December 1978 RAIN Page 9 • We also have an interesting habit of counting only additions to our stockpiles of wealth and not the losses from it. When we tear down a perfectly good four-story building and erect a new lO-story building in its place, or tear up a perfectly good two-lane road to replace it with a four-lane one, or build a new sewer in a community that already has a considerable investment in operable septic systems, we forget that we're destroying perfectly good things while building new. And we U5ually forget to add the cost of those losses to the cost of the changes we make, consequently thinking we're better off than we actually are. • Normal patterns of family indebtedness are usually ignored in economic calculations, though they have a major influence on the real costs to a family of choices in living and purchasing styles. A thirty-year mortgage on a home ultimately triples the cost of the house and requires several years worth of income to pay it off. A home purchase that avoids the use of a realtor immediately saves 6 percent of the cost of the house. But if applied directly to lower the mortgage, it ultimarely saves 18 percent of the price of the house. When a family has such credit purchases to payoff and the alternative exists to use the money to payoff the credit purchases more quickly, even cash purchases need to be considered as costing perhaps three times their price tag. How much of our incomes go to paying credit charges? • Mere realization of the magnitude of cash flow and profits removed from a community by outside ownership of economic activities-whether investor-owned utilities, franchises, pyramided corporate ownership of firms or just a non·local owner of a business- is reason enough for communities to revolt against present patterns and establish more locally-controlled ones. Where has that ~appened already, and how is it accomplished? •...•.••......•............. . _" '- '~'- ., -, ' •.~ : /. , a. ,. • • _ • ,,_\ \ ...., -;".- "~ - .-.:;;. -' .......~. ...:.. -,.. ".I'''.' ~ I,. ~ , '\ ~.......:.' ., .',' " '1//'1\\"" ,,'. '. j' ',,',•••!I\~\~,'.\,,\ ", -!. 11111 I I I IIIm.'...; , '111111 Inili/', ~'i 11,111 n!III."'!IIU, ', -iIIUIIIIIIIlII',, , 111111111111111 ' , I '11111'1 lil'IIIIlI' \ . I -'\' U 111,11111 1IIII t 'j'" fill UtII••II.lll1'l \. . .\ 1111111:'-::::1111111 t ' •.•••.......••..•.••..•..•... The list could go on and on-about functional diseconomies of scale and transportation and advertising, about the values of greed rather than need that are supported and encouraged. about "economic development" claims of benefit to a region that are totally unsubstantiated in actual experience or about who really benefits from particular economic concepts and accounting that are used. Increased land values, for example, are traditionally viewed as a sign of prosperity and considered beneficial, yet land values only benefit a few, while the other side of the spoon-land costs-affect everyone and represent a cost of location, something to be minimized. Likewise, schemes to increase revenues from tourism represent profit to a few, but increased costs for everyone's vacations. The confusion in these exchanges is between benefits to the community and benefits to certain favored individuals. and the community has come out the loser in most cases. It's clear, however, that both intentionally and unintentionally we are misled as to the effects of our present economic sys,tem. Better accounting concepts can improve our information considerably, but it seems in case after case that decrease in scale. regaining local control. or internalizing the split between producer and consumer are the inherent structural changes that eliminate or avoid the problems rather than trying to mitigate their effects. The alternative of self-reliant economic patterns appears to be particularly fruitful compared to the status quo today because of several recent changes in the forces underlying our economic patterns, The decrease in our power to negotiate favorable or even fair exchanges in the marketplace against increasingly powerful outside interests such as OPEC, other commodity cartels, multi-national corporations, and more efficient manufacturing nations is making more autonomous local, regional and national economies increasingly in our selfinterest, At the same time, the recent development of techcontinued self-reliant economics . Tom Bender
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