We’re a pop group that seeks to radically change the world. In our most pessimistic moments, we worry that if everything does break down, then it’s essential that the right answers, about democracy, about economic justice, are out there, and this we must attempt. Of course, it’s hard to sustain pessimism when you’re a pop group.
We’re deeply into pop music, and its qualities of communication, 3 minute-ish packages of distilled mood and dreams; and we yearn to try and follow those we love. And we find, as music makers, we can’t help but sing about issues which scream to be heard about. We have this website to promote the music, but also to propagate information about some things we think are crucially important.
We are alarmed, as increasingly many are, by the planetary emergency which is not being treated as such. We’re alarmed about threats to civilisation, to peace in the world, to the biospheric cradle in which this happens. We’re alarmed, as are others, at the lack of alarm.
We mentioned Answers. Of course, it sounds very immodest and arrogant to claim that we have the answers to what’s going wrong in the world and what would go right; who on Earth do we think we are? It’s certainly not like that, it’s that we just happen to have stumbled across ideas which we believe to be self-evidently true and of the very highest importance.
Answers to what?
To what goes wrong in the world. It is an old truism that the world is set up wrong somehow; this nagging feeling that it just works wrong. Answers to the causes of poverty. We haven’t got answers to every challenge for the world, but most of them, at root, come down to key ones: how we justly distribute economic wealth and power; how we best make democratic decisions about our communities and our world; how we most effectively generate clean and abundant electrical power. There is another imperative of absolute importance: how we most wisely use our agricultural land to feed the world’s population, abundantly and well, and which does the least possible damage to the biosphere as far as possible.
We are certain we have been exposed to the answers, to the fundamental questions of, and varying dangers to, civilisation in the biosphere. The central important understandings of how it all works properly, where it’s going wrong and how this is unsustainable.
What can we do?
Now we’ve been exposed to these ideas, we must try and pass them on and try and explain. And we do so in the full confidence that anyone, with a little thought, would grasp all of this and could not fail to agree.
They are insights of economic understanding which were well known amongst the late 19th century American public, also among many in Britain and in pockets all around the world. They are insights that show peace, prosperity and justice. These are insights which completely change the power relations of the world; which is why they were very effectively airbrushed out of history.
In late 19th century USA there was a political movement in the USA called The Single Taxers; S.T.A.N.E.B stands originally for The Single Tax and Natural Energy Band, which we felt was quaintly old-fashioned. It’s been shortened to S.T.A.N.E.B. after consideration; it was suggested to us that mention of the long past was unhelpful to a modern understanding of these insights. Indeed, we came to see how the term can obscure the greater scope of rent. (Just go with this for now, rent will be simply explained.) We toyed with Natural Energy Band but didn’t feel right; so, let it best be S.T.A.N.E.B., which it had become locally anyway.
Staneb promote the insights of Classical political economy, enquiries into where wealth comes from and how it is most justly distributed. As simply and engagingly as we could, the root and bones of all this are explained in Economics: The Root of Dysfunction. What we’re trying to point out is that the principles of economics are simple and completely accessible to everyone. There is plenty more to say, but if this point is made, the goal has been achieved. It’s not taxing, it’s easy reading and it wouldn’t take very long.
We badly want to explain that economics is not this scary subject of mathematical hieroglyphs, that it is completely understandable and it belongs to everybody.
These lost Classical insights are essential to addressing the planetary emergency. How Economics works is essential to wise stewardship of our common heritage. The natural world is screaming, and the need for awareness for responses to this eclipses everything. Hence, the latter part of the band’s name, Natural Energy, or more commonly called, renewable energy, the growth of which is clearly urgent as ending the era of hydrocarbons is surely the biggest single urgent response to be made.
We have a piece about Natural Energy. It’s an engineering question in which no expertise is claimed, but, as far as can be seen, the numbers around kites make the self-evident case for Kites, the harvesting of the energy from high altitudes, where wind energy is of a completely different order to ground level wind power. In this field, Kitegen seem to be the most advanced and our essay highlights Kitegen’s numbers around projected Energy Return on Energy Invested.
And Staneb prescribe Direct or Pure Democracy. David Van Reybrouck’s Against Elections – the Case for Democracy, made us realise the dysfunction of electoral democracy, and showed that in sortition the ideals of democracy, of legitimacy and of effective and just action, are far better served. Once again, as in Economics, there really is another way to think about it, a much better way.
If people are given the time to consider the real truth of things, independent of lobbying from vested interests, unencumbered by the need to win elections, it is much more likely that the vital measures of which we write will see light of day. Since we claim that what we are talking about is the self-evident truth, then it all just needs a fair consideration.
We badly want to signpost how there’s a much better way of making decisions about our lives in our societies.
So, classical political economy, harvesting natural energy, and direct democracy are the pillars of this band’s world view and we seek to promulgate these ideas, along with peace, love and understanding.
We’ll be trying to explain all these issues, simply, in the following essays, and provide links to places that say it better and expand on it all, should we have managed to sufficiently interest the reader to seek more. Various books are referred to as our sources – not one of these books is difficult or clever, all simple truths (otherwise we’d have never understood.) These simple essays, in the first instance, are to save you reading these books; but these books are the answers and interesting the reader in these is the aim.
ECONOMICS AND THE ROOTS OF DYSFUNCTION
this is briefly is the roots of it all …
Away from this cynical cacophony, how it should be done …
this is much longer, a lot at different forms of renewable energy, a few years old now …
NATURAL ENERGY was a section from the STANEB 1 SLEEVE NOTES which are further down
We wrote a lot of sleeve notes for the first album, gripped by a passion for new thinking, for answers, at last, starstruck in amazement at finding understanding.
As for the music, we’ll keep trying to make better records. Third album coming and another attempt to follow those we love.
Wake Up: Alarmed Pop Music and Answers 