Cheers, and Thanks!,
Markus

I attended a conference several years ago and met Rachel, I purchased the Biodiesel book directly from her. It was a sustainable agriculture conference. Coincidentally, I am a huge fan of RAFI, USA. In fact, I participated in the NOAP process (National Organic Action Plan ) that RAFI spearheaded over the past several years.

I have a specific comment on sustainable agriculture. In order for sustainable agriculture to challenge conventional agriculture in acreage covered, sustainable producers will need to stop relying on intern labor.

Here’s why: Many rural, and all limited-resource farmers are unable to compete with the farms that use intern labor.

I have a small certified organic farm that competes directly with several farms that use intern labor. The interns have a higher quality of life than I do because they do not need to pay rent, or a mortgage. They work for less than a living wage, but it is temporary. And they eat what they grow. They suffer through the internship until they get enough “experience” to go out on their own. Then they enlist more people who are willing to work for less than a living wage, who live in a communal house seasonally, and repeat the process. Whoopee!

I work from sun up to sun down without making a penny because I can’t find any rural people who will agree to be paid less than a living wage. I can’t compete with the rich “do-gooder” landowners who build intern housing and start enlisting help from more college students who are “slumming it’ while they get less than a living wage and agree to man the Farmers’ Market booths,all the while more interns are at the farm growing vegetables. And the land-owner goes to conferences and tells all the concerned citizens about how he has a farm and raises organic food. But, really he doesn’t raise anything.

There are several farms in the metropolitan area where we live that fit this description. The worst thing is, these farms “choose not to certify”. And, because they are so well-funded, and look so slick, the consumer public eats it up. Pardon the pun. And the land-owners feel so good about themselves, they think they are creating a sustainable agriculture, as they destroy my business…and destroy consumer confidence in organics….

I agree with your friend Screech who does all his own labor and grows hydroponically….

-T

I bought this book on the recommendation of a friend. Luckily, our friendship is strong enough that it will survive this mishap.

This book, well, at least the chapter I forced myself to read, is horrible.

One current concern of mine is health insurance. I run a corporation and last year our premiums went up 27%. At that rate they would double every four years. I think one of the major problems with the health insurance industry is that it is run like a corporation, with a goal to maximize profits, when it should be run to maximize wellbeing.

I thought this book might be written in that vein. I was wrong. The main premise is: all corporations are evil.

I take offense to this, mainly since I run a multi-million dollar corporation and I believe we not only take care of our shareholders, we take care of our employees (who happen to be shareholders) as well as our clients (since taking care of our clients is the best way to maximize profits).

Granted, I only read through the first chapter, but isn’t that the chapter where the author is supposed to state his thesis and grab my attention?

After a rather decent Introduction, Chapter One starts off with a history of corporations. When someone is lecturing me on history, I really, really insist on footnotes. Where are you getting the information you want me to accept as fact? Knowing where the author gets their information helps me determine its validity as well as to judge the conclusions drawn from it.

He starts off with a short history of the chartered corporations of the 16th and 17th centuries and then states “locking in place a set of corporatist priorities that to this day have not significantly changed” (page 9).

What? In North Carolina, anyone with $125 can file Articles of Incorporation with the Secretary of State. How does that compare with monopolies controlled exclusively by royalty? While modern corporations may have the same desires concerning profits and markets that chartered corporations did, the similarity pretty much ends there.

The author also seems to make a big deal about the “limited liability” granted to corporations. He seems to forget that back then when individuals incurred debt they could not pay they went to prison. The bankruptcy protections granted to corporations are one of the reasons I started one instead of a sole proprietorship. I can’t understand why he views this as a bad thing.

One thing that is desperately in need of a footnote comes on page 15 where he discusses the rather well known anti-semitism of Henry Ford. He then goes on to claim that “American corporations from General Electric to the Brown Brothers Harriman bank either funded the Nazis directly, or set up money-laundering schemes on their behalf”. Comparing corporations to Nazis pretty much invokes Godwin’s law, but without context one doesn’t know what to make of this statement. My understanding is that if American corporations wanted the war effort to fail, they could have made that happen, but since that is in conflict with observed reality I have a hard time accepting that all corporations are fascists.

Where he really started to lose me was when he describes the invention of double-entry accounting on page 10. He states that it “only mattered insomuch as they kept the credit side of the balance sheet bigger than the debit side”.

Ahem – the debit side is the asset side. He basically just stated that corporations were ordered to maintain their liabilities to be greater than their assets.

Maybe this was just an editing mistake and not due to the fact that the author can’t do research. Well, no, on page 11 he states that corporations “were appreciated solely for their capacity to enhance the credit column of the ledger back home”. If he doesn’t understand the basics of double-entry accounting, which he introduced to the discussion, what else doesn’t he understand?

Look, applying corporate motives to everything is a bad idea. To have corporations that are “too big to fail” is a bad idea. If you are too big to fail, then the system is broken and that entity should be broken up until it is no longer “too big to fail”. But to say the idea of corporations is bad on the whole is a gross oversimplification.

Some people watch things like Fox News because it does little to challenge their preconceived notions of reality. If you have already decided that the root of all evil in this world lies in corporations, then you’ll love this book. If you want to have a real discussion about how to address the issues that misapplying “corporatism” to all aspects of life creates, you’ll have to look elsewhere.

Being familiar with consumer culture and the grasp that the PR industry has on us, I still found this book to be insightful. It also made me really happy to be in Chatham County – a place where we are spending a lot of our time on the last chapter.

All this to say loved your book and the philosophies with in it. Learning to do the same in small town world Drayton. Only question I’ve got for you is, why is there a photoshopped slave chain attached to the vendor’s arm?

Love the book. Returning it to the library so that all can read it! DeeJay, Donna (nee Stevenson) Hirtle