From the burgeoning popularity of farmers’ markets and co-operatives to the revitalisation of community banking,
people are organising to reclaim the economy from large profit-driven corporations and ‘too big to fail’ financial institutions.
The small-scale and diversity of these local initiatives masks the immense potential they hold for addressing fundamental flaws in the current model of economic development.
Rather than treat the swing towards the local as a fad or misplaced radicalism,
the policy community should work to support this alternative vision for sustainable,
human-scale development.
[ Instead of just acting in their own interests all the time ]
Why localise?
The concept of discriminating in favour of local economies is by no means new.
One of the most well known advocates of protecting the local is none other than John Maynard Keynes, as emphasised in his famous essay of 1933, On National Self-Sufficiency:
“I sympathise with those who would minimise, rather than those who would maximise economic entanglements among nations.
Ideas, knowledge, science, hospitality, travel – these are things that of their nature should be international.
But let goods be homespun wherever it is reasonable and conveniently possible,
and above all,
let finance be primarily national.”