Talk about synchronicity, Richard! Worked with some friends in Indonesia on developing, building and testing a prototype eerily similar to this one, back in 2015/16. We did actually build the app, and were similarly waylaid by circumstances (though not as dramatic or painful as yours! and we didn't have anywhere near your experience with IRL communities—at least not yet ;)). Our grassroots-up focus was initially on entrepreneurs and small businesses in the region. At the same time, we also helped to create a parallel cosmo-local economy in our town, as an experiment with digital currencies, which ran modestly (and quite brilliantly) until late 2017. Methinks we were a bit premature, too; the zeitgeist seems to have just about caught up now. 😊
And yet a website exists https://onesphera.com/ BTW I wonder if the phone network (not the telegraph system that included ranches with wires) and the internet can be thought of a symbiotic network that everyone can sit in?
Of course I see some differences with the symbiosis your work is attempting to build. I can also see some challenges - there has to be a community of scale and with enough diversity to act. So for example highly specialised demands might not be met locally. It also I think can seem that there is not the chance to find opportunities for some in many communities. Many urban areas suffer from this food poverty, lack of cultural resources and poor / expensive transport links. Yet it can be even worse in a rural community. I think of areas with 50% unemployment and few opportunities which then promote out migration. Or certain populations which can find they cannot find what they seek. FOR example there are 1400 PhD holders in Finland who have been unemployed for over a year. Surely they are intelligent and well educated - yet they cannot find work. What could be done about them? Similarly the large number of people in the USA using substances to get by indicates a deep malaise within that society.
That's a flash from the past as that website is not current. I believe the most straightforward way to explain what seems to be happening. The economic globalization of the past 70 years is breaking down to a process called re-shoring -- bringing back production to the national levels. What if that process continues towards the local levels where people, groups, and whole communities naturally find what they can produce locally in a series of circles starting with person, then community, region, nation, world. I don't believe this will be a luxury but a necessity for survival.
The buy local - buy regional - buy national - buy continental calls are headed by some. But I would wonder about how strong that movement is globally. I notice here in Finland that the sales of stuff from Teemu, Shein and other Chinese factories have increased a lot over the last 3 or so years, and the ideas of reshoring is not happening for food - increasingly from Iberia, Eastern Europe, even Iceland; for clothing - there are no profitable Finnish clothing brands any more, instead the brand makes stuff abroad and is even owned by foreign companies with record levels of bankruptcy of entrepreneurs. OF course this is one country. But there have been efforts in France to do this and even Brexit proved how difficult it is to live from locally produced products in the UK. There are some goods that are increasingly not made profitably in Europe such as laptops, cars - and I think the USA has also suffered some of this.
True there is an aim to encourage reshoring now in the USA - tariffs seem to be a policy aimed in this direction. AND there seems some evidence of that https://www.imts.com/read/article-details/Reshoring-Confirmed-Paradigm-Shift-from-Global-to-Local/1828/type/Read/1 but this does seem a USA phenomenon and not one that is common in Europe. Here there still seems to be nearshoring but also some places are very much investing abroad. Finland for example gets better returns than investing in the Finnish stock exchange and many funds are thus not investing domestically. Businesses are choosing to operate in the USA rather than Finland. AGAIN this is limited to one country and other EU countries may show something different.
Talk about synchronicity, Richard! Worked with some friends in Indonesia on developing, building and testing a prototype eerily similar to this one, back in 2015/16. We did actually build the app, and were similarly waylaid by circumstances (though not as dramatic or painful as yours! and we didn't have anywhere near your experience with IRL communities—at least not yet ;)). Our grassroots-up focus was initially on entrepreneurs and small businesses in the region. At the same time, we also helped to create a parallel cosmo-local economy in our town, as an experiment with digital currencies, which ran modestly (and quite brilliantly) until late 2017. Methinks we were a bit premature, too; the zeitgeist seems to have just about caught up now. 😊
That's so wonderful to hear. Doing a call in the new year might be great for comparing notes. Happy New Year, 2025!
And yet a website exists https://onesphera.com/ BTW I wonder if the phone network (not the telegraph system that included ranches with wires) and the internet can be thought of a symbiotic network that everyone can sit in?
Of course I see some differences with the symbiosis your work is attempting to build. I can also see some challenges - there has to be a community of scale and with enough diversity to act. So for example highly specialised demands might not be met locally. It also I think can seem that there is not the chance to find opportunities for some in many communities. Many urban areas suffer from this food poverty, lack of cultural resources and poor / expensive transport links. Yet it can be even worse in a rural community. I think of areas with 50% unemployment and few opportunities which then promote out migration. Or certain populations which can find they cannot find what they seek. FOR example there are 1400 PhD holders in Finland who have been unemployed for over a year. Surely they are intelligent and well educated - yet they cannot find work. What could be done about them? Similarly the large number of people in the USA using substances to get by indicates a deep malaise within that society.
That's a flash from the past as that website is not current. I believe the most straightforward way to explain what seems to be happening. The economic globalization of the past 70 years is breaking down to a process called re-shoring -- bringing back production to the national levels. What if that process continues towards the local levels where people, groups, and whole communities naturally find what they can produce locally in a series of circles starting with person, then community, region, nation, world. I don't believe this will be a luxury but a necessity for survival.
The buy local - buy regional - buy national - buy continental calls are headed by some. But I would wonder about how strong that movement is globally. I notice here in Finland that the sales of stuff from Teemu, Shein and other Chinese factories have increased a lot over the last 3 or so years, and the ideas of reshoring is not happening for food - increasingly from Iberia, Eastern Europe, even Iceland; for clothing - there are no profitable Finnish clothing brands any more, instead the brand makes stuff abroad and is even owned by foreign companies with record levels of bankruptcy of entrepreneurs. OF course this is one country. But there have been efforts in France to do this and even Brexit proved how difficult it is to live from locally produced products in the UK. There are some goods that are increasingly not made profitably in Europe such as laptops, cars - and I think the USA has also suffered some of this.
True there is an aim to encourage reshoring now in the USA - tariffs seem to be a policy aimed in this direction. AND there seems some evidence of that https://www.imts.com/read/article-details/Reshoring-Confirmed-Paradigm-Shift-from-Global-to-Local/1828/type/Read/1 but this does seem a USA phenomenon and not one that is common in Europe. Here there still seems to be nearshoring but also some places are very much investing abroad. Finland for example gets better returns than investing in the Finnish stock exchange and many funds are thus not investing domestically. Businesses are choosing to operate in the USA rather than Finland. AGAIN this is limited to one country and other EU countries may show something different.