I enjoyed and agreed with most of your post. I cannot say that I agree with your primary statement, however.

The world in no way needs corporations.

Nothing wrong with corporations themselves. They're just groups of people getting together to run enterprises that are too large for one person to run alone. Without corporations, we would still have feudalism.

It's a lack of regulations, too low taxes, a lack of ethics, and no corporate sense of the common good that are the problem.

I like a lot of people have lost some weight this year. Back in 2007 I was 215 pounds at 5'11. I was living in a friends basement in the mid-west, eating fast food and not exercising.
I moved back to Portland that year, and my new years resolution that year was to get healthier. I decided to do something drastic and make it a secondary part of my resolution to never eat at a location other than my home. Meaning, no fast food, no restaurants. Although this lead to my HATE for doing the dishes, it also led to a drop of 20 pounds within a matter of months. I urge people to actually learn to simplify their lives by simplifying their meals at home. Its fun, and will be the best food youve ever tasted.

More on a current note;
I just did my spring cleaning this week. Yes, I know its still winter.
My storage area got reduced about 50 percent. I was storing box's from things I had purchased and recycled any box that I had a duplicate size of.
All 3 of my closets got a complete overhaul. Lots of donations to good will. And lots of time spend wrapping up electronic's wiring (I have 2 duffle bags full of various lengths and connectors)
I have recently put up things on craigslist but no takers yet.
What is it they say? If you havnt used it in a year, you probably dont need it? True story.
This years resolution was daily yoga, which reminds me, gotta get started!

I am a student and I have just moved away from home; both of those mean I live simply from necessity.

Although other students have TVs and cable, I have neither. An internet connection is enough.

I'm taking this as an opportunity to decide how to pare down my lifestyle. I am still debating whether or not to renew my driver's license. In any case it is a good hurdle to any car ownership I might have, and I plan on remaining a city dweller so I will probably never need one.

I've considered vegetarianism, but as I am VERY underweight I decided against. The search is on for a source of non-factory farmed meat.

I hope to keep as much of my purchases sourced from the used market as I can. This is pretty easy for my other hobby: music. Guitars have not been upgraded in decades, really, and lots of people give up on guitar every day :)

I am an economics student, so I may be able to cut through a lot of the jargon that gets posted on the articles here. Feel free to ask anything about my "capitalism studies" degree.

I cut my own hair today.

I started doing that when I found out all my age 50+ engineer co-workers were cutting their own hair. I kinda miss going to the old style barber shops - the ones that smell of hair tonic, with the 1946 vintage waiting chairs and cash registers, an unused shoe shine stand tucked in the corner, and where the barbers still talked mostly about their World War II exploits - but those are just about all gone anyway. I did see one in a state of perfect preservation a couple of years ago in Crockett, Texas but no one was in it.

For way too many years I thought about cutting my hair. I just kept putting it off thinking that one day I'd try it.

It started for me in the 90s. My regular hair cutter quit. For a year I went around trying to find another cutter that did just as good a job. Sometimes she did a great job and other times not. No matter which barber I had it was never the case of the perfect cut each time. Each time I found a barber that impressed me I would stay with that person for a few cuts only to be let down in time. Somehow they don't do consistent work.

Out of frustration I just said to myself that I couldn't do much worse and why should I be spending so much money, time, and gas to get an imperfect cut. My first try was really just as good as most cuts. Sometimes I get it perfect. There have been a couple of little mistakes but none of them were noticeable by others. The good thing is that I can fix any imbalance by just evening out the other side.

Since I've been doing it for so long now I don't make mistakes. I save plenty of time and money cutting my own hair. When I started out I just used scissors. Now I have an electric clipper that is faster and I don't cut my knuckles anymore. My inexpensive Whal clipper set cost a tiny bit more than a hair cut cost ten years ago. I don't know if cutting my own hair is part of simplifying my life in the eyes of others, but; it does make my life easier.

I've been doing that for the past 11 years. In fact, I'm doing it again today. I bought the Wahl clippers at Wal-Mart and ordered the longest attachment available from Wahl, which is a #12. It gives a 1 1/2" cut. Two mirrors and running the clippers all around my head multiple times gives me a better result than the haircuts I used to pay for.

Hi,
I study in Budapest University of Technology and Economics. I have a six-month project and i have to design a cycling infrastructure. So i would like to asset in the first round the opinion of the patterns, insights and something like that.
Thank you very much :)

The link

I never thought "Living Simply" meant doing without.
I always considered it as meaning have what you need, not what you do not.
I enjoy my HDTV, My computers, my waffle iron.

At the same time, I have my bike so I need not a car.
I have my reel mower so I need no gas-burning mower.
I have the internet so I do not need a $170 a month cable bill.
I have my rain barrel, my compost heap, my weekly recycling collection...

My neighbour produces as much refuse in a week as I do in a year....
I think I'm living the dream without knitting sweaters from my own hair. :)

It amazes me how much 'garbage' my neighbors put out each week. I think one way to measure how simply we live is to compare the amount of 'garbage' a person produces.

quit drinking, quit smoking

LocalrootZ Project
 

Here is a little video I put together about living more sustainably and blogging about it @ Localrootz Project



A little shameless plea.. my fiance' and I are finalist for a green wedding giveaway contest @ Clay Hill Farm. If you feel so inclined to give us your vote we would love the support of other car-free folks ! VOTE HERE

There are two massive errors in how corporations are set up now.

1) Corporations by law must maximize profits. While no corporation can survive without them. It's an almost blind interpretation of them. Stockholders are not the only ones with an investment in a corporation's health. The employees have a big stake. That should be recognized. Everyone's benefit must be observed, not only the owners and the employees but the customers and the other citizens of earth in general must be strived for.

2) Corporations are not people and do not deserve the same rights and protections under law.

As it is, by their nature they will slowly create their own feudalism, and destroy the planet in the name of profit. We need to redefine the corporation if we wish to survive.

The last time this happened the French rose up to cut off the heads of the king and queen as part of their rebellion!

Great points, but I'm not clear on how corporations create feudalism.

I am still trying to figure out the first one...Aaron :)

I think Art was referring to laws that say the corporate board of directors has the primary responsibility of increasing profits for shareholders. Sounds great, and mostly is, but it makes it difficult or impossible for boards to make decisions that benefit other stakeholders such as employees, customers or the public at large. Walmart argues that they can't give employees health benefits because that would lower profits for shareholders. BP says it has to give the lowest possible payouts to oil spill victims in order to increase profits to shareholders. And so forth.

I guess if you are a publicly traded company that could hold true. I know that the company I work for is privately held and every now and again they will make a massive investment into the company, that I am sure would negate any profit for the year or perhaps a couple of years.

Aaron :)

Well, corporations are taking over more and more of the resources, and using the military to protect their interests. That's very feudal.

And people on the lower end are getting deeper and deeper into debt putting them into a serfdom of sorts.

To me, the real similarity is how extreme the division of haves and have nots is becoming.

That's it.

OK, I get it now. Another analogy I see is with the "Gilded Age" in the late 19th century. Corporations and wealthy individuals (known as robber barons) had great freedom to do as they pleased and there was enormous income inequity. Then leaders like the Roosevelts imposed controls and regulations, consumers banded together to demand better products, and labor unions rose to give strength to the employees of large corporations.

It's ironic that unions and government regulations cost the robber barons money initially, but in the long run they helped set the stage for the whole "American century" with unprecedented prosperity for rich and poor alike. Too bad nobody in business or government seems to understand this any more.

I don't know much about it either. Here's a wikipedia article that might explain it a bit:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_judgment_rule

This was my 1st winter using a (homemade) coldframe.
I'm sure I'll have many more!

Great video! Very inspiring! I'm gonna check out your blog.