Category Archives: New Utopia

The life of an activist. Pick your issue. Everyone is passionate about some issue in particular. You do not necessarily need to be holding a sign outside. There aremany forms of activism. Activism is a great activity, but many people are unable to dedicate to it on a full-time basis. Ian Freeman was one of them.

A decade ago, he started a radio show with a partner, but he had still to work at K-Mart to pay the bills. His optimistic attitude kept him going, but each day felt like it was a struggle torecruit a team of dependable activists. Although, there was a beacon of hope. He learned about the Free State Project and thought it would be best to concentrate his efforts in New Hampshire.

After all, concentrating his efforts in a small New England state would be a better use of his time than a large Southern state. So, he sold his partner on the idea and made the move to New Hampshire.

Ian also remembered the trouble that he had in doing activism in a mid-size city like Sarasota. So, he did not want to experience that again. Instead, he picked a smaller city in his adopted state.

During his first few years there, he did many acts of civil disobedience as a way to challenge the government to stop punishing people for victimless crimes.

In this episode, I welcome back the Free Talk Live host and Keene activist, Ian Freeman. He was my guest on episode67.

We discuss his path to reaching the finish line through activism. He also shared some insights that were instrumental in his success. The truth is that this path is not for everyone.

If you like this episode, you can access the archive page to get all of the other Reaching The Finish Line episodes.

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This Man Turned This Small City Into an Activist Utopia - The Good Men Project

The tenor of the sessions, keynotes, and discussions at the AIA conference this year seemed markedly different from those of recent memory. Issues of diversity, equity, inclusion, and social-impact design were front and center. The convention was keynote-heavy, with appearances by Francis Kr, Michael Murray of MASS Design Group, and The Hip Hop Architect Michael Ford, to name a few, as well as Michelle Obama in her first public appearance as a private citizen.

Many of these keynotes were, in effect, a sales pitch for progressive values. But the thunderous applause of the audiences at the keynotes indicated that the vast majority of the 16,000 architects at the convention didnt need to be convinced that race and gender equity and working for the social good are important. After all, architecture is a profession that draws those who want to build something positive in the worlda fact corroborated in several sessions that highlighted survey data indicating the importance of doing meaningful work on a daily basis to employee retention.

So while the inspiration and earnestness of the keynote presenters can not be put to question, a cynical observer could be forgiven for believing that the whole event was a calculated response to the outcry over Robert Ivys posts election comments. Regardless of intent, the PR slick felt like the AIA preaching to a choir that had begun to doubt its pastors faith. The real lost opportunity of the convention, then, was asking the question: Why, if we do as a profession hold these values dear, do we have such a problem putting them into practice?

An earnest exploration of that question is by definition complex, difficult, unsexya fact that was revealed during a smaller keynote follow-up session with Alejandro Aravena, Francis Kr, and Michael Murray. When asked by Rosa Sheng (a leader of the excellent Equity by Design group) how these architects had made doing social impact architecture a viable business model the response from Murray was clear: Its not. This bold admission was followed by each of the panelists describing the torturous journeys theyve embarked on to make projects aimed at the greater good part of their practice. In spite of Murrays pleas to retire the phrase social architecture to avoid creating a false divide, the tensions between the current economic structure of architecture and the desire to embrace a more expansive notion of who we serve was a real, but never more than nascent, backdrop to the discussion.

This session above all demonstrated the long-term failure of the AIA. Its not that architects dont want to do work that benefits the entirety of the public or solve architects demographic crisis. Rather, its that structural problems in society and in the economics of architectural practice create immense barriers to translating intent into outcomes. We dont need convincing. We need the resources weve pooled together in our largest professional organization to start to address the things we cant alone, the things we cant with a single project. We need to confront the crisis of value in architectural work that renders us subservient to developer logics that thrive on the inequity we claim to stand against and render moot the commitment to the public implied by licensure.

On that score, the national AIA clearly remains at a total loss. They might understand a problem exists but their inability to diagnose its systemic roots means their solutions are woefully inadequate. A case in point was when AIA president Tom Vonier introduced Amy Cuddy with a line that held great promise: to confront these [social] issues we need to know our own value. However, any hope for a substantive dialogue on the subject was erased as Cuddy proceeded to talk about how power poses increase perceptions of self-worth for the better part of half an hour. While I dont doubt the importance of good posture, some comments from Twitter noted the shortcomings of this approach. @_YoungCommodity satirically noted, oh our profession is definitely undervalued by the general public [because] theres a perception that architects sit hunched over and not upright. User @sekucci referenced Cuddys riff on the relation of sexism to posture and wrote Amy Cuddy, speaker at #AIACon17 explains teaching girls power poses to solve inequity. Hasnt mentioned teaching sexist men not to be sexist.

A shallowness of discourse also pervaded the majority of sessions covering non-technical issues at the conference, many of which had promising titles that hinted at the larger issues (things like Win More Work: Communicate Your Value, Attracting and Retaining Talent, and Big Data, Civic Hacks, and the Quest for a New Utopia). In most instances, the content on offer was limited to a panoply of buzzwords or tips and tricks. This is a profession in danger of losing its relevance to all but the most decadent corporate and wealthy clientswhere are the sessions on that? Where are the sessions on figuring out how we can increase the pitifully small percentage of buildings designed by an architect?

That isnt to say there werent silver linings. Discussions with the apparatchiks from some state and local AIA components as well as officials from the other architecture collateral organizations (particularly NCARB) revealed a more robust understanding of the issues facing architecture and good faith efforts to address them with new initiatives, like the integrated path to licensure. Its hard to say what makes this architectural deep state so much more in tune with the larger needs of the profession, but one could surmise it is the result of a more intimate knowledge of how the legal and regulatory frameworks surrounding licensure and state practice acts can be shaped to create real change in the structure of the profession. For this middle layer of officialdom, these laws are not immutable facts of existence but the battleground for defending and defining what is we do as architects and how it is valued.

Likewise, the emerging professional leadership of the AIA, are for the most part clear-eyed about the ways in which a culture of overwork and under compensation are turning away potential future architects in droves. Similarly, small practitioners voiced concerns in the handful of sessions tailored to them about struggling financially and being left voiceless in the AIA, despite making up nearly 80 percent of the membership.

The conference remains an important venue for bringing together the many diverse constituencies of architectural practice and taking the pulse of the discipline. If there is a conclusion to be drawn from this years events it that in spite of all the talk about leadership, the national AIA will not be the force behind sweeping changes in architecture. In a striking parallel to the failures of liberal institutions in 2016, we have on our hands an organization that smugly conflates messaging with real solutions and says all of the right things but is one step out of touch with the struggles of being a working architect.

Next years convention will mark the fifty year anniversary of Whitney Young Jr.s famous keynote where he excoriated the profession over our lack of action on issues of racial and social justice. He received a standing ovation then as he would todayunderscoring that the professions failures do not lie in our world view. The 2018 event will be a chance to see if the AIA can make a leap from a progressive affect to progressive action; a leap from positive-but-reactive piecemeal initiatives to a compellingforward-looking outlook and sweeping plan for an architecture that is relevant and helpful to society-at-large. If they dont, we may be looking back in another fifty years, stuck in the same place, at an era where most of us did little more than applaud all the right things.

Keefer Dunn is a nearly-licensed architect based in Chicago. In addition to being adjunct faculty at the IIT College of Architecture, he serves as the national organizer for The Architecture Lobby, a labor advocacy organization for architects, and is the host of Buildings on Air, a radio show about politics and architecture.

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AIA Convention 2017: Message Over Substance? - The Architect's Newspaper

Contrary to the hopeful prognostications of new urbanists, who saidthat Americans would move en masse to dense city centers, rent rather than buy, take eco-friendly public transitto work, American suburbs are booming. The big house, big car lifestyle is still the middle-class American way for raising a family and creating wealth.The New York Times reports:

Be skeptical when you hear about the return to glory of the American city that idealized vision of rising skyscrapers and bustling, dense downtowns. Contrary to perception, the nation is continuing to become more suburban, and at an accelerating pace. The prevailing pattern is growing out, not up, although with notable exceptions.

Rural areas are lagging metropolitan areas in numerous measures, but within metro areas the suburbs are growing faster in both population and job growth.

The post-recession urban boom was in part a product of the stimulus and low interest rates andmillennials inability to make down payments. But now that millennials are starting to get married and make more money and enter the housing market, the demand for suburban living is increasing. Meanwhile,telecommuting, Amazon, and low energy prices make suburban living more convenient and less expensive.Our regulatory and infrastructure planning policies should reflect thecentrality of suburbs in American life, rather than trying to shoehorn a new generation into an eco-friendly urbanist utopia.

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The Suburbs Are Still Where It's At - The American Interest

The Hindu

Birth of the contemporary The Hindu And minimalism saved the ecology. With the Land Art-IT connect, the psychosis of sci-fi dystopia flips over into a new Utopia. Landscape made desolate by global wars becomes the source of a new knowledge order. Psychosis that in one part led to drugs ... and more »

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Birth of the contemporary - The Hindu

Photo: Punchyy

A town supported entirely by revenue from turbines gives us a glimpse of the challenges we will face in a workless future.

In 1905 the Spanish writer Vivente Blasco Ibez described the horrible conditions of day laborers in the vineyards outside Jerez. Barely paid, almost starving, and sleeping on hay, the day laborers in Blasco Ibezs novel, La Bodega, stumble through life as cadavers, with twisted spines and dry limbs, deformed and clumsy.

But Blasco Ibeza sort of Dickens of Andalusiaimagines a different fate for his protagonist. Our hero escapes with his fiance to South America, that young world where land ownership is not a prerequisite for a good life. What an Eden, the narrator interjects, so much better for the eager and strong peasant, a slave until then in body and soul to those who do not work. The lovers would be new, innocent, and industrious. The novel ends happilythere is no doubt of thatbut on a mixed metaphor, with an Eden where people work hard. Indeed Blasco Ibezs term for industriouslaboriosoalso translates as toilsome.

What sort of Eden is this, where women and men till the soil? In Genesis, Adam and Eve simply pick fruit from orchards in perpetual bloom. At the Fall, God invents work as punishment and commands his children, You shall gain your bread by the sweat of your own brow. Blasco, however, views a certain form of labor as a reward, and most social critics have shared this perspective. Like most myths, Eden tolerates ambiguity.

Much of the world is approaching the end of work, in which machines and computers will replace virtually all human effort in the production of goods and services.

Now reformers everywhere may have to resolve the dilemma of toilsome versus leisurely Edens. Much of the world is approaching what Jeremy Rifken calls the end of work and, more recently, the zero marginal cost society. In a zero marginal cost society, machines and computer algorithms replace virtually all human effort in the production of goods and services.

Rural Andalusia never had much retail, but its interior villages used to grow a variety of crops under the laborious conditions described by Blasco Ibez. In the last two decades, however, an almost effortless form of green energy has moved in. Wind turbines now crowd the terrain and there are few jobs, agricultural or otherwise. As an anthropologist, I began visiting a village familiar with these machines, hoping to see how people live with unemployment within a landscape that has been transformed from fields into electrical infrastructure.

In the tiny, four-hundred-person settlement of La Zarzuela, spindly poles rise up ninety meters to loom over fields exoticallymenacingly to some. With a smooth efficiency, sixty-meter blades propel current to people far away. The energy is clean in every sense. Once constructed and erected, a turbine consumes no raw materials. It produces no pollution. It also requires next to no maintenance.

They are robots, boasted the manager of the largest wind farm. Indeed the company that owns that farmthe Spanish firm Accionais so confident in automation that it does not even have a twenty-four-hour control room on site. Instead screens in Mexico monitor La Zarzuelas farm alongside hundreds of wind farms worldwide.

Meanwhile unemployed men of a certain age cluster at two bars. Supported by Spains social safety net, they think only sporadically about finding work. These men endured hard labor in their youth, but no one wants to return to that now. When machinery replaced the hoe and sickle, day laborers learned to drive tractors, a modest technology more like a motorcycle than a robot. But turbines upset that balance between device and operator, effectively dispensing with the latter, and as my drinking mates see it, turbines are jobs gone missing.

In a way clean energy is too clean, too divorced from the people and social context around it. Proponents of wind powerand I count myself in this groupwill succeed or fail based on our ability to solve this problem. What should the balance of work and leisure be after fossil fuels? How should we imagine utopia?

La Zarzuela huddles in a valley just north of the Straits of Gibraltar. There the pressure gradient between marine and terrestrial zones stimulates constant wind. Extending inland, two ridges frame the village in a V. They often funnel the strong, east wind, el Levante, into a howling squall. It has scoured the vegetation down to scrub bushes, the indigenous acebuche, and locals do not bother to plant trees, except for palms. El Levante creates the perfect conditions for wind power. Construction of wind farms began in 1999 and proceeded in spates.

Saving the planet from catastrophic climate change is going to be inconvenient.

When I arrived in mid-2015, almost 250 turbines were clustered within a roughly 3-by-6-mile strip. Three companies own the farms, which are called parques eolicos, since the notion of a wind park is meant to calm concern. But protests have dogged the turbines in La Zarzuela and in many other places as well. People object to the visual impact, the constant noise, and the strobe-like shadows cast in various times and seasons. In 2006 and 2007, as the government authorized another expansion, residents of La Zarzuela rallied against the masificacion de molinos (the massing of the windmills). They blocked a road, preventing construction equipment from reaching the site, rallied at the municipal town hall in Tarifa, and then lost. Big Windas critics term Acciona and similarly sized firmsalmost always wins.

At the El Pollo bar, I found men still nursing a grudge.

I am annoyed, declared La Zarzuelas mayor, a short stocky man known for blunt talk. Osvaldo Santiago (a pseudonym, as are all the names below) works as a foreman in the port of Algeciras, just across a narrow bay from Gibraltar itself.

Nadie! Nadie! he says while jabbing at my stomach. No one, no one has gotten a job from these monstrous blades. Local unemployment is 40 percent, he tells me. The turbines only require a few maintenance workerseducated, skilled technicians of the sort you wont find in rural Andalusia. Santiago, who hangs out with the captains and deck hands of container ships, cannot quite believe that such large hunks of steel can run themselves.

We can expect more such conflict and resentment. Denmark generates roughly 40 percent of its electricity from wind; Spain follows at roughly 20 percent. For now proponents and opponents agree on one tacit principle: that turbines should stay out of the way and preferably out of sight. Installers run them along ridges, in the empty spaces between settlement, or out at sea. But even this last option can provoke staunch resistance. Well-connected residents of Hyannis, Massachusetts, all but killed the 130-turbine Cape Wind project in the 2000s because they contended it would pollute their ocean views. Americans seem to prefer their windmills in Iowa, west Texas, and eastern Oregon, hinterlands where few people (and fewer rich people) live and vote. Unfortunately much of that electricity dies on the cables, never reaching refrigerators and light bulbs hundreds of miles away. Therein lies the problem: to power the grid with 100 percent renewables, every society will need to put wind farms and solar farms in places where the wind blows, where the sun shines, and where consumers of electricity live. Saving the planet from catastrophic climate change is going to be inconvenient.

Oil has been quite convenient, especially in terms of space. A hole in the ground less than three feet across can provide enough fuel to power a city. Even if one adds up all the infrastructure of rigs, pipelines, refineries, and gas stations, petroleum occupies very little land. Compare that modest footprint with the forests of colonial New England that were once obliterated to heat and light Boston. Those trees have returned, thanks to fossil fuels, and every Appalachian hiker benefits from that spatial subsidy (in addition to the gasoline that brings her to the trailhead). By refining compact kernels of hydrocarbon power, Americans liberated landscapes from servitude as fuel. Now, with great reluctance, we will have to reconsider this deal. Given that the arrangement will eventually cost us New Orleans, Miami, Boston, and New York, we clearly did not strike such a good bargain after all.

La Zarzuela provides a test case for a new deal between energy and landscapes. Against the will of the people, Big Wind converted field and pasture into an energy platform. The cost in acres was not immediately apparent; landowners still run cattle and plant crops around the turbines. But interior Andalusia had only recently begun attracting tourists, a promising new economic opportunity that the wind industry effectively squashed.

Labor gives us identity and, when it is good labor, the dignity and self-worth of a person fulfilled.

Alejandro Baptista knows about this defeat firsthand. His family owns the Doa Lola Hotel, a coastal resort, as well as the two-and-a-half-mile wind strip between the Atlantic and La Zarzuela. In 2004 the municipality surveyed that strip as a vacation city. Baptista dreamt of building holiday chalets and even a golf course, developments that would have employed the people of La Zarzuela. Tourism promised jobs and garnered local support, while the landowner stood poised to cash in.

Then turbines spoiled the vista. Baptista, who cannot imagine that a tourist would appreciate the whirring blades, opposed the turbines and joined the protestup to the last minute, when he capitulated. Now he collects an annual rent, calibrated to the generating capacity of each of the fourteen turbines on his property. The moneyapproximately $2,500 per machinefalls far below what he might earn from tourism. But it vastly exceeds what any individual in La Zarzuela takes home.

Local residents believe that Baptista sold out. Big Wind cost Baptista his view and his reputation. Meanwhile turbines did nothing good for the local economy. The industrious Edenpossibly something like Blasco Ibezs New World utopiaslipped away.

But what is utopia to the men of La Zarzuela? Sugar beets used to be a major crop in the village, but they are tedious and arduous to grow. As a root crop, sugar beets require men to bend at the waist, manipulating the tuber in the soil with a long-handled hoe. First workers thin the crop, cutting out three of every four roots. Those gaps allow workers to then reach the roots when, some months later, they are harvested.

At El Pollo Diego tells me that the labor was insoportable and dursima (unbearable and hard). In the ninety-degree heat of summer, day laborers would load sugar beets directly onto trucks all day long. Using my pen and notebook, Diego does some calculations. Each truck would carry 20,000 kilograms, and a team of eight could fill two trucks, meaning each laborer would harvest 5,000 kilograms (or 11,000 pounds) per day. It sounds like a Herculean feat to me, and Diego looks me in the eye to convince me that he is not exaggerating. Next to him another veteran of the beet harvest runs fingers down his face, mimicking perspiration.

In a way clean energy is too clean, too divorced from the people and social context around it.

Still in disbelief at such a hellish outdoor sweatshop, I check with Baptista, who grew sugar beets from 1975 to 2009, long after other growers had given up. I expect him to understate the drudgery he imposed on day laborers, but instead he warms to the topic. Day laborers loaded and cleaned the beets at a pay rate of 1.10 peseta (about a penny) per kilogram. I get confused, thinking he has said 100 pesetas per kilogram. No, Baptista laughs gleefully, 1,100 pesetas per ton.

Loaded and cleaned, he repeats with enthusiasm.

When La Zarzuelas men refused to break their backs in this way any longer, migrant laborers from Granada took over the harvest. Eventually the crop shifted to northern Spain, where it grows more economically, under irrigation and mechanical harvesting, and the Baptistas moved on to other crops, to hotels, and, of course, to turbines.

With little sadness, hard labor in La Zarzuela went extinct, but there is still nostalgia for less onerous forms of labor. In the Gazguez bar, just up the road from El Pollo, painted tiles show men cutting wheat with sickles and women carrying it away, and the barrooms conversations about grain differ in tone from those about beets. A man named Jaime smiles, recalling how horses trampled the harvest. Men would then toss it in the air using pitchforks while women carried out drinks to them. This harvest brought families and neighbors together. Old men crowd around Jaime and me, describing their personal experiences, while those middle-aged or younger recall stories from their parents. Mateo explains that one winnowed wheat when el Ponientethe weaker, westerly windwas blowing. Stronger gusts would have blown away the kernels with the chaff.

Although this work also took place in summer, no one recalls the heat or any sense of oppressive toil. No one mentions teams of workers, tonnages, or piecework, although I am speaking to the same men who had also handled beets. These men, mostly in their seventies, know a kind of work that adds to human dignity, family bonds, and the spirit of community. Pepe pays for my drink as he leaves, evidently pleased with our chat.

Hand winnowing ended in the 1960s with the arrival of a fixed threshing machine. Then, from 1975 onwards, combine harvesters took over. On the surface, wheat went the way of sugar beets, but no one in La Zarzuela sees them as parallels. Winnowing began as a task and became an expression of social life and environmental knowledge. It must have been arduous work sometimes, but not all the time. The painter of Gazguezs tiles, for instance, overlooked the sweat on the brows of the men cutting and tossing grain. Between utter toil and joblessness lies this remembered Eden of labor. Can people in La Zarzuela fight their waypast combines and turbinesback to that utopia? Should they?

Wind farms appear more restful than industrious. Workers do not surround the turbine or coax it to spin as do, say, drillers on an oil rig. Proponents argue that the expansion of the wind industry will generate hundreds of thousands of green jobs in the United States alonefar more than are now found in coalas electricians, crane operators, and so on still have to install any given turbine. The clean energy revolution will bring a construction boom lasting a decade or two, they argue. But then the turbines will virtually run themselves.

With little sadness, hard labor in La Zarzuela went extinct, but there is still nostalgia for less onerous forms of work.

Clean energy is structured that way. Karl Marx, who knew nothing about turbines, described labor as a process by which man, through his own actions, mediates, regulates, and controls the metabolism between himself and nature. That metabolism converts raw materials into products and, also, into waste. Miners, for instance, extract iron ore from the ground; further work is required to refine it into workable metal and still more to manage the discarded rock.

A turbine is utterly different. Its raw materialif one can even call it thatblows downwind. No one needs to dig for the breeze. Kinetically-charged air simply arrives and turns the blades, and electricity flows to the grid. There is no product to carry and certainly no pollution to cart off, bury, or otherwise handle. The dirt, the dust, the pile, the loadthe physical signs by which we know the dignity of laborare all missing here. Where is the work?

With some effort on my own part, I find technicians around La Zarzuela. After driving my rental car through the wind farms, ignoring the warnings that say Authorized Personnel Only, I encounter Ramiro, a ruddy, bearded man in his fifties dressed in a blue uniform. He and his partner are sitting in their truck at the top of a rise, enjoying the view of La Zarzuela and the sea. I ask him about his job. It is great, he tells me. They pay whether he has to do anything or notmuch better than working with pico y pala, pick and shovel. He also enthuses about nature, the view, and the tranquility of his wind farm. We chat for half an hour as blades swoosh gracefully around us. Then he drives off for his lunch break.

A few days later, I meet up with another technician named Jorge in Tarifa, the larger municipality to which La Zarzuela belongs. Jorge is active on social media, posting photos he takes of the turbines as well as photos of the view taken from atop them. He drives a black BMW, which I follow as he takes me to the beach outside town. We lean on the hood of his car, framed by waves on the west and bladed hillsides to the east. Jorgewho likes his job at least as much as Ramiro doesworks on contract doing the infrequent refurbishing of the turbines. He is now fielding inquiries from as far away as Chile. Twenty-six years old and handsome, Jorge likens himself to a soccer player resting between global tours. Friends drive by and wave as he talks about nature, each of us gazing up at the turbines along the ridges.

Meanwhile electricity is surging from those turbines. On one of the arrays outside La Zarzuela, twenty machines generate two megawatts of electricity each. Only five technicians service those turbines, which means each worker produces eight megawatts of energywith time leftover to shoot photos and take in the scenery. In the blow-zone of the straits, technology is enabling a lifestyle of relaxation, enjoyment, and beauty. Some might even call it a utopia.

To live comfortably with wind power, we will have to set aside deep-rooted biases. From Marx to Blasco Ibez to Barack Obama, observers of society have hewed to what Max Weber called the Protestant Work Ethic: one should toil industriously, make a product, and enjoy the fruits of that labor. Leisure must be earned. Perhaps because of Eves trespass, readers of the Bible feel they do not automatically deserve idleness or even hobbies. Labor gives us identity and, when it is good labor, the dignity and self-worth of a person fulfilled.

By refining petroleum, weliberated landscapes from servitude as fuel. But given that the arrangement will cost us our coastal cities, it was not sucha good bargain after all.

Some have dissented. In 1883 the Cuban-born writer Paul Lafargue advocated a right to be lazy. Modern machines, he found, produced enough to support both those working with them and a greater population made redundant by them. Lafargue, who married Karl Marxs daughter after emigrating to London, also argued for shortening the work day. By 1930 the economist John Maynard Keynes was on board as well, predicting a machine-driven, post-work society. Three hours a day is quite enough to satisfy the old Adam in most of us, he wrote, referring to the farmer after the Fall.

Some critics of capitalism now call for a multi-activity society, one that supports hobbies, sports, art, political action, and caring for children and parents. My state, New Jersey, has already embarked down that roadin an ecological fashion. The electrical grid pays me for doing nothing, though the transaction is complicated. In 1999 the Board of Public Utilities established an incentive program to encourage homeowners to install solar panels. As a beneficiary of this policy, I consume free electricity equivalent to my generation, meaning that I almost never pay an electric bill. But I also sell the environmental attributes of that electricity, known as a Solar Renewable Energy Certificate. I earn a certificate with every zero-carbon megawatt-hour I generate, which I can then auction to power companies so that they can include it in their quota of renewables, as mandated by state law. In other words, I get electricity for free and I earn more than $1,000 per year from my 22 rooftop panels. That second benefit compensates me, not for work or investment, but for environmental stewardship.

That planet-saving principle is sound, but other people deserve these payments more than homeowners in New Jersey. As they lose their jobs to solar power, coal miners and plant workers are reducing carbon emissions dramatically. Under the logic that pays me, they surely deserve their own, larger share of the $400 million annual market for New Jersey solar certificates. If I get a check for raising kids under my roof on a sunny weekend, then coal country ought to claim a subsidy for its no-wage, multi-activity society.

To agree to that transfer of resources, politicians and the public have to accept a place such as La Zarzuela for what it is. Many in the United States are likely to agree with hard-driving Santiago, the mayor in La Zarzuela, who cannot bear what he sees as idleness. He would prefer that his neighbors load freight, assisted by petroleum, from port of port. One should make something or move somethingor, at the very least, perform a service that others value enough to pay for. We have been taught that we earn money by the sweat of our own brows, as God allegedly put it at the Fall. We should not, as before the Fall, simply receive bread because there is enough to go around. As long as this insistence upon production prevails, we will remain mired in a system of industry and energy completely unsuited to todays ecological conditions. Perhaps, in order to relinquish fossil fuels, we need to learn to forgive ourselves and others for not working.

At El Pollo unemployed men and women come to drink beer and coffee. They pay with welfare money or wages from last summers tourism and they are, by and large, content. Nearby, the Caseta Municipal, the local club, offers free yoga classes for adults, soccer games for kids, and flamenco festivals for everyone. All the while massive robots do the serious, manual work. Some La Zarzuela residents might object to their appearance, but the turbines do their work without changing the climateand to some, they even change the landscape for the better. To me, these circumstances seem as close to utopia as I could ever to expect to witness.

Excerpt from:

A Jobless Utopia? - Boston Review

In a recent class of which I was a part, we were studying the subject of dystopia. Dystopia is an imagined place or state in which everything is unpleasant or bad, typically a totalitarian or environmentally degraded one. This was in contrast to the concept of utopia, which is an imaginary place in which the government, laws and social conditions are perfect as they relate to life and its possible perspective from which we live.

I inquired of a number of the participants how they felt about life and how they see their present life as it possibly relates to the concept of dystopia, utopia, or a third concept called reality. As it relates to the media, music and our everyday relationships, they indicated it seems that life is bent somewhat toward the dystopian concept. In the family units, or lack thereof, we feel far from a utopia with the epidemic of heroine overdoses and the cutting of the body for the purpose of substituting of one pain for a greater one. Although dystopia and utopia are both imaginary situations, we view them somewhat readily in our present world.

I have been taught all of my life about the utopia of heaven and the dystopia of hell. As a Christian believer and Christ follower, it is my faith in the Bible and the Resurrection of Christ that gives me my basis of belief and life. I do not believe in heaven as an utopian society, but rather as a designed place and plan for the people of God who have a established a relationship with him through Christ while living here on earth. I do not believe in hell as just a dystopian imaginary place, but rather a place of negative eternal damnation for those who have rejected the invitation of God to become related with him through Christ.

In a world of increased confusion that is seemingly diminished of hope and promise, I would take you back to one of my previous writings in this paper, when I talked about the particular world views from which we view life. Our world view is determined by the perspective from which we view life and all that is involved therein; in essence, whether we come from either a God-centered perspective or man-centered view. We are still in a world where the majority of the population believes in an afterlife. Heaven, hell or whatever you may call the life beyond death, it seems to fit into a thought process regarded as dystopia or utopia. This life is a test ground and a preparation for the life to come. The choices we make and relationships (both divine and human) in which we engage will set the direction and pattern of our utopian or dystopian stage for our eternal destiny.

Each day is another opportunity for writing the perspective and answering the questions that life presents us.

As you embark upon another day of life, I submit to you two passages from that ageless writing called the Bible. From the Old Testament: Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight. Proverbs 3:5-6 (NIV) And from the New Testament: For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. John 3:16 (NIV)

The realities of life are in the here and now. The questions of life and the answers of reality are before us to take or leave from our personal world view. Choose the God-centered view and be safe on the way.

Richard R. Burdett is a retired minister living in Lebanon.

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Dystopia, utopia and the like - Lebanon Reporter

Chicago Sun-Times

Maddon unveils new mantra, T-shirt for Cubs: Embrace The Suck Chicago Sun-Times To really expect utopia on an annual basis in the baseball industry is difficult and really not a good method, Maddon said. So right now, I want our guys to understand we haven't done our best work to this point, but that's a good thing (and) to ... Embrace the Suck: Joe Maddon, Cubs have a new, perfectly-timed rallying cryComcast SportsNet Chicago Joe Maddon hope Cubs 'embrace the suck' with latest t-shirtChicago Tribune all 15 news articles »

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Maddon unveils new mantra, T-shirt for Cubs: Embrace The Suck - Chicago Sun-Times

Democratic candidate for N.J. Governor Jim Johnson meets with the edit board at The Record on May 16, 2017. Mitsu Yasukawa/NorthJersey.com

Photo of Democratic candidate for N.J. Governor Jim Johnson meets with the edit board at The Record in Woodland Park on May 16th, 2017.(Photo: Mitsu Yasukawa/NorthJersey.com)

Jim Johnson, aDemocrat running for governor, envisions a liberal paradise in the post-Chris Christie New Jersey that will be achieved without pain or sacrifice -- unless, of course, you're a millionaire.

In the Johnson utopia, cash-starved public school districts will be awash in a new bounty once the school aidlaw of 2008 is fully funded for the first time in a decade. Every district will have pre-kindergarten programs.

The minimum wage will be boosted to $15, an idea also endorsed byPhil Murphy, a former Goldman Sachs executive, and Assemblyman John Wisniewski, two rivals for nomination who are peddling their own visions of a pain-free, progressive future,

Johnson is not inclined to cut benefits for public employees and retirees, even though the state pension system is on track to collapse in 10 years without sweeping reforms. He envisions tax credits to encourage developers to build affordable housing units and credits to discourage millennials from leaving New Jersey. He wants sweeping ethics reforms.

Johnson acknowledged his ambitious plans will be costly, and he pushed back on the notion that his plans won't come without sacrifice -- he calls for trimming political appointees, cutting back on corporate subsidies, for example.

"I haven't said that I'm going to get these things in the first year or the first two years,'' Johnson said during an editorial board meeting at The Record on Tuesday. "We don't have the money to do it. But I know where I want to go."

Johnson laid out his glowing vision on the same day state officials laid out the sad sack reality of the New Jersey's finances. And those numbers don't leave Johnson or his other allies with money for a liberal utopia.

Photo of Democratic candidate for N.J. Governor Jim Johnson meets with the edit board at The Record in Woodland Park on May 16th, 2017.(Photo: Mitsu Yasukawa/NorthJersey.com)

Revenues the current fiscal year, which ends in six weeks,are expected to fall $600 million below what was originally planned to come in, state officials reported Tuesday. And Christie officials also tempered revenue expectations for the next fiscal year, lowering the initial forecast by $443 million.

Those numbers do not suggest that the state is now plunging intoa fiscal crisis -- the shortfall represents a small slice of a $35 billion budget.State officials have no intention of slashing the pension payment, like Christie did when confronted by revenue shortfall in 2014. Treasury officials also plan to blunt the shortfall by dipping into the surplus and by transferring money from programs that have unspent funds.

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Yet, the dismal forecasts are not the kind on which to builddreamy visions for the coming years. Despite the improvement in New Jersey's economy, there is still not enough tax revenue pouring into the coffers to cover its year-to-year operating costs.

That suggests that the kind of boom that generated enough money to pay for a progressive utopia -- a boom like the one in the 1980s during Gov. Thomas Kean's two terms -- is not around the corner awaiting the next governor.

It comes as no surprise, then, that Johnson and the rest of the Democratic field embrace the idea of raising taxes on millionaires, a plan thwarted six times by Christie's veto pen. But that tax plan, if it does become law, would raise an estimated $600 million, roughly the same amount of the projected shortfall for the current fiscal year.

Johnson has other revenue-generating ideas, like reinstating some version of the estate tax, which was abolished in a deal Christie brokered last year that included a 23-cent hike in the gas tax. Johnson also calls for a more aggressive push for shared services and scrubbing the state finances for pockets of waste undisclosed by the Christie administration.

Johnson, a former federal prosecutor who lives in Montclair, acknowledged that he is casting a vision. And its one that the liberal, Democratic grass-roots is hungering for after 7 1/2 years of Christie's union bashing and conservative cost-cutting on programs like funding for women's health clinics.

"Part of this election is: where do you want the state to be in four years or in 10, rather than, 'how can we fix the problem of the last six years,' " Johnson said.

Yet, the problems of the past six years are the point. Without hard choices -- as in cuts in spending, an overhaul in public employee costs -- the problems of the past will haunt the liberal vision of the future.

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Stile: Jim Johnson's liberal vision comes without sacrifice - NorthJersey.com

SINGAPORE: Metallica, Guns N Roses, Coldplay, Steve Vai, Air Supply, The Temper Trap, and a whole lot more have already performed in Singapore this year. But it looks like the concert scene is just heating up, with even more big names lined up for the second half of 2017.

Beginning with Village People on Friday (May 19), there are at least 19 top international and regional acts dropping by Singapore until December. And the announcements just keep on coming.

Music-lovers, too, are embracing this wave of concerts. Artist and avid concert-goer Kristal Melson, for instance, cant wait to catch Foo Fighters. (She kept her ticket from the cancelled 2012 show as a keepsake.) Shes also considering checking out Sting, Britney Spears, and The Lemonheads Evan Dando.

Its great that we have a lot of bands that play stadium shows (here), because those like Guns N Roses, Foo Fighters, Coldplay are bands that people wait ages to come but kind of expect the shows wont happen. Ive been conditioned to think that if I want to see my fave bands, I have to travel out. So in that sense, even though tickets are expensive, theyre still more affordable than flying to, say, Australia.

For KittyWu Records co-founder Errol Tan (another Foo Fighters fan), the influx of acts coming to Singapore is a boon despite recent incidents involving scalping.

Judging from whats happened with Coldplay and Ed Sheeran, the scalping and reselling thing might be an issue. Its been an issue in US and all the mature markets, where these big acts play regularly, and now with all of them coming to Singapore, people are catching on to the whole reselling thing. Some people who really want to catch them might be on the losing end.

Nevertheless, a packed calendar bodes well for the scene, he said. Youre creating a bigger market that is hungry for live entertainment and making more people receptive to the idea of going out to catch live music, which is also helpful for the local scene.

Whether its to start saving up, working out a gameplan, or simply wringing your hands at missing out on that sold-out show, heres a list to help you keep tabs on the top acts coming to Singapore for the rest of 2017. For now.

***

VILLAGE PEOPLE (May 19 at Mastercard Theatres, Marina Bay Sands)

Time to rehearse those nifty moves when the folks behind classic disco hits like YMCA, In The Navy, and Macho Man drop by for a concert celebrating their 40th anniversary. And you get an extra treat, too theyre bringing along ABBA tribute group Bjorn Again to share the stage with them.

STING (May 28 at Singapore Indoor Stadium)

The English singer-songwriter returns in a concert in support of 57th & 9th, his first rock album in 13 years. Hes also got a couple of guests in tow Tex-Mex band The Last Bandoleros and his son-singer-songwriter Joe Sumner.

EVAN DANDO (June 6 at Hood Bar and Cafe)

The frontman of 1990s alt-rock band The Lemonheads (Its A Shame About Ray, Car Button Cloth) will be in town for his first ever solo set in Singapore.

A-MEI (June 9 and 10 at Singapore Indoor Stadium)

After last years successful concert at the National Stadium, which drew 20,000 people, the Mandopop diva returns to Singapore with her new Utopia 2.0 Carnival World Tour, which also commemorates two decades of her music career. Shell be doing her classic hits (including a 40-minute remix performance).

G-DRAGON (June 24 and 25 at Singapore Indoor Stadium)

K-pop fans wont get enough of Big Bangs big boss hell be here as part of his ACT III, M.O.T.T.E. world tour. And to make up for the fact that its been four years since his last visit, G-Dragon is doing two shows.

THE XX (July 25 at Singapore Indoor Stadium)

Another act who hasnt been here for a couple of years, the 2010 Mercury Prize-winning indie band is doing their biggest show in Singapore to date, with guest performer singer-songwriter Sampha.

BRITNEY SPEARS (June 30 at Singapore Indoor Stadium)

The last time she was in town, Britney was a teenager. Well, this global pop icon (and on-off controversy magnet) is definitely not a girl anymore but were not complaining. One of the years highly anticipated concerts.

SUNGHA JUNG (July 22 at Kallang Theatre)

Anyone who has ever checked out his online videos (or any of his past six shows here), knows this fingerstyle guitar virtuoso-slash-online sensation will be a treat to watch. Check out his YouTube channel to see what were talking about.

SHOW LUO (Aug 12 at Resorts World Convention Centre)

Mandopop artiste Show Luo Zhi Xiangs back after three years as part of his Show Crazy world tour. Expect nearly 40 songs from his discography, from 2003s Show Time to 2015s Reality Show.

G.E.M. (Aug 12 and 13 at Singapore Indoor Stadium)

After previous shows at ION Orchard and Max Pavilion, the Hong Kong singer, who switches between languages and music genres, returns for her Queen Of Hearts show.

BASTILLE (Aug 14 at The Star Theatre)

Notice how many of the acts listed here return year after year? The British indie pop act is no exception, after performing at The Coliseum and last years F1 Singapore Grand Prix.

MIDNIGHT OIL (Aug 16 at The Star Theatre)

Iconic Aussie rock band is dropping by as part of their Great Circle tour, which will see the groups classic lineup literally circling the planet with never-ending gigs in their most extensive tour since the early 1990s.

FOO FIGHTERS (Aug 26 at National Stadium)

Another highly anticipated act that might have disappointed its fans after the cancellation of their 2012 gig after frontman Dave Grohls voice problems, the Foos are back 20 years after their last Singapore show. (We wonder if Dave still remembers that Nirvana gig here in the 1990s)

ARIANA GRANDE, ONEREPUBLIC, ET AL (Sept 15 to 17 at F1 Singapore GP)

Were still waiting for other September dates but we doubt anyone would come up against this annual juggernaut of an event. From pop darling Ariana Grande and OneRepublic, to Seal and Duran Duran, to EDM duo The Chainsmokers and Grammy Award-winning DJ Calvin Harris, expect good fun for three straight days.

ED SHEERAN (Nov 11 and 12 at Singapore Indoor Stadium)

Are you among the lucky ones able to get a ticket? Or are you grumbling about scalpers, or praying for a miraculous third show? Well, its still a few more months to go before the singer-songwriters back-to-back gigs so lets just keep our fingers crossed, shall we?

BELINDA CARLISLE (Nov 11 at The Star Theatre)

Another singer whos celebrating an anniversary the former lead vocalist of the Go-Gos is on a special tour to mark the 30th anniversary of her classic solo album Heaven On Earth.

HARRY STYLES (Nov 23 at The Star Theatre)

One Direction fans in Singapore, count yourselves lucky. His show here after a 2015 performance with 1D is one of only two Asian pit stops in his solo world tour.

SHAWN MENDES (Dec 9 at The Star Theatre)

His world tour is called Illuminate which seems apt as the teenage singer-songwriter from Canada will shine a light on why hes such a phenomenon.

MAYDAY (Dec 15 to 17 at Singapore Indoor Stadium)

This year marks the Taiwanese rock bands 20th anniversary and their 10th concert tour.

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From Britney Spears to Foo Fighters, Singapore's 2017 concert fever continues - Channel NewsAsia

It is ironic that the scene of collapsing economies, if not failed states, should become the iconic markers of radical economic transformation (RET). It is a bizarre calling card, not to mention the trampling on precarious lives, in the cause of an untested ideological experiment. It seems that the proponents of these icons of collapse see beauty in the smashing rather than the ugliness of the aftermath. Unleashing forces of change can become an uncontrollable beast even to the well-meaning.

It is one thing to abstract economic ideas, pluck them out of the swirl of their own reality, and hope that if you brewed an economic alchemy dust can turn into gold. Sometimes, if not many times, leftist theorists make the same mistakes as neo-liberal theorist, they describe an economic world that operates like a sort of magical machine.

In their calculus, if you threw in the right ingredients the economy automates itself into a self-perpetuating machine to complete the sequence and task. The problem is that theories are theories, not reality. Reality is much more sober and messy. Reality is a world created out of social actors and their capacities to be a countervailing force against each other determines the character and nature of an economy in different parts of the world. Sometimes theories help to obscure reality more than they uncover it.

Sometimes bold ideas are less achievable through bravado and broad sweeps of policy revolution than through pockets of experiments and convincing by learning and doing.

Vladimir Lenin learned that very hard lesson when he took out the Kulaks, hoping to smash feudal ownership, only to bring them back when the Bolsheviks tried their own RET in the early aftermath of the Bolshevik October Revolution. Lenins War Communism caused food shortages and the collapse of rural economics. Lenin did rectify the situation. He introduced the New Economic Policy (NEP) in 1922. The introduced NEP enabled Lenin to place firmly in the Russian context a mixed economy and encouraged reign investment.

Pragmatism prevailed in the face of stark reality. The NEP was abolished after Stalin came into power as it was deemed to be not socialistic enough.

A study of NEP and the reasons for Lenins need to compromise with capital without totally giving up state control over key areas of the economy is an important episode of shift in revolution Marxist policy.

The other economic policy reforms are that of China.

The disastrous period of Maoist policies such as the Cultural Revolution and The Great Leap Forward took decades of silence before Deng Xiaoping, even under the watchful eye of Mao and his Gang of Four, began a process of reform. Chinas economy and industrial capabilities had been degraded. Deng had to rebuild Chinas industrial base and scientific capabilities.

China experimented a lot with policy reforms if you consider dual pricing, allowing households in rural areas to open village enterprises and the creation of special economic zones in certain parts of China before it universalised policy reforms across the country. Embedded in this logic of reform is understanding the empirical effects of reform rather than running with abstract readings of revolutionary economic theory.

Strategic economics in which national aspirations and long-term objectives of economic sovereignty are the intended goals have to take into account established interests both internally and externally. The more diverse and integrated an economy is within a global system the more shifting from an exclusive to an inclusive economy becomes a harder walk than an easy one.

Economic assumptions must always test their mettle against context. The calculus of change is always a slow process if you do not trust sufficiently that all the forces that can back the process of change are behind you. Or even worse the reaction to reform or revolution will be severe the severity of which you can only tell once it is in motion.

Hugo Chavez brought sweeping changes to Venezuela under the banner of neo-Bolivarianism. Many forces were aligned behind his agenda. The first of which was the loss of legitimacy of the previous government and its disastrous policies. Chavez had another good omen high oil prices that could subsidise fast-track pro-poor agenda in education, health, collectives, small-enterprise, agriculture and many other areas.

He also had a regional setting that favoured his pro-poor populist policies. These favourable leftist governments in Brazil, Cuba, Argentina, Bolivia and others that formed the Bolivarian Alliance for Americas. And, in the international setting there was also China and Russia despite the fact that the majority of Venezuelan oil was been exported to the United States. In the first few years of Chavezs rule Bolivarianism was making remarkable progress.

Today the story is different.

Bolivarianism is failing largely due to the fact that Chavez and now the Maduro era had to rely oil surpluses to pursue a pro-poor agenda which did not give enough time for Venezuela to diversify its economy to become more self-reliant. Chavez chose to spend oil revenues rather than save or seek long-term growth and returns from strategic investments in diversifying Venezuelas economy.

Oil surpluses also fostered a anti-capitalist pursuit that was a mirage of demolition rather than appreciating the capacity of capital to be resilient and able to bide time.

It is all the more ironic that as an anti-capitalist posture has pushed Venezuela to not only accumulate huge foreign debt but also have a hyper-inflated economy just as Zimbabwe did.

In the South African context control over many aspects of our mixed economy has already been established consider the disenfranchising of mining rights from private property, the nationalisation of water, the ability to influence state procurement, the state pension fund and its influential stakes in many private firms listed on the JSE, the significant capital injections in state enterprises. There is also an entire suite of regulatory provisions that if used more effectively cannot only control the abuses of capital but also harness it to move in a state-led developmental agenda. It is simple case of will-over-matter.

All of these, if there is good co-ordination, would be sufficient to pursue a strategic economic dispensation even with the presence of white monopoly capital (for which far too much mythic power is given than is warranted).

The challenge has always been to do good with these levers at the states disposal. Failure in co-ordination is often not an issue of competence but conflicting interests: some within the state seeking societal goals while others using societal goals to privatise the gains from the outflow of rents in various state deals on the offer.

The latter is often the elephant in the room.

Controlling the commanding heights of the economy, as they say, is a record that is mixed and at present combined with problems with competency and corruption state vehicles of economic transformation are bleeding money rather than growing the coffers. If anything, such an array of state control and ownership of assets has become a sort of resource curse just like states that have vast oil and gas reserves. They are turned from being sources of further productivity, growth and diversification into sources of enrichment and private gain by a predatory elite.

The state in turn becomes a consumer of capital rather than a generator of new capital and so degrading its ability to accumulate capital.

This lack of a proper appraisal over how these levers and assets have been used and how to fix the problems is a glaring omission by the RET. The thing with the RET is that it merely formalises an already tried and tested predatory system that over the last decade or more has worked out ways to privatize public spend by rigging the system.

Those who engage predatory practices are not dictated by the colour of their skin but rather carry in their soul a certain breed of callous sentiment which is being given cover by dogmatic ideologues to even call them leftist would be giving too much credit. They are at best in pursuit of a crude and unworked through nationalism.

The problem in Venezuela, and which is it is starting to emerge here, is that alienated eager stalwarts of radical economic theorists are converging with new forms of predatory capital. This unholy alliance, in South Africa, is an alliance of convenience each giving the other cover.

Their objectives are a determined control over the state apparatus the first phase of which is not about progressiveness but a power grab.

The second might well be a moral pursuit but it all depends on how this unholy alliance holds together and how much change is real change: change that benefits the intended beneficiaries or where change becomes an unmitigated disaster. On all these accounts we have no evidence but time will only tell.

You can be sure though that the power of the political entrepreneurs will be over-bearing that they will come to shape the character of the RET and leave for the dogmatics their howling of dogma if not abandonment after the RETs plundering has been exhausted: what good will that do for the poor should they continue to eat ideology rather than be given real bread and butter? DM

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Context matters more than Utopia the economics of South Africa and Venezuela - Daily Maverick