Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Kevin Parcell on December 1, 2011 at 2:22pm

Dave, I think economy=community, as others have said, but differs in that economy is the activity while community is the actor. In this sense, any group of people might share or create a marketplace and so be a community creating an economy, and speaking with their wallets.  If we think of this as "mimicking ecosystems", then the life of the system is money (or whatever is traded).  So if we want local communities/economies then perhaps we need local money.

Permalink Reply by David Eggleton on December 1, 2011 at 2:44pm

Your conclusion is something The E. F. Schumacher Society (now New Economics Institute) also identified and promotes as at least transitional.  Some 2.7 million Berkshares circulating in western Massachusetts are its poster child.

When its currency must be exchanged for dollars in order to purchase goods produced in other regions, the Berkshires region has a chance to identify its highest priorities for economic development.

As for "any group of people might share or create a marketplace and so be a community creating an economy, and speaking with their wallets," the formation and maintenance of any group has an energy basis.  Therefore, options today are more numerous than I expect them to become.  Relying on what's reliable recommends most highly those people who can be touched and addressed face-to-face fairly regularly, and whose traditions of being-in-place are relevant.

Permalink Reply by Kevin Parcell on December 1, 2011 at 6:12pm

They have all their plans online, and they are very busy with a very limited staff, so if you ask them then they will refer you there.  If you are interested in learning more about what they are doing, I recommend that you search their New Economics site.

Permalink Reply by David Eggleton on December 7, 2011 at 11:34am

Kevin,

You deleted some replies here.  In one of them you wondered if you grasped what I meant by "the formation and maintenance of any group has an energy basis."  The statement of your understanding is not here to quote, but as I recall, you did not understand what I meant.

By energy basis I refer to the ability to do work (classic definition) upon which an entity of any scale relies.  Thus, on a planet depleted of easy and safe to exploit fossil fuels not "any group of people might share or create a marketplace and so be a community creating an economy, and speaking with their wallets."

More and more, markets will be comprised of productive peers in places, once again speaking with their work.

Permalink Reply by Kevin Parcell on December 8, 2011 at 2:15pm

David, I think I see your point, and IMO that is a useful way to put it - as an equation that describes the global system as it exists - since that circumstance of continuous depletion is driving us to transform the system. The most efficient and potentially cleanest way to produce energy is in net-zero energy communities, and with this strategy, as in the general sense, "any group of people MIGHT share or create a marketplace and so be a community creating an economy, and speaking with their wallets".

I think such communities might also be the natural outcome of the transformation, as I propose at http://reconomy.net.

Permalink Reply by David Eggleton on December 9, 2011 at 10:37am

I'll try to get to that site sometime.  Please try to imagine the amount and sources of investment required to bring about net-zero communities everywhere.  I believe the former is way out of reach and the latter too hard to find.  That doesn't mean some nice demonstrations are impossible, but why demonstrate a dead end?

Traditional solar communities are the default condition of human beings.  With the arrival of fossil fuels, humanity lost its mooring and then its bearings.  This is a situation where simply retrieving is superior to innovating our way down, around and back.

Permalink Reply by Kevin Parcell on December 9, 2011 at 1:20pm

David, I've imagined this with collaborators around the world.  As a professional energy manager, and having focused on this many years, I think I have a pretty good view of the task. In fact, it is the cheapest way to go, and with an accompanying strategy for community empowerment imo it can support the needs of the human population while preserving habitat and species indefinitely.  I don't believe that retreating to the 19th Century can accomplish that, although one bicycle per person - a 19th Century technology - might take us some ways further down the sustainably path. Please get back to me if you get to that site, and then I would be pleased to discuss it in detail.

Permalink Reply by David Eggleton on December 9, 2011 at 4:18pm

"I think I have a pretty good view of the task. In fact, it is the cheapest way to go."

Sounds like you do and yes it is.  Sometimes, even the cheapest way costs way too much.

Time will tell, I guess.

Permalink Reply by Kevin Parcell on December 9, 2011 at 4:35pm

Yes, that's true.  Cheap energy is what is allowing us to eat the world alive, and while community energy empowerment might change that, there is also the law of unintended consequences.

Permalink Reply by Kevin Parcell on December 10, 2011 at 12:37pm

I offer as a local pragmatic idea Reconomy at http://reconomy.net, which is a model that establishes a money-energy value loop to develop community-controlled local energy resources.  I'm finding the utility of this approach is quickly grasped in developing regions, but not so much in developed communities.  The difference seems to be that "developed communities" are living easy by exploiting resources from less developed communities and so have little general interest in changing that gravy train to develop their own.

This experience has led me to focus on recruiting the help of those whom get it rather than on changing minds.  Or, in other words, I don't find much benefit in talking about the reasoning behind this in western developed communities.  People are moved by self-interest, enlightened or otherwise, and enlightened self-interest is lacking where self-interest is lavishly fed; so spending my energy on raising the consciousness of the affluent isn't profitable, not to say that reaching out to those whom are already tuned in is always a waste of time.

Permalink Reply by David Eggleton on December 12, 2011 at 11:47am

I wish you had used this statement to start a new discussion or to broaden the one you started, Kevin.  It is a proper response to Dave's leading comment and not a response to my

These forums will be necessarily (naturally) dynamic manifestations of who/what is present and contributing.  In time, appropriate traditions of being-in-place will return to serve.

Voice in the limited sense simply cannot go as far.

Permalink Reply by Kevin Parcell on December 12, 2011 at 12:23pm

David, I think of this as a pragmatic, local strategy.

• ‹ Previous
• 1
• 2
• Next ›
• Page