Ted Trainer.

The most important task in local economic renewal is establishing productive enterprises which enable the group of people who are unemployed or underemployed to begin producing some of the things which that group wants and would purchase if its members had more money. The tragedy inflicted on large numbers of people by the conventional economy is that they are forced to be idle and unable to earn and therefore unable to purchase many things they need, while at the same time they as a group have among them the productive capacity to produce many of those things.

Thus the key to economic renewall is not finding how existing firms can increase their sales, i.e., increase their exports. The global economy is increasingly competitive, unjust and predatory. It does not need all the little firms and towns that exist. Globalisation is largely about the big corporations increasing their sales by taking over the business large numbers of small firms once carried out. Governments are eagerly facilitating this, in the name of making our economies more competitive and "efficient". The inevitable result is the accelerating elimination of small towns and the dumping of people into idleness and deprivation.

All towns cannot expect to survive by trying to compete against other towns for more business. If your town is a winner in this conmpetition it just means some other town haa failed to secure the export sales you won. Instead our focus must be on helping all towns to become much more self-sufficient economies, especially by enabling those people excluded from economic activity to begin producing and purchasing among themselves. (Later this group can also begin trading with the existing firms of the town.)

Introducing a new currency such as LETS will do little to solve this problem. A LETS will only enable people to sell the very few things they as an individual might have to sell. Low income people often do not have many skills. Even skilled people such as lawyers and architects usually find that they cannot sell many of their services via LETS. Similarly a glance through the offers for sale lists for any LETS will shows that relatively few of the goods and services for sale are things that low income people need. Consequently it is not surprising that in Short Circuit Richard Douthwaite states that LETS transactions usually make up no more than 5% of the economic transactions of a LETS member, let alone a significant proportion of the local economic activity.

The question therefore should be, how can we get into the situation where local low income people as a group can be doing a lot of producing of the basic items which they would buy if they could. The crucial point is that this will not happen automatically, and it will not begin to happen just because an alternative currency has been created. It will only happen if a Community Development Cooperative or similar body works out what enterprises producing what items might be viable, and goes ahead and organises these productive ventures, "employing" people previously without jobs, and working out how best to distribute the produce.

The ideal solution is for the Community Development Cooperative to set up a general business, i.e., a productive enterprise that will organise unemployed people to grow and make some of the things that they need (and to sell some of the output into the existing economy for cash.) This would enable participants to work a small amount of time each week on a number of productive activities, putting in as much or as little time as they wished. Payment for work contributions to production would be via LETS credits.The most promising initial ventures would probably be a collective garden, a baking operation, and recycling and repair of materials, bicycles, furniture and appliances from the local tip.

All low income people need vegetables and bread, but it is not likely that a group of them would come together and set up a little bakery within a LETS. This would obviously best be organised by a collective agency whi ch has the resources to work out the logistics, find premises, organise working bees etc. The remarkable success of the Mondragon cooperative movement in Spain shows the importance of being able to harness community knowledge, talent, resources etc to the problem of evaluating productive opportunities and organising production. This is far more effective than leaving individuals to establish tiny firms on their own, via LETS. If in time a particular venture like baking proved to be quite viable it could be set up as a separate little firm to be run by a collective or family, under lease from the Community Development Cooperative.

The first priority of our general firm would be to produce for our own use, but sale of some goods for cash to individuals in the normal economy would also be important. Odd jobs for individuals and other firms in the normal or cash economy could be taken on from the start. Thus we might be approached by someone wanting a fence repaired and we could decide who can go over and do the job. Such a sudden one-off job might not easily be offered or taken up within a LETS, but local people would soon get to know that our general community firm can organise to do all sorts of odd jobs.

The enterprise could seek out many other opportunities for acquiring materials and goods, such as checking what wastes from facories we can use and which local farmers might have produce they can't market. It would also seek out and recruit different skills; e.g., people who can repair electrical appliances, bikes, lawnmowers. At some stage it should try to connect with retired people in the locality, encouraging them to contriburte their time and talents.

It should be stressed that the primary purpose is not to set up a firm to make money by producing goods to sell into the existing economy for money (thereby taking business from the existing small businesses in the town), although some earning of monetary income would be desirable. The main purpse is to organise so that unemployed and low income people can cooperatively produce for themselves some of the goods they need but currently can't afford.

By arranging set times for some of these productivre activities, which could include formal meetings and communal meals, we would also be meeting some of the social and leisure needs of participants.

The main concern in this document is to prompt discussion about what are the most promising items we might organise our firm to produce. The items would have to be relatively simple, because they will be produced by relatively unskilled workers.

Following is a first step to a list of possible items to explore.

Vegetables.

Eggs.

Bread.

Herbs.

Fruit. (...that we might glean from trees in home gardens..)

Honey.

Preserves/bottled fruit/ dried fruit.

Herbs

Labouring

Building

Repairing,

Gardening,

House renovating,

House cleaning

Painting.

Odd jobs.

Plant propagation; seedlings, shrubs, flowers.

Soft

Wooden

Slippers, sandals.

Timber.

Corrugated Iron

Repaired/recycled new bikes..

Repairs.

Repaired/recycled.

Hand made.

Hats.

Belts.

Bags

This is a somewhat different category of operations. The CDC might hold various items that can be borrowed or hired by participants, such as an electric drill. A washing machine located at the community workshop would be a shared facility, enabling some people to avoid purchasing one of their own.

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What are the most promising items in the above list?

What other items should we add?

How viable is this general proposition? How could it be improved?

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For a longer paper on the same themes, see Let's Save Our Town, which is much the same as the last chapter in What Should We Do? Build Local Economies! (in press).

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The Simpler Way: Analyses of global problems (environment,
limits to growth, Third World...)and the sustainable alternative
society (...simpler lifestyles, self-sufficient and cooperative
communities, and a new economy.) Organised by Ted Trainer.
http://www2.arts.unsw.edu.au/tsw/