A New Deal for Local Economies as Big Biz Tries to Look Local

[jotsy]

Found an article at Common Dreams by Stacy Mitchell, I've snipped and summarized to better adhere to length rules. Thanks for the nudge mods, learning to link was a necessary piece of the skill set here.

About ten years ago, the Institute for Local Self-Reliance launched the New Rules Project to develop and advocate for policies that would democratize ownership, refashion the economy for long-term sustainability, and nurture strong, self-conscious, and self-governing communities. Stacy Mitchell is a senior researcher on that project.

In city after city, independent businesses are organizing and building an increasingly powerful counterweight to the big business lobby on issues as varied as tax policy and global warming. Local business alliances have now formed in over 130 cities and collectively count some 30,000 businesses as members. These alliances are calling on people to choose independent businesses and locally produced goods more often, making a compelling case that doing so is critical to rebuilding middle-class prosperity, averting environmental catastrophe, and ensuring that our daily lives are not smothered by corporate uniformity.

And there is growing evidence that these initiatives are succeeding. During the 2009's slow holiday season, a nationwide survey by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance found that independent businesses actually outperformed chain competitors. What accounted for this relative good fortune? Many of those surveyed said that more people are deliberately seeking out locally owned businesses.

But here's what is perhaps the strongest—and, undoubtedly, the most bizarre—evidence to date that people's priorities are changing: Many massive, globe-spanning corporations are now trying to figure out how they can be "local" too. Corporations desperately want to turn the local economy movement into nothing more than a cheap marketing trick they can appropriate for their own ends.

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Follow the link to check out a spiffy little three point plan to follow up on the progress made to take our viability back. I've been saying for months that the flow of money to the corporatocracy must stop, well here's just some of the ways to see that through.

http://

[zeemike]

1. K&R...I think this is important.

We have created a beast with these mega corporations and now it is time to starve it to death.

[jotsy]

2. I do sense that beast has stopped to scratch.

This is a chunk of an essay titled 'Calling of a Contemporary Yank' from the journal I keep here. I thought it applied.

As we size up the opposition to a fresher way forward, understand the diversity of its layers, for it is far more than two fold. Primarily, you have a root and a mass, if you want to tame the mass, starve the root. A foundation of this magnitude doesn't make itself readily visible. Somewhere between the corporate greed and the hysterical masses are not only the veins we call a mainstream media, but the true arteries of manipulation, which are seen to by the realm of our elected officials. The presidency, in and of itself, is more of and administrative kind of secretarial set of tasks, the heart of the nation's power beats in our congressional halls.

As 21st century progressives, part of what we are here to deliver is a higher standard of government, because the state of our union has never been in greater peril from within. The challenge of our era is to clarify in current terms what constitutional provisions are required of, by and for a free and self governing society.

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Thanks for the kick.

[zeemike]

3. More and more I am feeling that we must set up a new society

Right along side the old, and let it go the way of the buggie makers.
And the beginning of it is local food and local products....a take back America that returns us to the land because that is where the real wealth is.

[jotsy]

5. Ive' long been a proponent of the reboot.

But have reconsidered lately in seeing what needs to be addressed is the EQUAL application and enforcement of the rule of law. The rules have been broken without consequence in what I call the age of means over merit.

[zeemike]

7. But that may be the more difficult task.

there is so much vested interests and the privilege is given to the rich not without expectations.
It seems easier to me to build a new economy along side our corrupt one and starve it to death....although that may take the will of millions....but so will changing our present system.

[jotsy]

8. A cake that could be cut both ways I suppose.

Something in attempting to persevere on the foundation of the intent of the original design, to see that it could be made to hold water under duress appeals to me. The reboot is more of a transitional cyclic chalk board cleansing for me. I'm pretty sure we're going to be forced down one of those two roads should the independent spirit of the self governed find a chance to prevail. Once the United States is irrelevant as a labor market and/or a consumer base, the PTB will flee to wider profit margins which will free us to return to the notion of an innovative and capable chain of resilient communities. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that we as a population have been or can be sold. That's ugliness I don't want to look for the details of, tyvm.

[zeemike]

9. I think the PTB will want to own the land.

Because the wealth is in the land and it's resources...once they control the land we are serfs and they are the feudal lords.

[jotsy]

10. My Native American parts say, one can do no such thing. The land is its own.

And it seems we do all in our power to make less hospitable. The effects of what's happening on the gulf coast now will have a swirl of ramifications we're sure to feel the impact from for some time to come. Such hasty beasts we can make ourselves into instead of trying to live up to the gift and responsibility of being the most architecturally sentient species on the planet.

I'm not sure about their level of desire for the land, but less mouths to feed on the long haul I fear could be on the list of objectives.

[zeemike]

11. It has always ben about the land for every empire.

He who controls the land controls the people...while in a natural system no one owns the land but it is held in common.

[girl gone mad]

4. The city of Austin is ahead of the curve in some ways.

Even my right wing relatives will always choose a small coffee shop over Starbucks. The concept of shopping local is pretty deeply ingrained in the community. "Keep Austin Weird" was a slogan designed to encourage people to support small businesses.

[awoke_in_2003]

6. I plan on retiring to the Hill Country...

probably a bit northwest of Fredericksburg. The whole area is great, and in striking distance of that great city (Austin).