The well designed PV Local First guide lists local businesses by the types of products and services they offer. It opens with the "Top Ten Reasons to Shop Local First," including that shopping locally promotes greater recirculation of money in the Valley, keeping our local economy stronger, that small local businesses are the source of most new jobs, and that local businesses often make more local purchases that require less transportation. The group also notes that small local businesses often set up shop in existing buildings in our town centers, decreasing sprawl.
PV Local First is gathering a growing number of member businesses and nonprofits, with backers as diverse as Hampden Bank, the century old regional financial institution that began in Springfield, MA, and CISA (Communities Involved in Sustaining Agriculture), the originators of the highly successful "Be A Local Hero / buy locally grown" farm marketing campaign. PV Local First is our area's member network of the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE), which describes itself as "North America's fastest growing network of socially responsible businesses, comprised of 79 community networks with over 21,000 independent business members across the U.S. and Canada."
The context for this questioning has become more complex, and the urgency for our questions has grown. Do we patch up the existing economic order without any fundamental change, hoping that the next financial catastrophe will not be the “big one” that pulls the nation and the world down? Do we continue a system where economic decisions affecting all of us are made on the basis of what short-term profits can be made by and for the few? Or do we reexamine our economic foundations and rebuild on a basis that can endure and prosper for many generations to come, benefitting not just the few, but benefitting all?
We, of course, are partisans of the latter approach, and the good news is that there are many, many economists, community leaders, business people and yes, even a few politicians, who have been thinking hard about what a sustainable economy would look like. (For a snapshot of some of these ideas, go to the Economic Resources page.)
Creating a sustainable economy will not be a simple task. In the process we will need to solve some of the oldest economic questions. How do we take care of the basic needs of all, while preserving incentives for the initiative of individuals? How do we regulate potentially dangerous and unsustainable technical, financial and other innovations, without blocking the innovation we need? How do we collectively regulate our economic endeavors to safeguard sustainability, without stifling innovation based on the freedom of economic experiment by individuals, small groups, businesses and communities?
In short, how do we take the lessons of 1989, and the lessons of 2009, and use them to forge a new, sustainable economic path? The beginnings of some answers are out there, and we will be looking more deeply at these in the months ahead.
Rudy Perkins
