[p2p-research] higher transportation costs can reverse globalization

[Samuel Rose]

Globalization was never a self-sustaining system to begin with.
Globalization began in part precisely (after WWII) precisely because local
systems were too efficient for market mass producers. They needed
governments to go "open up new markets" for them. But then the people on the
receiving end started wanting something in return, so the governments also
quietly but steadily started to look the other way while market mass
producers made war on those local systems, to drive out local competition,
and get their deal-cutting global networks in place as an only choice
system.

This was always heavily subsidized by the largest and wealthiest
governments. This is why apples from New Zealand are cheaper at my local
grocery store than Michigan apples from 10 miles away!! I pay the remainder
of the cost of New Zealand apples in the 1/3 of my earnings that go towards
federal taxes. So, the Michigan apple was actually always cheaper in the
first place.

Since we can't keep those subsidies up for ever, like oil and fuel and
shipping lane subsidies, we'll be returning to local food systems, which
will in part DEFINE this new century we are in. A shift from the
unsustainable to the sustainable, for human and earth-system survival.

However, we don't all ride off happily into the sunset, unfortunately. All
of those mass market producers, sitting on top of piles of money, are going
to quickly catch whiff of the change. They are going to try to co-opt it. To
make it look like they are also doing this local thing. But what they really
will be doing is trying to do is go around and buy out and control these
emerging local food systems.

Indeed, this could be the next financial "bubble" that we experience (at
least in the US, anyway). With wild speculation based around green tech,
local food systems, sustainable products and services, fueled optimism by
enthusiasm based around change in government (namely when Obama is elected
president).

This is why people who are working to create local food system
infrastructure need to be careful to make them a self-sustaining, community,
collaborative, peer-governed system. They also need to be more agile, more
adaptable than behemoth companies are. The people that make them up need to
realize that they can do business with large companies, but that they should
not put themselves in a position of relying on large companies, nor
governments, for their existence. They will emerge on the other side of the
"bubble" burst in a few years, as the entities that possess actual value
once all of the ponzi and get rich quick schemes fall apart.





On Fri, May 30, 2008 at 11:56 AM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> This study is dynamite:
> http://research.cibcwm.com/economic_public/download/feature1.pdf
>
> I wonder if it is possible to find a volunteer to refer tot his study for
> our blog?
>
> Michel
>
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