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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org, OWL-OldWaysLiving@yahoogroups.com
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] The Criminalization Of The Localized Economy
  • Date: Sat, 18 Feb 2012 19:58:14 -0700


The Criminalization Of The Localized Economy
http://www.countercurrents.org/goodchild180212.htm
By Peter Goodchild

18 February, 2012
Countercurrents.org

Richard Heinberg's recent Museletter 237, "The Fight of the Century,"
includes a curious point about criminalization: ". . . It will increasingly
be up to households and communities to provide the basics. . . . This is a
strategy that will . . . in many cases be discouraged and even criminalized
by national authorities." The question is whether such localization can
survive our political leadership. Yet the localized economy is probably one
of the few self-evident proposals for a future that seems to have a rather
slim number of options.

The illegalities of the "localized" life begin with the fact that many of the
changes that need to be made to house design, in our
post-nearly-all-materials world, are in fact illegal, if not strictly
criminal. Here in Canada, one cannot legally build or inhabit a house that
does not have conventional plumbing and electricity, for example. And the
insurance companies have their say: a house will not be insured if it is
heated mainly by wood. To be respectable, one must use our declining fossil
fuels, it seems. In fact, insurance companies now look for all sorts of
certification, most of which cannot be considered related to alternative
approaches, but all of which are expensive.

The same problem of illegality applies to many other activities, even if
these are just common sense. Localized agriculture, as I learned first-hand a
few years ago in Ontario, is increasingly plagued by pointless rules related
to processing, packaging, labeling, and similar issues, to the extent that
small-scale farmers are simply forced out of business. Much of this is done
in the name of "health," but such farmers do not have the ability to set up
the required laboratories and other equipment that would make their
businesses compliant with these ever-expanding regulations.

I'm sure farmers' markets are dismally inefficient at times, lacking the
economy of scale that makes the supermarket chains such a delight for the
average consumer. But a truck driver here in Canada once pointed out to me
that the cost of sending those large vehicles back and forth from Ontario to
California or Florida is just not going be feasible as time goes by: for each
truck, every trip costs hundreds of dollars.

Even living off the land is largely a criminalized activity, and "protecting
the wilderness" does not have a great deal to do with it. Hunting and fishing
rules are so designed that, with the exception of native people, the only
people who can engage in these activities are those who are rich enough not
to need the food that is thereby supplied. The rules could easily be modified
to suit those who are genuinely dependent on the food, but such modifications
are rare. Why should a Newfoundlander be arrested for shooting an occasional
caribou to feed his family, when a wealthy "sports" hunter can come from
outside and take that same animal?

If there is any pattern to all these restrictions, it is that money is
constantly directed away from the individual and into the faceless companies,
institutions, and government departments that now dominate our lives. If
Daniel Boone were alive today, he would be spending his years drifting from
one form of incarceration to another.

So, yes, Heinberg is quite right in saying that the localized economy is one
of the more practical alternatives to the economic problems that politicians
are now stumbling through. But I still think I should get a 10-percent
discount on every socially-aware book I buy, since I never read that last
chapter, "What We Must Do." The key sentence is inevitably, "We must
encourage our political leaders to . . . ." Unfortunately our political
leaders do not respond positively to those who do such "encouraging." If
anything, they are more inclined to lock up such people.

Peter Goodchild is the author of Survival Skills of the North American
Indians, published by Chicago Review Press. His email address is
prjgoodchild[at]gmail.com





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