Thad Williamson writes: Problem #1: For Alperovitz, a structural solution to the first problem requires that firms must be able to "internalize" the externalities; functionally, this means that they should be community owned, or owned by some combination of interests (worker-community joint interest, partial ownership in locally-owned firms, etc) guaranteeing a community stake. Under a community ownership regime, if a community wishes to pollute its river, it can make the decision to do so; or it might decide not to pollute itself and instead accept a lower profit margin. The key point is that the community, in a democratic process, has the power to determine the ecological behavior of its major industry. Obviously, a problem emerges when one considers emissions into the air which might pollute someone else, a problem requiring a macro-level planning capacity beyond the micro-level community-ownership structure, a point to be taken up again below. COMMENT: The problem with this is that pollution externalities are not likely to be confined to a community. Chernobyl devastated Laplander's way of life. Acid rain may damage communities far from the source communities. Pollution is often not a community matter, or even a state or provincial matter but a national or international matter. Why couldn't the internalization of costs be achieved through taxation? Surely control of pollution should not be at the local community level. Williamson also writes: As to strategy, Alperovitz argues that the trajectory of the American political-economic system, characterized by increased political disillusionment and growing loss of faith (and actual capacity) in the ability of the current system to solve problems, is pushing the country into a period of profound disorientation. Ultimately, a coherent vision and sense of direction--new ideas--must be generated if the stalemate is ever to be escaped. At the same time, growing economic pressure on states and localities has helped stimulate an impressive growth in community-oriented economic experimentation, including community land trusts, worker ownership, community development corporations (many of which directly own businesses), municipal enterprise, state equity holdings, state pension fund investments in local enterprises, community supported agriculture, etc--all of which show impressive growth just since the mid-1980s. COMMENT: Are these forms of economic endeavor really growing that much? What proportion of total economic activity do they form. In some of the prairie provinces(Sask and Manitoba and to a lesser extent Alberta) , producer co-operatives, consumer co-operatives, credit unions and marketing co-operatives are quite a large factor in economic activity -as are the caisses populaires in Quebec, but it doesn't seem to stem the tide of neo-liberal policies. The organisations seem to become much less radical then in an earlier era. The CCF (Co-operative Commonwealth Federation) specifically supported and built up these institutions in Saskatchewan in the fifties and sixties in the hope that there would be a steady evolution toward the co-operative commonwealth. It never happened and the nationalised industries and services have to a considerable extent been privatized. Among credit unions and co-operatives the trend is not to devolve into smaller units but to amalgamate into larger units. This is voted in democratically by the smaller units. Cheers, Ken Hanly
