Small is beautiful

 

There is increasing evidence that market growth cannot continue for much longer.  We are running out of resources and the population is growing too large.  So where to we go from here.

 

We need to start moving toward a sustainable economy, rather than a growth economy. 

 

Just as we talk of buying food locally, we should focus on shopping for all of our things locally.  Not just locally in the sense of “in my backyard,” but locally as in produced here, resold here, or repurposed here.

 

Support guilds, co-operatives (co-ops), and micro producers.  These are also called boutique businesses. 

 

This view was first expressed by E. F. Schumacher in his book, Small is Beautiful.

 

Guilds

 

A guild is an association of people in the same field.  In the middle ages there were guilds of artisans and craftsmen and guilds of merchants.  When mass production was developed, it put the craftsman guilds out of business.  Now these guilds are making a comeback as the market has developed for handmade or small production items.  Many of the artisans and craftsmen of these groups specialize in customized production.

 

Other forms of modern guilds are the Screen Actors Guild, The Writers Guild of America and most real estate firms. 

 

Some medical and dental groups are guilds, sharing testing equipment and business services.  The Bar Association in most states is also a guild in structure.

 

Co-ops

 

Co-ops can be either consumer based or business based.

 

An example of a consumer based co-ops is the food co-op where the members buy in bulk and divvy up the items among the members.

 

Credit unions are a good example of a business based co-op.  They often charge less for loans, pay a higher rate on savings, and support community activities.

 

Many insurance companies are co-ops.  Rates are usually lower as any surplus is used to offset the rates of the members.

 

Art co-ops help artists have a gallery experience at a reduced cost.  The art you buy there may be worth a great deal some day.  Develop a critical eye, start your collection early and buy consistently.

 

You can learn more about co-ops at www.cooperateusa.coop.

 

Finally, invest in sustainable businesses.  When buying stocks, consider reducing the percentage of growth stocks or growth funds in your portfolio .  Instead, look for strong dividend paying stocks.  They are less volatile and generally keep pace with inflation.

 

Prepping and permaculture

Prepping, or being prepared for disaster, is a big topic now. 

 

 

Download full size copy at www.prepperlink.com

 

Depending on where you live, you might prep for a variety of natural disasters, like hurricanes, tornados, wildfires, tsunamis, floods, or volcanic eruption. 

 Then there are manmade disasters, like the nuclear leak at Three Mile Island or the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.

Many of us prepare for smaller disasters, however, like enduring a power outage or being trapped in a highway drift during a snowstorm.

At the high end of the prepping movement, there are individuals preparing for the breakdown of society.  Some are moving to remote locations and setting up mini farms to ensure a steady food supply.  These people would certainly benefit from the agricultural principles of permaculture.  But, how might they benefit from adopting the broader scope of permaculture?

They would have to form a community (zone 2) of like minded people to leverage their position.

The nucleus of this community needs to be set in place before the disaster. 

 Microcurrencies might provide a small community of people with a medium of exchange, to facilitate bartering of goods and skills.  This should be developed before hand in order to build up trust in the system.

 A community first aid station could handle small emergencies or provide ambulance service to a city hospital.  By addressing this need in advance, a building could be converted and powered by solar, with battery backup. Arrangements could be made to train people to staff the facility and a system established to compensate them from the farm produce or by microcurrency. 

Shared educational responsibilities would provide children with a larger pool of knowledge than just home schooling.  This might entail a rotating schedule, much like a Cub Scout Den Meeting.

Ideally, each homestead should have solar power and battery backup.  For those who don’t or can’t have a personal solar power system,  community solar or wind installations could be set up to provide a charging station for batteries used to power electric tools, tractors and rototillers.

So preppers have a lot to learn from permaculture, but do permaculturists have anything to learn from preppers?

There are well over 100 prepper blogs on a variety of subjects.  Here you can learn to store and preserve food, manage your water supply, treat human and animal illnesses, and a host of other things that everyone might need at some time.

 At one extreme are people who are prepared to live as hermits to escape the ills of a dysfunctional society.  At the other people are thinking of ways to form communities after a social breakdown.  There is a wide range of thought in between.

 I think both would benefit from reading the thoughts of each other.

Zone medicine

 

Today’s subject is medical care.  This is a hot topic right now, because costs are going up faster than the rest of the economy.  If we think about this in zone theory, we need to think of small and intermediate solutions to the problem.

 

First aid clinics come to mind.  Many problems are small like colds or flu.  Some are intermediate like large cuts or broken bones.  These could be handled at a first aid clinic, where a doctor is resident, but only called if necessary.  Neighborhood screeners would make a determination whether or not to use a clinic or go to a hospital.

 Childbirth could be managed with midwifery.  Visiting nurses could handle home recovery programs.  In-home care could replace assisted living.  At home hospice is on the rise.

We are beginning to see the emergence of telemedicine, where the patient is monitored with a telephone or internet link.  My wife’s pacemaker is monitored this way.  Unfortunately, there is no standardization and different medical groups are implementing systems incapable of communicating with each other.  This is an area where government intervention would work wonders.

A gray area is also emerging.  People are doing holistic medicine from their homes or on the internet.  These involve naturalistic and herbal remedies, special diets, and physical programs such as yoga or massage.  Some of these people are very knowledgeable, but many are passing on folk remedies and practices that may be dangerous if misused.  Some form of control is needed here.  The internet is populated with both well managed and knowledgeable references and with snake oil salesmen. 

I see the future of medicine as a frontier area that needs both innovation and management. 

What do you think?

 

 

Food Miles

Food Miles

There is a lot if discussion about food miles, with the mantra to reduce the carbon footprint by shopping locally.  While there are many reasons to buy locally, such as freshness, support for the local economy, or knowing the origin of your food, it turns out that carbon footprint is not one of them.

 I recently completed a Coursera (www.coursera.org) course on Sustainability, taught by Jonathan Thomkins of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  In the final lecture of the course, Jonathan discussed food miles.

Using the example of a fruit salad with 2 pounds of apples traveling 2,000 miles from Washington State, 2 pounds of bananas traveling 2,500 miles from Costa Rica, and one quarter pound of local honey, 160 miles away, he calculated that there were about 2000 miles per pound to get the food to Chicago.  This compares with the 1,500 miles national average.

It turns out that 80% of the carbon footprint is due to production: tractor fuel, production of fertilizers and pesticides, etc., 11% is attributed to long haul transportation, 4% is caused by the wholesale to retail distribution system and 5% by the consumer traveling to the store to purchase the food.

This last part has caused me to think about my buying habits.  I have a friend who is urging me to buy organic and local.  He shops at the farmer’s market 15 miles away and travels about 30 miles round trip to an organic farm several times a year to share in their harvest.  While I support all of these agendas, I worry about the environmental impact of using so much gasoline traveling to all of these venues.

 
Years ago, we had a similar situation when a woman would drive across town to buy recycled toilet paper, because she wanted to support the recycle movement.  The goal was admirable, but the environmental cost in gasoline consumption was greater than the energy savings through recycling.

Another point that Jonathan made was that there are efficiencies inherent in certain food production areas.  He noted that raising lamb in New Zealand and shipping it to the U.K. generates half the CO2 emissions compared to raising the lamb in the U.K.  This is because the climate in New Zealand allows year round grazing and does not require sheltering the animals and feeding them farm produced fodder in the winter as needed in the U.K.

In another Coursera program, Food Systems, Bob Lawrence of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health covered our industrial food system.  In the final two lectures, he had guest speakers discuss alternatives, such as non-profit organic farms to support food banks and inner city farmers markets, Meatless Mondays, and the innovations of the Toronto Food Policy Council headed by Wayne Roberts.

Wayne noted that in one of their studies they found that 20% of all car trips were to get food.  He is now working to see if part of the highway maintenance budget can be diverted to the creation of neighborhood grocery stores in order to reduce the use of cars in grocery shopping.

 

Food miles is not as simple a concept as it seems.  There are many parts to consider.  Sometimes, we focus on just one element of a problem and lose sight of the big picture.  We need to start looking at the system, rather than the components.  Sometimes, because of our shortsightedness, we are our own worst enemies.

Permatechnology

Sustainable Technology

 How does technology fit into the concept of permaculture?  Thinking again of zones, we should focus on personal efforts first.

We should generate as much energy as we can at the point of use and then look to local, regional, and then look beyond.  This could mean installing solar panels, both active and passive, backyard wind generators and Microhydro where feasible.

Wood stoves and fireplaces, if we have the resources to harvest our own wood are also local solutions.

Alternatively, we can reduce the need for external energy sources by reverting to hand tools and

muscle power instead of electricity.

• Hang your wash, instead of using the clothes dryer. 
• Use a push mower, instead of a power mower. 
• Mix your batter by hand, instead of using a power mixer. 
• Read a book, instead of watching TV. 
• The list goes on.

Beyond the personal zone, it is difficult to get power other than from the grid.  A few communities have formed their own power companies and neighborhood power seems feasible, but not currently available.

But what about other uses of technology? 

Transportation

Zone 1 – Walk, bike

Zone 2 – Motor scooter, local public transportation. 

Zone 3 – Car pool.

Zone 4 - Intercity bus and rail.

Zone 5 – Rethink why this trip is necessary.

What are your thoughts on this?  How do we solve the travel problem?

Microcurrencies

When thinking about zones and economic, there is usually a big hurdle.  Our currency is national.  Several groups have tried to create a local currency and associated business loan programs.  This is a tough sell for me.  I’ve read of local currencies, or microcurrencies, but feel that they are mostly feel good efforts, rather than meaningful projects.

 This is is a concept of issuing a local microcurrency to be used in place of the almighty dollar for local business transactions.  The problem that I have with the concept is that they seem tied to the dollar as valuation.  The only useful aspect that I’ve seen is that the issuing agency can make microloans to environmentally sensitive entrepreneurs.  

 

The most nle example that I have found is Berkshares, Inc., a Massachusetts based microcurrency.  www.berkshares.org.  Once again, this operation is not pure, as it relies on local banks to handle the money for them. 

 

Here is how it operates, as I understand it.  An individual can exchange US dollars for Berkshares at the rate of $9.50 US for $10.00 BS.  If they cash out, they get the reciprocal rate.  Merchants who sign on, will take the Berkshare dollars as US dollars.  There is no coinage, so fractions of a dollar are paid is US coinage.

I see this as a 5% loyalty discount being offered by the merchants.  In my area several non-profit organization have arranged for 10% discounts for their members at selected retailers, whenever they show their membership cards.  These include art associations and sewing guilds.  How are Berkshares different?

A proposal has been made that Berkshares be pegged to a basket of local goods in order to insulate the local economy against volatility in the US dollar. This might make Berkshares a truly independent currency, otherwise I don’t get the point. Still, how is the basket of goods valued?  If it is in US dollars, we are back to square one.

I’ve read of barter societies, groups of people that exchange goods and services through an electronic credit system.  Perhaps a microcurrency could be used as a medium of exchange in this type of barter system.  The system would have to be closed and operate in parallel to the US dollar system. 

An advantage to this type of system is that it discourages growth for the sake of growth.  It makes no sense to produce more that your market can consume.  It would also encourage product differentiation, thus reducing direct competition for market share.

In researching this topic I found Creating Sustainable Societies, by John Boik.  This book is available in print from Barnes and Nobel or Amazon $16 or in Kindle format for $7.  You can also download a free PDF version (donation requested) from www.principledsocietiesproject.org.   When I work my way through this book, I will have more to say about this topic.  Expect this several months from now.

I’m asking all readers for input on this or any aspect of economics that follows the permaculture model.

Planning and goal setting

I want to leave the discussion of permaculture for a moment and discuss planning and goal setting. I particular, I want to mention mind mapping. Mind mapping is a way of organizing your thoughts about a subject, in a way that shows all of the interactions among the different elements.

Permaculture, as an interdisciplinary subject, seems a prime candidate for this technique.

  During the past year I’ve had the opportunity to review two books on this subject. Both were by Toni Krasnic. One was Concise Learning and the second was Mind Mapping for Kids. You can see my reviews at www.amazon.com under the name vallere. You can access Toni’s website at www.conciselearning.com

Both these books show ways of organizing your thoughts to see how they relate to each other, as well as ways to research and learn new material.

While Concise Learning is hardcover, Mind Mapping for Kids is only available as an ebook. This has the advantage of imbedded hyperlinks to other sites that expand on the subject.

I was through one of these links that I came across www.IQMatrix.com. This site operated by Adam Sicinski, has a wealth of information on mind mapping. There is even a free ebook to download.




One problem with Adam’s mind maps are they are so elaborate that it may discourage you from doing your own. Don’t be intimidated! Think of a stick figure drawing versus a Picasso. Both convey the idea. One is just fancier than the other. Create your maps according to your ability. It’s the content that counts.

I signed up for Adam’s newsletter and this led to a review of Goalscape, a goal setting software program. www.goalscape.com . Isn’t it great how surfing the web can lead from one great site to another?

Goalscape is different from mind mapping, but I think it can be equally effective. There is a video on the site that shows it in action.

You can get a version of mind mapping software for free or you can pay for a more powerful version. There is only a trial version of Goalscape or the paid version.

I am currently using a free version of mind mapping. I’m taking notes of limits to my diagrams and options for printing and sharing and when the time comes that I feel comfortable, I will get a full feature program. Goalscape is on my wish list, but will have to wait until other priorities are settled.

Does this topic have anything to do with our discussion of permaculture? I think these techniques can help us to organize our plans and define future directions for our activities. I’m a visual person, so this helps me see the connection between my various thought activities and possibly reprioritize them to achieve my goals.

Have you ever used a mind map or Goalscape? If so, would you share your insights with us?