Don’t Eat The Resource Hoarders — Address Inequity Cooperatively!
It’s been nearly twelve years since I became certified in permaculture design. Despite having what many would consider a black thumb back then, I wanted to learn how to grow my own food and also live off-grid and managed to find a place that offered both. I made the trek to the Argentinian side of Patagonia in November 2011, braving a ten-hour bus ride, followed by a three-hour horseback ride through the Andes Mountains and across a rapidly flowing river. That journey led to an estancia with very few comforts of home (no refrigeration, wood fired water heaters) and no contact with the outside world. When I tell you I learned a lot over that month, I learned a lot! About nature, about off-grid living, and about the world, in general.
While I’ve long since forgotten many of the lessons learned during that thirty-day intensive, one principle of permaculture stays on the playlist of random thoughts in my mind:
excess creates pollution.
It does not matter what thing is excessive, if there is too much of that thing, it will pollute. Water is a prime example. The right amount of water will nourish a garden, a forest, a farm. Too much will flood land and drown plants, structures, and people. And as life not only mimics, but is in fact, nature, I see this in the people I call resource hoarders.
Resource Hoarding and the Myth of an Ethical Capitalist
Resource hoarders are the ones more commonly known as billionaires, multi-millionaires, and/or whatever term used to calculate the value of resources they hoard. They’re not rich by any means. Definitely not worth eating. Good soil is rich. Rich soil provides, nourishes, and sustains the life it supports — reciprocally. Resource hoarders retain, oppress, and extract to excess. That excess has polluted our markets, our mindsets, and as we all know, the planet. And who wants to eat that?
Which is why I do not believe in the idea of an ethical capitalist. You cannot hoard resources without taking from others. It’s that simple. Many who choose the so-called social good capitalist way, e.g. benefit corporations and BCorps, believe that they can hoard resources, as long as they give a portion of their taking back. Living well by doing good. But this model does not address inequity at the root of living well. If ten people sit in a room with $100 and one person takes $91 and distributes $1 to the others, yes, all have received, but is there equity? Is there fairness? Even if that one person then shares another 10% of their taking by distributing another $9 to the others — the imbalance of resources remains.
Cooperatives! A Step Towards Resource Equity
So how do we address resource inequity? By recognizing that the Earth belongs to all of us. Our shared home. None of us are getting out of here alive. Not even the dudes with rocket ships. The resources that the planet provides belong to all of us. For all of us. To believe otherwise is to not recognize that the Earth is abundant. And as inhabitants of Earth, we are also abundant. As above, so below. Capitalism invites us to forget that.
Only an equitable distribution of resources can begin to reduce the level of pollution attributed to widespread resource hoarding. I confidently believe that cooperatives are a step towards that equity. We have to learn to work together. No other capitalist-rooted business model can claim that step. This is not to say that that cooperative model is the model to put an end to capitalism. I don’t believe that either. But I do believe that it is a step away from market inequity and a step towards a better distribution of resources. I cannot say that cooperatives are the end all be all because let’s face it, cooperatives have been in the news for having capitalist tendencies, see REI and its union busting activity. But. A step is a step.
As founding member of Trunk of My Car Cooperative, I do have a vested interest in advocating on behalf of all things cooperative. But. This isn’t my first cooperative experience. Back in the 80s, my mom was a frequent shopper at GLUT, a food coop located just over the DC line in Mount Rainier, MD, which has been there since the late 60s. I hated that our flour and our rice and other staples came in bulk plastic bags and not fancy brand name boxes like those at my cousins’ and friends’ houses. I was too young to recognize the revolution in cooperative shopping and that the bells and whistles of pretty packaging (of often the same exact goods) meant higher costs. GLUT is still going strong after all these years. Proof that the cooperative business model is a sustainable one.
Three decades after that first coop experience, I became a supporter of the now defunct Savannah Food Coop. Which, although it closed, does not mean that the cooperative business model does not work — it means that it is subject to the same, if not tougher, market conditions as capitalist enterprises.
While the Savannah Food Coop was in operation, I received a discount on my weekly local and organic food purchases by showing up once per week as a volunteer to prepare member orders for pick-up. I saw and was part of a community buying and redistributing high quality food at fair prices. There were people who:
- handled vendor ordering,
- people who received orders,
- people, like me, who prepped orders, and
- some who handled customer service.
We all did our fair share. Nothing in excess. No one person was like, I’m taking all of this home, y’all can go on now. It was like my permaculture course, revisited. All the different layers of the forest working together to not just survive but to thrive. Which is the exact opposite of what we see in capitalist marketplaces.
And now that mine eyes have seen the glory, I am confident that the way out of the excess and the pollution and the greed is to redistribute resources to the collective. No one man needs to possess all of the water or all of the currency, for that matter. There is enough for us all.
