Local Self-Sufficient Communities
The concept behind building up the local community - especially as it was practiced in the past with a more rural and agrarian-based society - is to develop and envelope the local and somewhat regional community into a self-sufficient and sustainable economy and lifestyle. This fosters goodwill, deeper trust within communities, neighborhoods, towns and villages along with incentives to participate as well as a huge insulator or buffer to volatile and unpredictable factors forced upon economies and families that depend upon those economies for their livelihood, infrastructure, and products.
In other countries as well as pockets of places across this nation, local communities are attempting to transfigure themselves into more locally dependent and sufficient entities as opposed to global or national dependent entities. The latter fosters large centralization among fewer corporate giants that have an overall dehumanizing effect attributing to problems with oversight and waste. These inherent factors ultimately fuel the stage for virtual monopolies where only the corporate giants with vast funds decide the rules. In most cases a double-standard also develops with corruption and abuses by those monopolies. We have seen this scenario played out in many forms in this nation and abroad for several decades now. Although this is 'nothing new under the sun' and 'the poor will always be among us', should we assume that we can never offer ourselves any alternatives to the status quo?
It really does boil down to personal choices along with thoughtfully challenging certain assumptions and mindsets we have been led to believe. Perhaps what we have termed 'Progress' and 'Quality Lifestyle' have left out essential ingredients that should never have been abandoned in the first place. I hope this begins to open your mind a bit and stimulate some questions and curiosity for something that lies beyond the prescribed norms of our present-day culture and society.
May we suggest that you start with an intriguing article written below by the late E.F. Schumacher, author of the book Small is Beautiful: Economics As If People Mattered.
A New Mindset and Paradigm
Modern Industrialism and The Gospel
And we will continue to add articles and stories to this topic in order to better understand or comprehend manners and ways to approach both our independence as well as our interdependence - the primary goal being to encompass ideals and practices that treat people with dignity and the environment with respect.
More Topics on Sustainable Local Communities
We welcome you to peruse the following topics below as we flesh out more of these ideas and bring additional topics to the list as they present themselves. This is all certainly needful and necessary today as much as it is exciting and encouraging. We hope that this will stimulate some initiatives and ideas for you to bring to your own local neighborhoods and communities! We'll also keep you abreast of what we're doing here with our local farms, co-ops, and neighborhoods in our own region of Maine.
Avoiding the Chain Stores
Buy Handmade
Economic Impact of Locally Owned Businesses vs. Chains - Study in Mid-Coast Maine
Small Businesses Unite in 'buy local' movement
Wake Up Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Cost
Wal-Mart Watch
Wal-Mart Uses Microchip to Track Customers
Wal-Mart undermines organic movement
Extensive PDF on Why Wal-Mart is destroying organic movement
Barter Systems
Alan F. Kay - Barter Systems
Barterfest
Community-Shared Gardens
Community Greens
Garden City Harvest
NY Restoration Project
Vancouver 2010 Project
Community Supported Agriculture (CSA)
CSA's - Wikipedia/Links
Local Harvest
Robyn Van En Center
Rodale Institute
Finding and/or Organizing Co-Ops
Food Co-op 500
Cooperative Health Insurance
Farm Stands And Co-Op Shops
Cooperative Grocer
Co-op Directory
National Co-op Directory
Harnessing Hydro and Solar Power for Small Communities
How to Build a Local Economy
SHARE Micro-credit Program
Land Trusts
Community Land Trusts (CLT)
Local Currencies
Berkshares
Networking with Other Co-Ops and Self-Sufficient Communities
Plans and Layouts for Self-Sufficient Communities
Raw Spa Living
Problems with Short-Term Missions and Globalization
Force Feeding the World
Joseph Stiglitz - Internal Critic of World Bank & IMF
Shortcomings of Short Term Missions and Dependency
Seed Banks and Food Storage
Supporting and Enhancing Small Farms, Homesteads, and Businesses
Polyface Farms - Joel Salatin