The New Localism: Fact or fallacy?
Thursday October 23, 2008
The silver lining in the economic crisis, says Joel Kotkin, is that it will foster a New Localism. Excerpt: Forced into belt-tightening, Americans are likely to strengthen our family and community ties and to center our lives more closely on...
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Rod Dreher is an editorial columnist for the Dallas Morning News, and author of "Crunchy Cons" (Crown Forum), a nonfiction book about conservatives, most of them religious, whose faith and political convictions sometimes put them at odds with mainstream conservatives. The views expressed in this blog are his own.
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Well, during the Great Depression, weren't families broken apart as husbands rode the rails to find work and send home money when they could?
I sincerely doubt that a dysfunctional society will be made whole by hardship. I mean, the Depression and WWII may have produced the greatest generation but they also scarred a lot of people (and look how well the kids they raised turned out.) Economic necessity might force me to ask my surviving in-laws and parents to help me with my kids, but it would be disastrous. (see Matt Frost's description, then add in more neglect.) I'd be more likely to leave my kids to raise themselves, frankly.
Rod, you already decry the lack of parental involvement in schools. Now envision a world where everyone works 3 jobs, and there's no time for those parents to be involved with raising their children or helping in those schools. (and poof! you have much of DISD.)
There will certainly be more organic communities that will have a sustainable local economy, but for most people this is simply not their economic reality. Those people trapped in a house whose value has plummeted, who have a long daily communte from one unsustainable suburb to another, who have severed their organic ties to family & friends will not fare well, nor should we expect them to. There will be examples of communities that are strengthened by this, but they will be few and far between, but by and large the great unravelling is not going to be pretty to watch.
My only issue with "the benedict option" is what do we expect people to do for a living? Can we all be subsistence farmers?
Well, during the Great Depression, weren't families broken apart as husbands rode the rails to find work and send home money when they could?
True, at least in my dad's case. He was raised pretty much by his mother because his father was on the road doing anything he could to earn money for his family. That left a big mark on my Dad.
Here's a picture:
http://www.chrisstockdale.com/images/OKmigrantMother.jpg
I think Kotkin is right. I've seen the "new localism" taking shape in my own town, and even in my own life. I live in a small, shoreline city of 25,000 in Rhode Island, hard against the Connecticut border. A few years ago, we were in danger of becoming just another featureless bedroom community for commuters to nearby cities. But something happened here. A group of committed local residents began reminding the rest of us that there was something precious about the character and history of our town, something that needed preservation. That sentiment, along with a growing realization that we were facing financial and energy crises we'd have to weather as a real community, has really galvanized people to focus on improving our local quality of life. We now have a peak oil task force and an alternative energy study committee; several of our leaders are preparing to engage in community resilience training; we've begun to reexamine zoning, taxation and planning rules that promote destructive economic development; the issues of open space, land reclamation, and family farming are coming to the table; and on and on. Personally, I couldn't have cared less about "local issues" three or four years ago. Now, I'm running for Town Council and volunteering for local boards. Like many people, I've realized that my town is not just a platform for commercial activity, or a place to park my car and rest my head. It is a community, where people dwell together in mutual respect and with a shared future.
I am always skeptical of "just so" scenarios, i.e., scenarios wherein circumstances are such that necessity forces people/society/government/etc. to do what the scenario-builder wants them to do anyway. We see this same thing with "peak oil = the inevitability of localism". Not to say that either scenario couldn't happen, but both do smack of wish-fulfillment (at least to some extent).
"[W]e'll make a transition that looks something like what Kotkin envisions, but it won't be smooth, and there will be a lot of pain."
Alas, the time to stress test your lifestyle choices is during good times.
Re: Riding the rails
Don't overlook the internet. I "ride the rails" every day from the comfort of my own home. Just yesterday, I submitted a job proposal to the Japanese Ministry of the Environment from my office computer in NH.
MI ---
I hear you. For most people, the coming recession is going to be nasty and brutish but not short. Who can say this early on what kind of cultural, social and political blowback we're goint to experience? The situation is unprecedented.
You hit the nail on the head, Rod; the truth is in the middle. Some of us will recognize the changes we need to make and have an easier path, some of us will resist the new realities and have a tougher time of it. When it's all said and done we'll be OK - but some of us will be more OK than others.
It's evolution in action. Adapt to change and thrive, or resist it and perish (or at least suffer).
The points Martha raises are important. I'm not sure that our society is in a position even remotely comparable to the one that entered the Great Depression. With sky-high divorce rates, single-parent (or even no-parent) homes, and the general breakdown of family life that has occurred over the last few decades, American society isn't in a position to develop a new family based localism.
Even in the Depression, families were easily split apart, as John E and Rod have pointed out. My paternal grandparents were forced to leave their homes in Iowa and go pick grapes in California (where they met). Hard to build localism when you're a migrant worker. We can't all be in the arts, consulting or design work (the coffee-going neighbors Kotkin mentioned). We're not all able to work at home.
Anyway, I still think there will be a decent percentage of the population that will be secretly frustrated if we don't slide into a new Great Depression.
I also wonder how to square this: most of us start to really want to root ourselves to a place when we have kids (or at least, start thinking forward to the time that will happen.) But Kotkin talks about Baby Boomers still supporting their Gen X kids -- if things are so bad you can't consider starting a family, cause you're still dependent on your mom & dad, will you still be wanting to put down roots? Will young people stop leaving home and wanting to see the world because it is harder to do so? Or will they just not get as far?
Also, as times I get worse, I for one am not more likely to go to these farmers markets he is talking about. (the nearest to me is all the way downtown.) I am more likely to go to the closest Wal-mart for rock bottom prices. We don't all look at rising food prices and say "That's it! Only free-range chicken and grass-fed beef for us!"
Oh, there is going to be a percentage of the population that is going to be greatly frustrated when we don't fall into a new Great Depresssion but I would never call them decent. There is nothing decent about folks who want everyone to be miserable so they can get religion and become all moral and boring.
The recession is going to be short, over in probably a year, two at the most, a deep dive but an even faster recovery. This ain't the 1970s and the notion of localism is frankly nonsense. People under stress do not pull together, they pull apart. Economic problems are not like snow storms or even hurricanes. They do not affect all people the same way. And people will look out for their interests, not those of the neighbors.
Uncle Chuckie --
I'd be interested in an actual argument (not an assertion) for why the recession is going to be short, just for my own personal amusement.
I think there could be a "new localism", but I also believe IF it occurs it will be concurrent with an inevitable "reverse migration" of wealth and talent pool out of the old Sunbelt. In 1982, John Naisbitt wrote his first book "Megatrends". In it he predicted relocation of educated talent and wealth out of the Upper Midwest and Northeast to the Sunbelt. Specifically, California, Texas and Florida. These areas he predicted as the new "economic generators" of the nation. Obviously, he was correct. But currently, all of these southern tier states now have significant problems, with a high probability of increase. In severe economic downturn, people return to familiarity. Irregardless of an immediate financial penalty. (Most never really assimilated to their new area. One reason for the present lack of localism.) Contrary to popular opinion, the "reverse migration" in Texas has been developing since circa 1994. This significant economic downturn is going to accelerate the process. No, the wealth relocation isn't going to return to places like New York, Pennsylvania and Illinois. (From where Naisbitt predicted the wealth and employment would leave in 1982. Keep in mind 1982 was also a recession period for our country. Unlike then, the old Sunbelt states are no longer beacons of new beginning.) Localism, IF it occurs, is going to find new locations in our nation. For example, North Carolina, Tennessee, northwest Arkansas, southwest Missouri, Washington, Oregon, and yes, southern Oklahoma. To the new inhabitants, it won't be home, but it will have a certain degree of familiarity. And like Naisbitt's prediction of 1982, mine may also not be politically correct, but it is a pragmatic assessment of what is going to occur.
Well look at other countries as they've weathered things like this. It's ugly. Why would the US be any better? We are starting from a weaker point (socially, interpersonally, culturally) than many have in the past century.
I think it all depends on where you live. There seem to be areas of the country that are more prone to localism and areas that are not. From what I've seen personally, it seems to me that a lot of folks are taking self protective measures instead of automatically thinking of ways to connect and organize. I think the knee jerk reaction will be to look out for number one since that has become the "new social moral order anyways.
I know that seems bleak, but the only localism really left is family. I hardly know anyone who lives in a community like Andy Griffith's Mayberry anymore. If things got really horrifically bad, I would move nearer to my family or they would move nearer to me. But otherwise, I don't know if it would occur to people to try to establish mutually beneficial relationships with people they don't know all that well because they don't know if they can trust them.
Kotkin's comments are pretty much pie in the sky irrelevance. Just a social planner's dreams.
There's a lot of things which have changed since the last great depression. For one, the way we use our resources has been altered dramatically. I live in a rural area, but our land use is regulated by an ideologically opposed state government 275 miles away, and the regulation's basic premise is that we, locally, are too stupid to do anything right, and thus all ability to plan, zone, change, grow, or shrink locally is GONE. I don't see that changing. Especially when those who did the centralized planning believe that the plans, beliefs, ideology, etc, of the locals IS THE REASON for our economic issues. In other words, their reaction to recession or depression will be dramatically more removal of local self determination, not localism. It will be 'central planning'.
The "localism" you discuss, in a strictly theoretical sense, is free enterprise and devolution of power and authority to a far more local and individualized level. And you see that the currently winning political enterprise is all about centralized planning and control, planned economies, and removal of the ability of individuals to "make mistakes".
I think this trend could be reversed, but that would entail engaging and transforming the one political party that's somewhat amenable to the idea, but right now, it seems everyone wants to banish it to the wilderness and let the centralized planners have free reign over our economy, lives, and future.
You get what you ask for, and boy have you been asking for it.
Our local shoppng centre had, thirty years ago when I was a child, a butcher, a grocer, a cobbler (yes!) a pharmacy, a post-office and a haberdashery. Now it has six expensive cafes and two real estate agencies. When these close (as they surely will), I can't see how there'll be either the confidence or the capital for those small businesses to start up again.
The most I hope for from this recession is that divorce will become economically impossible. People will learn to stick together again, and gradually a healthier society might emerge. It could take a hundred years, though.
I still think that localism has a future.
Our whole economy moved away from localism in the late 1800's, when the railroads made transportation of goods relatively cheap and easy. Ever since then, cheap, efficient transportation has been bringing the cost of consumer items cheaper and cheaper, especially with companies like Wal-Mart taking advantage of cheap labor in Third World countries.
The downside to all this cheap stuff is that relatively costly American-made and hand-made (vs. mass produced) items could not compete in either price or volume. The only way to make it profitable was to re-market the item as a luxury.
For example, a local knitting company makes beautiful, fancy, handmade sweaters which are sold in the local shops catering to rich tourists. Most of the locals, however, will drive 20 miles to Walmart or Target to buy sweaters for their family, as you can get 4 sweaters at Walmart for the price of one locally-made sweater.
But if you took the cheap transportation out of the picture, that Walmart sweater made in a Chinese sweatshop would suddenly cost a whole lot more. Which might make it much more feasible for the local knitting company to produce a line of less fancy, less expensive sweaters, and with high gas prices local consumers might well decide it was worth paying a *little* more to buy it locally instead of wasting gas to drive to Walmart.
If this line of sweaters sold well, the local knitting company might look to expand; there are certainly lots of people who enjoy knitting recreationally and would be happy to get a job in town knitting for pay. Perhaps we would never have the sheer abundance of cheap sweaters that we did in the glory days of consumerism, but really -- how many sweaters do you actually *need*?
Many things that we do for hobbies now were urgent necessities of life not to long ago -- sewing, knitting, weaving, baking, canning, woodworking, etc.. They became obsolete once it became cheaper to buy the finished product than to make it yourself (my seamstress friends report it costs far more to buy fabric and sew clothing for their children than it does to buy ready-made), and once it became cheap and easy to buy the premade items people found other ways to occupy their time, and then they didn't have time to sew or knit or build.
But when you take cheap consumer goods out of the equation, suddenly it makes much more sense to make your own or to barter with a neighbor who can. I think a lot of bartering might start going on -- I already do a fair amount of local business on trade.
Right now, the bread at the farmers' market is priced quite high because it is "artisan" bread, marketed towards the rich foodies because the local baker cannot compete on price with the Pepperidge Farm loaves down at the Stop'n'Shop. But if the cheap bread being trucked in became less plentiful, the local bakers could increase sales volume enough to bring the prices down -- maybe not as cheap as Pepperidge Farm, but still within reach.
We will have to accept that we won't ever have as much cheap and abundant stuff as we did in the past fifty years or so ... but really, all of this plentitude is sort of an aberration. Human beings were not meant to have all this stuff. I mean, the number one complaint you hear people making about their homes is how much "clutter" they keep accumulating, and there are about a zillion websites, books, and consultants who exist solely to tell us how to store, organize, and get rid of our excess crap. And the obesity epidemic has a lot to do with the fact that our bodies were not designed to ingest 5,000 calories per day while sitting on our behinds. We were created to work for our food, whether by hunting for it or laboring in the fields to grow it, and to endure a certain amount of hardship therein; not to have it shoveled into our car windows at drive-thrus.
Pyrrho:
I'll agree with you that this recession is going to be long. "Nasty" depends on your definition of the word; it could be nasty in several different ways. It's not going to be a Great Depression Redux, since the Internet and more abundant transportation will support mobility and more frequent communication in the job search. It will be more like a long, nagging bout of the flu; nasty but interspersed with stretches of feeling a little better for a little while.
The fact remains that there is a God-awful lot of debt that is going to have to get worked through. Toxic mortgage loans are just the forerunners. On the "macro" level: even with bailouts to guarantee liquidity, all those toxic-mortgage and derivative-contract time bombs are still going to have to be identified and defused. That's going to take years. Meanwhile, the central government is going to be under intense pressure to increase its spending, either on infrastructure or on more "entitlements" (Obama's tax-rebate promises, for example) by a Congress that is just about guaranteed to be left-wing Democrat for several years. This will NOT help matters overmuch, just as gunning a car engine while jamming on the brakes will not help the car move forward very quickly. Inflation pressures are going to be present and real for at least the next 3 or 4 years, no matter who occupies the Oval Office.
On the personal level: Look for problems with the large-scale credit-card issuers, the MBNAs and Citibanks of the world, next. Credit-card defaults are going to mushroom in the course of the next few years, as well as car loans. (Who on Earth came up with the idea of the 60- or 72-month car loan, anyway ?) Credit standards are going to get a LOT tighter, for just about everyone. Same thing with mortgages, but squared: looks like those NINJA loans are going to walk with the Lord, guys......
It's going to be a red-hot iron-cased b!tch for job-seekers for a while, too. Expect the underemployment numbers to rise for a year or so---and look for a lot less in the way of labor unrest or wage pressure. Lots of college grads are going to be running pizzas or doing landscaping, and they'll be glad to have the work.
The GOOD news in all this is that anyone with little debt and a strong cash position is going to have serious investment opportunities available to them; even now, the P/E ratios of lots of major companies are at historically low levels right now. Anyone who can fix or maintain things is going to find his/her services massively in demand. Joe the Plumber, take note. Sociology major ? Not so much.
The problems that I don't see anyone addressing are these: First, the central government is claiming to be able to finance bailout-this and guarantee-that. Said central-government borrowing is going to be at historically outrageous levels, for at least the next two or three years. How is all this borrowing going to be financed ? (Even the Red Chinese have their limits.) All our leadership cadre seems to be proposing is that the "burden" of maintaining demand be shifted from private sector to state sector. Sooner or later, the creditor nations are going to run out of credit. What happens when that happens ?
Second, how is this going to help this country pay for the entitlement promises the political class of the last 40 years have made, and which are ALREADY starting to come due ? I don't see anything being done about that, and that is going to be a far bigger problem than any credit crunch. Read Kotlikoff's books on the subject (but be warned, they'll cost you at least one sleepless night).
Short-term patching doesn't work, guys and girls....we're going to get a nice, long immersion in that concept. Localism under such circumstances is not going to matter that much, simply because the entitlement crash is very likely going to swamp everyone.
Now, where did I put that life vest ?
Your servant,
Lord Karth
LK --
Insightful as always. I think you got most of it down, except for the complete devastation of the retail sector and the hundreds of small banks that are going to go under when their construction lending portfolios explode. (This crisis should start hitting early next year.)
We're going to have an L-shaped recession. The only question remaining is the ultimate lengths of the vertical and horizontal lines.
And remember, folks, it's bad government policy that turns recessions into depressions.
Said central-government borrowing is going to be at historically outrageous levels, for at least the next two or three years. How is all this borrowing going to be financed?
McCain and Obama are both lying when they talk about financial discipline. The next Congress is going to set records for deficit spending. Let's hope they at least spend the money wisely on infrastructure improvements.
Paulson is currently blowing through a lot of cash, but I don't see a problem with it.
The Treasury is just recirculating money. Scared savers and investors are giving Hank gobs of money essentially for free. Paulson is just putting it back into the credit markets to prevent a credit market collapse. Wise move, in my opinion.
The so-called "bailout" is also not a problem, in my opinion. Paulson is buying distressed assets at fire sale prices. Because the government has very low carrying costs, it can repackage these things and sell them for a profit even at a much later date. No rush.
People don't realize that the government made a profit on the Chrysler bailout. The Resolution Trust Corporation also probably made a profit off of the S&L debacle.
I don't understand the moral hazard argument, either. The bailed out companies are getting their heads handed to them and their compensation packages are going to be heavily scrutinized going forward.
But ... the problem is going to get much worse. How will they eventually pay?
Can you say "monetization"?
But I don't want to hear anyone yelling "hyperinflation" without first explaining to me how this is at all possible in an economy sucked into a deflationary spiral.
I think Kotkin's optimism may be warranted in the long run---if the economic downturn is, say, a decade or longer, people will learn to adjust better, and today's ten-year-olds will be wiser adults. But Frost is right in the short-term, and in a way the long-term too: localism and frugality may be socially and morally "better," but we should realize they will have problems of their own.
God bless!
Our Pyrrho-friend @ 2:41 PM writes:
"the complete devastation of the retail sector and the hundreds of small banks that are going to go under when their construction lending portfolios explode. (This crisis should start hitting early next year.)"
I wouldn't go so far as to say "complete" devastation of retail. The Wal-Marts, Aldis and discount retailers are going to have few worries; people still have to eat, wear clothes and buy cat food. The highest-end stores are going to do equally well, since the rich, like the poor, are with us always. It's the chains in the middle that are going to get slaughtered. (Bath, Bed and Beyond stockholders, take note !)
McDonald's, BK and Wendy's-type chains are going to be all right. People will still want to go out every so often, to take their minds off the economy (or the Obama Administration's antics) if nothing else, and they're going to take the kids to Mickey D's.
There are going to be all sorts of people getting into the do-it-yourself routine; home-repair store stocks are going to go like maniacs. Same thing with car-repair chains, people are going to go three sides 'round the barn to keep their junkers on the road.
Autos are going to get killed; overcapacity and tight credit standards are going to see to that. DO NOT buy major auto-company stocks, whatever you do. GM is going to try to merge with Chrysler (that's no news, I realize), but neither of them is in any kind of decent financial shape, and GM is bringing an excessive amount of long-term retiree health-care costs to the table.
About the banks: anyone with any significant cash in a bank is going to want to pay SERIOUS attention to what those banks have in the way of loans. There are quite a few outfits out there that are not infested with toxic loans, and a little homework can help you figure out which ones they are. It takes a little work on your part, but it can be done. The concept used to be called "common prudence". Re-make its better acquaintance.
Now is NOT the time to get panicky, guys. Now is the time to pay some attention to the debt load, squirrel some cash aside and figure out how the old popcorn popper works. 15 years from now, when SocSec takes 30 % in taxes and they're rounding up all the businessmen and putting them in IRS internment camps ? THAT's the time to sit up and scream. Panicking now is unwise. Not to mention a waste of a good panic.
(Please note: I am no investment advisor, nor do I play one on TV. Anyone who takes my advice on stocks or retirement planning probably deserves what they get.)
Your servant,
Lord Karth
>>> but the only localism really left is family... I don't know if it would occur to people to try to establish mutually beneficial relationships with people they don't know all that well because they don't know if they can trust them.
Now, see, I would never try to establish relationships like that with my family (immediate family excluded) because I KNOW I can't trust them. That's with all sarcasm off. And I can hardly be the only one in this boat. That's why I have a skeptical view of the rosy Depression where we'll all move back in with our crazy families and be happy holding hands.
LK --
You're right. I shouldn't have used "complete". But the overcapacity in the retail sector is huge. The amount of abandoned retail space we'll be seeing in the coming months and years is going to look like "devastation" to most peope.
Rent the movie "King of the Hill." Family life in the Great Depression wasn't so rosy.
While I get both points of view and I concede that it probably won't go all one way or another, I was provided a very real time example this week of how people still do respond to the opportunity to adjust on a local level to a clear need once defined. Complacency all but disappeared and strangers from all over stepped up big time when a local need presented itself and word got out about the need to fund and support a local clothing charity that was being overrun by demand for it's services. On a grander scale, after ten years of anonymity in commerce on the web, I see people choosing to do business once again with people they know and trust even at a slight premium in price rather than sending their money out into the ether and risk getting shorted. In the end, we still do need each other. Tough times make that clear. Visit www.clothesforkids.org to read up on how strangers help out when the call for help is local.
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