Re: Approved

[Roberto Verzola <rverzola@phil.gn.apc.org>]

 >Even in the community driven world, the need for importing goods is
 >still there. Draw an economic circle around your community and find
 >out what the cashflow situation looks like and where the monies come
 >from and to where are they heading and you will find that self
 >sufficient communities is a Myth unless one wants to create a bordered
 >community as in Huxley's Brave New World. Neal Stephenson, in his

Actually, I wrote that essay on modularization vs. globalization. A
100% self-sufficient community may not be possible, but it is
certainly possible to move *closer* towards local-sufficiency, which
is what the essay advocated: that communities rely more on facilities
and resources within local reach and control to meet more of their
basic needs. It is not terribly important that you get your diamond
jewelry from 1,000 miles away, but it is important to reduce
"food-miles," to the extent that they are within local reach.

 >We can not use a past that never was to build a future that never will
 >be. In just 10 months baby y2k will be born- whether or not, to quote
 >TS Eliot,the millenium ends (begins) with a whimper and not a bang,
 >"communities" will be far different from the idylic Pastoral evoked by
 >Beethoven's music or Kalenbach's Ecotopia.

Quite an important issue, this one: was there ever a past when
communities were much more self-sufficient than they are today?
(Again, I'm not talking only of absolute, 100% self-sufficiency here).
I'd say there was. Is that a desirable goal for the future? I'd say it
is. This is the very lesson Y2K (among others) teaches us. All the Y2K
talk about "resilient," "self-sustainable," "self-sufficient," etc
communities are about this lesson.

Roberto Verzola