Major Rethink

Thanks to my friend Nicole for posting the article linked below on how to rethink progressive progress at the political level. It is an engrossing read on the eve of elections across the U.S. where excellent people are exhorting their friends and neighbors to vote using language like "if you don't vote, don't complain", or "your only chance to speak up is this Tuesday" which always strike me as the same type of empty warnings as moms and dads threatening to cancel Christmas or turn the car around three miles from Disneyland. Let's be clear: Voting is a privilege we have in this country that should be exercised by all, but people retain the right to agitate no matter what they do or don't do on election day. And why should they only speak up on Tuesday and only to choose someone else to work on these issues? Can some not care and work on these things the rest of the week, month, year too if they so choose?

Here's my own deal: I vote but only in local elections and initiatives and only when there is a measurable difference between the candidates. I stopped voting in statewide and national elections after 2005 actually, when my city went underwater and the politics played with it on both sides sickened me. I decided that my time and interest to work on real change had been long sapped by my extensive work on electoral politics, which had included working on races at the local, state and national level, even paying my own way to work on GOTV in Florida during the 2004 election. That even while I saw the amount of money and influence wielded by corporations on all manner of political candidates, I worked and voted for them because (I thought cleverly) I saw ahead to the chessboard moves that might lead us to a stacked Supreme Court, a president with jingoistic fears and adept administrators behind him or to congresspeople with unyielding corporate connections without any desire for lifting all boats. I feared the "opposition" gaining control of one of the apparatus of government, even as I saw both sides becoming closer in ideology and more importantly, almost identical in those that they allowed access as influencers and advisors.

Well to no surprise to me those things happened anyway and continue to happen because of some of the very ideas that Don Hazen points out in his article, especially because of the money controlling elections and the revolving door of politicians turned lobbyists. Culturally, is it a huge win that a African-American president was elected? Absolutely, and I was moved by the connections that I had after that historic day, especially with people of color who exhibited a type of hope rarely seen in our country, but let's be honest-what we elected was a centrist Democrat with starter policies and no plan for a lasting peace or any how to handle the ecological apocalypse ahead. The next election promises to offer an even more hawkish Democrat with more status quo friends than Obama, but since it's likely a female candidate and former first lady at the helm of one of the two parties for the first time in U.S. history, we're supposed to hold our noses and vote. 

Maybe we should only vote for people we believe in? (I remember Nader suggesting 20 or more years ago that we add a "none of the above" on ballots. Under Nader's proposal, if "none of the above" as a choice on the ballot obtains a majority or plurality of the votes cast in an election, the election's results would be invalidated. The losing candidates would be dismissed. A new election would then be called, possibly within 30 to 45 days of the first election. New candidates would have to be nominated, and those defeated in the first round of balloting could not stand for election again.) 

And maybe we should take some of the regular decision-making back on our own shoulders? Bring organizing back?

Maybe we should recognize that most politicians - even "good ones"- do not forward ideas out of their own good hearts and brave minds, especially at any level past local, but instead savvy politicians of all stripes sense which way the stream is flowing and jump in with a boat to be carried along when it can assist their next election. (See the Grace Lee Boggs quote over to the right of this page.)

We need to remember that culturally, this country has shifted in profound ways: first with the sexual revolution in the 1970s (people often talk about the 1960s but that was the "counterculture" part of it, the 1970s was when our moms and dads adopted these freedoms and truly made it a shift), and then a frightening shift to a "greed is good" glee which allowed trickle down global capitalism to gain a cultural hipness or demonization (depending on where you sat) that it had never had before, and then with the recent explosion of social media and computer technology a shift to a no holds-barred, no gatekeepers discourse that is never-ending and often childish, sometimes hateful but also oddly democratic in cultural terms. The deal is that all of those shifts and more continue to weigh on us and to influence us; the new does not wipe out what came before. Those shifts, once noticed and accepted as real were then adopted by politicians, often resulting in weak political gains that could have been much more robust if they had not been handed off at too early to the bureaucratic behometh of Congress to solve for us.

The younger generation in this country are entirely connected to the world and to each other 24 hours a day while comfortably living amid a jumble of family types and dizzying numbers of popular trends. Yet, the hardening of the economic strata is apparent to them, seen in the increasing number of them that believe that owning a house or even a car is not necessary to their well-being. It is also important to note that for the first time in human history, the majority of people will live in a city and that means that more of us will have to come to terms with having diversity of neighbors within sight and sound as well as the necessity of weighing in on decisions on aging infrastructure and new regional opportunities.

The sharing and conditional ownership (call it an Uber/airbnb/popup world) shift seems to be next, even as politicians and their sidelines scramble to understand who is who and what is actually going on. Trust me, officials will "allow" these new economies to grow, which I believe is a good thing even as I understand that the few that control the bulk of the ideas will just be replaced by others just like them-people chiefly interested in commodifying this sharing impulse or in gaining an unfair advantage by manipulating a weakness in entrepreneurial activity regulation. Since this is as true in this economy as it was in the Gilded Age or in the early days of the Industrial Revolution, social critics and trade unionists remain necessary to agitate to get a balance so that whatever new technology is at hand, it is not only the few that gain.
The reality is neither banning nor allowing unchecked activity is the appropriate answer to getting to the best version. The decision on which of these ideas plays out to be the most useful will be made by users and means therefore they will exist as long as they are useful and without deep penalties that are evident to those users. Most people do not operate in a nihilistic framework, but instead will accept information about the positive and negative impact of their decisions. When we do see a selfish agenda among our neighbors, we should recognize that they are operating from fear where they feel they will be ostensibly left behind. I recently heard the author Marilynne Robinson term the reactionary strain in the country as people using fear to make themselves the hero in their own narrative while pitting everyone as against them to strengthen that narrative. That struck me as accurate and if so, could be breached by showing our neighbors that their narrative will be more resilient with others involved and if no one is left back.
So the hope is that it these technologies and ideas are also used by those with empathy and innovative ideas for reducing inequities, as they have been already by thousands of organizers on climate change, violence against women and authoritative regime overthrow among many other issues.

So, I really appreciate his article and feel that this along with George Packer's "The Broken Contract" and Rebecca Solnit's essays especially The Case For Hope are some of the necessary readings for anyone determined to be an clear-headed active citizen in the US in these days.

Here are two excerpts from Don Hazen's piece that I especially agreed with:
..."I wrote an article, " The 4 Plagues: Getting a Handle on the Coming Apocalypse," about the four especially powerful and pernicious overarching economic and political mechanisms operating in our country that are fundamentally responsible for the situation we are in. They are privatization, financialization, militarization and criminalization, which together are producing a steadily creeping authoritarianism—a new authoritarianism—to fit our times....
.. We need to get more radical, and more self-supporting, both financially and emotionally. I am not advocating for despair or for dropping out. But we absolutely need to work more locally. The old adage that "all politics is local" is still very true. It is clear that very little can be accomplished on the national level of law-making."


Alternet essay

Don't defer post

The Zero Marginal Cost Society-Review

The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism by Jeremy Rifkin

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I agree with other reviews that I've read that suggest author Rifkin often has a "Gatling" approach to supplying facts and theories, and a tendency to offer the same theory over and over (as if he was paid by the word someone suggested!)-all true.
Even so, his contribution here that pure capitalism is in a transition to a hybrid economy made up of part capitalism and part collaborative commons is valid and worthwhile. He reminds us that the feudal system transitioned to the market economy starting in the ninth century and then with The Great Enclosure Movement of the 16th-19th centuries built a legal system that protected private property just as the Industrial Revolution began in earnest. Now, another shift is happening: capitalism has begun to share the global stage with one that uses collaborative data, has free or almost free goods and services available (because the cost of producing more goods is zero for online goods) and allows for more efficient (or sufficient) use of natural systems.
How all businesses will make profit in this future economy is undecided and he reminds us that economists from Keynes to Marx wondered about it too. In other words, there are some potentially scary unplanned moments ahead.
It's also important to discuss how the collection of Big Data which is almost always used as a negative in popular media has allowed the emergence of shared information for distribution systems, food production, human health, social revolutions and of course communication among others and is allowing for more interdisciplinary scholarship and maybe most importantly a reduction in ecological impact.

All of this is interesting as someone who hears the argument against the collaborative commons almost daily based on the legal implications of (in Rifkin's words) "moving from exclusive ownership to conditional rights". His statement that "markets are giving way to networks and ownership is less important than access" is beguiling language for any community activist. As a farmers market partisan, I already believe in the power of the commons and see every week how informal relationships can build a new economy. I regularly see mistrust of how this type of collaborative production or virtual distribution impairs adding or improving infrastructure, and yet I would argue that we need to reduce our dependence on that anyway as our main economic driver in municipal or civic systems.
Do I worry about loss of privacy? Some, but less so from my neighbors and fellow citizens who are bound by networks of social capital or because of the lack of shared networks with me, I am warned against sharing information or goods. In any case, these virtual networks only add to my existing (and more important) physical networks and allow me to bridge to more people and ideas.

We need to remember that it is not a total eclipse, but only a partial one and will allow for more diverse relationships and systems in other sectors while still retaining some capitalist characteristics when valid, like in local food production. It may also reduce the possibility of monopolies or at least reduce their length, since technological innovation be harder to stifle in collaborative systems.

As for Rifkin, I like his quirky way on these subjects, but he should never be your only theorist on economic systems. If you are interested in reading someone who expands his thinking and has long embraced the need to address the ecological impacts of modern life, you need to read this, or at least, read the first few chapters.

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Bookstores are thriving. yes thriving.

Gosh I hope my friends remember when I spot a trend before it happens.
When Borders (an old employer of mine) opened its Uptown store after Katrina, I told them it would not make it. The location was wrong, the business plan at Borders was wrong, and the local stores were well run and confident of their customer service ability, as they should have been.
That the industry would evolve to online sales for best sellers and eBooks, thereby taking the chain stores' business away from them, leaving niche markets and tactile events and special customer service for the local stores.


It's okay if they don't remember: a new store for browsing around the corner from my house is my reward. That, along with my friends at Octavia Books remaining successful and available for advice and service on my non-fiction orders.

satisfied sigh.

NOLA story

Localism Index

The link to the national localism index is at the end of this piece, thanks to The New Rules Project at the Institute for Self-Reliance. Fascinating.

Do you wonder what our numbers are in the region?
I surely do, but what we DO know is the local bookstores are contributing more to the economy now than the chain bookstores. Hell, the parking meters along North Rampart are contributing more...No, I don't miss Borders.

And I can also tell you the impact that the farmers markets have on this city and region has risen dramatically. This is from our 2010 SEED report which measures markets economic impact. This is from our 3 weekly farmers markets and was done with our web-based tool we call SEED which stands for Sticky Economic Evaluation Device. The multiplier is a term for tracking how money is spent and re-spent in a regional economy. Obviously, when local businesses make money (like our market vendors), they re-spend that locally. How long it stays here before "leaking out" depends on what businesses they have available to them, whether Walmart where the money is sent to their home base of Arkansas more quickly or Joe's Nursery, who puts that money to work locally again.

2010 SEED
Market impact: $6,717,630.32 Sales in the market, and the amount of money generated by those vendors spending it again. The multiplier we used was for our region and is designed by Bureau of Economic Analysis.

The impact the market has on its surrounding areas: $3,217,727.94 Again, this is shoppers telling us if they were going to spend money in the businesses around the market while there. That number multiplied by the regional BEA number.

Sales tax from sales at nearby businesses to the market: $151,620.69 Those who grow their own food and then sell it directly do not collect sales tax. However, the market does add sales tax because of the sales at nearby businesses that happen when our shoppers go there.
Overall economic impact $9,935,358

From three 4-hour markets each week.

Index page

Small is Beautiful Tuesday at 5:45 pm

Small is Beautiful study/discussion group
Tuesday, December 30, 5:45 pm
Fair Grinds Coffeehouse
(Other alternating locations will be considerately considered)

E.F. Schumacher:
“Infinite growth of material consumption in a finite world is an impossibility.”

Jane Jacobs:
... city areas with flourishing diversity sprout strange and unpredictable uses and peculiar scenes. But this is not a drawback of diversity. This is the point ... of it.


We discuss, read and dilly-dally about possibilities of the proper scale and use of resources in a regional economy.
All welcome, but argumentative participants ignored after hints.

Readings available on: www.smallisbeautiful.org

December: land trusts discussed
January: currency presentation of The Crescent, available at Crescent City Farmers Market

Information about group linked from and discussions tolerated at:
http://neworleanscanthrive.blogspot.com

Read all about it

Link to a essay on Michael Shuman's Going Local:

smallisbeautifulnola.ning.com

Community Economies

On Wednesday, June 25 at 6:00 p.m. a study/discussion group will start to meet and read about community economies, namely the idea of releasing capital, labor and land from the commodity brand it has long held in our country. These group will meet (after reading short and long essays, watching videos, listening to audio recordings beforehand) one evening a month, alternating between Mockingbird Cafe (Uptown) and Fair Grinds Coffeehouse (Downtown).
The readings are found on www.smallisbeautiful.org and will be agreed upon at the end of the previous month's meeting, with the choice(s) posted here.
Some of the discussions will center around:
Locally produced and circulated currencies have allowed bioregions to start to measure their own impact and realize their own power to make decisions. This group will study some recent success of local currencies and start to discuss ways New Orleans can add a multi-level currency of its own.
Land for farming and land for rebuilding. New Orleans has both, but very little of it has moved to those citizens who truly need it. Why is that, and is land reform necessary to truly make New Orleans thrive again?
With disaster capitalism, comes cheap labor. Migrants and immigrants flow into the cities that have immediate construction and service jobs and are so desperate for workers, very little is asked, or offered. How do we transform the energy of the new residents and also find jobs for long underemployed?

Writers such as Jane Jacobs, E.F. Schumacher, Peter Berg, Ralph Borsodi and many more have long argued that the current national economy is out of scale and out of touch. Recent financial scares have turned people's attention to the very real need of defining regional answers, and we will study those writers' ideas and host local discussions with our own visionaries and practical activists to see if the answers can help.
For more information, email darwolnik@gmail.com

Join us for talk about..ourselves.

Discussion/Study Group for Local Economy Readings and Action

Based on the E.F. Schumacher Society's paradigm, this group will read and discuss short and longer essays, watch short videos on the subjects of land, labor and money as community assets, rather than as commodities.
Reading will include Jane Jacobs, E.F. Schumacher, Robert Swann, Susan Witt, Peter Berg, Rudolf Steiner and many more who have written or spoke on the tools and paths to create a regional economy.
The discussions will be moderated-without having too much structure we hope-and we wil focus on the land, Labor and Wealth Generation topics seen on the Society's website:
smallisbeautiful.org

The idea is to hold these groups once month, and alternating Uptown and downtown locations. We would also like it to be non-alcoholic at one and alcohol-allowable for the other. We expect that Fair Grinds Coffeehouse will be our downtown location as they are leaders and true community people in their parts and we will no doubt find a successful Uptown location easily.

Please leave comments here to talk about your interests in this concept and possible Uptown locations.
My initial feeling is Mondays or Wednesday nights will be best and possible starting at 6 pm.
Dar