The Community Solution -- Part 2
Let's consider the vast array of things that families have to worry about on a regular basis. First, there are the things to pay for: housing, food, transportation, clothing, health care, insurance, and all other discretionary and non-discretionary spending. Then there is job security, the mechanism through which all of this spending is possible. How many American workers are truly confident that their jobs are safe, or that they have enough marketable skills to find a new job should they be laid off? If there are children in the family, there is the added burden of how to keep their lives on an even keel should job losses or income downgrades occur. If families are lucky enough to navigate this stretch of challenges, then there is the question of how to afford college tuition for kids graduating from high school. Increasingly, college is so disproportionately expensive compared to what American families bring in for normal income, that it has become a debt-financed enterprise by default. Huge school loans are now seen as a normal rite of passage for young adults graduating from college into the workforce. Similarly, household debt in general is an issue. To finance the "normal" American lifestyle over the past couple decades, household savings rates have declined, and credit card debt has increased. And just about the only thing keeping millions of families from having negative net worth has been the inflated real estate market, which makes household assets look much higher than they really are (as we mentioned before, how much of an asset can a house really be, considering that people have to live in something). Finally, to top it all off, families have to worry about elder-care for their aging parents and their own retirement savings.
All of these factors show just how close the American family is to the abyss. Many are just one catastrophic illness or one extended unemployment period away from an irreversible downward spiral of debt and bankruptcy. The individual-nuclear family economic matrix leaves absolutely no wiggle room from uncertain times. People's lives are leveraged to the hilt, and the relentless algorithm of too many expenditures vs. not enough money is grinding away on the American prospect. That is why there is so much panic with the recent surges in gas and food prices. There is just not enough leeway built into the average American household's budget to incorporate doubled transportation or food costs. And now that the secondary and tertiary equity loans based on increasing real estate values have dried up, there is nowhere else for families to find that next chunk of cash to keep the current lifestyle system afloat.
With all of these everyday worries weighing on regular American households, is it any wonder that so many people are frustrated when politicians come out and tack on a whole bunch of other stuff to do? We're supposed to fight global warming, support peace efforts in Darfur, march against violence on gays, donate money to cancer research, and generally jump into the fray on as many issues as we can. But there is just not enough time or energy left in most people's lives to drive all of these worthy projects forward. After commuting for longer periods of time, working more hours, dealing with high levels of economic anxiety, and procuring from the marketplace many functions that used to be performed by extra-market social networks, it is not surprising that people just want to hit that couch every night, escaping for a couple hours to a fantasy world of dancing contests, video games, or sitcoms. The social space made up of weekend nights and some hours on the weekends is not robust enough to tackle the kind of changes that need to happen to get us on the right track.
All of these factors show just how close the American family is to the abyss. Many are just one catastrophic illness or one extended unemployment period away from an irreversible downward spiral of debt and bankruptcy. The individual-nuclear family economic matrix leaves absolutely no wiggle room from uncertain times. People's lives are leveraged to the hilt, and the relentless algorithm of too many expenditures vs. not enough money is grinding away on the American prospect. That is why there is so much panic with the recent surges in gas and food prices. There is just not enough leeway built into the average American household's budget to incorporate doubled transportation or food costs. And now that the secondary and tertiary equity loans based on increasing real estate values have dried up, there is nowhere else for families to find that next chunk of cash to keep the current lifestyle system afloat.
With all of these everyday worries weighing on regular American households, is it any wonder that so many people are frustrated when politicians come out and tack on a whole bunch of other stuff to do? We're supposed to fight global warming, support peace efforts in Darfur, march against violence on gays, donate money to cancer research, and generally jump into the fray on as many issues as we can. But there is just not enough time or energy left in most people's lives to drive all of these worthy projects forward. After commuting for longer periods of time, working more hours, dealing with high levels of economic anxiety, and procuring from the marketplace many functions that used to be performed by extra-market social networks, it is not surprising that people just want to hit that couch every night, escaping for a couple hours to a fantasy world of dancing contests, video games, or sitcoms. The social space made up of weekend nights and some hours on the weekends is not robust enough to tackle the kind of changes that need to happen to get us on the right track.
But what if....?
What if the one person-one job, one family-one dwelling complex went away? What if people began living in larger groups? A larger community, acting as a single economic unit, would be able to harness the power of scale. A collectivity can drastically reduce the ratio of people-to-commodities through several mechanisms. First, people would need less actual stuff. If 25 families operate sepately, 25 sets of stuff are needed: cars, lawn mowers, TVs, kitchen appliances, etc. But those same families living as a single economic unit can pool resources and share products. Also, just as countries use "import substitution" to reduce their economic dependency, communities can perform many functions internally that currently have to be purchased on the open market: child care, tutoring, landscaping, food preparation, household maintenance, eldercare, etc. Additionally, people living in tighter communities tend to spend more time in social interaction as opposed to consumptive activity. And this more intense social intercourse actually reduces the amount of "therapeutic spending" that many people engage in to ward off loneliness, boredom, or depression. In short, a community-based social form provides a completely different platform from which to approach the wider marketplace and world. It is a much larger "home base," allowing for more freedom of movement, economically and socially. There is more space or wiggle-room, because the power of collective scale frees up time and money.
As peak oil kicks in with a vengeance over the next few decades, our lives will change drastically. The vaunted global economy will likely shrivel up to nothing, as fuel prices make long supply chains an unsustainable enterprise. Power and activity will devolve to more local settings, especially in the United States, where we have staked our entire society on a far-flung suburban experiment that will collapse and take the national economy down the tubes.
Many voices are currently calling for more local economic activity, especially in the area of food production. Community gardens, farmers markets, and community supported agriculture are increasing in frequency. Others are calling for the revival of local factory production, as the promises of the service-based New Economy evaporate into thin air. Making our own products locally again is seen as a healthy alternative to just hoping that globe-trotting corporations set up shop in our area and bring a few hundred jobs with them (always with the risk that they will pick up stakes and go to a better tax or labor climate when the going gets tough). As general economic times get worse, the conservative mantra of smaller federal government and lower taxes is looking more attractive. Let people use that same money at a more local level, in better targeted ways. All of these localizing, power-devolving currents are in the air.
But while many of these calls for re-localization are important, and do reflect changes that will likely happen in the near future whether we like it or not, I still think that the actual basic social form has to change. A revived local farming and manufacturing infrastructure will not be enough. A shrinking of the federal government accompanied by increased state and local activity will not be enough. Decentralized and sustainable power generation will not be enough. There will still just not be enough economic substance to support the one person-one job, one family-one dwelling matrix. Too much of our current "full employment" model is built on the construction and maintenance of the suburban infrastructure itself, including all of the shady financial instruments that are now coming unraveled. Too much of our present economic activity is predicated on cheap oil, for both the creation and movement of the product. Cheap petroleum has essentially injected a bulk of total economic and energy volume into the entire system, giving the illusion that there is more sustainable substance than there really is. It's kind of like when a huge python eats a large deer, and that lump is sitting there in the snake's midsection as the long digestion process takes place. Cheap Oil is that lump in the snake, working its way through our societies and economies. And once it gets metabolized out of the global system, we'll be left with a skinny snake again and no more deer to eat.
As we adjust to the new realities of expensive oil, re-localized economies, and less consumptive lives, it will become clear that the power of scale in community living is the only appropriate response. Products will have to be shared. Functions that are currently purchased will have to be done in-house, off the books. Single-family architecture will become an anachronistic luxury, as multi-use community compounds become the norm. There will not be enough lucrative jobs in the outside economy to support the nuclear-family complex, and the collective spirit will be revived (recall the 99% of human history lived in small tribal settings). Certainly, many of the good things in the present arrangement will continue: scientific research, advances in health care, labor-saving products, etc. And chances are that increased market demand will result in an expansion of "green" approaches to energy generation, building, and production. But the overall scope of economic activity will slacken, as the unique flowering made possible by cheap oil fades away. And in this new setting, people will approach the wider world and marketplace from a different platform and social space. They will use the community as their home base, and it will work.
As peak oil kicks in with a vengeance over the next few decades, our lives will change drastically. The vaunted global economy will likely shrivel up to nothing, as fuel prices make long supply chains an unsustainable enterprise. Power and activity will devolve to more local settings, especially in the United States, where we have staked our entire society on a far-flung suburban experiment that will collapse and take the national economy down the tubes.
Many voices are currently calling for more local economic activity, especially in the area of food production. Community gardens, farmers markets, and community supported agriculture are increasing in frequency. Others are calling for the revival of local factory production, as the promises of the service-based New Economy evaporate into thin air. Making our own products locally again is seen as a healthy alternative to just hoping that globe-trotting corporations set up shop in our area and bring a few hundred jobs with them (always with the risk that they will pick up stakes and go to a better tax or labor climate when the going gets tough). As general economic times get worse, the conservative mantra of smaller federal government and lower taxes is looking more attractive. Let people use that same money at a more local level, in better targeted ways. All of these localizing, power-devolving currents are in the air.
But while many of these calls for re-localization are important, and do reflect changes that will likely happen in the near future whether we like it or not, I still think that the actual basic social form has to change. A revived local farming and manufacturing infrastructure will not be enough. A shrinking of the federal government accompanied by increased state and local activity will not be enough. Decentralized and sustainable power generation will not be enough. There will still just not be enough economic substance to support the one person-one job, one family-one dwelling matrix. Too much of our current "full employment" model is built on the construction and maintenance of the suburban infrastructure itself, including all of the shady financial instruments that are now coming unraveled. Too much of our present economic activity is predicated on cheap oil, for both the creation and movement of the product. Cheap petroleum has essentially injected a bulk of total economic and energy volume into the entire system, giving the illusion that there is more sustainable substance than there really is. It's kind of like when a huge python eats a large deer, and that lump is sitting there in the snake's midsection as the long digestion process takes place. Cheap Oil is that lump in the snake, working its way through our societies and economies. And once it gets metabolized out of the global system, we'll be left with a skinny snake again and no more deer to eat.
As we adjust to the new realities of expensive oil, re-localized economies, and less consumptive lives, it will become clear that the power of scale in community living is the only appropriate response. Products will have to be shared. Functions that are currently purchased will have to be done in-house, off the books. Single-family architecture will become an anachronistic luxury, as multi-use community compounds become the norm. There will not be enough lucrative jobs in the outside economy to support the nuclear-family complex, and the collective spirit will be revived (recall the 99% of human history lived in small tribal settings). Certainly, many of the good things in the present arrangement will continue: scientific research, advances in health care, labor-saving products, etc. And chances are that increased market demand will result in an expansion of "green" approaches to energy generation, building, and production. But the overall scope of economic activity will slacken, as the unique flowering made possible by cheap oil fades away. And in this new setting, people will approach the wider world and marketplace from a different platform and social space. They will use the community as their home base, and it will work.
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