic buying by city-fleeing flatlanders who pay cash and buy houses sight-unseen.
Your idea of travel-based education is attractive, but I'm not able to see how this can help the situation I'm describing.
Hi, Mark. Yup, I agree with you. Now, because this is a political responsibility movement, how will you structure your policy in your corner of Vermont? If you have a $2 = ^1 exchange rate, and all of your housing and rentals are priced in carets, someone from out-of-state would need to pay twice as much to buy a house as someone local.
For existing houses, I'd offer residents a 3% interest fixed mortgage to refinance but make it clear that the fixed rate will rise by .1% every quarter for new mortgages or refis. So if those vacation homes are ever going to be sold, they'd get a better price by selling immediately rather than waiting while the price goes down because the interest rate goes up.
And if there's a 50% tax on carets that are transferred into dollars to be exported for out-of-area landlords, your remote owners will only make 25% of what visitors pay. Visitors will pay in dollars, which have a 2:1 exchange rate to become carets and then they get halved again to become dollars and be extracted.
Now, I would give people member status if they live somewhere 7 years or were born and raised there. My purpose is to enable families to stay together! So someone fixing up a childhood home that would've been sold for pennies to a slumlord is something I'd encourage. I'd give people the ability to keep their earnings in carets for a rental to be spent locally when they are there. You can always see if this amount of change, impeding new purchases, solves the problem before making it more restrictive.
Yes, I was thinking that your caret system might work here. I'm almost at that point in the book -- got distracted by Moby Dick and Madame Bovary and a couple of other books at the same time.
The Art House is delightfully charming! I’ve never been to Maryland, but if I venture that ways, I know whom to call!
My best friend also speaks in these concepts of caring for the land together and cooking together and breaking bread together. There is something to it. You know I grew up in late stage communism and have a bad taste in my mouth from it, but there were certain aspects that I appreciated that not only taught me great skills but also deep compassion for my fellow humans. One of them was that during the summer (starting in 6th grade and up) we had to go pick corn or till the land or whatever agricultural needs there were. I know, it looks like child slave labour, but it was truly great fun. It was like a sleep away camp where we worked for four hours a day and hung out and played games for the rest of it. Yes, someone else cooked for us at that age but it was mostly the older students.
We also had to do elderly community service where we brought groceries and read to people that couldn’t do it for themselves. I had an elderly woman that lived in the basement apartment of my house. She was in her 90s and used to tell me that she loved how animated my book reading was (I was an actor! 😆) we developed such a bond that when she passed it was like losing my grandmother. She wasn’t just an assignment for me.
Anyway, I love your idea of community because I don’t want anyone getting older and feeling useless and sent to waste away at a nursing home or dying alone. And even if that person has family to care for them, wouldn’t grief be easier to handle if in a community? Wouldn’t caring for children be easier as it really does take a village? And in a true community, “sisterhood” and “brotherhood” wouldn’t be threatening concepts to the opposite sexes because these kinds of bonds would be considered an asset. Sheesh, how did we get here?
I had to stop reading because your story about the woman you read to made me unexpectedly tear up and I had to wait for it to subside. I don't know why that hit me so hard. There was an older 'spinster' up my street who took care of her mother, and sat at the window reading. Anastasia. We became friends and I'd often visit her. It's such a delightful image of little Tonika reading in an animated fashion to an appreciative audience of one.
So here's a funny plot twist I found out about yesterday--Cumberland is offering $20K for people to move there. They need to have a remote job, buy a house for at least $150K and renovate it. Apparently, it's all over the internet. I'll be writing about it soon. But very funny that I'm trying to get people out of one of my hometowns and get people into another.
>> What is a feminine economy? It’s a system of exchange that places the happiness, resilience
>> and security of families at its center, without taking that away from anyone else.
Do you think perhaps one of the reasons why you get pushback or dismissal from much of the male half(-ish) of the human race on this proposal is precisely because it doesn't take anything away from anyone else?
Do they recoil at thoughts of:
No more "conquest";
No amassing of great personal wealth (as opposed to community wealth) at the expense of others;
No (or greatly reduced) ability to direct and control the labor & living conditions of others on a
massive scale, for generations, due to the unequal ability to wield economic power over them?
Is the (predominantly, but not exclusively male) urge towards these things the root cause of most of the problems in the "systems of living" we currently have available now?
Well, I have a different theory based on some of the men I know, including my ex-, who are trapped in this system. I think they feel it's too good to be true and don't want to get their hopes up. I think the ferocity with which they reject it as unrealistic is actually directed at the part of themselves that wants to believe there is an alternative. I think that most of them would thrive in my system, and those whose self-worth was tied up with their money might surprise themselves (and us) if they had another choice.
Yes, I know some men like that too - they probably would like it if they could experience it, but most are not going to stick their necks out and/or figuratively "lose their man card" fighting for it against the ones who thrive on conquest. Maybe the key is to find ways to make it easier for that contingent to do so without vilification. I am not trying to say that they're all the "conquest oriented" type. And even the ones who do have a taste for a certain amount of personal conquest that may or may not be tied to their self-image as a "real man" aren't really interested in raw subjugation of everyone else into poverty just to serve them. As always, it's that small 4+ % who are sociopaths/psycopaths that seem to skew / screw things for everyone else...
Under "feminine economy" I think it is essential to include the principle and policies based on "the earth is the birthright of all people" - see my Radical Middle Award winning book The Earth Belongs to Everyone here under Resources / Books as free pdf: www.theIU.org
Thanks for linking that, Alanna. To get more specific from your principles and policies to my position of decentralized control, what's the size at which 'the earth is the birthright of all people'--is that at the level of the family, the neighborhood, the community, the nation? If I'm understanding Georgian economics correctly, the way in which that birthright is manifested is as a share in the taxation of landowners, is that right? So there's no direct use-value to which people are entitled, like my plan, but a share in the money gained by taxing those who do have the right to use it?
It seems to me that still allows land-usurpers to hire slave labor to work the land, and us to have a share in the spoils of that enslavement, because we get some of the money. Please let me know if I'm misunderstanding. What my plan does is give us collective and secure tenure on the land at a neighborhood level, so that we can use our own labor to provide for ourselves.
Tereza - Thanks for your comments and questions. Labor taxes are removed thus increasing purchasing capacity while tax base shifts to land rent (a socially created value, unearned by individuals) so it actually gives incentives for land reform / private property for ALL (no private profiteering or speculation or hoarding of land). Under California's Wright Act early 1900s a million acres owned by one person became 7000 small farms and thriving communities in the Central Valley. The Bank of America (having second not first lien on the land) took it to the Supreme Court three times until they won. Now via our federal income taxes we subsidize agribusiness irrigation, and these corporations often to "tax loss" farming, write off their profits and losses from agriculture and oil industry and such. We work for tax shift to resource / commons rent (surface land and all natural resources including the electromagnetic spectrum and L5 zones) AND money as a non-profit utility. Both land and money reform are keys to an economy with maximum Freedom AND Fairness, so land value tax / commons rent movement and Public Banks will hopefully work together soon. Also you may know of the success (quashed by the central banksters) of towns using Sylvio Geselle approach to free land / free money. For more see free pdf of my Radical Award winning book The Earth Belongs to Everyone and the webinars on the website of the International Union for Land Value Taxation here: www.theIU.org For excellent holistic view on decentralization do read Decentralist Manifesto by Ralph Borsodi who understood problems and solutions to both land and money and how to fully decentralize the political-economy. Any question just email me alannahartzok@gmail.com or phone in PA 717-357-7617
I confess to having Bad Thoughts about AirBnB, after seeing what it's doing to my little town here in Vermont. More and more houses are being bought up by flatlanders (our dismissive term for people from out of state) and converted into what are essentially small hotels. This is coupled with the decades-old trend of outsiders buying vacation homes here that are occupied for two weeks per year.
This has led to a situation where at least half the houses on some of the streets here are unoccupied much of the time, and where there is very little housing available now for people who want to live and work here full-time. House prices have also gone up about 80% in the last four years, some of which may be due to this hotel-izing trend, but some of it is probably due to Covid-related panic buying by city-fleeing flatlanders who pay cash and buy houses sight-unseen.
Your idea of travel-based education is attractive, but I'm not able to see how this can help the situation I'm describing.
Hi, Mark. Yup, I agree with you. Now, because this is a political responsibility movement, how will you structure your policy in your corner of Vermont? If you have a $2 = ^1 exchange rate, and all of your housing and rentals are priced in carets, someone from out-of-state would need to pay twice as much to buy a house as someone local.
For existing houses, I'd offer residents a 3% interest fixed mortgage to refinance but make it clear that the fixed rate will rise by .1% every quarter for new mortgages or refis. So if those vacation homes are ever going to be sold, they'd get a better price by selling immediately rather than waiting while the price goes down because the interest rate goes up.
And if there's a 50% tax on carets that are transferred into dollars to be exported for out-of-area landlords, your remote owners will only make 25% of what visitors pay. Visitors will pay in dollars, which have a 2:1 exchange rate to become carets and then they get halved again to become dollars and be extracted.
Now, I would give people member status if they live somewhere 7 years or were born and raised there. My purpose is to enable families to stay together! So someone fixing up a childhood home that would've been sold for pennies to a slumlord is something I'd encourage. I'd give people the ability to keep their earnings in carets for a rental to be spent locally when they are there. You can always see if this amount of change, impeding new purchases, solves the problem before making it more restrictive.
Yes, I was thinking that your caret system might work here. I'm almost at that point in the book -- got distracted by Moby Dick and Madame Bovary and a couple of other books at the same time.
The Art House is delightfully charming! I’ve never been to Maryland, but if I venture that ways, I know whom to call!
My best friend also speaks in these concepts of caring for the land together and cooking together and breaking bread together. There is something to it. You know I grew up in late stage communism and have a bad taste in my mouth from it, but there were certain aspects that I appreciated that not only taught me great skills but also deep compassion for my fellow humans. One of them was that during the summer (starting in 6th grade and up) we had to go pick corn or till the land or whatever agricultural needs there were. I know, it looks like child slave labour, but it was truly great fun. It was like a sleep away camp where we worked for four hours a day and hung out and played games for the rest of it. Yes, someone else cooked for us at that age but it was mostly the older students.
We also had to do elderly community service where we brought groceries and read to people that couldn’t do it for themselves. I had an elderly woman that lived in the basement apartment of my house. She was in her 90s and used to tell me that she loved how animated my book reading was (I was an actor! 😆) we developed such a bond that when she passed it was like losing my grandmother. She wasn’t just an assignment for me.
Anyway, I love your idea of community because I don’t want anyone getting older and feeling useless and sent to waste away at a nursing home or dying alone. And even if that person has family to care for them, wouldn’t grief be easier to handle if in a community? Wouldn’t caring for children be easier as it really does take a village? And in a true community, “sisterhood” and “brotherhood” wouldn’t be threatening concepts to the opposite sexes because these kinds of bonds would be considered an asset. Sheesh, how did we get here?
I had to stop reading because your story about the woman you read to made me unexpectedly tear up and I had to wait for it to subside. I don't know why that hit me so hard. There was an older 'spinster' up my street who took care of her mother, and sat at the window reading. Anastasia. We became friends and I'd often visit her. It's such a delightful image of little Tonika reading in an animated fashion to an appreciative audience of one.
So here's a funny plot twist I found out about yesterday--Cumberland is offering $20K for people to move there. They need to have a remote job, buy a house for at least $150K and renovate it. Apparently, it's all over the internet. I'll be writing about it soon. But very funny that I'm trying to get people out of one of my hometowns and get people into another.
🤗 People are getting creative! I remember there was a similar deal to move up to Nova Scotia. A bit chili for my taste but a cool idea.
>> What is a feminine economy? It’s a system of exchange that places the happiness, resilience
>> and security of families at its center, without taking that away from anyone else.
Do you think perhaps one of the reasons why you get pushback or dismissal from much of the male half(-ish) of the human race on this proposal is precisely because it doesn't take anything away from anyone else?
Do they recoil at thoughts of:
No more "conquest";
No amassing of great personal wealth (as opposed to community wealth) at the expense of others;
No (or greatly reduced) ability to direct and control the labor & living conditions of others on a
massive scale, for generations, due to the unequal ability to wield economic power over them?
Is the (predominantly, but not exclusively male) urge towards these things the root cause of most of the problems in the "systems of living" we currently have available now?
Well, I have a different theory based on some of the men I know, including my ex-, who are trapped in this system. I think they feel it's too good to be true and don't want to get their hopes up. I think the ferocity with which they reject it as unrealistic is actually directed at the part of themselves that wants to believe there is an alternative. I think that most of them would thrive in my system, and those whose self-worth was tied up with their money might surprise themselves (and us) if they had another choice.
Yes, I know some men like that too - they probably would like it if they could experience it, but most are not going to stick their necks out and/or figuratively "lose their man card" fighting for it against the ones who thrive on conquest. Maybe the key is to find ways to make it easier for that contingent to do so without vilification. I am not trying to say that they're all the "conquest oriented" type. And even the ones who do have a taste for a certain amount of personal conquest that may or may not be tied to their self-image as a "real man" aren't really interested in raw subjugation of everyone else into poverty just to serve them. As always, it's that small 4+ % who are sociopaths/psycopaths that seem to skew / screw things for everyone else...
Under "feminine economy" I think it is essential to include the principle and policies based on "the earth is the birthright of all people" - see my Radical Middle Award winning book The Earth Belongs to Everyone here under Resources / Books as free pdf: www.theIU.org
Thanks for linking that, Alanna. To get more specific from your principles and policies to my position of decentralized control, what's the size at which 'the earth is the birthright of all people'--is that at the level of the family, the neighborhood, the community, the nation? If I'm understanding Georgian economics correctly, the way in which that birthright is manifested is as a share in the taxation of landowners, is that right? So there's no direct use-value to which people are entitled, like my plan, but a share in the money gained by taxing those who do have the right to use it?
It seems to me that still allows land-usurpers to hire slave labor to work the land, and us to have a share in the spoils of that enslavement, because we get some of the money. Please let me know if I'm misunderstanding. What my plan does is give us collective and secure tenure on the land at a neighborhood level, so that we can use our own labor to provide for ourselves.
Tereza - Thanks for your comments and questions. Labor taxes are removed thus increasing purchasing capacity while tax base shifts to land rent (a socially created value, unearned by individuals) so it actually gives incentives for land reform / private property for ALL (no private profiteering or speculation or hoarding of land). Under California's Wright Act early 1900s a million acres owned by one person became 7000 small farms and thriving communities in the Central Valley. The Bank of America (having second not first lien on the land) took it to the Supreme Court three times until they won. Now via our federal income taxes we subsidize agribusiness irrigation, and these corporations often to "tax loss" farming, write off their profits and losses from agriculture and oil industry and such. We work for tax shift to resource / commons rent (surface land and all natural resources including the electromagnetic spectrum and L5 zones) AND money as a non-profit utility. Both land and money reform are keys to an economy with maximum Freedom AND Fairness, so land value tax / commons rent movement and Public Banks will hopefully work together soon. Also you may know of the success (quashed by the central banksters) of towns using Sylvio Geselle approach to free land / free money. For more see free pdf of my Radical Award winning book The Earth Belongs to Everyone and the webinars on the website of the International Union for Land Value Taxation here: www.theIU.org For excellent holistic view on decentralization do read Decentralist Manifesto by Ralph Borsodi who understood problems and solutions to both land and money and how to fully decentralize the political-economy. Any question just email me alannahartzok@gmail.com or phone in PA 717-357-7617
Excellent, thanks Tereza. Much to take in there
This is so anti-political.
I love it.