Friday, November 6, 2015

Cowboy stylings.

Part two of the opening backdoor.

For me what it really comes down to is that an emerging social and eco- orientated conscience with a willingness to work towards those ends which are of most benefit to humans living in modified landscapes alongside what might be defined as natural landscapes is that the old model of commercial/charity being the only way to approach a problem just isn't cutting it anymore and we shouldn't have to make that paradigm fit us as we design approaches to the re-vitalisation of our place on this earth.

It stands to reason, but a reason yet to be clarified, that it would be advantageous if we accepted a model whereby we all need to work to live, and therefore some sort of recompense was required but at the same time accept that that work can be of benefit to more than just ourselves and so in line with what might now be called a charitable contribution.

This might be what is termed post-capitalism, which might be almost the same as capitalism except the impetus and drive isn't to advance the individual in terms of material consequence but is a retention of the system of barter being afforded efficiencies using a monetary basis for exchange alongside and serving, as it were, a collective orientation towards the greater good.

Long ago I realised that an efficient process would do itself out of it's job, which is to say that anything started and taken to fruition would get to a stage where it became self perpetuating and didn't require human labour anywhere near the extent that it did at it's beginning but the biggest problem with this within a capitalist system is that there is an inbuilt tendency for this not to happen simply because it would no longer yield profit and so the initial investment of time, labour and capital would be lost.

The automobile industry is just one of many that illustrates this well in that it is well within our abilities as an industrialized economy to create vehicles which could easily last for decades upon decades with an absolute minimum of re-investment but we don't do that. What we do do and it's is hugely wasteful is to keep creating new vehicles year after year which degrade not mechanically at all, or at least not significantly, but that they degrade mostly in style as they are almost exclusively a fashion accessory and that this has almost become the paramount requirement to ensure full employment of the vested interests which have aligned themselves within that industry.

And it's completely stupid.

A comparison would be to look at the efficiency of growing vegetables and fruit trees on an average 1/4 acre block, because we all somewhat understand this process within our own little kingdoms, but imagine if every year we had to sell off more and more of that efficiency simply because wheelbarrows were badly made and it became our prerogative to keep changing the colour each season to the extent that the changing of the colours became paramount and the simple fact they were badly made had little consequence?

But now I must cede back into my original discussion and give up this easily embraced criticism of what things are like now because that's one of our big problems too. This inclination we all share to spend far too much time hauling the present system over the coals and not actually spending time, if any, in creating solutions. And that's why we need to work towards redefining the commercial/charitable paradox because we need people to be able to earn a living but also work towards redefining the possibilities of new ways of doing things.

The present system is unfair in the sense that people without backing can't afford to be as charitable as they might wish they could be and in that regard charity is the playground of the affluent.

But again I diverge towards criticism of things as they are... so simple!

One thing I have noticed over the past few years is one that effects the market economy, and I don't mean markets of the type that Merrill Lynch etc plays in but the type we see forming in carparks on weekends with a bent towards the craft market alike Titirangi and Coatesville which occur once a month. At once quite quaint and somewhat nostalgic they also often sit, the marketeers, on economic realities not visited upon the mass of economic activity to the extent that within what we might call the first world these people are almost having to exist in a third world. Case in point is that those who effectively engineer a product from nothing, or at least a cheap and available resource, must basically get in and make their money both to recoupe their investment and provide a living without protection from others who might recognise the validity of their works and the efficiencies they have created and just basically steal all the hard word they have done creating a market share for their product.

Yet the types of efficiencies these people create is what we actually need. This kind of seedbed architecture of how things might be is left on the forest floor of economic development to make it's own way and while on a personal level this is quite a good thing, as it makes the individual canny and aware (given they even make it through), such strengths are missing and decidely under-developed in the group sense and this is what we really do need if we are to cede into a post-capitalist system.


In short instead of seeing wealth creation as the end product of efficiencies we have to see, and embrace, wealth creation at the beginning of production.

And that which is our stream of waste is the most likely candidate to enact the groundwork required to create a feasible system where people are allowed access to that stream of waste and in a way that encourages both a growing and expanding view of that use whilst also ensuring these experimenters and possibility makers have a reliable source of income which doesn't require them to protect and lock out others from utilizing and making even more efficient the use of resource they have created.

Then what needs careful consideration is that once a resource becomes valuable within our current system the likelihood is that the suppliers of said resource, which started as rubbish, becomes part of regular economic activity and subject to increasing costs which then basically renders it rubbish again because the people who are able to utilise it when it was cheap cannot afford it any longer and this kind of irony, in the capitalist system is actually the most in need of re-aligning towards a sense of what charity is and can be as the future finds us acknowledging who and what we are as social creatures beyond economic slaves and masters.

Part three; How it happens at the Waitakere Transfer Station... or maybe even where I actually live, Manukau, simply because the vested interests at Waitakere cannot give up their individually lucrative stranglehold on selling dreams to the next generation.

Thursday, November 5, 2015

Rubbish working Cowboy style.

Over the past few days I've gotten to know the Waitakere Transfer Station a little bit and it's kinda fallen into my usual estimation of Council run services in that I've kinda been able to get in and grab what they haven't regarded as useful yet and then seen walls up around other things I might be able to use in some way simple because the vested interests have locked things down.

Case in point was the simple fact they do up lawnmowers on site which is a good thing but then I asked about buying parts from their stash of unfixed lawnmowers and they basically said no as they use them to get parts from so what what we actually have here is a system which isn't so much interested in the overall value of that which is deemed surplus finding it's way back into the system if at all possible so much as an entity which has locked up a resource to ensure it's own survival. The follow on from that is that I must let my own lawnmower decay and have it become a resource for them and buy a fixed up lawnmower from them as opposed to me be able to draw on reserves of good parts to be able to make the lawnmower I have last for as long as possible.

Alongside this I saw a huge resource stashed away in the form of broken weed eaters and they have yet to find a use for them outside of just being weed eaters and I have a use for them but given the way they would certainly grab that use and then lock up the resource for their own employment continuation then I am loathe to give them the idea, which in fact isn't mine at all but something I saw some young chap make use of a year or two ago and has been filed away as a very good idea.

What this essentially illustrates is the basic problems with the system of capital as a driving force because of it's natural tendency towards ownership and needing to protect available resource to ensure that that defined ownerships investment is both in defining a resource and ensuring access to that resource.

Now I'm faced with a dilemma and that dilemma is basically do I give this idea to the control entity defined as the Waitakere Waste Minimisation Scheme (or something similar as those control entities love there ability to define themselves as compartmentalisations in branched out and supposedly independent relativities of consequence... SAD! (supposedly advantageous departmentalisations) in a style they actually understand as in a licensed ability to use an idea and pay out a dividend on... oops, then we run into what might be the crux of the matter where on one hand the Council entity has to make money to ensure it's own survival but is entirely loathe, one would suspect, to allow us to make money on it's behalf as it's stands behind some unspoken rule whereby we must all volunteer how we could actually become part of the system.

And then tucked up at the very back of all this inspired waste re-purposing, and it's a bit hard to find and without signposting... which seems really silly, is that modern approach to all great misunderstood problems where we're hell bent on just making sure the children of our world get the full impact, or rather gift wrapped in colourful jocularity, of that which almost completely mystifies us as a tarted up bunch of excuses that we're actually doing something and as my friend said as we left the place ourselves that what was actually telling of it's existence was the brand new Volvo and BMW that were parked out the front.

So I would encourage everyone who might read this to visit that award winning site of rubbish repurposing... if you can figure out how to actually get in, see, that's the thing. Incidentally I can't blame Council and the actual entity which is the Waitakere Transfer Station for that but it really is something that needs to change and change as quickly as possible. It needs a backdoor and a backdoor that's open wide.

Because entering from the front is all big gates and lights for when to drive forward and weight bridges and big trucks and I had to basically lie to get in. My friend is doing a mural next door in the Dog Pound and I only even knew about the transfer station because he told me it was there and had found out from someone else that if you said at the gate, the toll booth, that you were doing work with children as part of a charity and needed to view materials... as the impetus for the work was recycling, you'd be allowed in. So I did this and I got in and once in there and taking up the time of the important chap they'd arranged for me to meet I learned that all I had to do was say I was going to the Gate 5 shop, which upon realising the existence of as a adjutant to the 'free wood' pile was then modified simply to 'free wood'. What I actually did, and I see this upon reflection, was that I created my own back door and having done this realise that that is actually what this 'thing' requires.

It requires a whole new way to acessing what's available within it which has as great an influence on it's running efficiently as the front door has. It needs an entrance that can question and determine the legitimacy of people coming in from behind and letting them feed into the system whereby alternatives uses for the vast heap of raw materials can be put to use in a targeted way that suits this eventual ideal of Zero waste.
 Now I've actually done my dash for the morning and have to do some work but I'll come back to this tomorrow morning and talk about how this backdoor might actually be created.
So the pragmatic part of me understands the situation, as much as I can within the circumstances, and while hopefully the people at the above might be working in this direction already, this above photograph, and the description to follow, states it as my intellectual property and as such 'owner of' and it is within the development of how and where to actually fit in a pathway, both in terms of a driveway/walkway in real actual hard materials and the integration of a way to allow individuals and organisations to allow that pathway to fit their needs - as opposed to individuals having to fit themselves to bureaucracies needs, this being an absolutely vital part of the backdoor as a new paradigm worth embracing.