At 01:53 PM 12/2/97 +0000, John wrote (replying to David):
>>I would think that communities would control their basic needs and interests
>>while joining in federations, both industrial and geographical, in order to
>>take advantage of economies of scale. At least that seems to be the crux of
>>Bakunin-type aspirations as well as the example given by Spain.
>
>O.K., suppose that I buy the argument that the way to go is for "communities"
>to self-provision clothes, shelter, food, according to local ecological
>conditions and customs, and to engage in voluntary exchange w/other
>"communities" for more sophisticated goods and rare items (this opens up
>a huge can of worms which I won't get into). What are the
>territorial/functional boundaries of the "community" in the first place,
>given that today in
>advanced capitalist countries most "communities" neither produce most of what
>they consume nor consume most of what they produce (with the exception of
>personal services) ? Is the whole Bay Area (where I live) a community ?
>The city of San Francisco ? My neighborhood ? Most people don't even work
>in the neighborhood where they live (to the extent that neighborhoods, as
>opposed to "planned developments" demarcated by planning technocrats,
>landowners, and real estate developers).
For that matter, assuming you can define "local," what's so great about
starting locally? Obviously, any truly participatory system will have lots
of local participation. But there are so many issues that require making
decisions at a larger level--technological advancement, dealing with global
ecological issues, funding universities, etc.--because either they require
lots and lots of people/other resources to make them happen. In many
areas, economies of scale are so crucial to guaranteeing basic needs (esp.
given climate changes and natural/man-made disasters) that treating
federations as a side-thing, something that's an adjunct to local control,
doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.
And then there are countless examples of how local control can stomp on
minorities or dump a community's crap on its neighbors if it isn't strongly
counterbalanced by larger entities. So, what's so great about starting
locally, as opposed to starting locally _and_ regionally _and_ nationally
_and_ internationally?
Anders Schneiderman
