We aren't citizens but consumers

I came across this in my IWWG newsletter and it echoes what I have been thinking and saying People today are no longer citizens but consumers manipulated for an economic system that is in itself an artificial set up with its own rules and regulation. The question isn’t so much, what the hell are we are doing, is why are we letting if be done to us?

By Ethan Miller in YES

“The dominant story defines the heroes of our market system as the rational, self-interested firms and individuals who seek to satisfy their endless need for growth and accumulation in a world of scarce resources. In this story, we the people are just worker-bees and consumers, making and spending money, hoping for the opportunity to accumulate more, and perpetually dependent on the jobs and necessities that the corporate system allocates to the worthy. Citizenship is reduced to the active pursuit of financial wealth…A community of active, creative and skilled people without money of capital (or the desire to have it) are considered unproductive or backward…

Suppose we try a different story: Instead of defining economy as a market system, let’s define it as the diverse array by which humans generate livelihoods in relation to each other and to the Earth. Extending far beyond the workings of the capitalist market, economic activity included all the ways we sustain and support ourselves, our families and our communities. Peeling away the dominant economic story of competition and accumulations, we see that other economies are alive below the surface, nourishing us like roots. These are not the economies of stockbrokers and economists. These are the economies of mutual care and cooperation—community economies, local economies. They include.

Household Economies – meeting our needs with our own skills and work, raising children, offering advice or comfort, teaching life skills, cooking, cleaning, building, balance the check book, growing food and medicine…

Gift Economies—built on shared circles of generosity, volunterr fire companies, food banks, donationg to community organizations, sharing food.

Barter Economies—trading services with friends or neighbors, swapping one useful thing for another, returning a factor, exchanging plants or seed, time-based local currencies.

Gathers Economies—based on the abundance of earth’s gift economy: hunting, fishing and foraging. Also re-directing the waste stream, salvaging from demolition sites, gleaning from already harvested fields, dumpster diving.

Cooperative Economies—based on common ownership and/or control of resources: worker owned and run business, collective housing, intentional communities, community health trusts.

Community Market Economies—networks of exchange build from small businesses and cooperatives that are accountable to their communities through social ties, innovative ownership models and mutual support. Such economies not create to make large profits but to provide healthy, modest livelihoods to their participants and services to the larger communities.