"By contrast, those who have cut back on unnecessary consumption, increased practical skills, and have spent time cultivating an informal economy are much better off and resilient right now."

Jason,

This is a much better description of what I might call genuine autonomy keeping in mind that autonomy doesn't mean being isolated and alone, but rather "self-governing," that is, having a large say in how your life will be structured. This is a far cry from what I call the illusion of autonomy from which so many suffer. Fossil fuels have made us feel powerful and omnipotent, but do they really make us more autonomous? That is, do they under our current system actually give us more power over our own lives or do they simply give others more power to shape how we live? I started to explore some of this in a piece I wrote two years ago entitled "The Illusion of Autonomy in the Fossil Fuel Age."

People see themselves as maximizing consumers first, and citizens with duties to a greater society second.

My recent thoughts about the subject of effective outreach and promotion of social change ties into the current economic decline (relevance), and responses that improve both individual lives and the wider problems we face (effectiveness).

I'm not entirely convinced that people do see their role first as consumers and then as citizens. There is so little they can do as citizens, after all: select which of the candidates will help them consume more? Vote with their dollars in the marketplace? Time and time again I find people upset, wanting to do more, but forced by the economic strictures to spend time at work - working to make things worse. And they are often more than a little aware of that.

Much of this, I feel, is tied to the destruction of the commons. We privatize the commons to create profit, people then must work in the profit based economy, but the profit based economy must continue to privatize and destroy the commonwealth. So we destroy more and more. There is no more "head west, young man", no more frontier. Via TAE, "Someday son, none of this will be yours.".

That economic freedom is intimately tied to our political and spiritual freedom. There will be no women's rights, no gay rights, no human rights, no rights of any kind (and fugedabout rights of the environment) unless we humans have economic rights.

Most people haven't had much in the way of economic rights ever, but there was the frontier and there was growth - the rising tide floats lifts all boats. Now that both of those are no longer available, we are engaged in a negative sum economic picture - where profits can only be maintained for the few at the top by stripping what little is left of the commonwealth for the rest of us. I keep harping on the proposed salt-water fishing licenses here in Maine as a good example. The factory boats will vacuum the sea, but the guy on the dock will have to get a license to pull out a few blues.

That ties together the political and economic spheres. If you don't have "legal presence" in Maine - meaning proof-of-innocence and proof-of-citizenship - you don't get driver's license. Means no car, no insurance. It's soon to mean no bank account, no health care, no student loans (probably no go-to-school-at-all), so forth and so on. Ultimately, one will not be able to buy a little milk and day old bread without being swiped for "legal presence". So, ultimately, one's role as a consumer and a citizen are knitted together. No more Thoreaus - only Alpha, Beta, Gammas and Deltas. It's all more efficient, of course. And safer, because those unseen watchers will watch out for you. It moves politics from liberalism into authoritarianism and totalitarianism.

The Somali pirates may have the right answer - the necessary answer - to those vacuum cleaners and the dumpers of industrial toxics. It seems to me it has to get violent. Sorry. The alternative is to shut our eyes and tell ourselves this gas chamber really is a nice bathroom. What would Jefferson say?

Consider health care "reform". Mandated health care will mean no health care for those not "in system". And because it is mandated, unless you are "in system" you are illegal. Which brings us back to legal presence again. Resource depletion and the hierarchical controls (REAL ID) that society imposes will force the typical citizen/consumer to play a game she can only lose. In US that will function much as typical IMF and "free trade" agenda does in less developed country.

I wonder if this is not precisely what is playing out now. We have systematic looting and asset stripping at the top. Everyone else being set up to take the fall. Sure, there has always been corruption, but never at such a qualitative scale.

It still doesn't work, however, on a limited planet with a limited resource base. But it will work a little longer and esp for those in power, that is a good thing.

In this game of musical chairs, those in the chairs are shooting at those losing chairs. They might lend a chair to some poor slob at Blackwater (or whatever the new name is) as long as he helps. house slaves vs "terrorists".

Freedom is not a state. It is only for those who take it and the price will get increasingly high as there will be no place to stand apart - certainly not in one's own garden.

One last point now, the laws are not going to help. Rachel Carson's work did lead to more regulation and that worked in some places for a limited time. Anyone who thinks regulation works now is deluded. Every one of the regulatory agencies is now a licensing agency; they enable and do not prohibit. Law as an impartial rule is a function of liberalism; law is only a fig leaf in authoritarianism or totalitarian structures. Bush pointed out how the Constitution was only a piece of paper, Gonzales that it was "quaint", and now we have a self-proclaimed constitutional lawyer in the White House who continues the policies of the DOJ to subvert those laws. The rule of law - trust - has largely evaporated now that the only way to make money is the old-fashioned way, to steal it.

cfm, in his garden