Seaweed Micro-industry and Anarchy

An obscure magazine called Lucky Peach did a long article on the seaweed harvesting industry in Norther California.  They don't put their articles online, but you can buy back copies.

The article is very instructive, and highlights how microbusiness is and can be.  My observations while I was reading the article.

1. Given the nutritional benefits of seaweed, including seaweed in a diet means you need ot eat less of other things, like fish, to get a well balanced diet.  Less fisheries needed, the less harvested.  The less we actually eat to sustain ourselves, the more efficiently our body performs.  I've been down to two meals a day for about a decade, no snacks, for the simple reason that is all I need given what I eat.  If you are american you are probably eating way too much of the wrong things, and it is slowing you down.  Sure good food is more expensive, but less needed, so it is a net savings.

2. The fact people have started gathering seaweed for commercial purposes means people are regularly present where once was no one.  They watch our coastlines and give us early warning of threats like pollution, or whatever.  They are advocates for off the radar parts of the ecology.  The more we eat of seaweed, the more it is harvested, the better our coastlines are protected.

3. The people who harvest the seaweed are not capitalists, they are not about accumulation, but commonwealth.  As free marketers, they mix their labor with natural resources to create a product to sell.  Private property occurs when you mix your labor with natural resources, or otherwise trade your own services with those who do. No one owns the coastlines, and the state does not enforce real estate property rights (another example of why we do not need to have real estate property rights.)  If conflicts were to occur, they could be solved by recognizing the treaties giving Indians ownership, and then let the Indians lease out shore use. 

4.  As you read about the people actually involved, they are old enough to be aware of the pre-1970 economy, in which comity, not polity was supreme.  So sad to see people under 55 without a clue as to what could be.  Business is about lifestyle, not accumulation.

5. We see in free markets no one need own land.  Capitalism depends on a real estate regime, communism does not. Now the communists are a direct lot, they just executed the unneeded landlords.  In capitalism the Supreme Court simply makes laws allowing for big business to take private lands for themselves.  If you resist, then the capitalists will just kill you too.  All -isms are grounded in violence, one way or another.  Owning real estate is not necessary nor sufficient for a free market, indeed it seems to inhibit it.  The Indians and the communists got this right for different reasons, but in any case, leases are not necessary but sufficient for free markets.

6. We see the seaweed harvesters come up with best practices, which are adopted among competitors. Practice creates rules and regs, and the lease enshrines the rules and regs to maintain sustainabillity.  For example, the hegemon has made a hash of regulating seawed on the Northern Caifornia coast, and the only reason it has not killed off the micro-industry is the local regulators do not enforece the stupid tules.  (What hegemon rules are not stupid?)  Anarchists love government, but not the hegemonic state. Anarchists live by rules, rules necesarily not violence-backed.

7. With leases, the lease sustains the environment and those who own the lease mix their labor with natural resources, and the work is handed down to the next generations, who either renew the lease or let it go to the next highest bidder for a new lease.  Capitalism demands real estate ownership so lists may be known of whom to tax, and real estate is a handy choke point.

The article illuminates yet another example of working anarchy, and the chaos the state introduces where freedom naturally yields prosperity.  We have peaceful means to govern this limited resource we call land (or ther seas, which ought also be leased, but capitalism is about accumulation into ever fewer hands by the means of usury.  So for capitalism to obtain its raison d’etre, capitalism must have a provision for personal ownership of real estate.  From this flows all of the horrors of capitalism that has plagued the world for the last two centuries: war, poverty, starvation, refugees, lack of proper food, clothing, medicine, education, etc.

I understand how this may fill you with rage at capitlaism and capitalists, but we must remain meek, never resort to violence like the communists, and simply withdraw our consent to be governed by the hegemon so we can move forward, broken people that we all are, to the more just comity of no one owning the lands, or more specificaly, giving it back to the Indians, who can then lease it out to the highest bidder, subject to terms of sustainable best use.

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