4 ms·

Why is money the main goal? If you see everything through that lens, then of course permaculture seems incoherent. If money is a primary concern, why grow food

Why is money the main goal? If you see everything through that lens, then of course permaculture seems incoherent. If money is a primary concern, why grow food at all? Just strip-mine your land instead, or simply engage in real-estate speculation and landlordism.

vintermann 3y ago
If you buy actually valuable expensive input from the outside world for making food, you should sell actually valuable output to make it worth it. Otherwise it isn't sustainable. Sure, making money on things that aren't actually valuable is all too easy, but that would defeat the point. "Economy", formal and informal, seems to be a big and acknowledged part of permaculture culture.
- gafferongames 3y ago
  The whole point of permaculture is to not require expensive inputs.
- CapstanRoller 3y ago
  If "permaculture" meant "hobby farm", then you'd be correct. However, permaculture is centered around a radically different approach: maximally leveraging existing ecosystem features rather than trying to fight them, or trying to wipe the ecosystem clean and turn it into mere substrate for building something artificial. A correctly implemented permaculture "farm" should require minimal or no artificial inputs at all, instead relying on a composition of self-sustaining closed loops (e.g. food waste goes into compost and a worm bin, where the compost is used to grow more vegetables while the worms are used to supplement chickens foraging in the garden and eating pests like slugs)
  - vintermann 3y ago
    Even if that, you need shovels. You need a lot of stuff that wears out, that you can't make yourself. You need to participate in an economy. Some of it can be with other permas, but much of it likely won't. It's always been like that. Farmers from the stone age on have used tools manufactured a long way away.
    - CapstanRoller 3y ago
      No one said anything about avoiding participating in an economy or abstaining from tools. You seem to be confusing permaculture with primitivism.
m463 3y ago
I agree. Actually, I suspect optimizing for anything will probably backfire. I wonder if there can be a sort of ecosystem effect on money that works like produce. If you overproduce something, it ends up going bad and rotting. Maybe you could have a currency where if you don't use it, it diminishes. That would make sure that money would be spread around, just like an abundant harvest would be shared widely before it goes bad.
- CapstanRoller 3y ago
  You've basically reinvented communism. >That would make sure that money would be spread around, just like an abundant harvest would be shared widely before it goes bad. Yes, that's how we get "from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs"
  - m463 3y ago
    I was wasn't trying to eliminate money. I was thinking more along the lines of incentivizing feeding the money back into the economy. I though clinton said something along those lines? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_the_economy,_stupid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_the_economy,_stupid
- flo123456 3y ago
  > Maybe you could have a currency where if you don't use it, it diminishes. Isn’t that what inflation is? Maybe at a lot slower scale, but the long-term effect is the same.
  - CapstanRoller 3y ago
    It sounds more like a decaying/expiring CBDC https://bfsi.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/policy/digital-currency-yuan-comes-with-an-expiry-date-spend-or-it-will-vanish/82059471 https://bfsi.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/policy/digita...

vintermann 3y ago

If you buy actually valuable expensive input from the outside world for making food, you should sell actually valuable output to make it worth it. Otherwise it isn't sustainable. Sure, making money on things that aren't actually valuable is all too easy, but that would defeat the point. "Economy", formal and informal, seems to be a big and acknowledged part of permaculture culture.

gafferongames 3y ago
The whole point of permaculture is to not require expensive inputs.
CapstanRoller 3y ago
If "permaculture" meant "hobby farm", then you'd be correct. However, permaculture is centered around a radically different approach: maximally leveraging existing ecosystem features rather than trying to fight them, or trying to wipe the ecosystem clean and turn it into mere substrate for building something artificial. A correctly implemented permaculture "farm" should require minimal or no artificial inputs at all, instead relying on a composition of self-sustaining closed loops (e.g. food waste goes into compost and a worm bin, where the compost is used to grow more vegetables while the worms are used to supplement chickens foraging in the garden and eating pests like slugs)
- vintermann 3y ago
  Even if that, you need shovels. You need a lot of stuff that wears out, that you can't make yourself. You need to participate in an economy. Some of it can be with other permas, but much of it likely won't. It's always been like that. Farmers from the stone age on have used tools manufactured a long way away.
  - CapstanRoller 3y ago
    No one said anything about avoiding participating in an economy or abstaining from tools. You seem to be confusing permaculture with primitivism.

m463 3y ago

I agree. Actually, I suspect optimizing for anything will probably backfire. I wonder if there can be a sort of ecosystem effect on money that works like produce. If you overproduce something, it ends up going bad and rotting. Maybe you could have a currency where if you don't use it, it diminishes. That would make sure that money would be spread around, just like an abundant harvest would be shared widely before it goes bad.

CapstanRoller 3y ago
You've basically reinvented communism. >That would make sure that money would be spread around, just like an abundant harvest would be shared widely before it goes bad. Yes, that's how we get "from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs"
- m463 3y ago
  I was wasn't trying to eliminate money. I was thinking more along the lines of incentivizing feeding the money back into the economy. I though clinton said something along those lines? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_the_economy,_stupid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_the_economy,_stupid
flo123456 3y ago
> Maybe you could have a currency where if you don't use it, it diminishes. Isn’t that what inflation is? Maybe at a lot slower scale, but the long-term effect is the same.
- CapstanRoller 3y ago
  It sounds more like a decaying/expiring CBDC https://bfsi.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/policy/digital-currency-yuan-comes-with-an-expiry-date-spend-or-it-will-vanish/82059471 https://bfsi.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/policy/digita...