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Liberty begins with freedom.
The Personal Sovereignty Library
Homesteading
Karl Marx wisely defined real wealth
as 'owning and or controlling the means of production.' He was
thinking of industrial assets. But a small farm or ranch, some
garden land and a woodlot are also means of production. Self-sufficient
homesteaders are fundamentally trying to achieve much the same
thing that many entrepreneurs are after. Homesteaders are creating
independent poverty instead of trying to be independently wealthy.
To round out this library I am looking for excellent back-to-the-land
books and works encouraging voluntary simplicity and self-sufficiency.
Social
Criticism
Much social criticism is little
but the expression of reactive self-justification. A few individuals,
however, seem to transcend their own limitations. Here you will
find works by the brilliant thinkers Ralph Borsodi and Ferdinand
Lundberg.
What This Collection Is All About
Life on Earth could be easy
and far more pleasant if only people were entirely rational about
pursuing their interests and passions. But we aren't. Scott and
Helen Nearing spent decades on their self-sufficient homestead
demonstrating that achieving our daily survival needs could be
accomplished in only a few hours of work a day--if we did not
have taxes to pay and produced most of our necessities ourselves.
But as things are currently organized on Earth, most people in
industrial countries are obliged to expend most of their energy
most of their lives, working for what they have been programmed
to consider as "necessities." Sometimes I think we have
created our planet this way because we would be bored if things
were too easy. Sometimes I think we have wars and conflict for
this same basic reason.
And sometimes I think the real reason
in a nutshell is: instead of cooperation and a gentle allowing
of others, Homo sapiens tend to focus on one of two destructive
games: dominating and enslaving others, or making others be "good"--as
one person conceives of "good" for the other guy.
Whatever the real underlying reasons,
most people flail around ineffectively within the current scene,
never escaping. But some few do escape the trap--at least to an
extent--by focusing on achieving spiritual freedom, personal liberty,
independence and self-sufficiency. These fortunates travel several
seemingly opposing roads:
- We can make a surplus of money, and save and invest and accumulate
our own small piece of the big action--a share of what my old
buddy Karl Marx would have called the "means of production."
This path is especially fraught with perils. At one time this
library had a few books on these subjects, but they have been
withdrawn (as of 27 June 2000) because I am currently confused
about the ethics connected with having unearned income.
- We can learn to live with ever-greater voluntary simplicity,
thus lowering our needs for physical goods, and thus attain greater
liberty, a feeling of security, and more free time. This path
is fraught with perils, but may have the least number of perils.
The worst peril is probably boredom occasioned by success.
- We can homestead, go back to the land, and learn to grow
our own food, gather our own heating fuel, build our own houses.
This last solution is much like the first, in that we achieve
ownership and control of the means of production, but do this
production with our own efforts rather than deriving some benefit
from the efforts of others. And it is much like the second, in
that homesteaders have to accept a simpler lifestyle.This path
is also fraught with perils.
These "roads" are actually
parallel and interactive. They are not opposites. The Personal
Freedom Library exists to encourage others to travel these perilous
roads.
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