Posted by
James Burns on Thursday, December 18, 2008 9:39:51 AM
Today our economy is a nationwide system. With the growth in transportation such as the railroad, automobiles and trucks, manufactures can spread all around the country and even the world. This type of economy is prone to falling and actually hurting the country because there is no backup system. Look at the Great Depression. Because of an economy that is nationwide a few mistakes can cause a major crisis.
Before our economy became centralized, our country functioned on a group of smaller regional economies. The reason for this was transportation was limited to horseback or horse drawn carriages. Each regional economy produced what the region needed. most food was grown or raised in the area. Small local manufacturers produced the goods needed to allow for life in that region. Each area had a saw mill, farmers for producing food, blacksmiths for the building of wagons or horse care etc. Basically each region was a self sufficient micro economy. Granted not all things needed for a micro economy to survive could be produced there. Things like wheat for flour, sugar etc. had to be shipped into more northern climates. But there were things that each micro economy had to ship in to survive.
What I am trying to say is that our economy the way it is will not survive. There is no fall back if it were to fail, as it is now. But with little localized regional economies if one was having a hard time, say to drought of flooding, others surrounding the troubled economy could help by sending goods in to sustain that area until things got better. But at least the whole nation would not be crashing and burning. The damage would be localized and easily fixable. But when our centralized market based economy has trouble the whole nation will.
If we as a nation could revamp the system and decentralize it and create smaller micro economies we could be a stronger nation financially. Going back to the old ways that are proven through time may be our answer to our dilemma now. The problem with doing this though is all the rich, Wall Street and government types would scream bloody murder because they would lose control of the whole economy. I believe this crisis we are in was planned. Set up to fulfill an agenda. But implementing older style economics and allowing for regional local micro economies would be more beneficial to all. More companies could start up providing goods and services that are right now done on a national corporate scale.
I know that this is just wishful thinking, but maybe the Amish have it right. Small local economies like the Amish have show very little trouble in times of financial hardship. Because they are self sufficent. They do not depend on the Walmarts or the products imported from other countries to survive. But again this would mean a total revamp and the big heads in charge would not like that. We have seen that the old ways work. I don't think that the new ways are doing very well as we can see.