Students rocked this

Thanks for the kind words J.J. The students on this project really knocked themselves out. I just pointed them at a growing movement and they dove in. Hope you enjoy the whole series.

We discovered, especially as

We discovered, especially as refugees after the war, that people who had a piece of land and tools and knew how to use them were the best off during the depression and the starving post war years.

Since then we have been working to learn all gthe trades we can, buy land and tools and become as self sufficient as possible.

Mention the words "self sufficiency" to brainwashed economists and they will fall on the floor with convulsions, because self sufficiency cuts into their phony GDP, with paople making, instead of buying things.

Our whole fraudulent economic system is built around making people incompetent, jamming them into mega cities where they're at the mercy of the new multinational carpetbagger aristocracy, forced to buy everything for their survival, while "having fun", living in shoe boxes.

We have achieved a great degree of self sufficiency and are very well off on our old age pensions, while others have to eat dogfood to survive.

We have land and workshops, grow much of our food and can make many of the things we need. We've built our 3 level house with 2 studios, installed all the power, plumbing, made all the furniture, painted the pictures on the walls and carved the sculptures (I'm a trained artist by the way). We can repair and make our own machinery, have three large freezers full of the best organic foods and meats, and so on and on.

The best economic system is self sufficiency from the individual to the community and national levels. Not competition, but cooperation with others to the greatest degree.

In short, start questioning the fraudulent garbage being taught in our universities as economics and get rid of the "wealth creating" politicians and their multinational corporate mafia bosses, get out of NAFTA and the rest of the crap , start living like human beings and not as slaves in "jobs, jobs. jobs" that pay less and less every year, because the lords of the universe demand more millions from people's pockets.

Ed Deak.

It is also a first for me

And I like the concept very much as concerned people take the initiative to help mold the societies they live in for the benefit of all. I want to be part of something good as living in BC it is very difficult indeed as people don't come into the equation and how sad is that. I see them as Visionairies as Makers make the world a more compassioniate and caring place where not everything has a price tag attached. If societies continue to be motivated by NBC, CBC and Global etc to shop until they drop without concern for their environments the Makers have a big job ahead of them indeed.

Makers and Compassion

Hey morechatter, thanks for reading. The gift economy that is part of maker culture is heartening. A lot of folks we spoke with give freely of their time, expertise and, sometimes, of the things they make. Certainly that's true in the open source code world. And, folks who make a print 3D objects share their plans online. That's open source things, which is a wild idea.

Why Makers Matter

Here's http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/jan/15/students-evacuated-school-chollas-view/ a great example of why talking about maker culture is important. We now live in a world where a kid working on a harmless science project can be taken for a terrorist.

Yeah, but they know well enough what's 'in the making'...

The instincts come out to the surface. The guardians of the social order do not like people, who are too damn smart, and would rather put them into reservations with triple razor wire around. Should we suppose it is coincidence that one of the first targets of all petty tyrants, or even not-so-petty ones, is the 'intelligentsia'? This goes all the way back to one of the first emperors of China, who had all the 'philosophers' dig a big hole, and then he had troops throw the dirt on again, atop the diggers, until they could no longer be seen.
This incident of 'violation of school policies' (would be interesting to know the specifics of THAT!) was made the most of, because there is just something scary about too much 'genius', and so we must teach those who possess it to toe the line, ram the fear of God into their souls, make sure they will ask us, before they just go and do stuff.

Chemistry Sets and Gunpowder

dorothy, I recall, when I was a kid growing up in Nova Scotia, how I loved getting two chemistry sets from different relatives for Xmas, so I could mix chemicals from both - smoke, excellent acid and vile stenches resulting. I remember making gunpowder from D-cell battery cores and drug store ingredients and my father teaching my how to make wonderfully explosive hydrogen from Gillete's Lye and aluminum foil. And, I remember high school science experiments that could very well have exploded. Good times, good times.

Future Inc.

Rabble.ca is a tired old Marxist circle jerk quick to censor anything that does fit in parameters so tight, they verge on mind control.

How is "maker culture" any different from sixties alternative culture or the seventies back to the land movement?

It is not that long ago that people were actually able to claim crown land in BC, build their own homes, establish gardens etc. in a manner that promoted a self sufficient, low impact lifestyle. Yet today with millions of hectares of failing tree farms and pine beetle killed forest stands, people are unable to take things into their own hands and start colonizing these ruined lands even though the technological tools available to us now far exceed anything we had in seventies.

Both timber licensees promoting the lie of sustainable industrial forestry as a means of getting the last lucrative stands and environmental groups such as the Wilderness Committee have long opposed clearcut forest stands doing anything but returning to what they once were coupled with the politically correct and counter productive notion that BC's public lands are traditional territories "owned" by Indian bands have prevented this from taking place.

I remember asking why no-one has considered growing hemp, surely the crop of the future, in the clearcuts and being subjected to a self-righteous lecture on how this would introduce an alien species to BC's forest lands and the purpose of groups like WCWC was to save wilderness. Left unsaid was that hemp would also cross-pollenate and destroy the cash dope crops that support much of BC's rural culture today. Read how former a Grand Forks mayor received death threats when he tried to promote hemp growing in Ian Mulgrew's Bud Inc, a study of BC's marijuana industry.

The primeval stands that once covered this province are gone and so are the traditional lifestyles that sustained stone-age cultures that existed here for millennia. Everyone just needs to get over this and get on with the future.