takes prolonged and constant attention to unexamined assumptions, questioning, clearing away, letting the new anc_i stronger emerge. Combine your informing and supporting activities with others as you find them, pooling information and resources, ideas and energies and questions. You can contribute up to 10 percent of your income to existing nonprofit organizations (or new ones you form). You can invest more money and have it deductible by "losing" it in some kind of business enterprise that is pointed toward becoming a viable part of some corner or some sector of some mini-economy-so long as the endeavor makes basic economic sense and is making progress toward break-even. Good, imaginative, and principled lawyers and accountants love to help on projects like this, where the government subsidizes your work whether they like it or not. ... I would add another component to Schumacher's urgent dictum "Take back the value added," namely "Take back the imaging function." By imaging I mean that aspect of imagination which seeks a resulting action in the real world. As much as humanely possible, the crucial imaging function must be conducted by those who will actually make the entrepreneurial leap from thought to action, venturing their energies and resources and often their working livec;. Professionals and specialists typically think that it is a regrettable waste of everyone's time when people "have to reinvent the wheel." The essential fact to the contrary is that professionals, specialists, and experts (few of whom, we might note, also have responsibility for any real action or risk-taking) have eliminated the imaging function, when going through that imaging process is an essential precondition for the mobilization of thought and action and self-discipline required to carry through anything ofsubstance and complexity, most parti.cularly any real business or any other productive economic process. In the case of the urban professional or other knowledge person who is trying to find or create his or her own good work-or at least the part of it that comes from diversifying one's personal or family micro-economy- in a rural area or a smaller community, then that is where the imaging must be done. Going beyond the assemblage of experience and information to the formulation of actual what-if working hypotheses, which are tested until one of them gains enough weight and validity to be put into action-this all requires a focus on place, people and local economy and mini-economy in the actual environment where the work will take place. One of the best ways to stoke the imaging fires is by means of County Self-Studies. The idea is to look at the county as if it were an independent island republic. What do we produce .here? What do we consume or use? Where does it come from? What could we prodµce that we don't produce now? How could we meet more of our own needs? How can we diversify the local economy? The County Self-Studies are usually conducted by selfselected pick-up groups of local people who together want to generate a picture of their local reality and potentials based on meta-economic principles and geared to locating new enterprises. The area doesn't specifically need to be a county. There should be a large enough mass of land and people to provide a diversity of mutually reinforcing conjectures, yet it should be small enough so that people can meet together frequently and bear the expense out of their pockets. Sometimes a useful study can be made on the basis of a Congressional district. There is an enormous amount of information available from the federal government a~rcady "broken out" on a district basis; because of reapportionment each district has about half a million people and therefore what has been done in one district may have direct usefulness to people in October 1979 RAIN Page 11 another. Most important, perhaps, the project has a built-in interested audience of one, its member of Congress, for whom almost nothing generated from his or her own constituents is ever hand-tailored to his capacities to act. The past of the locality and its economy can provide enormous resources of experience and information and ideas. These are "tailings" that can be "mined" by the present generation for concrete and relevant possibilities for economic activities that, for instance, once went on in this area but went out of business in the 1930s because of competitive advantage as transport costs rise... These County Self-Studies are not antiquarian exercises. They aim at stockpiling past experience and present knowledge and imagination and conjecture in order to provide raw ma· terials for the imaging processes of those people who must actually make individual decisions to take one particular possi· bility and run with it. They must be kept open and compre· hensible to the ordinary public. They cannot be institutional· ized or put into the hands of paid professionals; even academics and professionals and other sources of knowledge who yearn to help must learn to be "on tap, not on top." Existing prototypes suggest that teenagers and retired people between them often provide the best staffing and direction for such studies at minimal financial cost and with minimal institutional structure. The idea is to look at the county as if it were an independent island republic. What do we produce here? What do we consume or use? Where does it come from? What could we produce that we don't produce now? How could we meet more of our own needs? Once the imaging of the potential "entrepreneurs"-based in part on the raw materials stockpiled by the self-studies-has led to concrete decisions and commitments, another type of locally generated and directed institution can come into play. George McRobie, Schumacher's closest longtime associate in Britain, has been taking the leadership there with John Davie in helping stimulate and encourage the formation of what they call Local Enterprise Trusts. Herc, by contrast with the self-studies, there is a slightly higher level of professionalization, though still the maximum resistance both to salaried staffs and elaborate institutional structures. People working through Local Enterprise Trusts generally have some concrete experience in small or large business, government, or a relevant profession such as law or accounting. Their role is to bring to bear capital and professional, technical and specialized help when the actual venturers need it and ask for it. Such a Local Enterprise Trust is often nonprofit but con· cerned with helping both conventional for-profit businesses and other patterns of enterprise (such as production coopera· tivcs or worker-owned or community-owned corporations) to succeed and flourish. It is frequently able to invest locally generated capital in such an enterprise, lend assistance suffi· cicnt to help make the enterprise a success, and then conclude its "grassroots investment banking" role by letting itself be bought out at an early Stage and returning the capital thus recouped to a revolving fund for the assistance of newer enterprises. The dynamic underlying the whole thing is the process of people taking back the imaging function. ■
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