John Seymour on local economics and self-sufficiency
By jimrob | November 14, 2008
From the introduction to “The Self-Sufficient Life and How to Live It”
Unless we come from a race of traveling people, we are all pretty much “locals.” We live somewhere, and what goes on in the locality of where we live is much more important than what goes on in Paris, London, or Washington, DC. If we could once again run our world on a local scale, with decisions made on a local basis, then many of our problems would be stopped in their tracks. Let me explain “local” by comparing two villages: these are in Crete, but they could be anywhere. One village is high up in the mountains, just to the south of the cave where Zeus was born, according to Greek myth. It can only be reached by an unpaved road full of potholes and [is] quite unsuitable for buses. The only contact with the outside world that I could see was that a man with a very tough truck would brave the potholes once each week and bring a load of fish from the small fishing port down on the coast. Sheep were exported from the village to bring in the cash for this transaction.
Apart from this exchange, the community on this mountain was self-supporting. There were enough tiny terraced fields to grow wheat, wine, and olives. There was an oil mill for pressing the olives. There were plenty of nut trees as well as lemon groves, fig trees, and many other kinds of fruits. There were beehives, and the sheep provided meat in abundance. The mountain village houses were beautiful, simple, and comfortable in that climate. Clothes were made by the women. There was a loom-maker in a neighboring village, a boot-maker in another, and a knife-maker in yet another. Was there culture? Well, there was singing and dancing and music aplenty. There were few books, but if the villagers had wanted them, they could have been made available. The villagers paid no taxes, and had just one policeman. They knew their own laws and kept to them.
Now the other Creatan village I wish to describe was lower down the mountain and had a “good” road. This gave access to the city, but also gave the city access to the country. City money came in and bought much of the land, uprooting the old trees and vineyards and planting quick-growing olive trees, so providing an olive crop for cash sale. Now the villagers had to pay for their olive oil and were dragged quickly into the money economy. All sorts of traders had access to the village, and a small supermarket opened. Suddenly the villagers found they ‘needed” all sorts of things they had never needed before. Television arrived and brought with it aspirational visions. Young people in the village no longer sang or danced; they wanted Western pop music and Coca-Cola. Even though their fine road looked like a road to freedom, it was actually a road to sadness, wage slavery, and discontent, from which the youngsters could not return.
Topics: Livin' Simple in a Complicated World |
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