🔗 Being quietly radicalised by being on holiday (Interconnected):

We all form a government which is a kind of enlarged co-operative really. Why don’t we make a basket of essentials, democratically argued about and iterated over time, then nationalise not-for-profits to run supply chains and shops for them?

Just… take essentials out of the for-profit bit of the economy.

Our priorities have lost their way somewhere along the line.

I remember reading and appreciating this post when Matt first wrote it back in April. It reappeared in my timeline this morning and I still appreciate it.

The trouble, I think, is in how we are supposed to reach an agreement on what “the essentials” are. I like Matt’s list but that is probably because I am in roughly the same socio-economic group that he is, and our politics are likely in the same ballpark.

People in my relatively small New England town can’t even agree on investing in our schools, expanding the public library, or replacing our 120-year-old sewer lines. We have removed benches on Main Street because the worst people in town got upset about seeing homeless people sitting on them. Decent public education, functioning civil infrastructure, and taking care of those in need all seem like essentials to me, but enough of my neighbors disagree that it is a perennial debate over even what I consider to be the most basic kind of stuff.