Proposing an "opt out" system.

[Skidmore]

I don't buy it that we are irrevocably trapped in this free market globalization scheme. Now I don't claim to be an economist, a manufacturing, and a marketing expert by any means. I am just wondering if there is any way that small groups could ban together outside of the corporate structure to take back some of this power. Can we use coops or small investment groups to get at producing some very basic good. I liked Farrakhan's idea to grow food on Native American lands in an arrangement with the tribes. How would you go about an effort to set up such types of arrangements for producing various groups of essential goods beyond foods? I'm not talking about frou-frou stuff like the trinkets, designer clothing, etc. For example, rather, can we grow cotton and natural fibers in a quantity large enough to supply our own network of weavers and clothing manufaturers? Break it back to basics. I don't know if this makes sense, but it is something I think about periodically and would be interested in knowing what others think.

[bryant69]

1. People are doing it here and there

It is hard, and it is not for me, but it can be done, on a small scale.

Trying it on a macro economic scale would not be as successful, I don't think.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[Jed Dilligan]

2. Some towns have their own money--that's one approach

You can start by learning the origins of the products you use already and substituting the higher-quality products that smaller businesses produce wherever you can possibly afford it. You can live in the big city and still support someone's organic farm somewhere else.

I think that lots of people scaling back corporate consumption will do more to foment positive change than a few people giving it up completely.

[sui generis]

4. which towns have their own money?

is it scrip?

On the OP's post though, I think it would be great but it's not raw materials production and manufacturing that cost - it's marketing.

Also, as any small farming community can tell you, a one crop community is destined to fail in the first drought / crop failure / warehouse fire / tornado.

A robust local trade economy can only work with a robust variety of products, and that means that you are controlled by your raw materials suppliers and transportation. And it can only keep working as long as you can attract and retain business talent. You can't just have children and automatically expect them to choose to do what you do.

"Opting out" implies that you have determined that your children are not free to pursue their own lives.

[Jed Dilligan]

5. Berkeley, CA and Ithaca, NY (last I heard)

I'm pretty sure there are other towns as well. I'm not sure what the technical defintion of "scrip" is.

[mazzarro]

3. Good idea - a bunch of progressive do-it-locally co-ops?

I will like to see real and active progressive credit unions to help in financing, real and active progressive business/trade/professional associations, etc to help sustain the idea. All of these tied to the ownership of the average low class workers.

[villager]

6. "Garage Sale Economy" coming soon:

<snip>

The good news is that it will become not only viable but essential to manufacture locally. It will be cheaper to move raw materials by rail to be manufactured into products locally than it will be to transport finished products halfway across the world by ship and truck. Jobs will come back, though they won't be the jobs that left. Labor prices won't reach anything like their old levels, but there will be many new jobs – however, not as many as needed to replace all the jobs lost to pricey oil.

But other jobs will be created unpredictably by the new situation, for manufacturing will become not only local but personal. As Jim Kunstler writes, "The salvage of existing material is going to be a huge business. The commercial highway strips and the Big Box pods of today may be the mines of tomorrow. ... A lot of the retail of the future will consist of recycled, second-hand goods, some of it expertly refurbished. To some extent America will become Yard Sale Nation. ... There will be a lot of work for people in many levels and layers of activity: the scroungers, the fixers, the wholesalers, the brokers, the sellers." The handy neighbor who fashions this-and-that into that-and-this – an object you can use – will become a prime supplier. So will people who can sew. Not to mention local moonshiners (for rationed grain and costly shipping will, alas, deprive me of my Irish whiskey). There will be a large black market – or rather gray, since it will be everywhere and involve every possible item from batteries to bullets. The disposable society will become the scavenging society, the inventive society.

Life will be a lot less predictable and a lot more for real. The greatest art will be the art of survival. Your credit rating won't matter (you won't have one), but your word will matter a great deal. It always does in an informal economy. Careers, as we know them, will be a thing of the past, but so will boredom; most people will be in the same boat, swapping services and skills and not knowing what tomorrow may bring. Ours will be a leaky boat, in need of constant attention. It'll be intense, interesting, and often dangerous – and that's when people feel most alive. Folks will look back at how we live now and wonder at the triviality that, as a society, we allowed ourselves to settle for. If we survive, there will be many great stories to tell your grandchildren.

<snip>

http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2005-10-14/cols_ventura.html

[Greyhound]

7. I believe you are describing the 'new' economy that these last 4

administrations have brought us. It will become necessary for us to produce and sell our own goods and services as we are being forced to finance the corporate exodus from our country and we will not be able to afford the future.

[Skidmore]

8. Once the corporations have exited the country, we should

ban the importation of their goods, as far as I'm concerned. And they can take their wholly owned legislators with them.

[Greyhound]

11. I'll go along with that. We still have the best

real estate on the planet and it can make us strong again.

[Skidmore]

9. kick, cause the reponses are interesting and I would like to hear more.

[Indy Lurker]

10. Ban Imports

Most manufacturers would welcome the banning of foreign made goods.

Good manufacturers are happy to produce goods in the US. It's the crappy manufacturers who can't compete on a level playing field, who in the face of bankruptcy, decide to move operations overseas, so that they can once again compete.

But once one company starts paying 10% of what a US manufacturer pays for labor, not to mention a lack of OSHA, or the EPA it's hard for the remaining companies to stay in the US.

Of course if we ban imports, the rest of the world would collapse, which would dry up the foreign investment that is servicing our debt, which in turn will cause our economy to collapse.

[Skidmore]

12. kicking for the evening crowd

and I catch up with this in an hour or so