u/DennisEarthAndHearth

The treadmill is costing workers way too much today. When the president and crew took America off the gold standard in 1971 I could buy an ounce of gold for three hours of my work; They also froze wages and prices, and today it takes 251 hours of the same work to buy an ounce.

We sold our first home in 1969 for $2,450. Today Zillows list the little house, still on the same footprint, for $550,500. Wages have stayed frozen but prices increased as new money was printed to pay for the Vietnam War and the wars to come.

The coin of cooperatives is labor, not dollars that have lost most of their value. How many hours does it take to build a house, to operate market gardens, or raise a child.

About eleven thousand generations of Homo sapiens have lived since our species first appeared. A wooden farmhouse dating back to the 11th century is still lived in today. Regenerated farmland can last 10,000 years. If a cooperative is a company owned by its members it can easily last until the next glacial period.

 Does this make sense?

DENNISEARTHANDHEART

I’m an old dog, still learning new tricks. Born during World War Two, I grew up with a front-row seat to human chaos. That early shock turned me into a lifelong seeker, always trying to understand what’s real beneath the noise.
I spent 29 years in Kings Beach, Lake Tahoe starting in 1945. Tahoe was my classroom. In the summers, the richest people in the world showed up. The rest of the year, it was laborers, carpenters, cooks, and families trying to make it through the winter. Seeing both worlds up close shaped how I see everything.
Today my work is about helping people step off the late-stage capitalism treadmill and live like humans again. I’m interested in how others here think about that shift.