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…
3. Rethink the idea of “Jobs”
Become a jack of all trades and a master of one. – David Holmgren, quoting a European Permaculturist Perhaps this segment, more than any other, calls upon that “raw courage” I mentioned in Part I. “Jobs” as we know them…
Resilient nonprofits
As we rethink society for a post-petroleum, economically-lean future, it’s opportunity to rethink nonprofit structures, too. As stated before, we need to set up environmental and social change organizations as entities that will endure, instead of going bankrupt. Rather than…
How do you do all this and still conduct a “normal” life?
That’s exactly the point: You don’t. At some time within the next few months or years, circumstances will be such that you will relinquish the feeble attempts to hang onto that gluttonous consumption, compete-with-the-Jones’s (or “keep the kids competitive” with…
2. Expect contraction
Think about a bathroom sink: water comes in through the faucet and leaves through the drain. If the water is flowing in faster than it is draining out, you’ll have an accumulation of water in the basin. If the level…
1. Do the Dance
A friend once showed me that everyone is doing a financial Dance. Some people are quite aware that they are doing it: they live rather “on the edge,” managing to pull in just enough to pay the bills, just in…