Page 4 RAIN June 1978 Is there an inherent contradiction in the involvement of large and centralized government in the development of smalFscale and locally controlled technology? Ideologically the answer to the question of government involvement in a.t. is a thundering "Stay Out!" Choosing to do decentralized things in a centralized way belies that you understand at all what you're , trying to accomplish. Pragmatically the question is not so sill)ple. Universal, generalized answers are one of the things that we've learned are rather unworthy of trust. ... The federal government does exist. We can't pinch ourselves and make it go away. It has some value. It also has subsidized and encouraged the exploitation of America as well as the rest of the world by our corporatiops, and has been the leader in the bureaucratization, regulation and institutionaliza-• tion of our lives. Any real rebalancing of power between central and local institutions and individuals must involve the Feds, p.robably as an adversary. You can't be given power, for the power.to give is the power to take away. And institutions, like people, don't usually like to give up power. i -- . ------ 4;~1111 ' I JIIIM11i,c- ~ ~- - a- . ·~ • .:=i:-~ -- ~~~=~~~~~~--~~4_;~:=·; ~~~~~~~~~~~:~ How can we tell if the Feds are serious about a.t.? You can tell when anyone gets serious about sorpething-when they start looking at their own actions in relation to it. If the Feds get serious about a.t., they won't be funding solar water heaters. They'll be trying to figure out what should and should not be done locally or centrally or by people themselves. They'll be looking at what needs to happen at the Federal level and what should be done, better or worse, locally. They'll be asking how to decentrali2:e, simplify, close down and turn over many governmental ac'tivities to state and local control. They will be dealing with anti-trust, corporate monopoly, control of corporations, elimination of advertising, and elimination of subsidies to large-scale activities. They will be examining the relative effectiveness of self-reliant and centralized techn.ology, self-reliant and exchange eco.nomies-but as a means to decide what to keep hands·off of rather than as new government program possibilities. -Tom Bender Sounds like these things ought to be looked at anyhow. Yep. Our government has been operating on what we would call Evasion Politics-avoiding dealing with any real problems that might rock the vote-boat. It's called hiding symptoms rather than dealing with causes. The government voice is the last voice you'll hear raising real questions about equity of wealth, foreign intervention, poverty, dangers of nuclear radiation, failure in Vietnam or depletion of energy supplies. The data is there, the questi'ons need to be dealt with, and we need to keep them clearly and squarely in fro~t of our government. Do you really believe they would ever support anything that radical or critical or revealing? _They? They who? Our government may be a mastodon, but it . isn't a monolith. With anything that big, the left hand never knows what the right harid is doing, and•it's not impossible
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