Why even the G8 prefer vibrant, diverse local economies really…

What we now know is that even G8 ministers would rather pass through High Streets populated with small, independent butchers, bakers, grocers, would rather see shop windows overflowing with delicious food, trusting that the relationship they have built up with the shopkeeper over many years…

Learning to Look at the Sky Again

“Because you gave names to everything you found, and came up with logos for bad ideas, and woke up early for conference calls, and changed your car every two years, and it was no progress at all/just a shadow festival/because of that you will have to learn to look at the sky again, you will have to learn to eat food that grows where you live again, you will have to learn to touch what you make.”

We Don’t Live In Neverland

The return to an older American concept of government as the guarantor of the national commons, the theme of last week’s post here on The Archdruid Report, is to my mind one of the crucial steps that might just succeed in making a viable future for the post-imperial United States. A viable future, mind you, does not mean one in which any signficant number of Americans retain any significant fraction of the material abundance we currently get from the “wealth pump” of our global empire. The delusion that we can still live like citizens of an imperial power when the empire has gone away will be enormously popular, not least among those who currently insist they want nothing to do with the imperial system that guarantees their prosperity, but it’s still a delusion.