angelburst29
The Living Force
With the media filled with doom and gloom, high unemployment, record numbers on food stamps and controls placed on every aspect of our lives, I came upon a fasinating article on "Decentralizing Big Retail and Monopolies."
http://localorg.blogspot.com/2012/12/decenralize-big-retail.html
How to uproot Walmart and bring jobs home.
In many towns across America, Walmart, or a similar mega-retailer, is the only option you have when you need (almost) anything. Big-retail is a monopoly in its truest form and it has become so, not through "free market" economics, technological innovation, supply and demand, or healthy competition, but rather through a combination of pro-monopoly rules and regulations, human exploitation, outsourcing labor overseas, while preventing labor domestically from unionizing for better wages, job security, and benefits.
The sub-par trinkets, poisoned food and beverages, and slave-made goods that line the corporate consumer troughs at Walmart are the result of a global network taking advantage of socioeconomic disparity, consumer ignorance, and deplorable labor conditions to bring the very lowest prices possible to consumers.
Along every step of Walmart's supply chain, abuses, exploitation, deceit, and harm is being done to both labor and consumers. The only benefactors are the handful of shareholders and executives that run Walmart - who live a life entirely isolated from the paradigm their spanning monopoly has created. Below, an infographic depicts this supply chain - starting at overseas sweatshops, brought through domestic ports where workers struggle for job security, fair wages, and benefits, and end up on the shelves of Walmart, where likewise, labor must struggle to improve their lot.
Additionally, many of the foods lining Walmart's shelves are genetically modified, many come from factory farms where crops and animals are overcrowded, laden with chemicals and medications, and end up as literally poison on your dinner table. The grocery aisles of Walmart are where big-agri converges with big-retail - again to the detriment of both labor and consumers.
The media industry is also an abusive, exploitative monopoly. The ills of this industry had their critics who ceaselessly promoted boycotts, but ultimately to no avail.
It wasn't until a technologically derived alternative, peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing, came along that people in large numbers began to undermine the media industry - to the tune of billions.
The wealth to be made in media is being distributed over a larger community of producers and artists - not through wages or populist handouts, but through entrepreneurship and collaboration.
Similarly, we must look for such a solution versus all industry monopolies - including big-retail, where nearly all of these monopolies seem to converge.
The answer to Walmart, a place where you can buy (almost) anything - is a place where you can make (almost) anything. Such a place was imagined by MIT Professor Neil Gershenfeld. Called a FabLab (Fabrication Laboratory), it serves as the setting for a course literally titled, MAS 863 How To Make (almost) Anything. In it is a collection of modern manufacturing machines - from computer controlled mills and laser cutters, to 3D scanners, electronics production equipment, and 3D printers - where students are taught interdisciplinary skills ranging from engineering and programming, to designing and art.
Professor Gershenfeld's class expanded into a global network of FabLabs focusing on education, local manufacturing, and turning the world's population from consumerist "sinks" into productive "sources." The concept of shedding our centralized consumerist paradigm for one of localized production has expanded beyond the growing FabLab network and made its way into the "maker community."
Locally organized spaces where a similar collection of tools and interests converge to accomplish many of the same goals as MIT's FabLab are called "hackerspaces" or "makerspaces." These are not standardized, and each one is as unique as the community within which they spring up. Experimenting, education, research, and development take place at hackerspaces, and occasionally an entire business model may result. Community projects have also been undertaken by these emerging local institutions.
Agriculture as well is being "re-localized" by community gardens around the world, both by necessity and as a political statement. Growing Power operates an urban agricultural operation, producing crops and fish, while helping others replicate their business model around the world. Other city dwellers are taking advantage of under utilized rooftops, planting gardens to produce fresh, organic vegetables. An emerging trend is for restaurants to grow at least some of their ingredients on their rooftops in a phenomenon known as "roof to table dining." Food waste doesn't go into the trash, but rather into the compost bin to be reused in the growing process.
Now imagine all of these ideas, along with localized education, communication infrastructure, farmers' markets (and maybe maker's markets or a combination of the two), locally sourced water (atmospheric water generators) and many other ideas all combined within the confines of a single block or village. You now have a living breathing, self-contained, semi-insulated localized version of everything Walmart offers, minus the sweatshops, cheap labor, wasteful global logistics networks, and all the instability that comes with a globally interdependent socioeconomic paradigm.
Corporate monopolies seek to control this pie, both as it is, and as it continues to grow, while ensuring the vast majority of humanity has access to less and less. The consumerist paradigm leaves the means of production, logistics, and retail firmly in the hands of the monopolies, while everyone else is either a consumer or an employee.
Localizing, decentralizing, and undermining these monopolies is the real revolution of our time. The "Arab Spring" was manufactured to fulfill a human need to affect change in the face of adversity. The monopolies are trying to channel the backlash to increasing global disparity, by redirecting it into a geopolitical struggle, one that in fact only widens the very disparity people are increasingly becoming angry over.
Obviously big-retail is not going to simply allow people to decentralize and replace their vast monopoly. Big-business of all sorts have assembled a multi-pronged attack including passing legislation aimed at regulating out of business small start-ups with impossible-to-meet requirements they themselves have no intention of meeting. They are also attempting to simply make "illegal" any practice that threatens their antiquated business models, e.g. SOPA, ACTA, and the war on file sharing. They have also attempted to co-opt, buy-off, and partner with these emerging "proto-local institutions." And for now, it may buy them time.
http://localorg.blogspot.com/2012/12/decenralize-big-retail.html
How to uproot Walmart and bring jobs home.
In many towns across America, Walmart, or a similar mega-retailer, is the only option you have when you need (almost) anything. Big-retail is a monopoly in its truest form and it has become so, not through "free market" economics, technological innovation, supply and demand, or healthy competition, but rather through a combination of pro-monopoly rules and regulations, human exploitation, outsourcing labor overseas, while preventing labor domestically from unionizing for better wages, job security, and benefits.
The sub-par trinkets, poisoned food and beverages, and slave-made goods that line the corporate consumer troughs at Walmart are the result of a global network taking advantage of socioeconomic disparity, consumer ignorance, and deplorable labor conditions to bring the very lowest prices possible to consumers.
Along every step of Walmart's supply chain, abuses, exploitation, deceit, and harm is being done to both labor and consumers. The only benefactors are the handful of shareholders and executives that run Walmart - who live a life entirely isolated from the paradigm their spanning monopoly has created. Below, an infographic depicts this supply chain - starting at overseas sweatshops, brought through domestic ports where workers struggle for job security, fair wages, and benefits, and end up on the shelves of Walmart, where likewise, labor must struggle to improve their lot.
Additionally, many of the foods lining Walmart's shelves are genetically modified, many come from factory farms where crops and animals are overcrowded, laden with chemicals and medications, and end up as literally poison on your dinner table. The grocery aisles of Walmart are where big-agri converges with big-retail - again to the detriment of both labor and consumers.
The media industry is also an abusive, exploitative monopoly. The ills of this industry had their critics who ceaselessly promoted boycotts, but ultimately to no avail.
It wasn't until a technologically derived alternative, peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing, came along that people in large numbers began to undermine the media industry - to the tune of billions.
The wealth to be made in media is being distributed over a larger community of producers and artists - not through wages or populist handouts, but through entrepreneurship and collaboration.
Similarly, we must look for such a solution versus all industry monopolies - including big-retail, where nearly all of these monopolies seem to converge.
The answer to Walmart, a place where you can buy (almost) anything - is a place where you can make (almost) anything. Such a place was imagined by MIT Professor Neil Gershenfeld. Called a FabLab (Fabrication Laboratory), it serves as the setting for a course literally titled, MAS 863 How To Make (almost) Anything. In it is a collection of modern manufacturing machines - from computer controlled mills and laser cutters, to 3D scanners, electronics production equipment, and 3D printers - where students are taught interdisciplinary skills ranging from engineering and programming, to designing and art.
Professor Gershenfeld's class expanded into a global network of FabLabs focusing on education, local manufacturing, and turning the world's population from consumerist "sinks" into productive "sources." The concept of shedding our centralized consumerist paradigm for one of localized production has expanded beyond the growing FabLab network and made its way into the "maker community."
Locally organized spaces where a similar collection of tools and interests converge to accomplish many of the same goals as MIT's FabLab are called "hackerspaces" or "makerspaces." These are not standardized, and each one is as unique as the community within which they spring up. Experimenting, education, research, and development take place at hackerspaces, and occasionally an entire business model may result. Community projects have also been undertaken by these emerging local institutions.
Agriculture as well is being "re-localized" by community gardens around the world, both by necessity and as a political statement. Growing Power operates an urban agricultural operation, producing crops and fish, while helping others replicate their business model around the world. Other city dwellers are taking advantage of under utilized rooftops, planting gardens to produce fresh, organic vegetables. An emerging trend is for restaurants to grow at least some of their ingredients on their rooftops in a phenomenon known as "roof to table dining." Food waste doesn't go into the trash, but rather into the compost bin to be reused in the growing process.
Now imagine all of these ideas, along with localized education, communication infrastructure, farmers' markets (and maybe maker's markets or a combination of the two), locally sourced water (atmospheric water generators) and many other ideas all combined within the confines of a single block or village. You now have a living breathing, self-contained, semi-insulated localized version of everything Walmart offers, minus the sweatshops, cheap labor, wasteful global logistics networks, and all the instability that comes with a globally interdependent socioeconomic paradigm.
Corporate monopolies seek to control this pie, both as it is, and as it continues to grow, while ensuring the vast majority of humanity has access to less and less. The consumerist paradigm leaves the means of production, logistics, and retail firmly in the hands of the monopolies, while everyone else is either a consumer or an employee.
Localizing, decentralizing, and undermining these monopolies is the real revolution of our time. The "Arab Spring" was manufactured to fulfill a human need to affect change in the face of adversity. The monopolies are trying to channel the backlash to increasing global disparity, by redirecting it into a geopolitical struggle, one that in fact only widens the very disparity people are increasingly becoming angry over.
Obviously big-retail is not going to simply allow people to decentralize and replace their vast monopoly. Big-business of all sorts have assembled a multi-pronged attack including passing legislation aimed at regulating out of business small start-ups with impossible-to-meet requirements they themselves have no intention of meeting. They are also attempting to simply make "illegal" any practice that threatens their antiquated business models, e.g. SOPA, ACTA, and the war on file sharing. They have also attempted to co-opt, buy-off, and partner with these emerging "proto-local institutions." And for now, it may buy them time.
