I’ve been doing a fair amount of genealogical research this winter and have dug deeply into the lives of people in small towns in Idaho and southeastern BC 125 to 75 years ago.I have been struck by the sheer number of social events, church events, reporting cf what every kid is doing in school, who has come to visit who, which businessman is staying at the local hotel, who won what at various fairs, birth and death celebrations. The early phone directories give a very good picture of the Main Street businesses all owned and run by your neighbors. People had real love for their local “mercantile” stores.
Wealth was not great in those days and life was quite hard and very physical. But a sense of the rhythm of life and contentment shines through.
Yes, “progress” is inevitable, but the author is correct that the structure, ownership, and design of modern businesses, roads, and communities can be soul-robbing and stultifying. He should have also added the smothering nature of everybody having to bow before the Great God in far away Washington DC and its insatiable appetite for our money. That is probably equally devastating to communities as anything else.
Kuntsler is right to be concerned about the stripping of our towns’ local businesses and their replacement with cookie-cutter giants.
And you my friend identify what is lost: power.
Kuntsler is right on this point:
“Yes, “progress” is inevitable, but the author is correct that the structure, ownership, and design of modern businesses, roads, and communities can be soul-robbing and stultifying. He should have also added the smothering nature of everybody having to bow before the Great God in far away Washington DC.”
The movement of commercial power away from the integrated fabric of our communities, is just like the movement of political power over EVERYTHING to Washington D.C.
The further away from you that a power resides, the less influence and control you have with that power.
When your neighbor’s kid works at the local Costco, there is not the same sense of connection as when your neighbor’s kid works for the local hardware store owned by the guy who is one of the lay leaders at your church.
Towns are still towns today, but many are no longer “communities”.
There was a reason our founders tried to keep the range of the federal government’s operations small which was part of the same reason why they wanted a federal constitutional republic and not a “democracy”.
Democracy - full fledged one man one vote on everything - only works in small jurisdictions. As the range of a democracy’s writ covers too much territory, it quits working in the interest of the people, as its power becomes wielded by a tyrannical majority against the “common people”. Just think of the bi-coastal majorities running everything across the whole U.S. with no structural impediments to them doing so. THAT is what the backers of a “national popular vote” for president do not understand. They do not understand that a nation is not a mere body count of how many people you can add up. It is farms, villages, towns, cities, counties, states and regions, and THEN, only then do we see the people that reside in them. Each of those PLACES is part of what makes the “nation”, more than any “national majority”. You look at a county by county map of the results of the last presidential election and you see it. The “nation” is a sea of GOP red, with some fringes and ribbons of blue within it.
Ignoring places IS ignoring the people in them. A center, whether it be a Rome, or a Washington D.C. cannot hold, when the role of the center becomes just telling everyone else to just shut up and do as their told. The rest of the “nation” sees the center of power is not them, not theirs. The Democrats represent that central, just shut up and do as your told, power.
Giant corporate monopoly business models do the same thing as big government, they just operate through a different element, the commercial as opposed to the governmental.
We have a grocery store chain here in New York/New Jersey.
It’s model has worked very well.
It began decades ago, in the 1940s. It was a struggling period for grocers. Some New Jersey grocers were having trouble getting good wholesale prices for the goods they sold. The Del Monte company approached a group of them and suggested they form a cooperative company, as the buying unit for all of them. By making larger orders with the major suppliers, they’d get better wholesale discounts. They would each be individual store owners and operators with a share in the buying outfit they formed. That’s what they did, and that’s what they sill are today.
There are many Shop Rite owners. Some own a single store and some own a number of stores, but they are not owned by the company they cooperatively own as the buyer for all of them. There is no corporate architect, no corporate HR department, real estate manager, ect., ect.
And you know what you find in every Shop Rite store I know of? Tons of employees - way, way more than any other super market chain. And none of the Shop Rite stores have “self-check-out”, and they all have the best prices you can find. That all sounds very nice, but it is actually amazing (the number of employees), as I know, continuing as far back as the 1960s and still today, the average net profit of supermarkets is between $.01 and $.03 on each dollar of revenue.
Maybe that would be the better business model for all sorts of retailing - not cookie cutter corporate stores, just a buying cooperative for lots of independent stores selling the same kind of goods. I think the Ace Hardware stores use that business model. In the midwest I saw some Ace Hardware stores with store foot prints and volume of offerings in competition with Home Depot and Lowes.
I have been struck by the sheer number of social events, church events, reporting cf what every kid is doing in school, who has come to visit who, which businessman is staying at the local hotel, who won what at various fairs, birth and death celebrations.
What has replaced the local mercantile? It is the local drug dealers, much like the godfather. You need a problem solved or some money, he is more than willing to help you not only with drugs. He likes the power and prestige in the community.
The Homersexual community is linked on one common thing too. It is a well structured network that we don’t even begin to understand.
But most of all, your comments are a reminder to repeat the successes of the past. Host a local block party and start networking.
I repeat, The one small thing we can do is start having some picnics and bonfires.
My farmer tenant just told me that he did this for all the new house owners in his area. The next year, someone else hosted it.