Transitioning to the Elm Street Economy

Peak Moment 173: How can you contribute your skills towards meeting real needs now and in the future? Sarah and Paul Edwards, the authors of Home-Based Business for Dummies, focus on the "Elm Street Economy" of locally-owned businesses rather than "Main Street", which we hear so much about, but is comprised mainly of franchises. In the Elm Street Economy, local businesses meet local needs - for food, shelter, clothing, heating, electricity, healthcare, and other products. Sarah and Paul suggest: Keep your job and pay off your debts, while gaining enduring skills for the future. A large number of today's professions won't be around in five years. (www.elmstreeteconomy.com, www.letslivelocal.org)

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• career
• jobs
• business
• economy
• transition

[mos6507]

Janaia, don't you think it's time to remove the peak-wealth portion of the opening narration?  Aren't we really post-peak on the wealth aspect?

[peakmoment]

@mos6507, Maybe we should change it to "peak debt" for many people and "peak wealth" for the elite? If we think of wealth as being based on real resources, then I agree with you. (Peak money-printing? Probably not).

Peak oil is basically here (as acknowledged by the International Energy Agency). Peak fresh water looks pretty close.

I think of these "peaks" in a broad sense, like this decade or so. The point where historians will look back to.

[casecarson]

I like the idea of homes becoming self-sustaining by producing all of their own electricity. But in order to get there, it's going to take much investment and innovation. That can only be done by governments, business, or coordinated non-profit investment.

[blaiko]

hey look you can see the studio lighting on the side of the frame

[manilaenglish]

@HowToChangeTheWorld Animals other than humans do not have the technology we humans do. We have the intelligence and technology to create better lives for ourselves and for the planet.

[manilaenglish]

@HowToChangeTheWorld If we get rid of the monetary system and manage the resources as a community then it will free people from obligation and give everyone a much better quality of life. People won't be working because they have to, they will be volunteering to work because they want to. Because we provide food, medical care, education, transportation, everything you can think of to everyone in our society for free then people can chose to become educated, become scientists, doctors, engineers

[manilaenglish]

@HowToChangeTheWorld Technologically our society is advancing at an astounding rate, however we are still moving forward far more slowly than we could be going simply because of the need for jobs to sustain our lives. Because of this need for jobs, people are stuck doing boring, repetitive tasks that make our society ignorant and unhappy. A great, great number of jobs being done now could be 100% eliminated immediately with today's technology. For instance, think of how useless cashiers are.

[manilaenglish]

@HowToChangeTheWorld Nobody would force you to work and you would have no obligation to work. That is real freedom. Living without obligation.

While it's true those kind of robots don't exist (yet), our society already has advanced so much that we are already feeding billions of people with fewer and fewer workers in Agriculture and how many people does it take to manufacture medicine and products in a factory? Less and less. It actually isn't necessary for everyone to be working all the time.

[manilaenglish]

@HowToChangeTheWorld Imagine you had a robot that had the ability to do anything you commanded completely unsupervised, did a better job than if you had done it, and didn't have emotions so it never complained? Such a robot doesn't exist but if it did, you wouldn't need to work. What you decided to do with your time would still be up to you. You could spend it singing, dancing, playing or could spend it studying, working on a community project or a hobby or whatever you wanted to do. (cont...)

[manilaenglish]

@HowToChangeTheWorld Correct me if I'm wrong. Isn't permaculture a way of farming? Zeitgeist is an organizational and social philosophy. That's kind of like comparing how to grow vegetables with the Robert's Rules of Order isn't it?

You said that everyone must work because there are no free rides. What kind of work do 5 year olds do? How about 3 year olds? How about 1 year olds? How about a 95 year old retired woman? What about someone without a job studying to be a brain surgeon at Harvard?