How well do you know the democratic socialism that Bernie is reviving across the continent? When you discuss with friends what Bernie means, do you have the full picture? Corporatist capitalism has erased most of FDR's New Deal democratic socialism and today's people have no memory of it. It is most helpful to have a general overview of the benefits of democratic socialism when talking with capitalist-formed people.
Here's Part One: http://caucus99percent.com/content/local-resilience-democratic-socialism...
This diary series explores the outlines of Bernie's economic philosophy. We do so using a famous book that came out when a young Bernie Sanders was forming his economic philosophy: Small Is Beautiful (1973), by the post-WWII British economist E.F. Schumacher. It is subtitled "Economics As If People Mattered." We follow the four parts of the book very closely and attempt to tie it to Bernie's economics. Have no fear: there's no technical language, or math, or any Marx. Well, it's a long-form essay and the language is from the 70s, but so am I :=) Don't be deterred: read it in stages.

If you'd like to see a town that has transitioned to democratic socialism, see Totnes, a small market town in Devon, England, the town that created the Transition Town movement:
http://caucus99percent.com/content/local-resilience-transition-town-totn...
http://www.transitiontowntotnes.org/
Please follow me for more below for the democratic-socialist corrective to the dismal science.

Might as well listen to Jack Johnson, eh.

In 1973, British economist E.F. Schumacher published Small is Beautiful – Economics as if People Mattered, a book that offered a vision of an economy driven by a desire for harmony, not greed; a local economy based on community and ecological values, not global financial derivatives. In the 1970s, “Small is Beautiful” helped launch a back-to-the-land movement that is the ancestor to the Local Food Revolution of today and the global Transition Network.

Don't buy books new. You can find the text online.
Please don't search with gargle: try www.duckduckgo.com instead.

1. The Modern World (See the link to Part One above)
2. Resources (this essay)
3. The Third World (now called the emerging world)
4. Organization & Ownership (the best for last :=)

PART TWO: RESOURCES
Six - The Greatest Resource, Education

Notice that democratic socialism begins a discussion of resources with education, not capital.
Bernie Sanders agrees. Here is the introduction to his plan to make college tuition- and debt free:

In a highly competitive global economy, we need the best-educated workforce in the world. It is insane and counter-productive to the best interests of our country and our future, that hundreds of thousands of bright young people cannot afford to go to college, and that millions of others leave school with a mountain of debt that burdens them for decades. That shortsighted path to the future must end.

As President, Bernie Sanders will fight to make sure that every American who studies hard in school can go to college regardless of how much money their parents make and without going deeply into debt.
Here are the six steps that Bernie will take as President to make college debt free:
https://berniesanders.com/issues/its-time-to-make-college-tuition-free-a...
And here is how Bernie plans to support historic black colleges:
https://berniesanders.com/issues/supporting-historically-black-colleges-...

On the content of education, Schumacher remarks that:

If western civilisation is in a state of permanent crisis, it is not far-fetched to suggest that there may be something wrong with its education.
Our education system is good at transmitting know-how, but we need it to be good also at transmitting ideas about values. And not values as dogma - that is worse than useless. We need to learn how to use our values as instruments with which to look at the world.
The way in which we experience and interpret the world obviously depends very much indeed on the kind of values that fill our minds. One's mind must be able to bring to the world a set of powerful ideas, otherwise the world will seem strange and chaotic.
The despair we find in western societies is not due to a lack of know-how but a lack of coherent ideas about values with which to engage in the world and make decisions. Our main problem today is that the leading ideas of our times are mostly derived from the 19th century, but they have been either misapplied or applied outside of their particular niches.

Schumacher identifies six such themes of 19th c. ideas and values.

1. The idea of evolution - that higher forms continually develop out of lower forms, as a natural and automatic process. The 20th c. saw the systematic application of this idea to all aspects of reality - without exception.

2. Flowing from such a narrow view of evolution, was the idea of competition - natural selection as the survival of the fittest, which purports to explain the natural and automatic process of evolution and development.

3. The idea stemming from Marxism that all the higher manifestations of human life, such as religion, philosophy, art, etc., are nothing but a cultural superstructure erected to disguise and promote economic interests, the whole of human history being the history of class struggles.

4. If Marxists denigrated all the higher manifestations of human life as being disguises for economic oppression, the Freudian interpretation reduces them to the dark stirrings of a subconscious mind and explains them mainly as the results of unfulfilled incest-wishes during child-hood and early adolescence.

5. The general idea of relativism (not the general theory of relativity :-), which denies all absolutes, dissolves all norms and standards, leading to the total undermining of the idea of truth in pragmatism, affecting even mathematics, which has been defined by Bertrand Russell as "the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, or whether what we say is true."

6. Finally, the triumphant idea of positivism, that valid knowledge can be attained only through the methods of the natural sciences and hence that no knowledge is genuine unless it is based on generally observable facts. Positivism, in other words, is solely interested in 'know-how' and denies the possibility of objective knowledge about meaning and purpose of any kind.

So there you have it. Our people are educated with this set of ideas (values) and with which they set out to face the world. It is no wonder that the rich world is filled with so much depression and angst.

Schumacher points out what these ideas have in common:

They all assert that what had previously been taken to be something of a higher order is really 'nothing but' a more subtle manifestation of the 'lower' - unless, indeed, the very distinction between higher and lower is denied. Thus [hu]man, like the rest of the universe, is really nothing but an accidental collocation of atoms. The difference between a man and a stone is little more than a deceptive appearance.
Man's highest cultural achievements are nothing but disguised economic greed or the outflow of sexual frustrations. In any case, it is meaningless to say that man should aim at the 'higher' rather than the 'lower' because no intelligible meaning can be attached to purely subjective notions like 'higher' or 'lower', while the word 'should' is just a sign of authoritarian megalomania.

This set of ideas dominate the humanities today, and which claimed to do away with metaphysics, are in Schumacher's words themselves a bad, vicious, life-destroying type of metaphysics.
Metaphysics and ethics, it turns out, cannot be thought away; what we ended up with underpinning western civilization was bad metaphysics and appalling ethics.

It is not so much the specialization of modern education that is bad, but the lack of depth and the lack of metaphysical awareness.

Schumacher says that Economics is being taught without any awareness of the values, the view of human nature that underlies present-day economic theory.
In fact, many economists are themselves unaware of the fact that such a view is implicit in their teaching and that nearly all their theories would have to change if that view changed.

Bernie agrees and makes practical many ways to overthrow these bad assumptions. Here is Bernie's plan, for example, to restore real family values across America:

The right has claimed the mantle of “family values” for far too long. When my Republican colleagues use the term they’re usually talking about things like opposition to contraception, denying a woman’s right to choose, opposition to gay rights, and support for abstinence-only education.

Family values: let’s talk about what those words mean.

When a mother can’t spend time with her newborn child during the first weeks and months of life, that is not a family value.

When a husband can’t get time off from work to care for his cancer-stricken wife, that is not a family value.

When a mother is forced to send her sick child to school because she can’t afford to stay home, that is not a family value.

When parents and children can’t spend any time on vacation together during the course of an entire year, that is not a family value.

In fact, these things are an attack on everything the family stands for.

When it comes to supporting real family values, the United States lags behind virtually every major country on earth. We are the only advanced economy that doesn’t guarantee its workers some form of paid family leave, paid sick leave or paid vacation time.

Or, to put that another way: Workers and families in every other major industrialized country in the world get a better deal than we do here in the United States.
That’s wrong. It’s a travesty. And it should be an embarrassment to anyone who claims to speak for family values in this country.

Time for parents and children
It’s an outrage that millions of women in this country are forced back to work after giving birth, simply because they don’t have the income to stay home with their newborn babies.

Virtually every psychologist who has studied this issue agrees that the first weeks and months of life are enormously important to a newborn’s emotional and intellectual development. It’s understood that mothers and fathers should spend this time bonding with the new person they have brought into the world.

The Family and Medical Leave Act we signed into law in 1993 is inadequate for the task. Today, according to the Department of Labor, nearly eight out of ten workers who are eligible to take time off under this law cannot do so because they can’t afford it. Even worse, 40 percent of American workers aren’t even eligible for this unpaid leave.

In my view, every worker in America should be guaranteed at least twelve weeks of paid family and medical leave. That’s why I am a proud cosponsor of the FAMILY Act, introduced by Senator Gillibrand, which does just that. Under this measure, every employee would receive twelve weeks of paid family and medical leave: to take care of a baby, to help a family member who has been diagnosed with cancer or another serious medical condition, or to care for themselves if they become seriously ill.

This would be funded through an insurance program, like Social Security. Workers would pay into it with every paycheck, at the price of roughly one cup of coffee per week. There is no reason not to pass this bill now.

Sick leave for all
We must also make sure that workers in this country have paid sick leave. It is insane that low-wage workers for companies like McDonald’s must work when they are sick just because they can’t afford to stay home.
That’s bad for the workers – and it’s also a public health issue.

The Healthy Families Act, introduced by Sen. Patty Murray, would fix that. It would guarantee seven days of paid sick leave per year for American workers. It would benefit 43 million Americans who don’t have access to paid sick leave today. It would also establish a minimum standard for employers who already do offer sick leave.

We need a vacation
Millions of Americans are working longer hours for lower wages. They are overworked, underpaid, and under enormous stress. Today 85 percent of working men and 66 percent of working women are working more than 40 hours a week. Millions of people are working incredible hours – some with two or three jobs – just trying to care for themselves and their families.

That is why I have introduced legislation which would require employers to provide at least 10 days of paid vacation per year. This is already done in almost every country in the world. My proposal would allow workers to take two weeks of paid leave each year – to rest and recuperate, travel, visit loved ones, or simply spend time at home bonding with their families.

Companies like Virgin Group and Netflix have adopted generous paid vacation policies aimed at boosting productivity and increasing worker loyalty. But nearly one in four workers gets no paid vacation time at all.

Studies show that nine out of every ten Americans report that their happiest memories come from vacations. Vacations have been shown to reduce stress, strengthen family relationships, increase productivity, and even prevent illness.

American workers are being denied a benefit that workers in every other advanced economy already enjoy. Europe, Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand … we are the only nation that doesn’t require employers to provide at least 10 days of paid vacation time.

There is no reason for that. Our country is every bit as prosperous as theirs – and it is prosperous because the men and women of this country work so hard.

I’m not asking for the most generous vacation policy in the world. This is nothing like what they get in France, Austria or Belgium. But I intend to push for a standard which befits a great nation.

There is no reason not to pass this bill. It would benefit workers while also helping employers, the economy, and society as a whole.

Real family values
Last place is no place for America. It is time to join the rest of the industrialized world and live up to our ideals by ensuring that every worker in this country has access to paid family leave, paid sick time and paid vacations – just like they do in every other wealthy country on the planet.

The next time you hear a politician talking about “family values,” you may want to ask whether they support measures which really help American families. These bills will help families spend more time together, in greater happiness and security.
Those are values every family can believe in.
https://berniesanders.com/issues/real-family-values/

Schumacher would have approved wholeheartedly. He had an optimistic view of humans. He said: "Fortunately, the heart is often more intelligent than the mind and refuses to accept these six ideas completely."

So man is saved from despair, but landed in confusion.

In order to lift the confusion, we should learn to accept metaphysical ideas that are pretty much the opposite of these six leading ideas of our time. That is not to say that one rejects evolution. Of course not.
But it does mean that the bad metaphysics with which the struggle for the acceptance of evolution has left us can now be safely discarded. No one is bringing back paternalistic theism or creationism or any such thinking.

So what are these healthier (values) metaphysical ideas?

1. The first is the re-acceptance (without theism) of levels of being in the universe.
It is only when we can see the earth as a ladder, and when we can see the human position on the ladder, that we can recognize a meaningful task for human life on earth.

Maybe it is man's task - or simply, if you like, man's happiness - to attain a higher degree of realization of his potentialities, a higher level of being or 'grade of significance' than that which comes to him 'naturally': we cannot even study this possibility except by re-cognizing the existence of a hierarchical structure.

As soon as we accept the existence of 'levels of being', we understand why the findings of physics - as Einstein recognized - have no philosophical implications.
BTW: Schumacher further developed this concept in a remarkable and wonderful book called A Guide for the Perplexed (1977).

2. The second new idea is the acceptance of opposites.
Schumacher states that it is the nature of our human thinking to think in opposites, ones that cannot be resolved at that level of thought.
He presents the example of the opposites of freedom and discipline in education.

There's no one formula that can capture this, but countless parents and teachers do it everyday.
They do it by bringing into the situation a force that belongs to a higher level where opposites are transcended - the power of love.
The true problems of living - in politics, economics, education, marriage, etc. - are always problems of overcoming or reconciling opposites. They are divergent problems and have no solution in the ordinary sense of the word. They demand of humans not merely the employment of their reasoning powers but the commitment of one' whole personality.

3. The third new idea is that of the renewal of ethics.
The 19th century thinking encapsulated by the six idea noted above meant the diminished acceptance of the existence of levels of being and the idea that some things are higher than others.
This has has meant the destruction of ethics which is based on the distinction of good and evil, claiming that good is higher than evil. The result has been confusion.

Schumacher asks: "What is the guiding image that young people have before them when the leading intellectuals claim that everything is relevant and ethics is treated with cynicism?"

The task of our generation is one of metaphysical reconstruction, using the age-old ideas in new formulation.

Schumacher begins with this inconvenient and inescapable fact:

Someone once gave a brief outline of history by saying that "civilized man has marched across the face of the earth and left a desert in his footprints."
This has been one of the prime reason for the collapse of successive civilizations, necessitating the need to always move along.

Schumacher notes that the questions posed by the proper use of land are not technological. They belong to a higher order of thinking.
One of the most important tasks for any society is to distinguish between ends and means, and to have some sort of cohesive view and agreement about this.

Is the land merely a means of production or is it something more, something that is an end in itself?

Capitalist economics, based on 19th c. ideas and values, consider land and its creatures to be factors of production - means-to-ends. (And the results of this are in, eh?)

But this is only their secondary nature. Before everything else, land and its creatures are ends-in-themselves.

Schumacher says that land and it's creatures are meta-economic:

...and it is therefore rationally justifiable to say, as a statement of fact, that they are in a certain sense sacred.

This is where we run headlong into materialistic, capitalist economics, which refuses to recognize anything as sacred, because it cannot imagine that there are meta-economic facts that precede and should determine it.
Schumacher notes that he can treat his car any way he likes, for it is human-made, but he cannot treat a cow the same way (as is done in industrial farming), for they are different levels of being, something that modern economics is incapable of understanding.
The main danger to the soil, he says, is modern human determination to treat agriculture the same as industry; it is the prime danger to agriculture and civilization. We poison the earth, we poison ourselves. Again: the fact that agriculture, which deals with living processes, is different from industry is a metaphysical, a meta-economic fact. Agriculture must precede and pre-determine economics.

Real life consists of the tensions produced by the incompatibility of opposites, each of which is needed, and just as life would be meaningless without death, so agriculture would be meaningless without industry.
It remains true, however, that agriculture is primary, whereas industry is secondary, which means that human life can continue without industry, whereas it cannot continue without agriculture.
Human life, at the level of civilization, however, demands the balance of the two principles, and this balance is ineluctably destroyed when people fail to appreciate the essential difference between agriculture and industry - a difference as great as that between life and death - and attempt to treat agriculture as just another industry.

The capitalist economist sees agriculture as primarily directed towards food production.
Schumacher insists, however, that in ethical economics, agriculture has three tasks:

- to keep [hu]man in touch with living nature, of which s/he is and remains a highly vulnerable part;
- to humanise and ennoble man's wider habitat; and
- to bring forth the foodstuffs and other materials which are needed for a
 becoming life.

I do not believe that a civilisation which recognises only the third of these tasks, and which pursues it with such ruthlessness and violence that the other two tasks are not merely neglected but systematically counteracted, has any chance of long-term survival.

Here is some of Bernie's plan to make these agricultural democratic socialist principles practical in America:

As someone who has represented a rural state for more than 24 years, improving the lives of rural Americans is a top priority for Senator Sanders.
Family farms and ranches are the backbone of rural America and the U.S. economy. Farmers are also among our nation’s foremost stewards of our lands and water.

Throughout his career, Senator Sanders has successfully fought for innovative rural economic development initiatives, including investments in farm-to-school and farm-to-table initiatives; agri-tourism programs; school gardens; large scale bio-mass fired electric plants; shared agricultural processing and storage facilities; and anaerobic digesters to process cow manure into methane gas.

Senator Sanders understands that agriculture programs need to be counter-cyclical to assure market-derived commodity income at levels that advance and sustain family-scale farming.

Senator Sanders will fight for farm policies that will foster the entry of a new generation of owner-operators. He will not back away from land stewardship standards that include the commonwealth of clean water for all.

As president, Senator Sanders will adopt policies that will:
Make sure that family farmers and rural economies thrive;
Expand support for young and beginning farmers;
Produce an abundant and nutritious food supply;
Establish an on-going regeneration of our soils; and
Enlist farmers as partners in promoting conservation and stewardship to keep our air and water clean and to combat climate change.

Family Farms Instead of Factory Farms
Senator Sanders believes that we need more family farms, not more factory farms.
It is unacceptable that just four corporations control 82% of the nation’s beef cattle market, 85% of soybean processing, and 63% of pork processing. It is unacceptable that there are over 300,000 fewer farmers than there were 20 years ago.

It is unacceptable that the top 10% of farms collect 75% of farm subsidies, while the bottom 62% do not receive any subsidies. We have to adopt policies that will turn this around.

Supporting Agriculture
In 1966, farmers received 40 cents for every dollar Americans spent on food. Today, they only receive 16 cents on the dollar.

As President, Senator Sanders will reverse this trend by:
Fighting for America’s small and mid-sized farms.
Abraham Lincoln called the United States Department of Agriculture the “People’s Department” and Senator Sanders will ensure that the agency lives up to this name by expanding its services for new and underserved farmers.
Encouraging the growth of regional food systems.
Farmers throughout the country are boosting their bottom line and reinvigorating their communities by selling directly to local consumers, institutions, and restaurants. Senator Sanders will invest in this movement, helping Americans support local farms.
Reversing trade policies like NAFTA that have flooded the American market with agricultural goods produced in countries with less stringent environmental, labor, and safety regulations.
Enforcing our country’s antitrust laws against large agribusiness and food corporations.
A few large companies dominate many agricultural industries, allowing them to force unfair prices on farmers. Senator Sanders will stand up to these corporations and fight to ensure that farmers receive fair prices.

Bernie also knows that there can be no restoration of rural America without a concomitant restoration of tribal nations.
Here is his record and plan to restore first nations. Notice how all it's points tie back to Schumacher's positive ethics in chapter six.

Although Native American tribes are supposed to be sovereign nations with the right to self-governance, the United States has greatly exacerbated the struggles of Indian Country because of its failure to support basic principles of self-determination. Native Americans are more likely to be killed by police than any other racial group and the rate of violent crime against them is twice the national average. Yet, because the federal courts have chipped away at tribal sovereignty, tribal nations are often unable to prosecute criminal offenders for violent crimes that occur within tribal borders. Tribal governments are distinct sovereigns, and should be recognized as such – they must have the autonomy and authority to protect their own peoples.
In congress, Bernie has worked to resolve the many issues and injustices facing tribal communities.

In 2013, Bernie cosponsored the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act, which expanded tribal jurisdiction over domestic violence crimes and provided additional funding for tribal criminal justice systems and victim services.
Bernie introduced the Save Oak Flat Act with Rep. Raul Grijalva to repeal a federal lands transfer of sacred lands in Arizona to a foreign mining company.
Bernie voted to make the Indian Health Care Improvement Act permanent, and to expand healthcare services for Native Americans.
Bernie voted in 2008 to formally apologize to Native Americans “for the many instances of violence, maltreatment, and neglect inflicted on Native Peoples by citizens of the U.S.”
In 2014, Bernie sent a letter with other Senators urging the NFL to rename the Washington D.C. football team.
As the Chairman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, Bernie passed the most comprehensive veterans’ health care legislation in modern history – improving care for Native Americans who serve in our military at the highest rate of any ethnic group in the United States.
Bernie included a provision in the Affordable Care Act that doubled funding for community health centers across the country, including many health centers in Indian Country.
Bernie championed the Older Americans Act, which provides funding for home-delivered and congregate meal programs, transportation, disease prevention, and caregiving services to more than 250 tribal organizations.
Bernie has led the fight against the Keystone XL Pipeline since Day One. He is also the only presidential candidate to publicly oppose the tar sands oil Alberta Clipper pipeline in Minnesota, the fracked oil Sandpiper line in Minnesota, the fracked oil Bakken pipeline in Iowa, and the aggressive use of eminent domain for corporate gain in Nebraska for Keystone.
Bernie’s proposed Climate Justice Resiliency Fund, which is paid for by a tax on carbon, would make climate adaptation investments in low-income and minority communities, including tribes, to help build resilience to the extreme impacts of climate change.
Bernie’s Low Income Solar Act of 2015 would invest $200 million in loans and grants to offset the upfront costs for solar on community facilities, public housing, and low-income family homes including Native Hawaiian, Alaska Native, and federally recognized tribes.
Bernie has committed to provide universal early childhood education programs and tuition-free college for all students willing to work hard to get a higher education.

As President, Bernie Will Fight to Strengthen Tribal Nations by:

Supporting Tribal Sovereignty and Tribal Jurisdiction:
Tribes must have the ability to prosecute non-Native people who commit crimes on tribal land, and have greater jurisdiction over prosecuting all crimes, including family disputes. Bernie will fight to provide Tribes with the resources for effective law enforcement and tribal courts. He will work to streamline tribal retrocession from P.L. 280 for those tribes that wish to do so, and will encourage the continual development of the U.S. Department of Justice Tribal Access Program for National Crime Information to provide tribes with access to national crime information systems for both civil and criminal purposes.

Upholding the Trust Responsibility:
We must honor the treaties and federal statutes that are the foundation of the trust relationship. Bernie will maintain a White House Policy Advisor for Native American Affairs to ensure that tribal issues are consistently addressed and coordinated throughout the federal government. Bernie will also create a position within the Office of Management Budget to ensure adequate subject matter expertise and sufficient coordination between federal agencies. Bernie will appoint senior level tribal appointees with access to executive agency leaders to promote meaningful consultation with Native Americans. Bernie is committed to the principles of trust modernization to update antiquated trust practices to better serve tribal nations.

Improving Housing:
Bernie will fight for increased local control over the administration and operation of tribal housing programs. He will also fight for full funding of the Indian Housing Block Grant Program.

Strengthening Education:
In order to create economic opportunities, we must invest in education from early childhood through higher education. Bernie will fight to fully fund the Bureau of Indian Education and strengthen self-determination to enable culturally tailored learning, unique to each tribal nation, and help to retain qualified teachers for Native youth. Bernie will build upon the “all of government,” integrated work of the Generation Indigenous initiative to ensure that every Native American child can reach their full potential. Moreover, Bernie’s College for All plan allows students to refinance federal debt, lower interest rates, triples federal work-study jobs, and provides for free college tuition at all public colleges and universities.

Improving Health Care:
Bernie believes that healthcare is a right, and he supports a Medicare-for-all system that would complement the healthcare provided by the Indian Health Service. Critically, Bernie will work to fully fund the Indian Health Service, strengthen regional management and recruitment of committed IHS health care personnel, direct his administration to audit IHS operations, and ensure that Native Americans have adequate, safe, and affordable access to primary care providers, including oral health and mental health practitioners and substance abuse treatment options.

Restoring Tribal Lands:
All tribes must have the right to protect and restore their lands. Bernie will fight to streamline the land-into-trust process and work to reverse the Carcieri Supreme Court decision that resulted in an unjust two-tier system of tribes.

Advancing Economic Development:
Bernie will advocate for economic development in Indian Country by investing in infrastructure. His Rebuild America Act would make a historic $1 trillion investment to upgrade our roads and bridges, drinking water and waste water, freight and passenger rail, and electric, telecommunications and broadband networks, and more. This effort will create and maintain at least 13 million jobs across the country – and will be targeted to areas of highest unemployment, like Indian Country. The investment would go a long way to addressing the “digital divide,” because lack of internet access means Native American communities are at risk of falling even further behind in their ability to access employment, educational, and other opportunities made available by modern information technology. Lastly, all federal grants open to state and local governments will also be open to tribes.

Protecting Sacred Places and Native American Cultures:
Native Americans must be empowered to maintain and pass on traditional religious beliefs, languages and social practices without fear of discrimination or suppression. Native children are the future of tribal nations; the Indian Child Welfare Act is critical to survival and must be enforced with the original intent of the law. Further, tribal cultures, sacred places, religious practices, and landscapes must be federally protected.

Expanding Consultation:
Bernie will reexamine Executive Order 13175 “Consultation and Coordination with Indian Tribal Governments,” to ensure that consultation means more than mere listening sessions. Moreover, all voices — tribal leadership and grassroots alike — must be heard. Bernie will expand the annual White House Tribal Nations Conference that brings tribal leaders, cabinet members and the White House together to find solutions to common problems.

Promoting Voting Rights:
Bernie will stand with Native Americans to fight for Indian voting rights, just as he will defend the franchise in minority communities across the country.

Fighting Racism:
Bernie will be an ally in ending the scourge of bias and discrimination against Native peoples. A good place to start is by eliminating offensive school and sports mascots that reflect outdated stereotypes and perpetuate racism against Native Americans.

Fighting Climate Change and Promoting Environmental Protection:
Bernie’s climate change plan will transition away from fossil fuels to a 100 percent clean energy system. Bernie believes that we must provide a just transition for workers, so his plan includes $41 billion to provide benefits and training for oil, gas and coal workers as they transition in to clean energy jobs. In the first 100 days as president, Bernie will convene a climate summit with the world’s best engineers, climate scientists, policy experts, activists and indigenous communities to chart the best strategy against climate change. Bernie’s climate plan calls for an end to fracking for natural gas and mountaintop removal coal mining. Bernie will fight for other critical environmental laws and policies like the Clean Water Rule.
https://berniesanders.com/issues/empower-tribal-nations/

This is a chapter one may safely skip reading as it contains numerous technical calculations based on technical assumptions from 1973. The majority of the chapter is concerned with energy as the primary consideration in industry. And he anticipated the need for renewable energy.
Schumacher calculated that peak oil would arrive in the 80s. He was off by 30 years, but correct in the thrust of the argument. He would have approved of all renewable energy development.

Here's part of Bernie's plan to promote Renewable Energy - firstly in rural America:

Senator Sanders supports major investments in wind, solar, biomass, geothermal, and other sources of renewable energy. These investments are not only important to combat global warming, they are also critically important in improving the farm economy.

The good news is that farmers and ranchers all over this country are leading the charge toward a more sustainable energy future.
Today, more than 57,000 farms are taking advantage of renewable energy production — which has more than doubled since 2007.

Senator Sanders would substantially increase investments in wind energy and would make the Wind Production Tax Credit permanent. By making these investments, wind could supply over 40 percent of Iowa’s electricity in the next five years. By 2030 wind energy in Iowa could supply enough electricity for 6.3 million average American homes.
And, it’s not only wind. Biofuels like ethanol have been an economic lifeline to rural and farm communities in Iowa and throughout the Midwest, supporting over 850,000 workers, all while keeping our energy dollars here at home instead of going into the pockets of oil barons in the Middle East and Russia.
Senator Sanders strongly supports the Renewable Fuels Standard that is helping us move beyond oil.

Moreover, when we talk about harnessing energy from the sun, the good news is that solar panels accounted for more than 60% of renewable energy production systems on farms. According to the Solar Energy Industries Association, the cost of residential solar has come down 75% since 2009.

Over half of the electric generating capacity added to the grid last year was renewable energy from new wind and solar projects. There is enough solar power in America to power four million homes. And, as we generate new sustainable energy, we also generate new opportunities. Today, the rate of job growth in the solar industry is ten times higher than the national average.

While this is a step in the right direction, much more needs to be done to ensure our planet remains habitable, improve the environment, and help our farmers across the country. Substantially increasing our investments in renewable energy will be a major priority in a Sanders administration.
https://berniesanders.com/issues/improving-the-rural-economy/

And from the same chapter, here is Bernie's plan for restoring infrastructure in rural America:

Addressing the infrastructure crisis facing the country – and creating the millions of jobs our economy desperately needs – has been an essential plank of Senator Sanders’ campaign.
Senator Sanders’ Rebuild America Act will make substantial infrastructure investments throughout rural America.

Improving our electric grid.
Senator Sanders understands that we desperately need to improve our aging rural electrical grid, which consists of a patchwork system of interconnected power generation, transmission, and distribution facilities, some of which date back to the early 1900s.
Today, the World Economic Forum ranks our electric grid at just 24th in the world in terms of reliability, just behind Barbados.

As part of the Rebuild America Act, Senator Sanders would invest $50 billion on power transmission and distribution modernization projects to improve the reliability and resiliency of our ever more complex electric power grid. This investment will also position our grid to accept new sources of locally generated renewable energy, and it will address critical vulnerabilities to cyber-attacks.

Investing in broadband and high-speed Internet services.
Another critically important rural infrastructure issue that often goes overlooked is the expansion of broadband. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development ranks the U.S. 16th in the world in terms of broadband access.

Today, people living in Bucharest, Romania have access to much faster Internet than most of the United States. That’s unacceptable and must change.

Senator Sanders’ Rebuild America Act would invest $25 billion over five years to expand high-speed broadband networks in under-served and un-serviced areas, and would boost speeds and capacity all across the country, particularly in rural areas.

High-speed Internet access is no longer a luxury. It is essential for 21st century commerce, education, telemedicine, and public safety. And, it’s especially important for rural America to stay connected and to do business with the rest of the world.

Improving our dams and levees.
Senator Sanders’ plan also addresses dams and levees. Right now, more than 4,000 of the nation’s 84,000 dams are considered deficient.
Even worse, one of every eleven levees have been rated as “likely to fail” during a major flood. Most of those facilities are in rural areas.

The Rebuild America Act will invest $12 billion a year to repair and improve the high-hazard dams that provide flood control, drinking water, irrigation, hydropower, and recreation across rural America; and the flood levees that protect our farms and our towns and cities.
https://berniesanders.com/issues/improving-the-rural-economy/

This chapter follows on from the discussion of energy in the previous chapter.
First, some context. Schumacher wrote this book in the 60s, when "serious" people still thought nuclear energy could be made to be sustainable. Schumacher, though, wasn't having any of it.

No degree of prosperity could justify the accumulation of large amounts of highly toxic substances which nobody knows how to make 'safe' and which remain an incalculable danger to the whole of creation for historical or even geological ages.

To do such a thing is a transgression against life itself, a transgression infinitely more serious than any crime ever perpetrated by man.

The idea that a civilisation could sustain itself on the basis of such a transgression is an ethical, spiritual, and metaphysical monstrosity. It means conducting the economic affairs of man as if people really did not matter at all.

After Fukushima, I found an article and a documentary that made the issues clear: http://www.culturechange.org/cms/content/view/779/1/
Knocking on the Devil's Door: Our Deadly Nuclear Legacy - a documentary of the greatest urgency

I personally feel strongly about the abomination of nuclear energy. Never waste a breath of argument with people who hold that nuclear energy is anything but an unmitigated disaster. The evidence of human inability to manage this most dangerous of all human activity is so overwhelming that its continued existence is only due to human greed and metaphysical blindness.

Schumacher builds the case, in the face of the early optimism of his era, about nuclear energy and its disastrous consequence with evidentiary precision such that one cannot but despair of human evil.
If you have any doubts at all about nuclear energy, read Chapter Nine carefully for yourself. And remember, he wrote before Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima, and countless studies of radioactive toxicity.
Just think about it, is any venture worth it if the collective insurance industry of the world refuses to touch it?
No cooperation with evil.

This chapter is a presentation of the need for changing how we create and apply technology.
Schumacher notes that the modern world has been shaped by its metaphysics, which has shaped its education, which in turn has shaped its science and technology. And the world is in crisis in part because of its technology, which becomes more inhuman by the day.

For example, there is a great difference between the laws of nature and the laws of technology.

Nature is characterized by the principle of self-limiting growth.
As a result, the system of nature, of which man is a part, tends to be self- balancing, self-adjusting, self-cleansing.
Technology knows no such boundaries and is not self-regulating.

Schumacher says our modern world, as shaped by our present technology, is immersed in three crises simultaneously:

First, human nature revolts against inhuman technological, organizational, and political patterns, which it experiences as suffocating and debilitating;
Second, the living environment which supports human life aches and groans and gives signs of partial breakdown; and,
Third, it is clear to anyone fully knowledgeable in the subject matter that the inroads being made into the world's non-renewable resources, particularly those of fossil fuels, are such that serious bottlenecks and virtual exhaustion loom ahead in the quite foreseeable future.

What is technology good for?
Well, it lightens some workloads while increasing others.
It is very disruptive.
Schumacher worries that what our technology seems to be most good at is reducing or even eliminating skilful, productive work of human hands in touch with real materials of one kind or another. This in the 1960s already. Today even lawyers and doctors are worried about become dispensible.
Think of most physically productive, creative work, such as making clothes or furniture, cooking from scratch, any guild work, or farming. In advanced industrial societies such work is rare now and it is difficult to make a living. Our technology has vastly reduced the employment of actual producers.
Schumacher says the result has been that the prestige carried by people in modern industrial society varies in inverse proportion to their closeness to actual production.

Our reality is that virtually all real production has been turned into an inhuman chore which does not enrich a man but empties him.
Modern technology has deprived humans of the work we enjoy most: productive, creative work, and has multiplied immensely work of a kind that only relates to production incidentally. Karl Marx was right about this: "They want production to be limited to useful things, but they forget that the production of too many useful things results in too many useless people."

Schumacher says it is time we take stock of the direction into which our technology is developing.
The number of people who believe that our technology is developing on the wrong track is growing.
Such people are not against 'growth' but care about the quality of growth. It is a matter of what should grow and what should recede and do we have the right balance based on sound principles.
Schumacher says it is important for ordinary people to take sides. To leave it to the 'experts' is to leave to those in 'charge' of the stampede.
He is hopeful that change is possible because ordinary people generally take a more humanistic view than do the experts.

Schumacher closes Part Two on Resources with this:

Man is small, and, therefore, small is beautiful.
To go for gigantism is to go for self-destruction.
And what is the cost of a reorientation?
We might remind ourselves that to calculate the cost of survival is perverse.
No doubt, a price has to be paid for anything worth while: to redirect technology so that it serves man instead of destroying him requires primarily an effort of the imagination and an abandonment of fear.

Phew! Well, we made it through Part Two of Small Is Beautiful.

I hope it provides some building blocks for understanding more about democratic socialism.
Next weekend, I'll publish a summary of Part Three, which deals with lessons for us from the emerging world.

It's all just common sense, isn't it? We can build an economics as if people mattered. I look forward to your thoughts and ideas.
Peace be with us, if we learn about and work for democratic socialism,
gerrit

* This is a top-rescue of a series I wrote in summer 2015, which was met with muted cheer and loud chill.