 |
PM |  | |
Quote | | |
Reply | | |
Full Topic | |
| Joined: | Mon Nov 21st, 2005 |
| Location: | California USA |
| Posts: | 6399 |
| Status: |
Offline
|
| Mana: |    |
It isn't a story about dependence or independence between people, so much as it is a dependence people have on the concept of justice, or equity, as people seek to remain alive by cooperating with each other on a daily basis.
The link reports current news of people who become desperate as a direct result of powerful forces of nature.
Read the report and then imagine your own life becoming a desperate struggle for power, do this chore along with me; so as to understand what I mean with my opening sentence above.
Imagine that your life suddenly changes from what it is now to a beginning moment on a beginning day whereby electric power, natural gas, water, food, and communication stops flowing to you, and this situation lasts for some time - it is morning, you just wake up, you are freezing, hungry, dirty, and thirsty. You want to turn up the thermostat, but heat does not flow into the house. You want to cook some food, but the refrigerator is empty, and the stove doesn't work. You want to take a shower, but the water is freezing cold, and then that water stops flowing out of the shower head. You want try to get a drink before the water stops flowing but you see it all go down the drain instead.
You first struggle to reconnect to the flow of information and much to your regret you find out that you are not alone in your desperate situation, it turns out that the whole city your home resides within has no power either, everyone else will soon wake up to the cold hard facts on that morning too.
That is news.
You find out that news, and you know it is true - hypothetically. What happens when everyone else in the city knows what you know too? What happens when everyone else wakes up too?
That happening, when everyone else knows what you know too, is the first connection, and it is a just, or it is an equitable connection, everyone knows, and everyone knows that everyone else in the city is disconnected from electric power, natural gas power, gasoline power for cars, food power, and water power, no one has any, and everyone is equally desperate in that city, by that force of nature, that calamity, and that clear and present danger.
Shift your view, from that scene, and imagine a city nearby, and in that city nearby things are different. Everyone in your city knows this fact too, that things are different in the next city. All the people in your desperate city are without power now, except one power, the power of knowing that all the people in the next city are different.
How different?
In the next city there are families in homes that can be exemplified by four homes you know about; whereby the first home is a home that has solar panels on top of the garage roof, and there are many solar panels, more solar panels than needed for that one home, enough solar panels for more than two homes - just in case. When there is too much electricity, the home owner sells excess.
The home next to the solar panel home is a home that has solar panels on the roof of the green house where the family grows food and algae with a new vertical farming method. They also have enough solar panels for more than two homes, just in case. When they produce too much food, they make algae instead, or sell food, or sell algae.
The third home has no solar panels, it has a well to pump water though, and a storage tank to store water, just in case, and a filtering system, and a need for power to pump the water high up in the air, so gravity can keep the water flowing, and just in case the electric power stops flowing from the neighbors: this home owner also has an emergency generator that will run as long as the water in the tank flows down through the turbine wheel. When the water tank is full: they sell water.
The fourth home has a garage where the home owner takes raw algae and turns it into gasoline for vehicles and emergency generators and that fuel is stored in tanks when too much gasoline is produced over and above current consumption, the process of turning algae into fuel requires electric power, so this home has solar panels sufficient for one home and one algae fuel operation. When the tanks are full, they sell motor fuel.
The four homes are typical in this city, next to your city, and everyone in your city knows this fact.
Did the people in your city invest in bullets, instead?
Go back to that morning, before everyone else wakes up, and imagine that everyone else in your city are about to wake up to the cold hard facts on this new hypothetical day, and imagine that you are the only one who knows about the city next you your city. What do you tell your fellow citizens if your fellow citizens have invested only in violence as a means of gaining necessary power, and what do they tell you about the cold hard facts, the real news?
Power produced into oversupply reduces the price of power while purchasing power increases because power reduces the cost of production.