I recently came across the following article on a de-centralized United States in the Wall Street Journal by author Paul Starobin.
First of all, it was fascinating to find this kind of piece in the Journal, though it speaks to the article’s point that the desire for a more distributed, place-based political life is of growing interest across the ideological spectrum. More importantly, my mind immediately went to the Local Living Economies movement as a parallel trend in economic life. There seems to be a deep-seated current taking shape in American culture of people seeking to establish more direct, transparent, and personal connections to their money, their investing, and their consumer choices.
As the article points out, this is not a reactionary or nostalgic movement based on romantic notions of the past. It’s not about running away from the conditions of today’s globalized, high-tech world and returning to “simpler” times. Rather it’s about effectively channeling those large-scale, collective forces towards the long-term interests and needs of particular communities and places. It’s about balancing global and local, individual and collective, economic and environmental.
But even if we understand and sympathize with the impulse towards a more de-centralized economy, the question remains: what does it look like? Yes, we can look to history for examples of more localized, regional economies, but clearly the conditions that made those possible are no longer dominant or decisive. I invite anyone reading this to begin envisioning how a global network of Local Living Economies would actually function. If this movement is truly to be about the future, which I believe it must, it will take a great deal of creativity, trust and experimentation to make it happen.
Learn more about Don’s work at RSF Social Finance and the conversation they’re catalyzing to Re-Imagine Money.
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