Community Economics and a Steady-State Economy
The solution would be obvious: create a non-linear economic model that ensures continued prosperity (a word also requiring a refined definition). The work of Herman Daly best describes the alternative as Steady-State economics. This is a non-linear ecological economics; one that constrains natural inputs to an economic system to ensure a balance between availability and production. For instance, a barrel of oil, needs to find its corrollary in an equivelant renewable energy. The idea is to reduce the use of non-renewable natural resources by increasing renewable energies. Essential to all of this is the inclusion of consumption. In a steady-state economy one can only consume within the constraints of a non-linear system. Endless consumption (consumption literally for its own sake as a driver of a linear economy) is a detrimental as endless growth. In fact one is a prerequisite to the other. The reason why consumption is such an important consideration is that the discovery of fossil energy has no "one for one" replacement given the expotential demand for productivity and consumption.
Any attempt at creating a long-term generational-centric economics demands that we confront the limits of consumption as the principle by which we establish our current metrics for a "strong economy" (i.e., GDP). We'll challenge the commonly held notion that such a metric can provide what is most important - human welfare.
As we explore ecological economics it will be in the context of energy issues, not least of which is food, shelter options, scalability, and land use. Daly, some of Henry George's work, particularly the recent writings of Bill Batts, and of course, Jane Jacobs will all figure into this modest attempt at a unification of a sustainable economics. Additionally we will explore sustainable living.
This is an in progress initiative. For now here is a valuable website to provide you with a sense of journey: Steady State Revolution.
Sustainable Local Living Economies
RNLC views the urban landscape through a process of observation and analysis. Understanding how a local urban economy is developed around a historical lens of how cities develop from settlements. That understanding provides the basis for determining how the health of such settlements develop as they grow and/or die. To understand RNLC's economic underpinnings, we begin with the classical economics of the 19th Century political economist Henry George and the urban chronicler, Jane Jacobs.
Local living economies is first and foremost a practical means to achieving a sustainable and vibrant urban community. It provides deep growth which includes working to assure both material and non-material needs are met. An economics of universal needs which connects our human and natural assets with the assets at hand. Only then do we really know what we have to build on.
A Local living economy creates a self-sufficient and resilent local economy based on local assets and relationships. It reflects the fundamentals of building community and our local economy from the inside out.
Click for the course on Understanding Economics
Local First Business Network
The cornerstone of our local economy are our people and the local businesses they run; whether as owners or staff. Advocating and promoting our local economy means advocating for a community of locally and independently owned businesses. New London, a relatively small city, has nearly 200 such businesses of all sizes serving all kinds of needs for the City and the City-region.
Local First is a network of our local businesses around the principles outlined by the Business Alliance of Local Living Economies or BALLE. BALLE is a movement based on the notion that local economies are sustainable and most democratically organized. Such economies are "real" or "Main Street" based and less prone to the vaguaries of speculation and boom and bust of the global financial markets.
This is accomplished by connecting our local businesses through a common mission of "local first", providing meaning economically oriented business community programs through direct local business to business, business to consumer and and business to local government activities. This raises the awareness of all constitutents and begins the process of "jump starting" our local economy through a genuine multiplier effect that keeps currency circulating longer to produce more business and living wage jobs. But it's just the beginning...
Click here for more information about New London Local First business network.
Land Use and Taxation
Land use, at first consideration, may seem to be a non-economic issue, unless you happen to be a farmer. However land is central to life and a living economy. Afterall, humans are land creatures, and as such everything we do begins and ends on terra firma. But land in economic terms is more than the ground. It is really other things non-human created.
From an economic perspective there is no economy without land. Energy, which provides every non-natural manufactured product on the planet, is merely an element of land. And so it's only fitting that a living economy be grounded in land. How we use land and the access each of us has to it defines the health and well being of our community. Wealth is a product of land + labor + capital. Common wealth is the distribution of the wealth that comes from that which none of us makes, but all of us determines value - LAND.
How land figures into our economics was the life's work of a little known and considered by some of the greatest minds of the late 19th and 20th Centuries to be one of the top 10 most piercing intellects of all time: Henry George. George, disturbed by what he saw as American cities grew, as progress marched on so did growing poverty. Through a process of synthesizing his observations and the thinker of other economists he concluded that it was the access to land (or lack thereof) that produced poverty, and even conflicts and wars.
His works have led to a focus on the use of land as a primary means of taxation (he referred to it as rent). He determined that a rent on land use would assure that land was accessible, and that it would provide the means for all government revenues. Today, we see this in the form of a "split" rate tax on land and buildings with the greatest revenue coming from land rather than maintenance on buildings.
For more information click Why Tax Land?
Local Food Economy
Food is the primary energy force from which all life is possible. There has been much documented, books, articles and films, concerning our industrial food system and the high-fossil base from which it attempts to feed the world. The problems are well documented here and here. Understanding our current food system and what it use to be, provides us valuable information what serves our living conditions from a sustainability perspective.
A large group of stakeholdes ("food touch points") met in the summer of 2008 to discuss the issues and address some immediate and longer term directions. A this stakeholder group is called the Greater New London Farm to City Coalition and consists of hospital/clinics, restaurants, farms, fisheries, nursing homes, colleges and schools system as well as representatives from a host of non-profit organizations. From this group was spawned a GNLF2C Work Group. The Work Group has established the organizations initial mission and governing principles and created a meta-model of a local food system. This food system is integral to our health and our local economy.
The dynamics of local first, a fair means of financing our community, and re-igniting the areas major assets - farm and fishery economies, together represents a real, living economy for generations to come!
Click here for more information about Greater New London's Farm to City Coalition.