Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I have more to say but not enough time tonight, but i did want to say something to the above quote:

In China, India, and Pakistan (among the worst) low skill/low paid is exploited by a "free market economy" to the point that human rights violations are a valid concern. Women and children enslaved into bondage and sold as labor commodoties are common. Free market privateers such as Wal Mart turn a blind eye and claim the same thing you are saying Doug. It's a free market they say, low skills and pay are commensurate, we don't control individual decisions to enslave and sell women and children into bondage. If it occurs, we are unaware. Free market labor is a human rights violation in and of itself. It has created the diamond mines in Africa and the cotton and tobacco fields in the south during the 18th/19th century. Arguably the free market has created the bloated government contracts and privateering and profiteering off the War in Iraq. Oil securities so that our soccer moms can continue to drive their SUV's to Starbucks uninterrupted? So I reiterate, there's nothing "free" about the idea of a "free market economy" and is rather an axiom of Capitalism to protect those in power and absolve the capatilist of fiduciary and social responsibility.

Tend to agree MF.... name me a "free market economy"....

seems to me the countries that expound and fervently drive the concept of a free market economy are often the first countries to apply trade sanctions, barriers, tariffs and protectionist policies.....

Always to protect their own interests, or in political speak the "countries" interests......

Threats to such interests are often meet with thinly veiled threats of either military force and/or eceonomic coersion....

It is currently a widely held view with political circles that unless China devalues the Yuan then the US will move to impose tarrifs on Chinese imports and consequetially a trade war could develope......

a "free market economy"...... free for who ..... name me one!!!

And if you've found one.... tell me the size of their military and show examples of their foreign policy history that shows benevolence in a world wide and social construct???

http://www.gangsofamerica.com/read.html seems appropro. We have corporations with budgets larger than many countries.

Hey everyone, great discussion. Myself, I'm a cornucopian and a libertarian.

I do have to point out that even libertarians don't agree on a definition of what libertarianism is .

Here's the working definition I use: Libertarianism is the political belief that government should be limited to only those functions that individuals or groups of individuals (co-ops, companies, whatever form) cannot do for themselves. In addition, property rights (including the property of your mind and body) are to be respected.

The logical consequence of respecting property rights is that it limits an individuals freedom to whatever he or she wants to do that doesn't effect another person's property. For example, my right to swing my fists around stops at your nose. Someone mentioned Wal-Mart having abusive working conditions in India or something like that. The abuse of another person is a violation of that individual's rights. Paying a lower wage than you think someone should be paid is not.

**Fundamentally, this is what seperates it from anarchy.** Do whatever you want so long as it doesn't interfere with me doing whatever I want.

While this form of government has never really been put into practice, I personally believe it will work better than the bastard child of republicanism we have now (which is still the best the world has come up with so far). The key is to hamstring the power of government de jure, de facto, and culturally.

Another logical extension of libertarianism is a free capital market. As an example, I am totally against the US government's policy of subsidizing oil creating a skewed demand curve.

We've all seen over the last century that free markets lead to more prosperity for more people than centrally controlled markets. And the reason is truly very simple: distributed information processing. 200 million consumers in the US can optimize their resources much more efficiently than even a million government employees trying to think for them. You may not agree with the purposes those consumers put their resources to, but in a free world that's not your decision to make. Thomas Sowell explains this really well in his book, _Basic Economics_.

Of course, to agree with me you'd have to be a cornucopian . And believe that while we may have short and medium term challenges we are a resourceful bunch, the universe is abundant, and we'll figure out a good solution. If you thought that inherent human motives fundamentally lead to extinction, I can see how you would disagree.

Who else wants to build a Dyson sphere? All that energy radiating out into nothingness... now there's waste!

Amen ems... should be compulsory reading for anyone in this debate....

Don't neccessarily agree with it all.... but I really do think that we need to look at these issues with and through an historical perspective....

Ultimately there's a questions of what I see as "the greater good" and more particularly the role/right of people to citizenship.

It both delights me and sadens me to see this debate....

Saddens because in many ways it seems that some sections of society seem to be attempting to effectivvely re-write several centuries of history...

And we as citizens, locally and globally, are having to debate and defend issues debated and seemingly resolved nearly a hundred years ago....

Gladdened, for that very reason that the debate has begun and is intensifying over such issues and questions of morality, ethics and global citizenship are being defined to fit a "globalised" and shrinking world...

The question to me is how do we as individuals and collectively as people maintain a balance with a natural system and its resources in a global constuct.....

If it requires some form of global oversight/governance then I for one want such a governance to be people/ethics driven for the greater good of humanity....

To place such trust and power into the hands of competing global economies/corporations or entities is just not an option that is sustainable to humanity IMHO....

The inherent nature of these entities and inherent goals/desires are such that if driven by politics, religion or pseudo statehood are counter productive to freedom and democracy....

Or at least could so very easily be.... Ultimately it is these entities that control the vast resorces of military might... frankly I'm somewhat scared by the direction that debate has recently taken...

That corporations and legal/illegal entities seem to have been assimilated into collective thinking as having more rights than individuals or citizens

You can definitely put me into the Neo Malthusians camp.. Very interesting discussion, however, I think that some ideas put forth here are so heavily based on reliance of cheap resources, that they just aren't achievable and certainly not sustainable.. So many noble and advanced civilizations have come and gone before our modern western consumer society, each one of these had their own arrogant ideals, and each one relied on expansion into new territories consuming and using all they could along the way in the name of progress and the glory of their civilization. Yet each one has also eventually failed. Of course the loss of these civilizations hasn’t bought about the end of humanity, just change.

Each time these civilizations collapse we go back to a more sustainable society that consumes less. The industrial age has been a doozy, flowing into the technological/information age, but once again these are not sustainable because of their resource heavy nature, and we’ll be destined for a period where humanity reverts to lower consumption, no matter what your political persuasion.

Agreed. And AP seems like a step in the right direction. AP can be applied any scale from micro to macro. If people can feed themselves from their own backyard, it removes some of the centralized power of governments and corporations. It is a productive hobby rather than wasteful entertainment.

With you on that one - ems!

While I have no statistics to back this up, I believe that our society is becoming more efficient with respect to economic output vs. natural resource usage.

People talk all the time about how the US consumes 25% of the world's energy, which is true. What most don't mention is that we produc somewhere around 27% of the economic output, and the US is most efficient in the output:energy input game.

Of course, that's all well and good, but if the aggregate is not sustainable on an absolute scale it doesn't matter how efficient you are. Aye, there's the rub. We'll find out one way or another.

It's hard for me to believe that people here in this forum at the forefront of developing a revolutionary technology for the modern world fall into the Malthusian camp .

Takes all types tamo.
Just wondering about the producton you were talking of.
27% of economic output. is that world output and does that include stocks and bonds and work completed offshore for US companies.
Because thats a lot.

Yes, 27% sounds like an lot of production does that take into account the actual production of goods? Do the inputs vs outputs look so healthy because most manufactured goods are produced in other countries and imported?

It does take all types, and I guess this is why there are differing oppinions on the autopot/autodosing systems vs the simple gravel beds systems..


Reviving ancient, natural methods, that mimick nature..

well said EB!!!!
The KISS principle.

Nothing revolutionary about it. Is there? We are just trying to get back to basics but are mostly restricted due to our location to a consistant water source. Ie the tap. So with that we each have to devise a way to get the water around. What is surprizing is that any here would fall into the Corney camp, given the desire to return to basics.

Interesting discussion...I feel compelled to weigh in.



Not in a governmental sense Doug...it's easy to confuse dictatorship gained through the agency of perverted Marxist rhetoric backed by violence, with genuine 'socialism.' That's the definition most of us have been educated to believe...but there is a clear difference between the two, as I hope to clearly demonstrate (albeit briefly) below.

First off, just to qualify my comments, I'm not a Marxist per se, but I do sympathise somewhat with the ideology in a broad sense.

All the dictatorships proclaiming to be 'socialist' or 'communist' were marked by State control of everything and little incentive for the individual to refine and improve - Marxism is almost capitalistic in comparison. Under a so-called Socialist Dictatorship, the 'proletariat' is utterly controlled by the State. In a genuinely Marxist system, control over productivity is broken down into far smaller groups which each have autonomy from the State which is equal to that of Capitalism.

For example, an Aquaponics company under a Socialist Dictatorship would have its ambitions, growth potential, productivity, personnel, supplies, market - anything you can think of to do with running a business - all controlled by the State.

Under a Marxist system, only the workers and managers who are directly involved (the shareholders to put it another way) have control over the company's operations. The idea is to stimulate those directly involved to work as hard as they can to make the company a success. They - not the 'shareholders' in a Western investment sense - are the direct beneficiaries of the company thriving.

As you can see, the whole concept has profit and sustainability of each company or entity as its central tenets - not 'syphoning wealth from the productive and hard working to those who are not'...as Marxism has been overwhelmingly portrayed as being all about.

The inherent irony in a genuine comparison between Marxism and Capitalism, is that under our present Western system of Capitalism, wealth is indeed syphoned from the productive and hard working, to those who gain far more from merely investing their pre-existing wealth (investors). Some of these may indeed be 'self-made' and have started from scratch by working hard, but a far greater number, inherit wealth and snowball that ever growing wealth endlessly through the generations.

I hope I've explained the above clearly...I'm happy to elaborate on another occasion if I haven't.


As for many of your own and other people's thoughts on Capitalism and technology combining to solve all problems, I'm very much of a similar mind to Joel.

I'd like to refer to an article and thread I posted over at the PRI about the 'Rule Of 70' to partly summarise the bases of my belief that the endless growth needed to keep a Capitalist system functioning is totally unsustainable, downright dangerous, and pre-destined for collapse:



Note: The author of the first link and the quoted excerpt above is South African - at 6% growth they are a 'happy medium' between Western growth rates and those of the 'boom economies.'

China and India are growing at 8-11%...'doubling' roughly every 6-9 years. Once they have a far greater amount of wealth in their societies (which IMO is questionable as to whether it will ever be achieved), the global investors will (or would if it were physically possible) just look for the next frontier - and with much of the world 'economically underdeveloped', there are plenty of other options.

At what point do we realise as a society, that not just energy (which alone is a subject I could write for a week solid on), but ALL resources need to continue being able to endlessly double over short periods of time for growth to be endlessly maintained? The day it stops, we fall face first into a global recession. Oil, coal (energy) or moving on to new horizons (the 'New World' etc), pulled us out of recession in the past...now, for the first time in our industrialised history, this won't be remotely possible.

We can nip away at the edges...conserving and inventing to amazing degrees, but the fundamentals (simple physics, land area, soil fertility and depth, water, food, energy, and finite available raw resources) don't really change. Without wealth creation via endless consumption of raw resources and endless population growth, economic growth is simply not possible.

IMO we have two choices: sustainable energy powerdown, reinvented agriculture and a shift away from the need for constant economic growth to maintain healthy societies; or Cornucopian (to use the thread term) collapse.

This choice is upon us now - not decades from now.

There's a hundred other things I could have raised, but I saw these two as being the most relevant and important to start with.