Hartmann’s Older Culture view
Thom Hartmann, in The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight, gives us an idea of the magnitude of change that will be required. He reminds us of the Older Culture view, the tribal culture, of which Native Americans are an example.…
Beyond Emergency Care
Once our “trauma center” is up and running, we can turn to Holmgren’s Permaculture Principles: “Observe and interact.” We must learn how to observe, and what to observe. We must retrain our powers of observation for the new economy —…
10. Crafting the Shadow Structure
George Bernard Shaw famously said that all progress depends on not being reasonable. It’s time for a large amount of civic unreasonableness. – James Gustave Speth At the beginning of Part III, I quoted David Ehrenfeld. He reminds us that…
9. Strive for a Socially-Just Economy
Economics and social injustice is such a significant issue that it demands its own Practical Tool point. Our society currently has deep economic divides which are worsened by race, culture, geography and prejudice. NEF writes of the Great Redistribution where…
Social Enterprise
The concept of “social enterprise” has been gathering traction in the U.S. It’s kind of like a hybrid of the business world and the nonprofit world. In its most basic form, there’s the example of a gift store within a…
6. Community-based investment
The shift from a growth economy to economic contraction has turned our concepts of “profit” and “income” upside down. The idea of “investment” has similarly been radically altered. In the old paradigm, when we thought about “investments,” it meant turning…
5. A Multiplicity of Financial Vehicles
At the beginning of Part III we reminded each other than the economy is basically the sum total of transactions between people. At that same basic level, “money” is simply the markers we use to record those transactions. There is…
Questions we might invite our local businesses and proprietorships to consider
1) How dependent is your overall industry on oil, power, low-cost transportation and shipping — can your industry survive as we leave the era of cheap oil? 2) If your industry will survive, it will undoubtedly be radically altered. How?…
4. Resilience-building businesses and industries
In the past 20-30 years, the concept of “outsourcing” has stripped most of our local communities of the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker – the craftsmen, merchants, and artisans who have skills and know-how to provide the basic…
Two moving sidewalks
Ever feel like you’re zipping through the fast-paced hours of your day, the crowded pages of your calendar, like you’re on a swiftly moving sidewalk? Then you learn about alternative lifestyles, other ways of living and pacing one’s life. As…