Why farmpunk?

A farmpunk could be described as a neo-agrarian who approaches [agri]culture, community development and/or design with an anarchistic hacker ethos. "Cyber-agrarian" could supplant neo-agrarian, indicating a back-to-the-land perspective that stands apart from past movements because it is heavily informed by conceptual integration in a post-industrial information society (thus "forward to the land" perhaps?) The art and science of modern ecological design—and ultimately, adapting to post-collapse contexts—will be best achieved through the combined arts of cybermancy and geomancy; an embrace of myth and ritual as eco-technologies. In other words: the old ways of bushcraft and woodlore can be combined with modern technoscience (merely another form of lore) in open and decentralized ways that go beyond pure anarcho-primitivism. This blog is an example of just that. Throughout, natural ecologies must be seen as the original cybernetic systems.

**What we call for at the farmpunk headquarters**
°Freedom of information
°Ground-up action + top-down perspectives
°Local agricultural systems (adhering to permaculture/biodynamic principles) as the nuclei of economies
°Bioregional autonomy
°Computers are optional but can be used for good—see peer to peer tech, social media for direct popular management of natural or political disasters (e.g. Arab Spring), or the mission of the hacker collective Anonymous
°You

Monday, April 20, 2009

The World Bank: Employing the most deranged specimens of homo economicus

As if we all need any more fuel for the fire, lol.

From an internal memo written by the Vice President of the World Bank, 1991

Just between you and me, shouldn’t the World Bank
be encouraging MORE migration of the dirty industries
to the LDCs? [least developed countries] I can think of three reasons:

  (1) The measurement of the costs of health
impairing pollution depends on the foregone earnings
from increased morbidity and mortality. From this point
of view a given amount of health impairing pollution
should be done in the country with the lowest cost,
which will be the country with the lowest wages. I think
the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic
waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we
should face up to that.


- Lawrence Summers, World Bank Vice
President and Chief Economist

parenthetical link added
Posted by the faun at 4:23 PM

1 comment:

Jennifer McCharen said...

At first I thought he was somehow saying it was cheaper to care for folks in less-capitalized countries. Like, health care would cost less. But then I realized he's only talking about lost earnings from sick days. Completely deranged. Or rather, completely indoctrinated. Within the system he runs his statement has sound logic. If everything is just a resource pool to exploit, why not exploit the cheapest ones first? ugh.

April 21, 2009 at 9:39 PM

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