Money, Jobs, And Earth Homes

A Speculative Essay

Note: A version of this article first appeared in 1996.

Imagination and Reality

Begin with a quote from Starhawk's science-fiction book, The Fifth Sacred Thing...

The scene: the leaders of an ecologically-based City are gathered in council, debating what to do now that an army from the south is marching up the ruined freeways to take control of their fertile land.

The debate rages back and forth. All realize that, having given up weapons years ago to concentrate their scarce resources on the restoration and nurture of their land, they are now facing the consequences of that choice.

An elder rises in council, and speaks: "Many years ago the poet Diane di Prima wrote a line that comes back to me now: 'The only war that counts is the war against the imagination.' I often wondered what she meant by it, but now I think I understand. All war is first waged in the imagination, first conducted to limit our dreams and visions, to make us accept within ourselves its terms, to believe that our only choices are those that it lays before us. If we let the terms of force describe the terrain of our battle, we will lose. But if we hold to the power of our visions, our heartbeats, our imagination, we can fight on our own turf, which is the landscape of consciousness. There, the enemy cannot help but transform." (Bantam trade paperback edition, 1993, ISBN 0-553-37380-5, page 238)

Rough Going Here in North America

We are going through a painful time of contraction as the old systems change. Those of us who are employed are under increasing stress as job security vanishes. Yet part of our problems may be that we have suffered a 'failure of the imagination', that we are looking at only some of the possible solutions to our problems.

An example: The 1996 Ontario Public Service Strike. Enough of the people here in Ontario province have accepted the 'neo-conservative' way of thinking (that the 'financial', for lack of a better word, way of thought is the only way to run our affairs), to have elected Michael Harris's Conservative government. The leaders of the Ontario Public Service Employees' Union, OPSEU, also accepted this way of thinking and thus found themselves up against a wall, trapped by the government's financial plans.

Though the strike is over, no-one really won, for the goals perceived in financial terms by both sides were mutually exclusive. All involved had divided themselves into 'sides', and set these sides against each other. There was known behaviour by both sides: one-upmanship, picketing, macho posturing, threats, retaliations, scuffles, stonings. Each side knew how to approach this, and what to expect: the other side became Other, and commonalities ceased to be perceived.

The real battle had already been fought, and decided, in the minds of the people involved. Known behaviour was chosen, two mutually-exclusive solutions contended, and at most, only one side could win. There was no effort to go beyond currently-accepted assumptions to find a larger answer.

And so the real problem remained: how to reduce deficit and debt without damaging peoples' lives and the structure of society.

The Money System

The problems of the deficit and debt are real enough. We are sufficiently concerned with them to have given our government the power to sacrifice all else to the resolution of these problems. The subtle victory here, though, is to limit imagined potential solutions to those that are purely financial in nature, such as requiring redirection of taxpayer-supplied money from one destination (medical care, say, or arts organizations, or public-service salaries) to another (deficit elimination and debt repayment).

Notice the assumptions:

• Things such as art, medical care, or public service can only be purchased with money; there is no other way of encouraging or obtaining them.
• If the amount of money directed to a service is reduced, that service must diminish.
• If the amount of money directed to one service is diminished, there will be more money available for other services.
• One of the services money can be used for is to repay the debt.
• If we do not pay our debts, eventually no-one will want to lend to us.
• Borrowing money is necessary to the functioning of our society.
• Therefore, it is good to reduce spending in all other areas to concentrate on the elimination of the deficit and the repayment of the debt.

These assumptions may or may not be true. The problem is that they are unexamined. Any technical person knows that it's the unexamined assumptions that trip one up during troubleshooting.

A deeper assumption underlying this whole structure is that money is the only way that our society can use to organize its wealth. This assumption runs through our whole culture and is very difficult to escape. Hence the lottery fantasies of winning a million and then living 'The Good Life'. Money is perceived to be necessary to The Good Life, whatever that may be.

The Job System

At present, urban dwellers here in Ontario, the majority of us, must acquire money for all the necessities of their lives (such as food, water, living space), as well as for luxuries. A high level of work is required to provide sufficient money for both. In our society, such work is usually provided in the form of a 'job'. Jobs differ, with the more time-consuming or intense jobs ('full-time jobs') generally providing the larger amounts of money.

In itself this is not bad. However, we are now in an era of intense competition for these 'jobs'. Their holders find themselves at a disadvantage. In order to provide the necessities of their lives, they must follow their jobs, and where the requirements of the job conflict with other requirements, such as family, church, or health, the requirements of the job must prevail.

The alternative is to lose the job, which can be given to someone else who desires it and will follow its requirements more closely. This is a disaster for the individual- but only if that individual needs the money provided by the job for his or her necessities of life.

The Self-sufficient House

A self-sufficient house supports its inhabitants using as few outside resources as possible. These resources could theoretically be as few as the water, air, sunlight and earth present at the site of the house itself. Of course, this will never be fully achieved; all houses require spare parts and maintenance. The fewer outside resources the house uses, though, the cheaper the cost of operating it will be.

One example of a self-sufficient house is the Potters' house being built south of Bancroft. It is designed as an ecosystem, an interacting community of plants, animals, structures and machinery, to provide all of its inhabitants with shelter, heat, cooling, water, food, and waste treatment. It is built less expensively, from recycled materials on unserviced land.

What features does this house provide that may be useful in helping to solve today's problems?

First, inexpensive construction on inexpensive unserviced land in rural areas means elimination of mortgage payments (if any) after a much shorter period of time.

Secondly, self-sufficient construction means the elimination of most externally-supplied utilities and their payments. Only communications (phone, satellite, data), access (road), municipal taxes, plus some food, remain. These imply that the building is a much smaller financial strain on the owners while it is being built and paid for, and when it is finished and fully owned, it provides a replacement for expenditures that would otherwise have to be made.

Individuals whose necessities are provided by self-sufficient dwellings do not need as much money passing through their lives. Jobs, therefore, can be less time-consuming, can be temporary, or can be lower-paid. There is less stress on the job-holders, and the loss of a job becomes an inconvenience rather than a disaster.

But What Does This Mean?

The self-sufficient ecological house, such as the Potters' house, is an example of the shattering of current assumptions, such as those supporting the job and money system. In a fully-functioning ecological house, one which is fully paid for, work is required to maintain the ecosystems and produce 'necessities': food, water, heat, cold, etc., but the rewards (products) of this work are not mediated by money. They arise locally: from the Earth, from soil, sunlight, air and water, and the systems of the house, and pass directly to its inhabitants.

Likewise, no monetary mediation is required when products (wastes) of the inhabitants return to the rest of the house. The interactions between the house and its inhabitants are thus disconnected from the money system.

This disconnection will in the real world be partial; money may be required for interactions external to the house, and money will be required for items the house cannot provide: dealings with the larger society such as taxes, spare parts and supplies, and external services such as phone and satellite communication. No money is required for those interactions that the house can provide on its own- and these are many of the necessities of life.

The same ecological construction principles can be applied to small retail buildings. Shops and plazas can be built that will provide much of their own power, heating and cooling needs, resulting in lower overhead costs, even if inexpensive construction methods are not used.

A Conclusion

Partly self-sustaining ecological housing such as the Potters' earth home offers an excellent example of an unexpected solution to problems of today. By partially disconnecting the needs of daily life from money, buildings of this type allow their owners or inhabitants to reduce their needs for money. This gives them greater freedom and more flexibility to meet their problems and challenges.

But the real lesson here is that the solution was arrived at by looking outside the boundaries of conventional thought. We cannot allow ourselves to be confined only to yesterday's answers.

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