Finding real wealth in a home-grown economy
by Rob Parsons |
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"Money, it's a gas/Grab that cash with both hands and make a stash."
- Pink Floyd
The
looming economic downturn has sent a chill across the United States and
throughout the globe, as if Darth Vader had just walked into the room.
Great political debate is focused on how to prop up our failed economic
system, through a combination of bailouts and infusions of capital
seeking to create jobs and spur spending, even while increasing our
national debt—now more than $11 trillion and increasing by close to $4
billion daily.
President Obama has been both praised and
criticized for his humongous economic stimulus package, aimed at
providing relief to the auto industry, mortgage lenders, insurance
giants, and teetering banks and Wall Street investment firms. Less
focus has been given to the causes of the predicament Obama inherited:
a virtual financial inferno stoked by President George W. Bush's
massive tax cuts to the ultra-wealthy, combined with the expense of two
foreign wars sold to the American taxpayers as emergency appropriations
against global terrorism.
The American dollar, once backed with
gold and silver, now is bolstered by little more than bank promises and
Wall Street wishes.
Three hundred million Americans, locked into
our consumer culture, resemble gerbils on a treadmill, earning and
spending as fast as they possibly can but getting nowhere. Many have
watched in dismay as their 401(K) retirement funds evaporated, stock
market investments plummeted, or inflated home mortgages thrust them
into foreclosure.
Sadly, the American Dream has become an
export commodity, with the mega-populations of China and India now
aspiring to Western ways, conveniences and conspicuous consumption.
The
World Trade Organization (WTO) and World Bank espoused the altruistic
goals of offering an economic hand up to third world countries around
the globe. But rather than build wealth from the skills and resources
of indigenous communities, the WTO brought in multi-national
corporations to exploit cheap labor and abundant resources, often
creating one-dimensional economies without regard to environmental or
social justice.
Far from humble beginnings around 600 B.C., when
Lydians in ancient Turkey stamped precious metals into coins as
accounting chits for barter of grain, livestock and other commodities,
our 21st century monetary system has devolved into an artificial
construct, in which the relentless quest to acquire more money
perpetuates a system that dilutes real wealth.
So what's a
revolutionary sort to do? Certainly there are better options than
holding roadside protest signs in "tea party" kvetching over our tax
and spend government practices—aren't there?
YES! magazine co-founder David Korten, in a recent commentary writes that
Wall Street bailouts coupled with economic stimulus packages, "amounts
to trying to revive an economic system that has failed in every
dimension: financial, social, and environmental. Rather than prop up a
failed system, we should use the financial crisis as the opportunity to
create a system that works."
Korten contends that Wall Street's
modus operandi is creating more money for rich people, but without
actually producing anything of real value. Their inflated claims of
wealth without increasing a supply of goods, he says, actually makes it
harder for the rest of us to meet our needs.
"Real wealth," says
Korten, "is, first of all, the tangible things that support life—food,
shelter, clothing. Of course, the most valuable forms of real wealth
are those that are beyond price: love; a healthy, happy child; a job
that provides a sense of self-worth and contribution; membership in a
strong, caring community; a healthy vibrant natural environment; peace."
Korten
believes the Wall Street-driven economic system, with the fantastic
amounts of money it generates, actually diminishes or destroys these
many forms of real wealth. Perhaps the most apparent example is the
price the fossil fuel-bolstered global economy has exacted upon the
planet's fragile forests, oceans, inland waters and weather patterns.
More
than half the world population—some 3.5 billion people—now lives in
urban environments, often far from food supplies, watersheds and
locales where goods are made. As any part of the overall supply system
is affected or strained, these enormous population centers could
deteriorate into chaos or anarchy, as survival instincts trump civility.
Yet
many continue to cruise through life undaunted, pulling out their
drastic plastic credit cards to cover purchases they hope to pay off
later, even as their interest rates soar. "There are some things money
can't buy—for everything else, there's Master Card."
David
Korten celebrates the model of a "Main Street Economy…comprised of
local businesses and working people who produce real goods and services
to meet the real wealth needs of their communities." This, he
maintains, "is the logical foundation on which to build a new, real
wealth economy of green jobs and green manufacturing, responsible
community-oriented businesses, and sound environmental practices."
Early
Hawaiians developed a subsistence economy, based on highly
sophisticated agricultural production of taro and other crops, and on
food caught, gathered or raised in the ocean. No monetary system was in
place at the time Captain James Cook sailed to the islands.
The concept of wealth, however, did hold a place in Hawaiian culture. The Hawaiian word waiwai, meaning goods, worth or prosperity, has its etymological roots in the word wai,
or fresh water. Early residents of the islands recognized the vital
connection between this precious natural resource and its life-giving
properties.
It is often said that the environment is the economy
and that health is our only real wealth. Yet our current economic
practices are eroding ecosystems both locally and globally, while
continuing to cater to the golden calves of tourism, real estate
development and construction. A great national debate is underway over
finding cures for our ailing health care system. Congress endures
persistent lobbying efforts from HMOs and pharmaceutical corporations
heavily invested in treatment of disease, with barely a thought to
prevention and nutrition.
Family farms, once the backbone of
America, are now an endangered species, as corporate agri-business
rules our food supply, abetted by government subsidies. According to YES! magazine research, two companies sell 58 percent of all seed corn and
corporations produce 98 percent of all poultry in the U.S.
Over
the past eight years, the amount of genetically modified corn grown in
the U.S. has increased from 25 to 80 percent. GMO soybeans have soared
from 54 to 92 percent over the same period. Shockingly, iceberg
lettuce, frozen and fried potatoes, chips and canned tomatoes make up
almost half of U.S. vegetable consumption. Not surprisingly, two-thirds
of adult Americans are overweight or obese. But it's not just the
people that are unhealthy—widespread herbicide, pesticide and
fertilizer usage has poisoned our once-healthy agricultural lands and
water supplies.
In the Maui microcosm, the picture is much the
same. Plantation agriculture of sugar contributes to environmental
degradation through burning, spraying, topsoil loss and coal burning
emissions from the Puunene Sugar Mill. Hundreds of acres are leased to
Monsanto's GMO seed production for Mainland farm operations.
Yet
Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar and parent company Alexander &
Baldwin seem to resist bona fide changes to support local food or
energy production. Amidst contested case hearings with the State
Commission for Water Resource Management, they claim that any reduction
in the vast amounts of water they use for irrigation or processing will
jeopardize their viability. They, too, know that water is connected
with wealth.
The good news is that there are ways to reconnect
people with the real wealth of food, goods and services produced
locally. The current issue of YES!, "Food For Everyone," offers
a cornucopia of good ideas. Articles include: "Top 4 ways the Farm Bill
should change to a Food Bill"; "How a community-based food system
works"; "8 ways to join the local food movement"; and "The Good Food
Revolution," which includes accounts of sustainable food efforts on
Kauai and in Kipahulu, Maui.
Those who contend that local
farming can't compete with imported foods are looking through lenses
tinted by the limitations of the current economic system. It is time to
invest in the broad possibilities inherent in a homegrown economy, and
to plant seeds now for a bountiful harvest to come.