Welcome! I'm Mackenzie Andersen and this is my reader supported newsletter. I am narrating the very local story of culture war taking place on the Boothbay Peninsula in Maine, centering around such issues as the ownership class -working class divide and constitutional home rule versus the centralized economy. I have been independently studying the Maine statutes and the Maine Constitution and other historical documents, concentrating on the years since 1969, since 2007. I weave this long view into the contemporary political Peyton Place that is the Boothbay Peninsula today. It’s a local story but every local story has universality in our globalized world, sometimes change sometimes has to happen at the roots and in fact, it already is! You can subscribe by clicking on this handy little button:
When dealing with grief, staying focused on work is important. For a couple of days, I had things to do unrelated to my usual work routine and resultantly I fell into a state of sadness that is hard to disperse. Maintaining a focus on meaningful work is like having a boat and losing that focus is like falling into the ocean. Since I was focused on work when my sister suddenly died, I was already in the boat but by disengaging that focus for a couple of days I fell into the ocean. It’s vast and amorphic. Grasping for that stream of consciousness again, I decided to read.
Corey Doctorow is a content-provider, activist and science fiction author.
Science fiction writers of the twentieth century imagined where we are today. So here we are, in the twentieth century science fiction future. Overall, they got it right. Now twenty-first science fiction writers must imagine what comes next
One of the influencers on economy and politics in the twentieth century was Milton Friedman, about whom Doctorow writes:
Friedman’s paymasters had their limits, though. To keep the money flowing, they demanded a theory of change that explained how the gains of working people could be stripped away. Same goes for Friedman’s most promising acolytes, whose belief in their cult leader’s vision required some reassurance that it wasn’t all a pipe-dream.
Friedman had a tried-and-true answer to these skeptical queries: someday, there will come a crisis. When the crisis comes, people will look for answers. The answers they choose will be those “ideas lying around” that have been promoted by the status quo’s loudest critics. In that moment, ideas can move from the fringe to the center. Ideas Lying Around Corey Doctorow
I really did want to steal Doctorow’s title for this post but I thought twice. Maybe that is not a good idea. Why did he have to think of that title before I did?
Sometimes those who create the ideas lying around are the ones that cause the crisis in the first place. Identifying the real causes is as vital as distinguishing the truth from the false narrative. The everywhere cause of the global housing shortage is the short-term rental industry which is expanding aggressively and can only expand into what should be residential homes. Those wanting to create more space into which the short-erm rental industry can expand displace the obvious cause with an invented cause- “underproduction of housing” advancing the other bad-housing story of the twenty-first century- corporate owned single-family homes, sold as investment packages on the stock exchange to a disengaged ownership class.
So, we have to create other ideas “lying around”. My idea is to give the working class what it wants with worker-in-residence zoning. It’s not the answer for everything, if so, it would be a totalitarian solution, but it correlates with the latest real estate crisis looming on the horizon. the collapse of the commercial real estate market, said to be caused by the unabated growth of remote working.
What will become of the empty commercial real estate spaces? Perhaps they will be transformed into affordable housing, since there is a shortage of affordable housing and a deluge of empty office spaces. Perhaps instead of communal spaces with many closely packed desks, those empty office spaces will become worker in residences for city-dwellers, like the lofts in Soho after it was zoned as artists-in-residence. Maybe it will become museum spaces. The museum of the once and former office spaces, or maybe a Museum of American Designer Craftsmen.
Or maybe former office spaces will become short term rentals. Everywhere will be a transient community. No more permanency!
Meanwhile the folks who used to work in the offices are living somewhere else. perhaps in the suburbs, places that do not attract the vacationer, a more spacious version of the concentrated housing zones.
The large-scale concern is the effect on the whole economy caused by workers saying we want a better deal than we have been getting. We want a lifestyle upgrade!
A more surefire solution is one that many workers seem unwilling to consider: an end to remote work and an aggressive full-bore return to the office.
Barring that, the cities and businesses that once flourished because of white-collar workers stand to flounder — and even fail — without them. NPR A lot of offices are still empty — and it's becoming a major risk for the economy
This is after many decades of a steady decline in the pay and lifestyle of the working classes to the point that working for a living no longer means that one can afford to own a home, and the cabal solution here in Boothbay are corporate owned concentrated housing zones with half-sized “units” that might as well be called slave quarters, complete with corporate governance of the zone, and for the few units that are owned by the inhabitants, the land is still owned by the corporate overlords. No freedom. No yards, the dystopian vision of the twentieth century science fiction writers, scheduled to be put into every Maine municipality by state law, arguably an unconstitutional state law, but so far, I have not heard of anyone taking it on in the courts.
When covid opened a door on a better lifestyle for the workers, some large corporations put their foot down and some in the media portrayed the workers as lazy but the workers said they were more productive and happier working at home. And who would know more about productivity than the productive classes? Why not listen to them? If anything is made apparent by the current housing shortage for folks of ordinary means, it is how essential these folks are to the sustenance of the entire system.
Covid, remote working, and even gentrification bring into focus what many wish to obscure, that the system needs the working classes, without them, everything falls apart, but the working classes haven’t been getting a good deal.
Capital does not create wealth, capital enables wealth creation by creating the conditions for productivity. It is productivity that creates wealth. The workers are the producers and they say they are more productive working at home. Some pundits harp on about remote work being negative for the centrally controlled office culture. Reading between the lines, it is more likely that the pundits, who have no particular perspective on how individual office culture’s function. are upset about disruptive effect on the status quo of the entire economic system, a system that has been sacrificing the workers quality of life, both materially and psychologically for decades as the financial rewards have increased for the CEO’s and shareholders.
After years of working in a system that “To keep the money flowing, they demanded a theory of change that explained how the gains of working people could be stripped away”, the workforce found a way to make a small gain for its betterment, and the rest of system is hurting because of a change in the lifestyles of the working classes, from the commercial real estate owners, to the banks that hold their debt, the city governments that benefit from the property taxes, to the small businesses that benefit from the daily foot traffic produced by office workers staying in their designated place within a system that works well for everybody except them.
But the entire system is undergoing change for reasons above and beyond remote work, including AI, short-term rentals and radical climate change. The future is not going to look like the recent past. Systemic disruption means everybody must innovate in adaptation to the new future that is formulating now.
The workforce is at the forefront of accepting the first rule of innovation- willingness to take risk. The remote workforce, side hustlers, gig economy and small business owners are willing to let go of the security that held them fast to the old system until the old system made their dreams so inaccessible that the price of security was no longer worth it.
We are not selling security, We are enabling ownership!
In the comment section on Medium for my last post, Judith S Anderson noted this:
FUD
in economic circles this stands for fear, uncertainty and doubt. I'd ask them if they knew this and adopted the name ironically.
Since I fell into the ocean, I haven’t had the focus to get back to communicating with FUD.Inc, but I was thrilled to learn the economic meaning of FUD. It is an appropriate response to contemporary newspeak, of the sort where legislatures strike out every instance of “restructure” in Maine’s educational statutes, and replace it with “innovate”, showing no respect for the past because innovation is what everybody wants to own.
FUD tells it like it is, without the need for psychological illusions. Those who can overcome fear, insecurity and doubt with strong faith in their own abilities, are the innovators who own themselves, the fruits of their labor, and the rights of their own intellectual property and define their own goals, opportunities and limitations. They can potentially create the new middle class, a class that strives not for super stardom and world dominance but for balanced fulfillment. The future is about building new communities, cultures and places on different premises than those of the recent past.
We can innovate in the face of fear, uncertainty and doubt! That is the price we are willing to pay for our freedom! It must be like that if one wants to create one’s own opportunities and not have them delimited by the hierarchy that sells dwindling security and engages no respectful interchange in dialogue. We cast aside illusions. We are aware of what we are taking on because we believe we can not only do it but we can own it! We can own ourselves and our intellectual property and the fruits of our own labor because we can overcome fear uncertainty and doubt with our productivity! ! You cannot scare us with insecurity! We embrace it! If our freedom and productivity disrupt your system, then maybe it is time for all aspects of the system to take that courage on too. Transition calls for innovation!
I can see a corporation named FUD.Inc in a Philip K Dick novel. The character walks through a dark and deserted street and comes upon a strange edifice, at the top of which is a large neon sign that says “FUD.INC”.
Compare that corporation with its strange name to the concept of “phycological ownership” coming out of academic-corporate relationships that attempt to psychologically extract the “can-do” attitude of the small entrepreneur and use that attitude to create intellectual property owned by the public-private hierarchy, in exchange for the security of a nine-to five job that limits opportunity growth in the workforce, allowing only those connected and who play by the rules of the hierarchy, to climb the ladder of participation and financial success.
But the only reason anyone would knowingly take on the fear, uncertainty and doubt of freelancing is because they believe in their own abilities and want to define their own limits themselves. True innovators think for themselves.
I didn’t ask FUD,Inc why they chose their name but that is how it speaks to me.
In traditional rural communities like the Boothbay Peninsula, as long as the short -term rental industry is allowed to expand without any regulations, year-round residences of the community will be squeezed out
So something has to be done and something has to be said.
I live in a country where freedom of speech is protected, but to truly protect it, we must use it, or it will surely be taken away from us by subversive means, such as what is being attempted with the replacement charter for the Boothbay school district.
After testifying in the legislative public hearing for LD 1786, An Act to Repeal and Replace the Charter of the Boothbay-Boothbay Harbor Community School District, in which the replacement charter aligns our school charter with state law, I published a Letter to the Editor in the Boothbay Register titled Home rule means we do not have to align with state law.
If my readers agree that we should not relinquish our home rule over our school district, please give my letter an upvote. It matters. I saw today that the Committee on Education and Cultural Affairs approved the replacement charter but the Legislature must still vote on it.
The conflation of recently enacted legislation and development being pushed on this peninsula gives every reason to believe that what is being planned for the Boothbay region school system is a facility for the Maine Space Corporation. although this is never mentioned in the carefully crafted promotions for the school which portrays the school as featuring traditional maritime industries. However, it is the timing of the legislation with amending the educational statutes, chartering the Maine Space Corporation that will use the public school system to train its workforce from kindergarten to grade 12, and of course the repealing and replacing of our local school charter to “align with state law” which does not align very consistently with the Maine Constitution, the law governing state law.
Will Lockett writes very informatively about technology with a focus on climate change. Lockett recently published Climate Change Is Causing The Upper Atmosphere To Cool, And The Side Effects Are Terrifying. In short, the cooling upper atmosphere is punching holes in the ozone layer that makes earth inhabitable for humans and other life forms. This was only recently discovered using data that goes back only to 2000, making it inconclusive and yet conclusive enough to be concerned about. The environmental data on rocket launches is also too little to be conclusive but the largest concern is damage being done to the ozone layer and the stratosphere.
There is a high probability that the local investors cabal negotiating with the school board has its eye on becoming a Maine Space Corporation educational center, but with the new information about the cooling upper atmosphere, it does not seem like an appropriate response for the centralized economy of Maine to be launching a new space economy. Can we rethink that or will the prospect of financial gain rule as it usually does, even in the face of potentially making the earth uninhabitable to life as we know it? Are they planning on using their rocket ships to escape to some other planet after their rocket ships contribute to the destruction of the ozone layer making it necessary to escape to another planet? If it’s all about financial gain, do the math and ask “Is it profitable considering the enormous financial costs of moving to a different planet- and how do we even know there is a habitual one available?
Here is an alternative plan. Return to the age of the cottage industry. If you want to be high tech about it- just call it time travel, back to the past, before there was an industrial revolution, when working in the home was common place. No rocket ships needed. We can do it here, now and a rural peninsula is a perfectly compatible location- and it is innovative! No one else is talking about workers in residence zoning.. yet! We can be the first! We just need to overcome a few major obstacles blocking the path to common sense.
Yes, we are creating ideas and lying them around! When the crisis becomes so apparent that even our irrational leadership can see it, doesn’t a new era of the cottage industry beat out migrating to another planet that may or may not exist?
Today, the realization that the upper atmosphere may be cooling and punching holes into our ozone layer is so recent that solutions have not emerged other than reducing our carbon emissions. Remote working, or any type of working at home does reduce carbon emissions by reducing commuting. That’s something. If we decide to develop worker in residence communities instead of a space economy, it reduces projected carbon emissions and damage done to our ozone and stratosphere layers even more! It’s a win-win!
I jest but it’s also true. It’s about a change in values. If, at this time the only thing that can potentially save the ozone is to take reducing our carbon emissions even more seriously than we already are, that requires a fundamental change in our value systems.
That’s a big undertaking but there is a movement among the working classes that is already doing just that by shaking off the security myth of corporate culture. It’s revolutionary, especially when you consider that there is a layer of the entire system that is structurally built upon value systems, a layer of realty that penetrates many other layers.
Being that the economy interacts with almost everything, ever since 1976 when the Maine Legislature deemed that centrally managing the economy is an essential government function, the Maine Legislature has progressively taken over centrally managing everything, even creating municipal corporations that are instruments of the state rather than an instrument of the municipality, and chartering a region of municipalities as an economic development corporation. Now the Maine Legislature has chartered yet another corporation and plans on using our public educational system to train the workforce for the new Maine space economy, even defying the definition of the new space economy found in its own charter for the Maine Space Corporation, which is:
5. New space economy. "New space economy" means the full range of decentralized, diversified, entrepreneurial and accessible activities and the use of resources and players across industries that create value and benefits to human beings in the course of exploring, researching, understanding, managing and using extraterrestrial space. source (emphasis mine)
What is entrepreneurship?
At its most basic level, entrepreneurship refers to an individual or a small group of partners who strike out on an original path to create a new business. An aspiring entrepreneur actively seeks a particular business venture and it is the entrepreneur who assumes the greatest amount of risk associated with the project. As such, this person also stands to benefit most if the project is a success. source
You can read many other parts of the Maine Space Corporation Act and see that it is clearly intended to centralize the Maine space economy under the state umbrella, for example, the definition that directly precedes definition #5 quoted above:
4. Maine Space Complex. "Maine Space Complex" or "complex" means the Maine Space Complex established pursuant to section 13203, subsection 1.
[PL 2021, c. 631, §1 (NEW).]
So here we have an example of doublespeak, credited to George Orwells’ novel 1984,
Enter FUD. Inc introducing a new concept- old styled straight talk! Brush the illusions aside and let’s just deal with reality.
My reality is that I am now the sole custodian of an unusual line of ceramic slip cast designs created the only way such a line can be created, by years of creative productivity. Each design supported subsequent designs because each and every one of them established the enduring marketability that makes for a classic design that can be reinterpreted through ceramic decoration. Each design produced the means to create subsequent designs. Since the production was always very small by contemporary standards, these designs have never been overproduced and are still valid productivity assets that can potentially create the basis for a very unique workers in residence community. Ceramic slip casting is a very small industry in the USA today but it is a big hobby industry because people slip cast a decorate ceramics for pleasure. Ceramic slip casting can easily be done in a small studio attached to a home, Traditionally, back in the days of the cottage industries Museums featured designs that could be creatively reproduced through cottage industry.
I also inherited the brand name and the website, which is solely my creation. With a solid investment it can be made into a much more high-profile curated designer-craftsmen website. Andersen Design has the history, we are an established name. We can do this!
But today, we, is just me, which I project will eventually change because “we’re worth it!”
This is the basis of my mission as presented in short hand in the Andersen Design profile.
But today I must raise $500.00 to cover the back rent on the storage space that houses the master molds. They are the molds used to make the production molds for the uncontested Andersen line of slip cast designs. I am just one person trying to manage a very complex inheritance. Its really much too much to be handled single-handedly but here I am, the sole custodiam of this business. If I were doing a Kickstarter, the $500.00 would be my first goal and the next goal would be $5000.00 to hire the equity firm that I would like to work with, who would create pitch documents and connect Andersen Dseign with a stream of potential investors. Then I would have a team, of sorts, and I need a team. I can’t do this alone. Today am sailing alone in a sail boat following the streams of consciousness over the vast ocean, but if I were to manifest a new beginning for Andersen Design, then I would be on a ship with a crew and many people. Conjure it up, Scotty!
But since I am doing what I just said can’t be done, this newsletter is my fundraiser for now as it works with my available thinly-spread time. If you would like to contribute to my cause by making a tax-deductible donation, you can do so on The Field
Mackenzie Andersen is a sponsored artist with The Performance Zone Inc (dba The Field), a not-for-profit, tax-exempt, 501(c)(3) organization serving the performing arts community. Contributions to The Field earmarked for Mackenzie Andersen are tax deductible to the extent allowed by law. For more information about The Field, or for our national charities registration, contact: The Field, 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 906 New York, NY 10038, phone: 212-691-6969. A copy of our latest financial report may be obtained from The Field or from the Office of Attorney General, Charities Bureau, 120 Broadway, New York, NY 10271. Mackenzie’s Profile on the Field
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Or you can contact me about digital photo editing freelance work. I also dabble in video editing. I edited this video, including adding the sound:
I have the full suite of Adobe apps. I am most familiar with photoshop and lightroom, but have also used Premier Pro, After-Effects, and the PDF app and I am a dedicated learner.
Right now, I really need your support. large or small. Together we can turn this peninsula around and then change the world!
Our ideas, just lying round, grow more prominent, together!