"Smart Economy" - Right words, wrong plan !

In Ireland our government is telling us that the way to grow out of our self inflicted recession is to embrace the "smart economy". This is a term coined to define an economy type that they wish us to pursue. This economy type focusses strongly on building world class digital hubs, advanced broadband capabilities, etc. etc.. You get the message, build loads of techy stuff and things will be grand lads!

If only that were true. First of all there will be the inevitable governmental and state instituional incompetence in delivering the finished product. Secondly, by the time the product is delivered it will already be out of date as a concept, considering the scale of change in the world, but most especially in any IT related technological sphere. Thirdly, there will always be someone else doing things faster,cheaper and more efficiently in this field of endeavour.

So maybe pursuing this type of "smart economy" is not the best route for a country on its uppers. What though, if we were to pursue a different type of "smart economy".
One that built real solid foundations in our daily lives. One that meant that access to basic requirements like clean water, food, waste water recycling, heating and electricity could never be denied at any time, but especially not in times of economic recession. Currently we have half a million people out of work struggling to pay for many of these basic human needs. The lack of money though should never mean we are unable to meet these daily needs.

In effect there is a core of goods and services that should be removed from the grip of money. We should always be able to access these resources, even if we have no money! I am not saying we just get handed them, but in fact am saying we should be able to work collectively together to provide them for ourselves, without needing money to purchase them on an ongoing basis. This would remove so much stress over the loss of income and also greatly empower our daily lives.

Examples:
- Wind/Solar Energy:: Stop wasting money on investing in stock markets/pension funds (letting young pups gamble on your future security at financial roulette tables). Invest that money NOW as you work and earn, into building local wind energy (or solar) supply. Then you are providing free energy for your future. If you, or one of your neighbours lose your jobs, then since you all invested in buying the technology, you all should still get to receive power, even though some people are struggling with money levels. If one cant even afford to contribute part of the money that buys the technology, then maybe one can "earn" their free power by maintaining the infrastructure, or by performing some other social service for the community.

- Food supply:: Food is going to rise in price soon. No doubt. Also, it is becoming more and more unhealthy a product, as it is tweaked and prodded to meet all sorts of "preferred"specifications. Start growing food locally. Again take a share of our current earnings and pool together to get seed/eguipment/machinery etc. Now we also have future food security, and hence even if we lose our jobs, we can at least get out of bed and help others to work the soil, to feed our families. Even if we dont lose our jobs, it also provides future food security into retirement age etc....

- Water:: Drill our own wells. As water charges come more and more onstream, own your own water supply. Then you can be guaranteed of its quality and cleanliness. Again without money, we can now pump drinking water to our taps daily without depending on centralised and costly services. Also build rain water capture devices to utilise grey water for toilets and washing machines.
Many more examples could be listed.....................

If we could get to a situation where each individual in our society had this level of future security of resources then we have truly built a "smart economy". It is an economy that guarantees, at the very least, that basic human needs can always be met locally, external from the traditional monetary loop.

All else can follow on from there, i.e. market economies can build on those foundations. Build as many digital hubs as you like then, once you can access the basics. This would be a revolution in economic policy and finally start to de-leverage us from bond markets and depending exclusively on a healthy market economy as the only barometer to measure success in our world.

Where does the government fit in?
Stop peeing our money against the wall like a bunch of drunken teenagers. Stop wasting money on quangos/reports/advisors/ PR/ media/excessive salaries/advertising/ special interest groups/ saving face to other countries etc.. etc.. Use some of that money that is normally wasted and enable the process of allowing the people to meet their needs,

i.e.

• make any of the funds used to purchase this infrastructure, like wind turbines or solar panels, tax exempt

• remove all red tape, to help foster creativity, enterprise and innovation at a local level
• Sell country abroad as one that is self sufficient, thereby marketing us a experts in sustainable economic development

A smart economy should be able to always meet the basic needs of the people, regardless of external conditions like recessions or unemployment. Without that, anything additional is just building on weak foundations, that will eventually give way some day.

Barry Fitzgerald

Author of "Building Cities of Gold"

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My New book is for Sale

Barry Fitzgerald

Author of "Building Cities of Gold"

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Publishing house: ATTM Press.
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Fix it locally!

Dublin city council and a state agency are planning to pump water from the River Shannon, in the midlands of Ireland, up to the catchment area of Dublin, a distance closing on 80 miles. They are proposing to pump 350million litres of water per day to the city, to help serve as drinking water for the next 70 years.

Obviously, this is stirring up huge controversy. I am not going to get involved in either side of a passionate debate like this. I am more interested in the sanity/logic of this project, as more and more proposals like this will be mooted by governments worldwide, as a reactionary measure to counteract against increasing population levels and climatic changes. In this instance the project proposes moving water 80 miles for drinking purposes for a large urban area, at a proposed cost of 500million euro!

If I were a resident in the Dublin region, then two things look apparent. Firstly, it looks like my future water supply is in jeopardy and secondly, I am going to have to pay a lot of money over the years towards meeting that 500million bill, if this project goes ahead. However, by paying all this money in taxation is one actually guaranteed good quality water going forward? Im afraid not. Then, the question becomes why does one need to pay for this water to be moved. Why can't my council meet my water needs from water in my region?

If Dublin is running out of water then there has to be a reason. One has to question if Dublin may have significantly less rainfall than the rest of the country. It is slightly drier than the West, but still receives a large rainfall of approx. 900mm per year. Also, the beauty of a temperate climate is that this rainfall is fairly evenly spread out over the year and does not fall in a short monsoon season. Therefore the water cycle has a chance to keep working. This must mean that a lot of water is getting wasted in the city. And as it transpires this is the case. Victorian era pipe work leaks water like a sieve underground throughout the city.

So it is deemed sensible to move a great mass of water 80 miles to feed into pipe work that is totally inefficient. This is madness of the highest order. All at a cost of 500million euro. A pretty expensive bill for an illogical and poorly thought out proposal.

How to fix things:
Preservation of water has to be key. Don't even allow it into the pipework in the first instance. Trap water at source, e.g. capture rain water from roofs and store in individual household tanks. Get this tank plumbed into toilets/washing machines etc. Now less and less clean water is required from the council for these services. Now fresh water demand drops exponentially and the need to ship water cross country is negated.

Of course there will be a cost in implementing hardware in houses to capture water and feed it into the houses. However, if tens of thousands of houses across the region are getting this retrofit, then it could be done at a much reduced rate. Let’s just say we still spend this 500million euro, but instead redeploy it. If 500,000* houses, (nearly all of Dublin hinterland houses) all received a rain water harvesting system at a cost of say 1000*Euro (reduced price due to the quantity), it means we are empowering all those householders to help meet a lot of their water needs. If we get them to pay for this retrofit themselves, either up front if they can afford it, or over time if they can't (years if needs be), then they will not be hit with huge water charges going forward to pay for moving water by their council. This 1000*euro should also be written off against individual taxation. It is an investment in sustainability that means the government needs to perform less central delivery of services, and therefore it should be supported financially in the means of tax reduction. This means it will cost significantly less than the 1000*euro for the individual.

Of course people will cry foul at having to pay at all. However, with the plan of moving water the housholder will be forced to pay index linked taxation and water charges indefinitely into the future. Hence, they will pay a lot more than 1000Euro! However, if they paid 1000Euro now as a set amount to install their own collection system, then they know they cannot be forced to pay off a piece of state infrastructure indefinitely into the future.

Since we do live in a democracy it is a choice to implement a solution like this. However, those who do install it should be rewarded. Perhaps they would become exempt from all water charges going forward, or indeed just pay a token contribution (50Euro/year), whereas those who refuse to install their own water collection system should be those who need to install a full water metering device and pay for their usage. This also solves the crisis of how to apply water charging.

This project has the added benefit of creating thousands of jobs in installing these systems NOW, hence stimulating economic activity in the region. While a great big pipe from the midlands will create jobs, there would be far less due to large machines performing the bulk of the work. House to house retrofits are much more labour intensive and hence will create many times more jobs.

Now water doesn't need to be moved. It is generated at source.

We have to start coming up with local solutions like this. It is too easy for planners/councils/governments to sit in offices and make sweeping infrastructural decisions that have no long term benefit without pushing back and proposing better alternatives.

We gain security when we invest in these projects. It is far better putting our individual finances/savings into solutions like this, than investing in places like the stock exchange. We gain security when we invest locally. Now we know, at the very least, that we can meet a lot of our water needs, a somewhat basic human right. Shipping water 80 miles does not guarantee us this.

Also someone needs to explain first principles to these decision makers. A leaking bucket will always need more water. 350 millions litres today, 800million in a few years, where does it end!

Fix the leaks, coupled with introducing a widespread water saving project like rain water harvesting would secure water needs permanently for the region of Dublin city.

* These figures are not exact and are only used as illustration of the possibility of redeploying this money into better local solutions.

p.s. While obviously it's a major project to retrofit houses like above, it is not too outlandish an idea. There was once a time where every house in the Dublin region (albeit less houses) all had single glazed windows. Then this new fangled concept came to pass where they put two panes of glass together!.......try to find more than a handful of houses nowadays with single glazing throughout. That was quite a labour intensive project for all those houses, but obviously achieveable over time. Nothing to say the same couldn't happen with this project.

Barry Fitzgerald
Author of "Building Cities of Gold"

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Publishing house: ATTM Press.
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Hand Back the Keys!!!

A body in Ireland tasked with coming up with "creative" ideas to try and ease the pressure on struggling mortgage holders, reckon the best solution for these people is to hand back the keys to their homes, and to then go and join the social housing lists.

No consideration of the stress implications, the social impact of this, the fear and desperation of the people involved. They are treated like numbers, not people terrified out of their wits. Is there a better solution? One thing is for sure. People will need to help themselves, as inspiration ain't coming from the top down, as seen from above.

If we look at the figures, we are told 4% of mortgage holders are in dire difficulty. And anything up to another 10% are under uncomfortable strain meeting their repayments. Of course, the demographic involved is the 30-40 year old, with a couple of kids, i.e. the working (or not working, as the case may be) middle class poor. Also a major tax contributing demographic, if they are working. So they should just hand back their keys and give up. Yeah right!

It's time for unified thinking. Let's look at all of those who have no mortgages, e.g. the empty nesters, early 60's, who may be quite comfortable. Approximately 40% of people have no mortgage commitments and most of those are that type of profile described above. If we have a fit and healthy couple in their 30's who are unemployed, then they shouldn't languish under the stress and strain of potentially losing their homes through no fault of their own. If they can't (and many can't) gain employment, then perhaps we can marry these two demographic ranges together. For every unemployed person who can't get a job and who can't repay their mortgages, there is, in most likelihood, 10 mortgage free householders (or more) of more advanced years.

What if the young couple were to work in a socially agreed fashion for those 10 households? Any type of work; from manual labouring, painting, garden maintenance, to driving services etc.. Also more socially oriented work like house calls, counseling services, letting their young kids interact with what can often be a quite lonely demographic, i.e. the retired/elderly person. A fee could be pre-arranged, of say 10 euro per hour, for services rendered from the young couple to the older people. If each young couple performed just 10 hours work for another "older" household per month, then it would mean a remittance to them of 100Euro per month. Do that for 10 households and you have 1,000 Euro/month, for only 100 hours of your now "free time". That 1,000 would often meet, or go a significant way to meeting a monthly mortgage repayment.

Of course the "older" household has to have that 100 Euro spare every month. But a lot would have that. Secondly, they have to want to participate. But, if they are getting work done by a trusted, regular caller to their house, well they may well want to engage with such a scheme. Very often maintenance on something will prevent future catasptrophic failures, and so, a scheme like this could actually utimately save them money. Also, at a rate like above of 10 Euro they are getting a very fair price.

The upside is huge.

• Unemployed struggling young people can "work" without being dependent on the wider paralyzed economy to employ them

• Older people who physically may not be up to some tasks can get a lot of work done to their homes at a moderate rate

• There is a sharing of problems

• A feel good factor for the older generation, in being of such valuable social service

• The obvious easing of stress on young couple which feeds into less stress/pressures passing on to their kids
• The building of relationships that will trancend the generational gaps. When the younger people come out the other side of their difficulties down the line, valuable and deep relationships will have been forged. etc.etc.

A ratio of 1:10 is what's needed. Find ten comfortable households for each struggling household. Oh, and I believe that that 1000euro/month should be tax exempt. It is people helping themselves through a very difficult time; hence they are not now so dependent on the government. They will not end up on social housing lists, will need less state support and will get back on their feet a lot quicker. A government should be encouraging schemes like this, and the best way to do that is to grant them official tax free status. The economic and social payback from a scheme like this far outweighs whatever puny (in relative terms) taxes it would raise.

How to set up this scheme? Well it would be easy to operate, easy to follow rules. The hard part, as always, is to own up and to actually ask for the help, if one is struggling. We have forgotten we are a society, not a collection of economic producing housing units. The scheme should run from the ground up though, i.e. do not let incompetent institutions (including private banks) near the reins of power. A simple website to advertise the idea, publish profiles of those seeking aid, and of those willing to offer "work". A matching process could then begin, based on location.

People helping people. The only way out of this mess. And nobody is getting screwed.
It sure beats having thousands of house keys dangling from a banker’s office wall, with their corresponding houses lying empty.

Barry Fitzgerald
Author of "Building Cities of Gold"

Available Now From Amazon

http://tinyurl.com/22t3mkc

Kindle Version - http://tinyurl.com/2vq2e2d
Publishing house: ATTM Press.
http://www.allthingsthatmatterpress.com/buynow.htm

Sustainability; The most abused term in the English language.

In 2010 it seems everyone has a "sustainable" product and a lot of businesses use the term to describe their operations. Government and institutional officials throw the term around like confetti. Everyone seems to think that just using the term makes them fit in with the new zeitgeist and new world order. After all the people want everything to be sustainable, right?

Unfortunately nearly every single use of this term in our world means one of two things;
a.) either we have to consume more to enable this so called sustainability or,
b.) we will have to work more and more in our lives to pay for this term.

If we are constantly buying products, this doesn't make the operation sustainable, even if there is no damage to the environment. And this is really the only criteria we use to measure the term sustainability, i.e. the impact on our environment. But sustainability should be so much more than that.

It should include us as human beings in the equation. Is it sustainable for us to continue to work so hard, so we can just purchase more and more goods, even if those self same goods earn their stripes as "clean" products. I contend that this is not sustainable. Similiarily it is not sustainable for us to work longer and longer in our lives to pay for legislation and carbon taxes etc.. that are meant to bring us into line with environmental standards.

In all this we are missing a key component. It is only with increasing population levels that we can operate our current economic models, i.e. markets always getting bigger as population levels continue to rise. This has been the case for so long, but soon (within 6 decades) we will have a population peak. Thereafter what will we do? I mean how can we market, produce and sell "sustainable" products in an unsustainable market over the longer term. How can we tax and legisltate the average Joe and Jane to excess, when again we live in an unsustainable market economy.

This is why our abuse of the term "sustainability" has to stop. We need to re-define this term so it can only be used when we ALL achieve equal access to the resources of the world, to allow us to have security in our lives from cradle to grave. Only then are we free of an unsustainable market economy. Only then can we work to a more humane schedule, e.g. an average of 4 hours per day. Only then will we truly come into line and only consume that which we truly need. Only then will we be able to realise that we can achieve self sufficiency in our localities. Only then can we lay claim to using the term sustainability.

Why?, because we have regained our individual power, aligned into strong local communities and "own up to owning" our path in life. We trust our ability to meet our needs in our lives and now we are sustainable. We don't need carbon taxes or low energy consuming products to fool us into thinking we are sustainable. You are sustainable when you trust your needs in life will be met, both today and tomorrow and all the days after tomorrow. Of course minimum damage to our environment should be (and can be) a minimum requirement.

That leaves the lingering question. How do we ALL get equal access to the resources of the world. Simple, it is time we demanded it from those who fool us into thinking we cannot have it.

There is a better way to finance our futures.

Current Madness re: financing of countries.

Bondholders = faceless "beings" who loan money to our governments to keep the show on the road; daily, weekly, monthly, annually. Our governments never realistically plan to pay off the principal borrowed, but only to service the loans yearly with interest repayments. The bond holders get fairly attractive returns on their investments plus huge individual re-numeration, and who can be a better debtor than a sovereign nation! Or so the theory goes.

One slight glance behind this little arrangement highlights how dysfunctional it truly is. I would like to point that out here and also to offer one viable alternative to this system.

Since no country at the moment seems to have money to loan, except perhaps China, then one has to ask who are the bondholders and where do they get their cash? After all to hear political, economic and journalistic commentators talk on the possibility of debt default to bond holders, would make one think they were human eating lizards who could zap us all into oblivion with their advanced cosmic ray guns! No, the boring truth is that these bond holders are simply human beings like the rest of us. No ET lizards anywhere. However in truth who they work for, and represent, is often the pension funds and insurance companies of the world. A few bondholders in percentage terms are individual wealth holders, but mainly they comprise funding from these two industries.

So, we have the crazy situation where money collected from the people of the world through investments in pension funds and the buying of insurance policies of all kinds is pooled together and then used as finance to lend to completely incompetent governments and administrators in countless countries. Remember the money collected from the people is supposed to guarantee them personal security in their future, i.e. either through a guaranteed pension fund, or through the guarantee of an insurance claim being covered.

Investors believe that at some point they will be able to cash in their pension fund or their insurance policy and the cash will be there to meet their demands. This has worked to date for a few reasons. Primarily the biggest reason was that that we had a rapidly expanding population, hence it was perfectly acceptable for governments to defer debt principal payments and to be able to meet annual bond interest payments - (as they believed this debt will always deflate into the future, i.e. ever increasing population levels will make this debt a smaller and smaller burden. This allowed a malaise/incompetence to set in with the efficiency of handling finance raised in the bond markets. Countless articles could be written about how inefficiently government money is handled). However we are facing a population peak within decades. This should be the most alarming fact facing humanity at the moment as our whole economic system is built on the premise of more consumption, more people to pay taxes, more building, more cheap labour, more markets to sell to etc... So governments cannot assume that our current debt will always deflate, i.e. we will soon reach a point where more and more people are not available to pay off and devalue the borrowings of today.

Secondly, people up to very recently did not have hugely long retirement periods as the average age of death for both men and women was only about 10 years past retirement. That too is changing rapidly. In recent years people are living 20/30 years past retirement age. This will mean more and more money needs to be yielded back from pension funds to finance longer retirements, rather than being tied up in government debt repayment structures, with no access to the principal.

We cannot keep financing our lives the way we do today. We need to realise the bond holder is not some untouchable, all powerful demi-God. They handle our/your money. We need to stop investing in the market economy as the only way to ensure our future security. These guys will not be able to hold governments to ransom, raise interest rates and basically rule the world if they don't have your money to empower them. They are using your belief in a secure future to allow them rule the world.

How do we stop them, gain personal future security and by extension force governments to become more efficient?

INVEST in your local community. If we used the money we would have spent on investing in pension funds (public or private) and if we didn't have to buy insurance on everything, it would give us a lot more financial resources to secure our future. We could use that cash today to build the infrastructure (social and physical ) in our local community to give us more security. We could finance shared buildings, finance local food production, permaculture solutions and help build a barter economy where we can trade goods and services into retirement. These empowering additions to our locality (as just a few of many) would build our future security.

As for insurance, we could move to local insurance models. As an example instead of buying home insurance from a faceless corporation we could insure our homes collectively. It would be pretty easy to list the percentage of claims on house insurance policies and the common claim types. Then pool your money together with perhaps 100 neighbouring families. Hire a handy man/several people and pay them through a combination of local barter economy/cash remittances to work on fixing/auditing houses to correct common defects that could turn into future possible insurance claims. Now, instead of investing thousands and thousands over the years into house insurance that you may never need, you are now hiring someone locally to maintain your home and also to work on your house if you have an "insurance" claim. Part of the money you pay into this local scheme annually meets the local workers' salaries and part is used to pay for any bigger insurance claims that are fixed by locals.

Now power is taken from insurance companies/pension funds/bond holders who trade and hold governments to ransom with your money. Also governments will now have to evolve, streamline and become super efficient with reduced pools of money available for future borrowing.

In time, we should get to a situation where government borrowings are drastically reduced naturally as local solutions kick in. The more we finance/fund/fix our own lives, the less we need governments to do so for us.

I am not advocating the abolishment of something like a bond market. I am though advocating more individual empowerment over where your money is going and also empowerment over your future security. Everyone wins!

Book to be Published by ATTM Press

Exciting News: March 14th 2010.


My book also entitled "Building cities of Gold" will be published by ATTM press later in 2010. ATTM press are an exciting press that promote and publish work that has a positive message at its core.

My book will be for sale on both ATTM press website or on Amazon.com when it is published.