previous - ideas - further


        ID-5            Observations.                 January 8th,   1986




        Observations.


        The impoverishment of the community.

        The leaking bucket applies not simply to the economic situation 
        of every single person and business organization, but also to 
        every single community, from the village to the nation.

        You have what you have, and it goes when you spend and comes as 
        you earn.

        Within the community there exists a cascade of money from bucket 
        to bucket, employing local people until someone spends it 
        outside the community, perhaps on a holiday, perhaps to import 
        tools, equipment, foodstuffs.

        Each community exists in the world in a more or less precarious 
        balance between its income and expenditure.

        Hence the drive to export goods to increase income, and the 
        incentive to shop locally, to keep the money in circulation.

        This is equivalent to maintaining blood pressure for the bleeding 
        patient with continual transfusion.

        Unfortunately, the dependency of each community on external sources 
        of funds can dramatically distort priorities.

        From the nation, to the province, to the city and the village, we 
        have an appalling history of selling our soul to the export 
        market.

        This is quite understandable, since the cash flow is literally 
        the life blood of the economy, and the community can get quite 
        strange when it goes into shock from loss of blood.

        When there are only a few jobs in town, stress can easily develop 
        between those who have and those who have not.

        A community which is harmonious in good times can become highly 
        contentious when the internal competition for the scarce cash 
        becomes fierce.

        The short term and short sighted response to this is usually some
        frantic effort to get the rest of the world to spend in our 
        community rather than somewhere else.

        Proposals to this end typically entail increasing distortion of 
        the economic, social, political and ecological texture of the 
        community.







        Landsman Community Services Ltd.              ID-5      Page    1


        ID-5            Observations.                 January 8th,   1986




        Intelligent standards are compromised with the faint hope that we 
        can return to "normal" when the world economy recovers.

        Recovers what ?

        "If you can keep your head 
                       when all about you are losing theirs.."

         ... then you probably haven't grasped what is actually going on.

















































        Landsman Community Services Ltd.              ID-5      Page    2

previous - ideas - further