CHAPTER 21

Back to work

Markets flatter our solitary egos but leave our yearnings for community unsatisfied. They advance individualistic, not social, goals, and they encourage us to speak the language of “I want” not the language of “we need.”

—BENJAMIN BARBER, A Place for Us

It is illogical to criticize companies for playing by the current rules of the game. If we want them to play differently, we have to change the rules.

—ROBERT REICH, Supercapitalism

If you think your actions are too small to make a difference, you’ve never been in bed with a mosquito.

—ANONYMOUS

The work of building and rebuilding a culture is never finished, because the context—the environment and human activities—is constantly changing. At this moment in history, it’s clear that overconsumption as a way of life can’t continue, but what will take its place? That’s the weighty issue facing us on our desks, on our blog sites, in our state legislatures. Our mission is to invent equitable and efficient ways of meeting our needs in a world of diminishing resources, a changing climate, and a still-rising global population. This is a big moment, and these changes will not be automatic.

Think of the work that was accomplished more than two hundred years ago! In 1776, two civilization-shifting works were published. The pamphlet Common Sense, by Thomas Paine, was read by more than a third of Paine’s fellow colonists and inspired American revolutionaries to put their lives on the line for freedom and equality. Comments Marianne Williamson about its underlying theme, democracy: “The phrase, ‘Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’ is not just an early American public relations slogan. It is a bright light shot like a laser through thousands of years of history.”¹ Simply put, democracy is a keeper, and we need to safeguard it. As we tell our children when they receive their first grown-up gift, “You can have it, but you have to take care of it.”

The second transformative book, The Wealth of Nations, by the Scottish economist Adam Smith, helped launch one of the most vigorous and challenging periods in the history of humanity: the age of capitalism, in which individuals and companies in free market countries are given society’s blessing to accumulate as much material wealth as possible and as a bonus, receive kudos for contributing to the general good. (But isn’t this a little like telling our children, “Feel free to eat all the candy you want, because profits from candy sales are good for everyone?”)

In our time, Smith’s well-meaning formula is becoming obsolete, and toxic. As a flagship of civilization, it’s badly in need of course correction. Here’s why: In Smith’s time, most people lived in close-knit towns supplied by village-scale enterprises. Residents knew each other by name, and these connections provided accountability and conscience-by-community. If the butcher sold spoiled meat, not only would he get a bad “customer review” in the town, but the townspeople also probably wouldn’t let a daughter marry his son.

What would Adam Smith say now? Global population has expanded eightfold, and the world’s “local” butcher shop has morphed into monster companies like Tyson and Cargill that slaughter and pack sixty thousand cattle each day. Corporations like these pay celebrity CEOs outrageous salaries; move jobs overseas where wages are lower; substitute robots for people; bust unions; elbow small businesses out of the marketplace; abandon communities for sweetheart deals elsewhere; and exploit resources as if they were limitless, all in quest of short-term profits. In our day, the thousand largest publicly traded corporations control 80 percent of the world’s industrial output, and fifty-three of the largest hundred economies in the world are companies, not countries.² How do we hold titans like these accountable? Maybe the underlying purpose of trends toward localism, cooperative ventures, and the decentralization of technologies is an instinctive attempt to bring Thomas Paine’s thinking back into our lives.

THE SOFTWARE OF SUSTAINABILITY

In the brilliantly researched book Owning the Future, Marjorie Kelly opens the door just a crack to a new kind of economy—a democratic one, in which profits share the stage with other values such as the well-being of employees, the health of communities, the pride of producing high-quality products and services, and the regeneration of nature. After years as the cofounder and editor of Business Ethics magazine, she had an epiphany: “You don’t start with the corporation and ask how to redesign it. You start with life, with human life and the life of the planet, and ask, how do we generate the conditions for life’s flourishing?”³

One of many examples of stakeholder ownership she cites is a hometown bank reminiscent of Bailey Building and Loan in the movie It’s a Wonderful Life. Beverly Cooperative Bank, one of about eight hundred “mutual” banks in the country, doesn’t have outside investors who demand higher short-term earnings. This gives its owners more leeway to follow the bank’s mission: to create and maintain a great community filled with satisfied residents. The bank considers it a successful year when, for example, there are zero foreclosures on mortgage loans. Kelly writes, “Just as cows eat grass because their stomachs are structured to eat grass, Beverly Cooperative Bank makes good loans because it’s structured to serve its community.”⁴

Kelly sees ownership as the underlying architecture of an economy, but when that architecture is poorly designed, “it locks us into behaviors that lead to financial excess and ecological overshoot.” In contrast, the member-ownership architecture of the nation’s eight thousand credit unions keeps money (more than $10 billion each year) in the hands of ninety million Americans who pay lower interest rates on credit cards, car loans, and mortgages. When megabanks were receiving bailouts in the recession, the vast majority of credit unions didn’t need help, because they had steered clear of toxic mortgage securities that tempted the officers of other banks. In credit unions, profits are just one slice of a pie that also includes the financial health of members—who won’t go along with their money being gambled away in high-risk “casinos.”

Kelly emphasizes that systems do what they’re designed to do. For example, most publicly traded banks are designed to maximize profit and minimize risks and expenses, including expenses like livable wages and contributions to the community. “Too big to fail” banks like Lehman Brothers and Goldman Sachs were once partnerships that changed their ownership design to publicly traded firms, and that’s where the trouble began. Onetime trader Michael Kelly observes, “We took some risks, but because firms were partnerships, we were using our own money. If all of a sudden you’re using shareholders’ money, they end up taking all the risk while you make all the money.”⁵

“We know the next economy will require things like wind turbines, limits on carbon emissions, and sustainably managed forests,” writes Marjorie Kelly. “The question is, who will own these, who will control them?” Many farmers in the United States are now leasing wind rights to absentee developers who take home most of the profits. In tiny Luverne, Minnesota, farmers asked, “Why shouldn’t we pool our resources and own the wind developments ourselves?” They quickly raised $4 million by selling shares for $5,000 apiece—enough to construct four huge turbines. The architecture of Minwind’s contract requires all shareholders to be Minnesota residents, and 85 percent must be from rural communities. With this kind of agreement in place, the wealth stays local, by design, and in the hands of people who care about their land and communities.

Similarly, the community forests of Mexico (and many other countries) provide income and stewardship of the environment at the same time. Sixty to 80 percent of Mexican forests are managed by local stakeholders. For example, in Ixtlan, Mexico, the forests provide income for three hundred employees who harvest timber, make furniture, and sustainably manage the forest. Marjorie Kelly emphasizes, “When ownership rights are in the hands of those whose self-interest depends on the health of the forests, the fish, and the land, they have a natural tendency toward stewardship. Self-interest and the interests of the whole become one and the same.”

Kelly’s groundbreaking book explores the sustainable software of community land trusts; community development financial institutions; community-owned utilities; conservation easements; catch shares (biologically calibrated fishing rights); employee-owned businesses (more than eleven thousand in the United States); consumer-owned food cooperatives; producer-owned farming and fishing cooperatives like Organic Valley and North End Lobster Co-op; and many other highly democratic forms of ownership. There’s a common thread in these ventures: instead of capital hiring labor—and often suppressing it—labor in effect hires capital, setting precise rules to achieve specific outcomes such as employee stock options or protection of an ecosystem. It’s not that megacorporations are (all) run by crooks; they are just designed selfishly; their mission is to siphon money from living systems (including us) to Wall Street. The famed economist John Maynard Keynes saw this coming in 1933 when he wrote, “Remoteness between ownership and operation is an evil.”⁶

The lack of connection is convenient for corporate managers who don’t have to see the life cycle of their profits—remote sweatshops, strip mines, and toxic waste landfills. Their emotions and instincts can’t gum up the works of “rational” free market profiteering. They can focus on spreadsheets rather than livable wages or natural diversity. But there are many signs that economic rules are changing, and Adam Smith would probably approve.

“GOOD MORNING, BEAUTIFUL BUSINESS”

Judy Wicks, a tireless activist for “local living economies,” would much rather make financial agreements with people she knows. Thirteen years ago, she sold her stocks and put her life savings into the Reinvestment Fund, a Philadelphia community investment group that lends money to support things like affordable housing, local businesses, and community centers. “I soon discovered that the wind turbines producing renewable energy for our region, including my own home and business, were financed by the Reinvestment Fund,” she recalls. “So, from my local investment, I receive not only a modest financial return (which has recently outperformed the stock market), but also a ‘living return’—the benefit of living in a more sustainable community.”⁷

For twenty-six years, Wicks poured her energy into managing the White Dog Café in Philadelphia. The restaurant started and remained relatively small, because she’s never bought into the dominant paradigm that growth is defined solely by increased profits, though she does believe that economic exchange can be satisfying and meaningful. As Wicks sees it, growth is also about increasing knowledge, expanding consciousness, developing creativity, deepening relationships, increasing happiness and well-being—and having fun. She made a conscious decision to stay small, to be one special restaurant rather than a chain. She hung a sign in her closet that she’d see each morning: Good morning beautiful business. The sign reminded her of the farmers who were already out in the fields picking fresh organic fruits and vegetables; and the pigs, cows, chickens that were out in the pastures, enjoying the morning sun and fresh air. She would think of the restaurant’s bakers coming early in the morning to put cakes and pies in the oven, and the coffee growers who produced the organic fair trade coffee beans that made her restaurant so fragrant each morning.

The White Dog became an education and support center for Philadelphia residents. When the farmer who supplied the restaurant with organic pork needed a refrigerator truck to expand his business and supply other restaurants, Wicks lent him $30,000, which he has since paid back. Every year, Wicks staged a Green Dog Day to talk about green business practices and launch green initiatives, which included a project that supplied compost to inner-city school gardens; a solar hot water system to heat dishwasher water; and a ban on bottled water in the restaurant.

Choosing a place and taking responsibility for it is the first step in building a local living economy, she asserts. Other key principles of the movement include democracy and decentralized ownership, not concentrated wealth; a living return, not the highest return; a fair price, not the lowest price; a life-serving approach, not a self-serving one; cooperation, not competition; and cultural diversity, not a monoculture.

THE SHARING ECONOMY

Bending Marjorie Kelly’s ownership perspectives in a different, yet still innovative, direction, millions of Americans are practicing leasing rather than owning. (All they want to own is access to goods and services.) The digital revolution has provided online communities where virtually anything can be bought and sold; capital can be lent, borrowed, and invested; and cars, houses, even appliances, can be leased rather than purchased. Writes the green economy expert Van Jones, “Warren Buffett’s MidAmerican Energy made news recently with its investment of more than $2 billion in two solar power plants in California. But you know who has more money than even Buffett? All of us combined. Together, consumers can start rebuilding the economy from the community up.”⁸ The New Age term for cooperative investing is crowdsourcing, or crowdfunding, which can quickly parlay many small contributions or investments into large pools of money. Referring to the online energy investment company, Mosaic, Jones explains, “Mosaic connects investors to solar projects in need of financing. The projects generate revenue by selling the electricity they generate, which allows the investors to get paid back with interest.”

The Human Race

Maybe a solar project at a convention center in Wildwood, New Jersey, appeals to you, or an affordable housing complex in San Bruno, California. You can invest as little as $25 and get returns starting at 4.5 percent annually. Or what if you want to invest in a mini-power plant on your own roof, but you don’t have the cash? Hire a company like SolarCity and lease a solar electric system from them. “We’ll handle everything for your project including engineering, permits, installation and ongoing monitoring of system performance,” explains the company’s website. Essentially, you’ll be sharing the value of your roof space with SolarCity, while powering your home with clean energy and reducing your utility bills. Arrangements like this leave utility managers stuttering, because the very need for centralized power plants is being questioned. In 2012, there were more than ninety thousand PV installations in the United States, including eighty-three thousand in the residential market alone. According to the Solar Energy Industries Association, the United States now has over 8,500 megawatts of cumulative installed solar electric capacity, enough to power more than 1.3 million average American homes.⁹ (Add the more than 60,000 megawatts of installed wind generators already installed in 2013, and renewable energy in the United States begins to look formidable.)

The success of the online company AirBnB demonstrates that Americans are interested in innovative approaches, cost savings, and less conventional lodging when they travel, made possible by the smartphones, tablets, and laptops that allow access to lodging options from virtually anywhere. AirBnB’s platform for short-term rentals includes a quarter million or more listings of private rooms, apartments, castles, boats, manors, tree houses, tepees, igloos, and private islands in 192 countries. What was once considered one step beyond freeloading is going mainstream, or nearly so. What makes a service like this one work is reciprocal customer reviews and renter evaluations that establish trustworthiness.

Similarly, five years ago, consumers of car-sharing services were often assumed to be on the fringe, probably just too poor to afford cars. But recently Avis Budget Group bought the Zipcar franchise (“Wheels when you want them”) for a whopping $500 million, to compete with Hertz’s and Enterprise’s new car-sharing ventures. Here’s why car sharing makes sense: cars spend 95 percent of their lives parked, not doing what they were built to do—taking people where they want to go. Why not get full service out of our collective fleet of vehicles? If renting a car by the hour is the free market’s way of distributing value, even Adam Smith would probably drive a Zipcar, or even become a member of peer-to-peer car sharing ventures like RelayRides and Getaround (with a combined fleet of fifty thousand or more), in which privately owned cars are rented out by people like you and me.

“You can get anything you want at Alice’s restaurant,” sang Arlo Guthrie, and it’s clear that our economy (and especially the Internet) has become that kind of place. Need a bike in a foreign city? No worries. More than five hundred cities in forty-nine countries now host advanced bike-sharing programs, with a combined fleet of over half a million bicycles.¹⁰ Says New York City’s Mayor Bloomberg, “We now have an entirely new transportation network without spending any taxpayer money.” (The pay-by-the-hour program called Citi Bike launched in 2013 with six thousand bikes at more than three hundred stations.) With a Spotify subscription, you’ll have access to your favorite music without having to own CDs. Same deal with Netflix movies, as thirty million Americans have already discovered. A Community Supported Agriculture subscription brings fresh produce to your table and at the same time reduces the grower’s financial risk.

Need designer jeans but can’t believe how much they cost? Go to Mud Jeans, online, and rent them by the month. Philips Lighting will lease high-efficiency lights to you, and Interface will rent, install, and maintain modular carpet tiles. Textbooks, office space for “coworking,” handbags, jewelry, computers, guitars—all are for rent. This new way of having access without the burden of ownership is just one symptom of an invisible hand that’s reaching for efficiency and sustainability.

DESIGNING FOR A HEALTHY PLANET

When a toaster is designed well, it makes the day go better, because the toast comes out golden brown, and the appliance itself is so stylish! If the toaster is designed to be repairable, that’s also a good thing, and if it can easily recycled, we have a smart product that creates a minimum of impact, by design. Most countries in western Europe now mandate “extended producer responsibility,” which requires companies to take back products at the end of their lives. In the future, your toaster might “swim upstream” to be recycled at the very factory where it was manufactured. This mandate is conceptually brilliant, stimulating manufacturers to design a product that’s recyclable, durable, and nontoxic. But it’s not just products that need brilliant design; entire systems need to be rethought. Partly because our era is infected with the assumption of consumption, systems like energy, food supply, manufacturing, and city planning are in turn infected with coal-fired power plants, suburbs without stores, poorly designed packaging, processed food, out-of-season fruit from distant continents, communities with no recycling services, thirty million acres of thirsty, hungry lawn in America. If we integrate values such as efficiency, moderation, and fairness into our designs, along with tools such as precision, prevention, and participation, we stand a chance of creating a realistic, holistically abundant civilization. However, if we integrate the spoiled assumptions of our current era into our products, buildings, and landscapes, we’ll lock ourselves into a future that is literally designed to fail. Fortunately, brilliant minds are coming up with innovative designs to help restructure these systems and cool the fever of enormous challenges such as climate change. To give just two examples:

• The cement industry accounts for 6 percent of global CO₂ emissions (twice as much as the aviation industry). That percentage will get higher as Asia and eastern Europe continue to build infrastructure. Calera Corporation in California is challenging a cement-making paradigm that has remained constant for more than 2,300 years with a process that’s similar to the way coral reefs self-assemble. Calera injects carbon dioxide emissions from power plants into seawater, which creates a chalky carbonate that is added to gravel and water to make concrete. This process avoids the need for the high temperatures typically supplied by coal-fired kilns, creating a cement that is 40 percent solidified carbonate by weight.

• Touted by designers as the world’s greenest office building, the Bullitt Center in Seattle produces as much electricity with solar energy as the building needs, making it “net zero.” Rainwater is collected in cisterns, and gray water from sinks and showers irrigates the building’s green roof. The project complies with the Living Building Challenge, even more rigorous than the more familiar LEED certification for sustainable buildings. Building materials come from sustainable sources. Exposed wood, certified as sustainably harvested by the Forest Stewardship Council reflects the local Pacific Northwest natural environment.

WHERE WE LIVE TO CONSUME, OR WHERE WE COME TO LIFE?

We tend to use the question, “Where do you live?” automatically, without really thinking about what it means, or could mean. All too often it means, “How far do I have to drive to get there?” or “Do you live in an exclusive neighborhood?” In a distracted, unhealthy culture, where you live is just a place where you park your car, watch four hours of TV a day, and generate four pounds of trash. Ideally, of course, where you live is so much more: Where you come to life. Where you have your best relationships, your most creative ideas … Where do you feel the most content, and energized.

About eighteen years ago, Dave joined a group of people interested in designing a neighborhood from scratch, where basic needs could be met directly. The group took the formula for cohousing, a design concept imported from Denmark, and applied it to a chunk of land in Colorado. They found a scenic ten-acre property west of Denver, and with help from an architect and a developer, they designed and contracted twenty-seven private homes, a workshop, a garden-orchard and a common house. (The common house is used for community meals once every week and a half or so, and for meetings, parties, rehearsals, house concerts, late-night soul sessions, and whatever else.) The common house is owned collectively yet adds individual value because members don’t need a big living room to entertain in, or a guest room, since there are several available.

Before construction began, many visioning sessions made even a slow-moving process exciting. The group imagined the pedestrian walkways, the community garden, the kids’ playgrounds, and various rooms in the common house. Since the architecture is southwestern, they pictured a mission bell in a bell tower. Years later, that imaginary bell has a very real clang, and kids love to be asked to pull the rope that rings it. Salvaged from an old farm where one of the members grew up, the massive bell calls everyone in the community (called Harmony Village) for meals, meetings, and celebrations.

By clustering homes in blocks of two and four, Harmony residents preserved both land and energy, since heat is “borrowed” from the walls of neighboring homes. And by mandating that cars be parked in garages and parking spaces at the edge of the neighborhood, the group preserved the sanity of its members. There’s a sense of calmness in the center of the neighborhood, kind of like a courtyard in a college campus. The design also helps the neighborhood’s security, because there’s usually activity in the common area, and there’s also a good chance of having “eyes on the green” as people make dinner or do the dishes.

Though the residents don’t call their neighborhood Utopia, they’re learning trial-by-fire citizenship—an exciting and challenging, if sometimes frustrating, proposition. Cohousing is only one of many ways to create vital, people-friendly neighborhoods, and it doesn’t have to take place in newly constructed buildings. (The Nomad community in Boulder, Colorado, for example, shares public space with an existing theater, while the On-Going Community in Portland, Oregon, rehabilitated old neighborhood houses that members were able to purchase cheap.) Whenever developers, city leaders, and active citizens create a place that optimizes social opportunities and minimizes wasted effort (including resources, time, and money), they are taking a swipe at affluenza.