Strategic Corporals

As societies devolve into tribes, "think globally - act locally" will make a comeback (at least the principle, if not the phrase). In social terms, it could be revised to "think universally, act locally". "Global" has political and geographic connotations, whereas "universal" is the word used, for example, in the U.N.'s declaration that describes the rights of every human. We must think both globally and universally, but action always remains local.

"Local" pertains to one's domain, which may be large or small, but is limited by how familiar one is with its many internal relationships and issues. Intimate familiarity with these is essential to applying one's global/universal perspective, otherwise important elements may be overlooked or incorrectly assumed, leading to negative outcomes. Likewise, neglecting to gain a global/universal perspective can lead to counterproductive results due to unreckoned forces outside one's local domain.

Acting locally is normally all one can do. To act globally or at any other level outside one's domain is to violate the sovereignty of others. There are usually repercussions. Acting non-locally also requires resources sufficient to conduct expeditions, expend energy, and/or transmit information outside one's borders. The logistics are often too costly to justify anything but local action.

Thinking globally does not require acting globally. Disaster aid outside one's borders will become rare as global economic growth stalls and climate change claims more and more victims. Alleviating the burden of others in their distress is wonderful, but the logistics tails will be too long for most to contribute, and tribes contiguous to afflicted areas may have cause for letting their neighbors suffer.

Thinking globally and acting locally entails having a grasp of a global problem, and then acting within one's domain to address the problem as if the local solution was going to make the difference in the global problem. This approach is particularly relevant to environmental problems since every location has unique geographical characteristics that demand tailored solutions. Similarly, each locale has unique political and cultural characteristics that necessitate tailored corrective actions in the social sphere.

Conventional thinking says that global problems must be solved by international agreement and cooperation. The subtle shift of the Think Globally - Act Locally approach is that no agreement is necessary, though understanding of common predicaments is. The dissolution of national governments and international authority that appears to be likely in the next few years will leave their fractured replacements to operate on the faith of this approach. A new world order could emerge that no longer tolerates extreme imbalances, but places local sovereignty above imperial ambitions.

Apocollapse Now

I may have missed it, but in my twelve years as a cost analyst for the Department of Defense, including the highest level of certification from the Defense Acquisition University, I never once heard of Baumol's Cost Disease. Nonetheless, the late William Baumol was famous for his discovery of how the cost of services rises implacably while the cost of goods decline. Cost analysts could be spared much consternation through this principle, but it also clarifies the situation for the man on the street.

When you look at the declining productivity gains over the past few decades, much of the slowdown can be attributed to this "disease," wherein more and more employment has shifted away from manufacturing and into services. Manufacturing processes are more easily automated than most service jobs, so the shift to large-scale, centralized manufacturing has improved efficiencies and profits in that sector.

From Albert Bates at The Great Change

I have built my projection of our economic future on the concepts in The Limits to Growth, which, at this point in our catabolic collapse would begin to exhibit a remission of the cost disease, i.e. as we retrace the stages of our rise to the information age, we will revert to more manufacturing employment, albeit on a more local, less automated level. This regression will make the price of goods rise at a rate comparable to the price of services.

The changes coming to manufacturing also apply to farming, since our farming is almost all conducted on factory farms nowadays. The graph that tells the story of the world's predicament has appeared here before, but looking at the details of when peaks occur in food production, then other industrial output, and finally services per capita shows the order in which we should expect to see prices rise. Even now, we are seeing the price of food rise faster than inflation. Those rising prices, first in food and then other manufacturing, will attract more entrants into the production sectors. Entrepreneurs start locally. Most of those new businesses will not easily scale as they will struggle with the same growth limiting forces that gave them an underserved niche in which to launch their business.

A retrenchment from globalism will drive much of this return to small scale. The current administration's overt and inadvertent dismantling of trade and foreign relations will facilitate this retrenchment. In that respect, their steps and missteps will aid the transition to localism. There is a difference, however, between localism and nationalism. Old Blowhard promotes the latter, but has no interest in the former. Additional steps must be taken with respect to commerce that will foster localism in order to keep employment up and pollution down as we revisit industrialism and later descend into agrarianism.

Making America Small Again

President tRump's intentions for improving the economy may actually include some useful preparation for the "high" of our first turning which is due to begin in about a decade. Assuming this next turning will entail a less complex, more fragmented society, rather than the Great America tRump is shooting for, the @RealGreatDivider may accidentally usher us into a transition to smallness.

Smallness, in this case, refers to the size of corporations. With trade wars and import taxes in the offing, U.S.-owned international manufacturers are going to suffer some setbacks. While these will cost jobs at home, especially in the South and Midwest, small domestic manufacturers will gain opportunities to fill the home market demand for various goods/substitutes at more competitive prices. The big company jobs lost in the process may shift to smaller companies, especially if layoffs provoke more entrepreneurship.

Photo by Jo Morcom

The Small Business Administration will have to play an outsized role in perpetuating that shift to some 700,000 small businesses created every year. Someone who started and ran an outlandish enterprise like World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) could be just right for the job. As one of the few women cabinet officials, former boss of wrestlers Linda McMahon is a good match for the other showman in the room.

Not that tRump, himself, isn't pro-small business. The Apprentice cast its competitors in entrepreneurial roles and tRump ostensibly selected winners. Picking talent; it's what he does. So far, he has made a point to reduce regulatory burdens on small businesses and to improve their financial situation through efforts to eliminate Obamacare and increase access to loans. Realizing how intent tRump is on encouraging entrepreneurship even helps explain why he felt compelled to ask for prayers for Arnold Schwarzenegger. Celebrity Apprentice symbolizes the way forward - we need a few million successful "apprentices" in order for small businesses to make up for the disruptions tRump is creating.

Whether these steps will be sufficient to avoid a recession in the next year or two is doubtful


but, it may make something of a recovery possible to a more regional or local, sustainable society. By then, we will be able to kiss tRump good-bye and welcome our country's new Green leaders.

Off Broadway

As a plebe (freshman) at Annapolis, I loved the several opportunities to escape the confines of our pressure cooker environment by taking group trips to watch Broadway plays at the Kennedy Center and the Arena Stage. The half-price tickets were just cheap enough to make it affordable for me, but now, decades later, and living, once again, close to Washington, D.C., I am not able to afford such venues. Back in the '70's, I realized that I was living the dream and that life after the Academy wouldn't afford the same privileges. Being priced out of today's Broadway shows is, therefore, no great surprise.

Photo by Flipsy

Any latent disappointment over the loss of those glory days was erased Saturday night when my wife and I took in our first play performed at the New Direction Community Theater. Lacking only the grandeur and amenities of metropolitan playhouses, but not the acting quality or set realism, this community theater brought me as much of an escape from my work-a-day existence as those that draw audiences by the hundreds. It also costs less than I paid 40 years ago to watch professional acting.

I like the name "New Direction," because it implies to me the change in lifestyle we will all soon experience to some degree, i.e. valuing local community activity more than cosmopolitan pretense. Another difference is that, as part of a small audience, you become a bigger factor in the play's success by your attentiveness, reactions, and applause than when there is a larger audience to carry things along. You also are more likely to get to know the performers and crew, especially if you attend frequently. You will certainly get a seat closer to the action.

Rip Tide on the Chesapeake Bay

Here in Calvert County, the inverted middle finger of Maryland, we have a Comprehensive Plan by which we pretend to shape our own destiny. The wife and I have been ongoing participants in a group called Calvert Eats Local that meets monthly at the county library to feast and keep up-to-date on agricultural topics. Calvert Eats Local is providing input, through the umbrella organization, Sustainable Calvert Network, to the County Planning Commission in order to update the Comprehensive Plan - something that has not been done since 2004.

The impetus for this update to the plan is a wide open gap in the middle of the county seat, Prince Frederick, which appeared when an old middle school and armory were demolished. The Comprehensive Plan has a chapter on Economy which may bear most immediately on the new purpose for this piece of real estate, though I would hope that the People chapter, under the topic of Community Interaction, would play a larger role. Either way, focusing at this stage on the development of this parcel would compromise the integrity of the Comprehensive Plan, as in the tail wagging the dog.

A lot has happened in the world since 2004. I wonder if our planning commissioners have a good perspective on the economic, financial, ecological, demographic, technological, and natural resource developments that are driving our world, nation, and communities into a new era. Keeping in mind the precept that plans are nothing, but planning is everything, we should be able to improve our future through this thought exercise, as long as we don't swim against the rip-tide or exhaust ourselves trying to swim out of it.

An aerial view of the rip currents shows a financial crash in the offing followed by many years of economic adaptation. After the crash, eddy currents of energy and other natural resource peaks will drown much of what we have come to expect from commerce. The dilemma of the drill-baby-drill (or frack harder and deeper, baby) solution is that this has gotten to the point where earth, sea, and sky are revolting against further violations of whatever remains of our planet's purity. In fact, just backing off isn't going to prevent earth, sea, and sky from taking out their grievances on future inhabitants. Our future economies will be shaped by climate adaptation and, if the Paris climate agreement and the Maryland Greenhouse Gas Reduction Act mean anything, genuine consideration.

I doubt if our county planners will take this view unless the tide of the public's perception is swept in this foreboding direction and we cry out. Otherwise, our planners (even against their own misgivings) will rationalize and temporize these matters and pretend we can sustain the unsustainable.

Our focus in the Calvert Eats Local group is on the economy, with the outdated plan putting forth a vision that,

We are building a strong local economy based on renewable resources, high technology, retirement, recreation, and tourism.

Last night, among many other changes proposed by our group, I suggested that the word "strong" here be replaced by "resilient." Strong materials can also be brittle. Resilient materials, though somewhat strong, can handle a beating without shattering. We should try to make Calvert County shatterproof.

If you want to help shape the new Comprehensive Plan, there is a public forum on Thursday, 21 April at the Prince Frederick Library at 1 pm that will include the County Planning office. I may have more to say about our economic future at this meeting.

Cornucopia

The idea of scarcity, when it comes to food, seems a long ways off these days. Even the unemployed and destitute have free kitchens and food banks to avoid starvation. I imagine that starvation these days is mostly on the level of particular nutrients. Food deserts exist where nutrient deficient food is the norm.

The immediately obvious way to ensure a more nutrient dense diet is to grow your own produce, and if food ever does become grossly scarce, that choice brings a little more security along with it. Since I really dig gardening, that's my chosen solution, but it's really not an option for those whose schedules are already crammed to bursting.

If you can't afford the time, transportation, trepidation, and toll of routinely dining out, cooking your own food is a good way to go. According to Michael Pollan, the most important thing we can do for our health is to cook our own meals. I've found that I can make just about any produce on hand taste good with the help of recipes available online, using tools such as the Perfect Produce app.

If you find grocery shopping difficult, and don't mind a little adventure in your diet, a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) arrangement may be for you. The type that will save you some time at the grocery store offers pre-packaged items from the local harvest and might include meal kits and processed items such as breads. Here, we have Taste of Southern Maryland offering in-season, locally grown, nutrient dense foods delivered by priority mail with weekly plans scaled to your needs. Like growing your own, this approach seems like a good way to make your meals more veggie-centric.

If the chore of cooking is too much to handle, Calvert County (and many others) host Meals on Wheels to eligible (invalid or shut-in) persons. If you don't qualify for that free service, you can drive a short distance and get the same menu by signing up for lunch at one of the local Senior Centers for $3 to $5, depending on your age.

Our next local food outing will be tonight's Calvert Eats Local meeting, which is a pot-luck this month. There is usually a presentation, with next month's to be given by your's truly on the topic of gourmet mushrooms.