In yesterday's post I presented a world in which our newly discovered mastery of the art of carbon sequestration allows us to also progressively reclaim the global deserts and wastelands and essentially build out the Garden of Eden as our human homeland. This is the great dream of the romantics.
There is only one remaining brick to put in place. It is the keystone of access to willing human labor. Agriculture needs the use of occasional hand labor and in modern industrial agriculture that has disappeared or minimized unnecessarily. And quite bluntly, illegal immigrants will not be available for much longer. At best we have a generation or two. None of them would be here if a similar job existed at home. And were are all the European immigrants to day?
Yet I grew up on a farm were in my teens there were tasks that I could do to help the farm. A lot of it was incredibly boring, but it provided exercise and consumed surplus time and energy. If an economic model had existed that gave me measurable access to some form of purchasing power, I would have been willing and enthusiastic. I have learned that this is something that every teenager wants and needs.
And I can now say that as an individual reaches an age in which the demands of the work place diminish, that he too would welcome making such a contribution. I recall my father going out every day to tend his garden, simply for the exercise and the sense of well being. How many elders out there would enjoy putting in a four hour stint of hand work in gardens and the like.
Work of this nature becomes a social system rather than solely an economic system.
I contend that we now have the tools for making this to happen properly in hand. The advent of the concrete slab condo tower creates a small footprint system that can be integrated into the agricultural system readily.
For example, if we designate a square mile of farmland as an agro-community, we can use two or three acres for building towers to hold a couple of thousand residents. The soil can readily be redistributed, and services implemented. The title would be strata title with an additional share in the capital of the farm and access to the resources.
All of a sudden it becomes possible to manage the agricultural component on the basis of both individual initiative and shared initiatives. We actually recreate the traditional village environment in a modern setting and we can make it a better social system than ever arose naturally.
That is the way ten billion people can live on earth and prosper.
There is only one remaining brick to put in place. It is the keystone of access to willing human labor. Agriculture needs the use of occasional hand labor and in modern industrial agriculture that has disappeared or minimized unnecessarily. And quite bluntly, illegal immigrants will not be available for much longer. At best we have a generation or two. None of them would be here if a similar job existed at home. And were are all the European immigrants to day?
Yet I grew up on a farm were in my teens there were tasks that I could do to help the farm. A lot of it was incredibly boring, but it provided exercise and consumed surplus time and energy. If an economic model had existed that gave me measurable access to some form of purchasing power, I would have been willing and enthusiastic. I have learned that this is something that every teenager wants and needs.
And I can now say that as an individual reaches an age in which the demands of the work place diminish, that he too would welcome making such a contribution. I recall my father going out every day to tend his garden, simply for the exercise and the sense of well being. How many elders out there would enjoy putting in a four hour stint of hand work in gardens and the like.
Work of this nature becomes a social system rather than solely an economic system.
I contend that we now have the tools for making this to happen properly in hand. The advent of the concrete slab condo tower creates a small footprint system that can be integrated into the agricultural system readily.
For example, if we designate a square mile of farmland as an agro-community, we can use two or three acres for building towers to hold a couple of thousand residents. The soil can readily be redistributed, and services implemented. The title would be strata title with an additional share in the capital of the farm and access to the resources.
All of a sudden it becomes possible to manage the agricultural component on the basis of both individual initiative and shared initiatives. We actually recreate the traditional village environment in a modern setting and we can make it a better social system than ever arose naturally.
That is the way ten billion people can live on earth and prosper.
