Choose Wisely!

The latest Chamber seminar saw a presentation given by Michael Shuman live from the United States.  Although the technology didn’t work perfectly on this occasion it did demonstrate that we have access to some of the finest minds around the globe should we wish to engage with them.

Michael Shuman is Director for Research and Public policy for the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies.  In the United States he is a leading expert on community economics and the advantages of small scale businesses in an era of globalisation.  That makes him more than qualified to make comment on an Island dominated by small businesses.

Chamber does have a bit of previous on this in the form of the emotive 3^rd Supermarket debate.  That debate highlighted how easy it is to destroy the livelihoods of hardworking individuals when emotion overtakes science.  But none of this comes as a surprise to Mr Shuman; he’s seen it all before.

In his talk he split current thinking about how economies work into two camps:

The TINA camp; that is “There Is No Alternative” to globalisation,

And a second camp that he called LOIS or Local Ownership and Import Substitution.

He admits to being somewhat bemused by the lack of data (in the US) that is currently being collected on what he calls “economic leakage” when this information is so fundamental to the development of any strategy that attempts to deliver a sustainable economy.

All the evidence he presented to the seminar highlighted how increasingly inefficient global businesses are becoming.  He pointed out that distribution costs account for more and more of our “food dollars” with less and less going to those who produce it.  The bigger the carbon footprint the less money we see staying within our own economy.

Mr Shuman went into some detail about strategies that can be used to “nurture” LOIS.  One included a “local first” campaign; something that has already been started here under the slogan “think twice, buy local”.  He acknowledges that this campaign has attracted some criticism but points out that he’s NOT saying “you must buy local” and that it’s important to respect “consumer sovereignty”.

His overriding message is that all economies need to become more localised and that urgent attention needs to be paid by policy makers to a leakage analysis of our economy followed by a strategy of plugging those leaks.  

He lists the advantages of Local Ownership as “Smart growth, Tourism, Creative Economies, Low carbon footprint, civil society, Social equality and Political participation”.  

That’s a list I could sign up to and now is the time to make it happen.