[SustainableTompkins] relocalization

[Jon Bosak]

[Karl North:]

| Of course serious relocalization could wait out the current
| process of self-destruction inherent in the centralized
| power-over system, and as things fall apart sufficiently in
| the larger political economy and its unsustainable
| infrastructure, use the new political vacuum/chaos to
| reconfigure things locally. And that may be the only
| solution. But I am very uncomfortable with that approach.

Me too.  I don't view that kind of breakdown as an opportunity
for positive change; quite the contrary.

| It may be 1-3 decades for that vacuum to open up. Meanwhile
| the current centralized system will chew up resources and
| wreak eco-social damage faster than ever trying to cope with
| its self-inflicted cancers as they metastasize. As it is
| currently doing creating biofuels, martial law, resource
| wars, etc. It will do that as it always has, by trying to
| economically grow its way out of the problem, which in part
| is growth itself.

Yup.

| You say that big changes have come about
| > through viral memes (such as
| > the ideal of sustainability itself) that spread in a
| > self-organizing way until co-opted more or less successfully by
| > the same programmers and put to service selling more goods
|
| Maybe I need to hear you expand on that, but at face value
| it sounds like 'green business', much of which in present
| circumstances is doing much of the chewing up of resources
| that I referred to above, creating products that do not turn
| out to be very sustainable. Example: the auto companies
| boast of their hybrids when the really sustainable solution
| is to get transportation off rubber and back onto rail and
| even less costly means of travel, and to reduce the need for
| travel. The system, not the businesses (as a farmer I
| operate a business) is the problem, because it forces us to
| maximize short run profit, unless we are willing to
| sacrifice profit for the common good. Example: the Ithaca
| Farmers Mkt I sell in and helped build is deemed
| 'successful' mainly because Ithaca provides a relatively
| prosperous customer base. I call most of what is sold there
| "Yuppy Chow" (including my own products) because of its
| relatively high cost (despite which few of its farmers make
| incomes that approach those of its largely "professional"
| clientele). That is part of the reason that although
| thronged on Saturday market, the market as a community
| institution serves but a tiny fraction of the Ithaca
| community.

Agreed.

| [...] So I wonder what makes you think the really important
| viral memes will spread very fast in such an inhospitable
| system?

It's not an expectation so much as a hope.

| > With the possible exception of labor unions, I
| > can't think of a single fundamental societal change of the last
| > century in this country that was due to an organized mass
| > movement;
|
| Agreed. Even the labor unions have become feeble echoes of
| their counterparts in Europe. This is because, as a powerful
| empire sucking in global wealth, our oligarchy has been able
| to buy off or otherwise frustrate such efforts. But if you
| look outside this country, both historically and currently,
| examples abound of mass movements facing down elites when
| they are weaker than ours. Look what is happening in Latin
| America as the US protectionist racket, an umbrella propping
| up Latin native elites for a century, falters as the
| resources of the empire beginning its decline are drawn off
| in oil wars and maintenance of key client states.

Unfortunately, mass movements in response to insupportable
conditions often result in dictatorships of one kind or another
(either individual dictators or central committees).  When
things get bad enough, Americans may indeed spontaneously force
a change in the form of government; but I'm not hopeful about
what kind of change that will be.  Let's remember the response
of the culturally and technologically advanced German society
of the 1930s to runaway inflation.  The innate tendency to
blame others for our problems has been actively promoted by
thought leaders in this country, and I'm not optimistic about
where it's likely to go when things start getting bad.

One of the best concrete recommendations I've seen from the
peak oil crowd is that we at least try to get people to
understand the real causes of the problems they'll be facing so
that they will be less susceptible to this kind of
manipulation.  (Catton in _Overshoot_ makes this point, too.)

| > Those forms lie more in the direction of Jefferson than in
| > the direction of Marx.  To put it another way: the answer to
| > big repressive right-wing government is not big
| > counter-repressive left-wing government, because the problem
| > is bigness itself.
|
| Agreed there is a constant risk in large scale social
| organization.  However, if we can ditch cold war categories
| and look at what has really happened in Cuba, is unfolding
| in Venezuela, occurred in rural communities in the early
| years of the Chinese revolution, even for hundreds of years
| in Switzerland, what emerges is a number of encouraging
| successes in blending central and local control, as well as
| failures due to "one size fits all" policies, bureaucratic
| inertia or corruption, etc.  Due to our peculiar history,
| 'American exceptionalism' really does exist and has not
| served us well as a program. So unfortunately we need to
| look elsewhere for models. Jefferson, Lincoln, and
| Eisenhower essentially predicted that the Jeffersonian ideal
| would succumb to the consolidation of capitalist power in
| the USA. But many examples of central and local power in
| productive coexistence in other countries give me cause for
| hope.

I'll agree that there are examples of societies attaining
"productive coexistence," but I'm not hopeful that this will be
the response to hardship given the current American belief that
we have a God-given right to an ever-increasing level of
material wealth.

| So, as Jon says, in the last analysis it comes down to
| education - changing the mental programming. But, I would
| add, building a power base of local/regional alliances to
| create a policy environment likely to foster major changes
| on the ground, locally.

I think we're in complete agreement on this.  The question in
my mind is whether such local/regional alliances can be created
across the country or in just a few places.  The outlook for
places like Phoenix and Atlanta and Los Angeles is not good.

| I have not even addressed the issue of aspects of desired
| quality of life that cannot be achieved with purely local
| self-sufficiency, but might be possible sustainably with
| regional/national cooperation and centralization in certain
| areas. I witnessed virtually total self-sufficiency in rural
| villages in West Africa, and quality of life - with the
| exception of health care - was good, considering the
| resources available. But it is not a lifestyle that I can
| imagine many Americans would accept, even with massive
| reprogramming. Or need to.

My hunch is that they'll need to.  Without the discovery of
some completely new source of energy, we're going to be left by
the end of the century with an average level of material wealth
not much different from what we had at the beginning of the
industrial revolution -- or what groups like the Amish have
now.  If we can get there with our medical knowledge and
communication infrastructure intact, we'll be doing about as
well as we have any right to expect.  But that's going to be
hard to do starting from a population that's been programmed to
consume and thinks that it has an inherent right to an endless
supply of cheap goods.  That's why I keep being led back to
education and local organization as strategies -- not because I
have such high hopes for them but because I can't think of
anything better.

Jon