Has anyone else read this book on early “sustainability”? I’m find it very interesting reading it right now after being a fan of Hess for a long time. He seems to come up with some great ideas and a lot of encouragement to find solutions outside of the state. And some of the things like “aquaculture” he found to be actually competitive in the marketplace. Not to mention cutting down on statist wastes of resources and energy to improve the environment. He also makes some interesting observations about direct and indirect democracy (which he finds to be irrelevant to voting). And does so by encouraging neighborhoods instead of arbitrary city sized governments. Basically 6 different neighborhoods in Washington DC… Adams-Morgan. He found that even city governments are too big and inresponsive (in terms of people acting and/or showing up to get involved). And “federated” meetings (of all 6 neighborhoods) were only needed about twice a year, if that.
Karl Hess probably seems left-libertarian to some – because he always was opposed to be big institutions/colleges/corporations (but not to shut them down). And was also touting solar power and the importance of the environment before others. But he makes some observations about the welfare state. And how many minorities (blacks, hispanics, and Arabs made up a major majority in this city) have different ideas about representative government. Many of them felt so oppressed because of the current political rhetoric that all they wanted was representative vote to have others do work. Many of the minorities and white hippies would say stuff like “right on” when he told them what he was going to do, but they would never actually contribute even money (much less their labor) to projects. He actually talks about Jesse Jackson who at that time touted individual responsibility he says (what happened to that?), while other “community leaders” told black people that they were sell-outs if they tried to learn science or mathematics (both of which Hess finds to be indispensable to having neighborhood action). Which is very sad. Hess, like most libertarians, is not surprised at the result of welfarism. I’m not finished reading it, but it seems the whole thing worked in some areas and didn’t in others (sometimes because government blocking certain things and also people kept selling out and asking for government “grants” which they didn’t recieve… though they would send welfare checks). My favorite and one of the most surprising things was unhooking from the city sewage system and replacing it with some sort of device that recycled the waste and was much more efficient. Many of these things I didn’t think were possible. But they had engineers and really some savvy people for the time which Hess says are bound to probably live in most cities or would be in demand if cities were built without government assistance.
Hess remains one of my all time “anarchist” heroes. He escaped the IRS for countless years after sending them the Declaration of Independence. “They didn’t think that was very funny.” Classic.