Projo Subterranean Homepage News

Like everybody else, I'm swinging between fear and hope about the future, which has me looking at alternatives. The three segments below are loosely related.

The New York-based publisher of Trader Monthly, Dealmaker, Private Air, Corporate Leader and the Cigar Report--which had been forced to cut the frequency and circulation of its titles, lay off more than a third of its staff and reduce salaries for the rest--was working desperately to find a buyer. -- Forbes, Feb. 3

In the Wall Street Journal, Thomas Frank: Wall Street Mocked American Values.

At one point in its intermittent pursuit of the best possble record player, for example, Trader Monthly described what it claimed to be a $300,000 turntable as "a huge middle finger to everyone who enters your home."

If you didn't understand why someone would want to greet their guests in such a way -- and as a nation we certainly didn't -- then you didn't understand what it meant to be a trader.

But Trader Monthly did, and it limned the trader so that all might behold his glory. A trader was a sort of embodiment of the primal drama of capitalism; not just an überconsumer, but a bullying, self-maximizing, wealth-extracting he-man, a lout in full....

After the fall: The Perils of an Economy Based on Bricks and Boutiques. from the interesting British blog Transition Culture. The speaker is Colin Hines, "convenor of the Green New Deal, advisor to Caroline Lucas MEP and author of Localisation: A Global Manifesto."

"This is the best of times, and it is the worst of times. For some sections of our society it is already becoming the worst of times, with people losing their homes and being deeply worried as things becoming more and more dire and insecure. It is the best of times in that dramatic change only comes at times of economic instability.

The problems we are seeing now accelerated with the election of Margaret Thatcher. She and Ronald Reagan brought a brusque and efficient idea, that of leaving everything to the market. The private sector, so the thinking went, is clever, the public sector is nice but essentially stupid, whereas the private sector is brave and bold and can take risks, and can lead us to a bright new uplands.

Initially this was seen as nonsense, but over time it became commonplace, due, in part, to Thatcher's most corrosive legacy, 'TINA', or 'There Is No Alternative'. This mantra got into people's brains so much that people actually started to believe it. It became the commonly held belief that the role of governments is to get out of the way of the masterful and wonderful private sectors, the wizards of the Universe, so that they could create credit to enable everyone to feel fantastically good.

There's more entertainingly readable background. But now even Trader Monthly has folded.

Now money is being thrown at the banks in order to get them to lend money, but to lend money for what? The UK government just before Christmas threw money at a VAT cut, which was very successful as we saw, business boomed, even Woolworths did very well from it (!) All of this is based on the idea that this is a detour, a temporary inconvenience, with its resultant embarrasing need to nationalise banks and so on. It will not be OK. People are scared and they should be. In times like this, people will stop spending and save, and this is how it should be. The idea that we will spend our way out of this will not happen.

The good side of this is that if we really learn from Roosevelt and put our money into generating jobs and business opportunities through renewable energy, transport, food, labour intensive industries then there is hope. Roosevelt had to use public money. We have already used some money to get the banks working again, based on the idea of the need for some money upfront to save money in the longer term. We need to use it to put in public transport, a sustainable food system, renewables and so on, there is a huge potential there for jobs.

There are many places that have done some small parts of this, the problem facing the government is how to deal with a rapidly downward spiralling economy. The way is to get us off fossil fuels, which offers a huge and wonderful potential. It would re-energise and diversify the economy. The great thing is at the moment that nobody has a better idea! Economists are so stupid. "People are saving.. how unpatriotic!" People will continue to save, and we need to harness that. In Birmingham, the Council is trying to reintroduce 'Brummie Bonds', as an investment model to raise money for local projects. These bonds are guaranteed, and in a time when people want a safe haven to invest in, what are they going to choose? Office blocks? New houses? There are safe returns to be had on a Green New Deal.

It's a nice read. Of course it makes sense to create jobs doing things that need to be done, and Obama has made clear that Americans elected his policies of jobs repairing the infrastructure and clean-energy jobs that produce alternatives to our dependence on foreign oil.

We are a society, a civilization, a country, neighborhoods and people. It is us our economy exists to benefit.

Transition Towns exist:

The main aim of the project generally, and echoed by the Towns locally, is to raise awareness of sustainable living and build local resilience in the near future. Communities are encouraged to seek out methods for reducing energy usage as well as increasing their own self reliance--a slogan of the movement is "Food feet, not food miles!" Initiatives so far have included creating community gardens to grow food; business waste exchange, which seeks to match the waste of one industry with another industry that uses this waste; and even simply repairing old items rather than throwing them away.

Totnes, in Devon in the southwest of England, near Plymouth, is the prototype. Its groups define it: Building & Housing, Economics & Livelihoods, Education, Energy, Food, Health & Wellbeing, Heart & Soul, Local Government, The Arts, Transport. Here's its Current projects list.

TRANSITION U.S. is an informal networking site for those interested in exploring and/or implementing the Transition model in U.S. communities. All 50 states are now represented, at least minimally.

A budding Transition Rhode Island site is up. More active, PostCarbon Rhode Island.

When you put it that way.... Making pithy sense at Digg:

Sirius XM to file for bankruptcy; end is near for satellite (615 diggs) The harsh reality is that satellite radio will be dead and gone before you know it, never to return. The reason is that putting things into orbit in order to download them from space will never be a cost-effective way to get MP3 files into a car.

(This morning, Sirius is in talks with Liberty Media to stave off bankruptcy. Its physical assets are valuable to Liberty's DirectTV.)

 Tags  alternative energy Colin Hines future tech Transition Towns

---

Leave a comment

Name:

Email:

URL:  

Remember personal info?

Captcha:

Type the characters you see in the picture above.