Daniel O'Connor | Integral Ventures, LLC
In response to the current wave of economic globalization, there has emerged in recent years a grassroots movement for what we might call economic localization. One of the leaders in this highly decentralized movement is BALLE, the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies. As its website states, BALLE is an alliance of independently operated local business networks throughout North America dedicated to building Local Living Economies.
What do they mean by Local Living Economies?
A Local Living Economy ensures economic power resides locally, sustaining healthy community life and natural life, as well as long-term economic viability.
A Living Economy is guided by the following principles:
- Living economy communities produce and exchange locally as many products needed by their citizens as they reasonably can, while reaching out to other communities to trade in those products they cannot reasonably produce at home. These communities value their unique character and encourage cultural exchange and cooperation.
- Living economy public policies support decentralized ownership of businesses and farms, fair wages, taxes, and budget allocations, trade policies benefiting local economies, and stewardship of the natural environment.
- Living economy consumers appreciate the benefits of buying from living economy businesses and, if necessary, are willing to pay a price premuim to secure those personal and community benefits.
- Living economy investors value businesses that are community stewards and as such accept a 'living return' on their financial investments rather than a maximum return, recognizing the value derived from enjoying a healthy and vibrant community and sustainable global economy.
- Living economy businesses are primarily independent and locally owned, and value the needs and interests of all stakeholders, while building long-term profitability.
They strive to:
- Source products from businesses with similar values, with a preference for local procurement
- Provide employees a healthy workplace with meaningful living wage jobs
- Offer customers personal service and useful safe, quality products
- Work with suppliers to establish a fair exchange
- Cooperate with other businesses in ways that balance their self-interest with their obligation to the community and future generations
- Use their business practices to support an inclusive and healthy community, and to protect our natural environment
- Yield a 'living return' to owners and investors
Principles such as these will attract advocates just as powerfully as they attract critics. Ironically, what unites both advocates and critics, in many cases, is their tendency to evaluate such principles in terms of the outcomes they describe rather than the practices used to achieve these outcomes. Therefore, my own interest is not so much in the content of the principles as in the guidelines of the practice--the theory of practice--being used by those who would further the cause of Local Living Economies.
To the extent that economic localization is being pursued via the mutual pursuit of transparency, choice, and accountability, we can rest assured that it is consistent with the ideals of the market economy (not to mention democratic governance and civil society). When entrepreneurs, employees, customers, suppliers, and investors make fully-informed, uncoerced exchange decisions for which they are willing to be held accountable, and those exchanges gradually re-orient an economy toward a more local balance of economic development, this is a case of what I call Double-Loop Market Learning.
For a first-hand look at BALLE's contribution to the Integral Economy, consider attending their conference this week in Vancouver, BC.
