Burning Man is a good example of an experience of interacting w/out an over abundance of commercialism. Granted, you still *pay* to go. However, it’s a brief look inside cultural development that’s driven by something other than profit. There’s something about it that… suggests there may be other ways to build culture.

The detention camps are easy to google for. It’s hard to find a good fair article because the news created so much conspiracy theory. Here’s one that got some upvotes on Digg:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/02/04/ED5OUPQJ7.DTL

(hope that autolinks ok)

Personally, I believe there is a very good chance that our economy won’t recover. Even if it’s just a slim chance – what happens if it doesn’t?

I’m pretty sure the commerce model is broken. At least the notion of corporations. Sure, we’ve grown into a massive empire as a result… but what good are we as a whole? We pillage resources. Most of the “work” that we do for a living really doesn’t serve any greater good. The amount of energy we waste doing things we don’t want to do that serve no purpose could be spent on really wonderful things – like getting ourselves into space.

How long will our good fortune really last? Economically, the land we stole of the natives is amazingly rich. We have enough food to take care of ourselves 10 times over. We have enough fuel to sustain ourselves for a very long time. We’ve exploited immigrants (first legal, then illegal) for cheap labor since our inception. We’ve rapidly grown, which is the only way to benefit from our debt based economy.

But now what? If we can’t sustain growth at the levels we have before, our debt will catch up with us. There exists far more debt in our country than we have actual dollars to pay it off. Because we apply interest to loans, and all money is loaned from the central bank, debt will continue to increase – even if our economy or our population does not. This is not sustainable.

And what will happen when we can’t enjoy this artificially high quality of life anymore? What will our children see? Will we start to see the violence that’s currently in so many other countries? How will our government respond? Will we someday see martial law? We did just finish building concentration camps across the nation for *some* reason.

I hope I’m paranoid, but I don’t think we’re on a sustainable positive path. I also think it’s happening just slow enough that we’re the frog in a slowly warming pot of water – never aware of when it reached a boil.

You need to tell me about Krakauer and Penn sometime.

I think the quality of life we, as participants in commerce and earners/users of currency, have right here, right now, in this nation, is pretty fantastic compared to other human inhabitants of this big blue planet. Sure it’s not perfect, and our voice to better our well being in our democracy sometimes falls on deaf (or corrupt) ears. The machine keeps running, and I’m more happy to be a part of it almost every day, and the days I’m not are inconsequential when I read about what is going on in Iran, China, Darfur, and North Korea, to name a few.

P.S., What actually happened to Chris McCandless as portrayed by Krakauer and Penn is not completely accurate.

But yeah, Into The Wild… The Magic Bus

Sure, I can leave… to whatever countries might accept me. Am I any more “free” in these countries to remains outside the system? It’s not just the US, that just happens to be the country I understand the best because I’ve always lived here.

There isn’t one “master” anymore. If you can get to the top, you can play massa too. And it doesn’t matter who’s back you build your wealth on. There are plenty of people who have to buy food, water, shelter, and other things we used to get directly from nature. So if any of your workers want to leave, it’s easy enough to pass the work on to another in need.

Don’t get me wrong, the society we’ve built is absolutely amazing. The joys and securities I’m able to explore as a member of this team are wonderful.

It just occurs to me that I didn’t get to opt in… and it’s not particularly easy to opt out. Something seems wrong with that.

Even for slave classes, labor wasn’t purely uncompensated. It was not financially compensated, but slaves were – at the very lease – housed and fed. While slaves suffered extreme abuses, there are many recorded cases of slaves being very well taken care of. I’m not trying to justify slavery, just expose a gray area.

On the flip side – consider the way many (perhaps even most) Americans live – piles of debt, living paycheck to paycheck, and are unable to actually build wealth. Many don’t get proper medical care. Meanwhile, they work for companies owned by individuals who live extravagant lifestyles.

So, that “gray area” doesn’t mean whole lot by itself. But I see one more crucial piece that brings it all together. We lack the option to opt-out.

What if I don’t want access to education, parks and leisure, low-income assistance, etc. What if I do not want to participate in the “system”. What if I don’t want government run fire stations, police departments, and libraries?

They key point here is that I do not have a choice. I am not allowed to attempt to build my own existence outside of the “system”. I am not allowed to work with others to build a different system. To some degree, I have to submit.