A Direct Use Economy
For the purpose of this series of posts, the terms homestead, subsistence farm, self-sufficient, and hardscrabble all refer to an economic system of direct use.
It’s a novelty and curiosity now of days when the economy in general is an all cash economy (or cash equivalents). Many if not most people now consume nothing or nearly nothing they have produce themselves rather the entire economic basis of their lives is earning cash and then buying virtually everything they need with that cash. So unfamiliar are most people with the realities and verities of a direct use economy, that they must needs pause and reflect to clear their heads of the conditioning of a cash economy in order to not misapply some idea that does not obtain.
The essence of the direct use economy was summed up by Helen and Scott Nearing when they wrote, “…we grew our food and ate it, we cut our fuel and burned it, we built our house and lived in it.”
The direct use economy is not the same thing that Gene Logsdon calls the Pastoral Economy and the Amish Economy, although it shares a great deal of commonality. Nor does it necessarily have anything to do with communal economies which might be cash based or direct use based with the same benefits and shortcomings of either.
Cash economics and direct use economics don’t mix well’ it is exceedingly difficult to define the one in terms of the other. It is almost as if the two economies were Rowlings’ wizard world and muggle world. We can say for example that a patch of beans yielded four pounds of dried beans which could be had at the supermarket for five dollars. The temptation is to say that all that work of saving the seeds, digging the bed, planting and mulching the bed, eliminating pests and varmints, picking the beans, shelling them and drying them … all that labor is only worth five dollars. The cash economy has a tendency to view it this way. From the perspective of the direct use economy, that five dollars was hard come by. One needed the time to earn it, the transportation to go to the job and the transit time. Also needed were the work clothes, meals out, disruption of the direct use homestead flow of things, time to decompress and recover from working away. The earning of the five dollars also meant that the soil was not improved, no seed beans were saved, and health was not improved through exercise. There were no hulls to feed the pigs, no haulms for the rabbits or compost pile, and no fixing of nitrogen in the soil. There is no family time of shelling beans while catching up on the summer’s rental movie. Moreover, there are no skills honed and improved and passed along against that time when direct use might be out of grim necessity.
Either economy, cash or direct, carries on under momentum. To pause the one to engage in the other takes a great deal of effort. So seen from the vantage of the direct use economy that five dollars is hard gotten and ill spent.
Hardscrabblers who also have dabbled in selling produce off farm have all commented how the light and effortless the toil is to provide for their own table, but the same produce seems to take on leaden shoes when it wanders past the farm gates. It’s the difference between the two economies. It is like the fairy gold that so delights those who have stumbled onto the spirit world, but it turns into stones or dirt when they return to the ordinary world.
The cash economist often stumbles over mistaking an alternate economic system for economic absolutism. After all, we didn’t make the jeans we are wearing nor forge the hoe so a direct use economy isn’t possible after all, is it? To understand this we must needs rank our requirements by urgency. We must needs have replacement clothes periodically. But good peasant garb will last for years and in the meantime we can be open to opportunities for obtaining the clothing, making it, or obtaining the cash to buy it. Likewise with tools and utensils, they last long enough that we might not need replacements for …..well, forever!
But food? The need is much more pressing. Without an alternate plan for getting it, without an alternate economy, only a few days makes getting food an inevitable priority. No time to think about it, no time to muse over it, no time to wait out the best opportunity. In a cash economy this means going off to get money is equally a priority. Fuel for heating, cooking, and transportation are the same, as is transportation itself if it is necessary to obtaining the cash.
The posts that follow deal with the ideas, modes, and models that can be observed to greatly increase or decrease the likelihood of obtaining one’s good directly rather than depend on an unstable and uncertain cash economy. That is, they deal with homesteading.
It’s a novelty and curiosity now of days when the economy in general is an all cash economy (or cash equivalents). Many if not most people now consume nothing or nearly nothing they have produce themselves rather the entire economic basis of their lives is earning cash and then buying virtually everything they need with that cash. So unfamiliar are most people with the realities and verities of a direct use economy, that they must needs pause and reflect to clear their heads of the conditioning of a cash economy in order to not misapply some idea that does not obtain.
The essence of the direct use economy was summed up by Helen and Scott Nearing when they wrote, “…we grew our food and ate it, we cut our fuel and burned it, we built our house and lived in it.”
The direct use economy is not the same thing that Gene Logsdon calls the Pastoral Economy and the Amish Economy, although it shares a great deal of commonality. Nor does it necessarily have anything to do with communal economies which might be cash based or direct use based with the same benefits and shortcomings of either.
Cash economics and direct use economics don’t mix well’ it is exceedingly difficult to define the one in terms of the other. It is almost as if the two economies were Rowlings’ wizard world and muggle world. We can say for example that a patch of beans yielded four pounds of dried beans which could be had at the supermarket for five dollars. The temptation is to say that all that work of saving the seeds, digging the bed, planting and mulching the bed, eliminating pests and varmints, picking the beans, shelling them and drying them … all that labor is only worth five dollars. The cash economy has a tendency to view it this way. From the perspective of the direct use economy, that five dollars was hard come by. One needed the time to earn it, the transportation to go to the job and the transit time. Also needed were the work clothes, meals out, disruption of the direct use homestead flow of things, time to decompress and recover from working away. The earning of the five dollars also meant that the soil was not improved, no seed beans were saved, and health was not improved through exercise. There were no hulls to feed the pigs, no haulms for the rabbits or compost pile, and no fixing of nitrogen in the soil. There is no family time of shelling beans while catching up on the summer’s rental movie. Moreover, there are no skills honed and improved and passed along against that time when direct use might be out of grim necessity.
Either economy, cash or direct, carries on under momentum. To pause the one to engage in the other takes a great deal of effort. So seen from the vantage of the direct use economy that five dollars is hard gotten and ill spent.
Hardscrabblers who also have dabbled in selling produce off farm have all commented how the light and effortless the toil is to provide for their own table, but the same produce seems to take on leaden shoes when it wanders past the farm gates. It’s the difference between the two economies. It is like the fairy gold that so delights those who have stumbled onto the spirit world, but it turns into stones or dirt when they return to the ordinary world.
The cash economist often stumbles over mistaking an alternate economic system for economic absolutism. After all, we didn’t make the jeans we are wearing nor forge the hoe so a direct use economy isn’t possible after all, is it? To understand this we must needs rank our requirements by urgency. We must needs have replacement clothes periodically. But good peasant garb will last for years and in the meantime we can be open to opportunities for obtaining the clothing, making it, or obtaining the cash to buy it. Likewise with tools and utensils, they last long enough that we might not need replacements for …..well, forever!
But food? The need is much more pressing. Without an alternate plan for getting it, without an alternate economy, only a few days makes getting food an inevitable priority. No time to think about it, no time to muse over it, no time to wait out the best opportunity. In a cash economy this means going off to get money is equally a priority. Fuel for heating, cooking, and transportation are the same, as is transportation itself if it is necessary to obtaining the cash.
The posts that follow deal with the ideas, modes, and models that can be observed to greatly increase or decrease the likelihood of obtaining one’s good directly rather than depend on an unstable and uncertain cash economy. That is, they deal with homesteading.
posted by Eleutheros at 1:46 PM
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