automata

As we hurdle into a near-certain future of ultra-capitalistic technocratic climate chaos hell, sometimes I like to stop and think about certain scenarios.

So, here’s the premise:

Let’s say that I set out one day and decided that I would try to minimize the revenue I generated for businesses in all my day-to-day actions and activities. How much could I reduce? Would it make a difference if a large group of people started doing that?

Here onwards, this post will serve as a sort of brain-dump for ways to go about this “RevMin’ing.”

The first way that came to mind when I began thinking about this was food. I think I spend a decent amount of income, typically around 1/5-1/6 of everything in our household, is spent on food of some sort. Some of this is rather unavoidable. Our baby is on formula and it’s not feasible for some reasons to breastfeed, so my wife and I use formula. I don’t think we can safely make it at home, so we are basically forced to buy it or beg for it. We could do more begging, but that doesn’t necessarily reduce revenue in the long run because a lot of so-called non-profits are using kickbacks from the government for their giving in order to pay their employees and fuel big bonuses for their executives. Anyhow, let’s chalk it up to a necessary expenditure.

Well, what about everything else? It would take some upfront work, but I think we could probably grow some of our own food. We have a very small yard, primarily dominated by dogshit from neighbors, so we probably couldn’t grow much here “on-site” as it were, but there’s probably a community garden someplace that we could use. If we were organized a bit more, we could make trips and have some sort of little micro-ag system in place and mimic how large-plot farms do their thing, on a smaller scale. I’ve often heard that it takes a total of three acres to be completely independent when growing one’s own food. I’m not sure how accurate that is but suffice to say I don’t think we could easily manage three acres worth of community garden space without driving a lot. An acre is roughly a square with 210ft sides. So, it’s quite large. Three acres would produce a lot of food, indeed, but then there’s the tasks involved in such a thing. Tilling, planting, harvesting, drying, storing, prepping, cooking, etc. It’s a complex operation and running it on two adults betwixt the responsibilities of full-time employment and caring for a 5mo baby would be quite a large task.

Would this make a difference if a large number of people started doing it? Sure. At the same time, there’s reason to believe that GMO foods prevent a lot of illness and health issues, there’s a lot of power in the economy-of-scale aspect of larger format farming and having huge machines to do what would’ve taken dozens or hundreds of men working to do, and then the issue of each person finding a 3-acre plot of suitable farm land near enough to them for any of this to make sense… it’s a lot. Undoubtedly, it’d make a big difference, but it’s not very practical.

Instead, consider going vegan. Shop smart, shop frugal. Train yourself in the art of being disgusted with extreme sugarification of all your food and snacks and figure out how to make vegetables the main sustenance you’re eating. Remember, this is an act of war. Take care of yourself, think like a soldier. Eat, be merry, but fight the enemy with your wallet.

What about household things? Now that my wife and I have a child, I feel very differently about the volume of physical possessions because of how many things improve our quality of life with the baby. Do we absolutely need a bouncer? No, but it makes life so much easier because Junie can just hang out while I do dishes or while my wife folds laundry, whatever we’re doing. It’s great to have things like that.

Anyhow, this has been a messy post, but I’m going to just let it ride. It’s an interesting thing to think about, if a little anxiety-inducing. Are we fighting hard enough with our money?