Most of us [here] likely live in the international society dominated by the greed, opportunism and indifference of wealth harvesters. Harvesters who have twisted the technological dreams of freedom and liberation of my childhood in the 1960s into human-farming, not far off slavery.
On the other hand, there have been massive failings in education and politics [keep - or allow people to remain the “dark”?] that allow this to happen.
Despite all advances in civilisation, most here will be working harder than their ancestors, and possibly less happily, for a small share of what is available, options reduced even to keep breeding to keep the stock of labour topped-up. And did I see pictures of tiny US kids working in US meat plants recently, in a reputable newspaper?
So now we have people trying to monetise what they [sometimes] enjoy doing, or at least believe in, to stay afloat in this competitive wealth harvesting-system. And that brings me to FIC. One of the reasons I’ve come to spend less time here since being initially enthused, is that this monetisation is exactly what I see here. It’s even flaunted, by job titles like marketing manager… I sincerely believe you/they are not getting rich doing it! And that you/they probably have at least one other job.
But no-one pays me to write this post! I’m grateful if it stays published and is thought about. Yet I’m not buying into a system that seems to be trying to build a just /slightly/ less monetised version of doing what most of us would rather NOT be doing, to boost people who don’t need our boosting. If people get something immaterial from doing it, they do it anyway. I’d like to see that as being the way Alt-organisations work, not copying the bribery and oppression of the mainstream system.
This is a very incomplete statement, not even an “argument” - merely thought provoking. Interested to read what others here have to say about this situation, and is it maybe a reason why FIC seems to have largely “geofenced” itself in the USA despite being internationally available?
I like to simplify things, so I’m going to simplify your text based on what I understood: you think people do marketing for the communities on here, for the heads of communities that don’t really need the marketeers’ work. you wish the marketeers (and maybe the heads of communities too?) could find more purposeful work.
and/or are you referring to FIC as well?
The post was a bit of a rant but your interpretation is far from what I was attempting to say.
I was saying it primarily about FIC, rather than as well as.
Probably unlike most of the readers here, I grew-up in England post WW2, when it was more of a socialist country: peoples NEEDS were provided at little cost, and if you wanted more for yourself, fine, nobody stopped you. Not idealising this, it had plenty of faults and I rebelled against that system too! But it gives me another background to evaluate what’s going on here.
So to find FIC used as a way to “market” its creators’ and contributors’ input at high financial cost - quite ridiculous cost to anyone not making a good living in the USA or another highly-wealth-concentrating country - actually “selling” the socialist concept of communitarian living just seems like a contradiction to me.
The rest of the rant was really just setting the scene for maybe how folks seem to think this is fine, because the US baseline of society is so skewed.
So, an alternative summary: if FIC contributors lived in a less stressed society, they might feel less cool about asking for lots of money for sharing what I would hope are essentially their interests and beliefs.
Co-operative living isn’t an expensive luxury. How come US culture has made it this?
“The United Kingdom was one of the victors of the Second World War, but victory was costly in social and economic terms. Thus, the late 1940s was a time of austerity and economic restraint, which gave way to prosperity in the 1950s. The Labour Party led by wartime Deputy Prime Minister Clement Attlee, won the 1945 postwar general election in an unexpected landslide and formed their first ever majority government. Labour governed until 1951 and granted independence to India in 1947.”
" Despite losing the popular vote to Labour, the Conservatives won an overall majority of 17 seats in the October 1951 general election and Churchill again became Prime Minister, remaining in office until his resignation on 5 April 1955."
“The 1966 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday 31 March 1966. The result was a landslide victory for the Labour Party led by incumbent Prime Minister Harold Wilson” -wikipedia
etc. etc.
england remained (voted) conservative from 1951 to 1966. so I don’t know that doesn’t seem very socialist post war to me. they’ve gotten in and gotten out pretty quickly.
to sum up, you think marketing on FIC costs too much for non-americans.
how much does it cost? I’m curious.
" The FIC is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization in the United States."
Responding to your political history quote - my experience of UK society as a child, in a New Town near London was pretty affluent by world standards, with new well-built community housing, well neatly maintained infrastructure yet not the vast income and wealth gaps we see today. The socialists got in, created the revered NHS etc, but the right-wingers when they reclaimed government did not immediately demolish all that the socialists built. They more tactfully incrementally reduced funding for it so it begun crumbling away, permitted residents to buy their social housing, and began adding charges for initially free services eg. medicines, university tuition etc.
My parents came from and socialised with people from a wide social spectrum. If I witnessed stigma in those days, it was about aspiration and ability plus, of course, ethnicity (but that’s dealt with elsewhere here), not wealth.
Some examples of US-style monetsation from my FIC inbox:
Starts Jun 20 | $299 $249 |
Raising Children in Community
Starts Jun 23 | $299 $249 |
Planning for Aging in Community
Starts Aug 2 | $299 $249 |
Aging Gracefully in Community
Starts Sep 12 | $299 $249 |
Facilitation in Community
Starts Sep 14 | $299 $249 |
Reclaiming Permaculture and Placemaking for Liberation
Starts Sep 15 | $299 $249 |
Designing a Community Membership Process
Starts Oct 24 | $299 $249 |
Working with Conflict in Community
Starts Oct 25 | $299 $249 |
Legal Basics for Forming Communities
Starts Oct 27 | $299 $249 |
Participation & Work in Community
Not seeing a course or does the timing not work for you? Check out our re-run courses below. Watch at your own pace for half the price.
Available now | $149 |
Becoming a Communitarian
Available now | $149 |
Sociocracy for Communities
Available now | $149 |
Sure, there’s the token Scholarship Fund, but does that cover the 90% of the world population whose wealth-pump/trickle-down doesn’t consume 5 planets per year, like the US folks who will be buying into this?
Thank you for specifying your message.
I won’t verify what you’ve written now but I’ll take your word for it.
I’m waiting on the day they offer plumbing courses. just kidding I already bought a plumbing course.
May purpose be with you.
PS. I don’t think I’ve heard good things about the nhs recently… anyhow.
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