COMMUNITY. / ECO ICS Tom Bender Dorchester Com. News/cpf American communities are finally beginning to understand how their treasures are being emptied and their pockets picked by the financial chicanery of corporate and banking interests. The Institute for Local Self Reliance's study of energy self-reliance for Washington, D.C. (RAIN, May 1980) showed.how our energy dollars are suckedout of a community, and what happens if solar and conservation investments are made within the community instead. David Moberg's excellep.t articles in In These. Times have exposed the manipulations of • the municipal finances of Chicago and New York to the profiteering of bankers. Communities such as Cannon Beach, Oregon, and Carmel, California, have banned franchise businesses to -prevent their draining money out of a community. Two valuable recent publications add further pieces to the puzzle of how community economies are _ exploited·and what can be done to restore their true health. The Battle of Cleveland, by Dan Marschall ($7.95 from the Conference on Alternative State and Local Public Policies, 2000 Florida Ave. N. W., Washington, DC 20009) d~cuments the mayorial period of Dennis Kucinich,.and the battle in Cleveland between corporate power and public interest. Blackmail of the city by a-bankers cartel to force sale of the municipal electric utility to private interests; the tax giveaway to corporations by previous administrations that caused the city's financial problems; pressures on local media to keep the community from finding out the true picture; the exposure of the corporate • shadow government that traditionally ran the city for its own profit; and alternatives put together by the Kucinich administration to reclaim the future of the city for the community are all laid out in the actual newspaper accounts, speeches and other · records of that turbulenr-and vital period. An Income and Capital Flows Study of East Oakland, Califarnia ($10 from Community Economics, 6529 Telegraph Avenue, Oakland, CA 94609) doesn't question as deeply the economic assumptions beneath the financial cash flows of the community, but does make clear the impact of finance patterns and absentee ownership upon the economic life of the.community. More than half of all rent money in East • Oakland left the community in the pockets of absentee landlords. Two-thirds.of the wages, rents, and profits generated by purchases at East Oakland stores went to nonEast Oaklanders. More than 80% of home mortgage payments in East O1;1.kland went for interest charges. ·A number of recommendations are made for changes in the housing, commercial and financial sectors to minimize those excessive costs and keep the money within the community. Nature's Price, van Dieren and Hummelinck, 1979, $6.95 from: Marion Boyars, Inc. 99 Main·Street Salem, NH 03079 This book is a popular version of a study of the "economic" value of nature made by .the Amsterdam Institute for Environmen- ,:tal Problems for the Dutch branch of the -World Wildlife Fund. By attempting to pU:t cash values on nature's gifts that make our life possible, it tries to shock us into perceiving not only the frightful cost of destroying natural systems and replacing their functions by engineered devices, but also the absurdity of our whole economi'c calculus. Air purification and oxygen production by trees, water purification by swamps, climate control by vegetation and many other examples are discussed in simple and understandable terms. A good introductory book to how we benefit from the work natural systems do. The technical --:;tudy it is based upon is probably much more valuable and worth digging out. Though it is important to justify natural systems in traditional economic terms, itis even more important to change the terms of such dialogue and show the fundamental limitations of such economic analysis and why we need to move beyond it . . . a can of worms left unopened by this -study. Aug./Sept. 1980 RAIN •Page 21 Freedom Inside the Organization, David Ewing, 1977, $3.95 from: • McGraw-Hill 1221 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10020 Concepts of "freedom," "rights," and "responsibilities" are ever-changing things, and existing American' patterns do not necessarily define the best options for a modern society. We've fom;1d that abolition of slavery, gaining of voting rights by women, and such things as rental contracts (that give both tenants and landlords a fair shake ins'tead of considering only ~he landlord's seff-interest) evolve new concepts of freedom and rights and can make a better society. Similar concerns promise· further progress toward the democratic principles upon which our country was founded. One of the largest "black holes" remaining is in the area of people's rights in their workplace, which have generally .been non-existent. Ewing.documents numerous successful experiments in expat;tding and securing worker's rights, and shows how they can contribute to rather than de'stroy good business operation. His proposed Employee Bill of Rights, ensuring due process, freedom in outside activities,· free·speech, freedom from unwarranted· search or invasion of privacy, privacy of records and employee rights to c~allenge • data in personnel files has solid precedent and real need. It should be adopted in every state! Japan as Numbe,~One, Ezra Vogel, 1979, $12.50 from: Harvard University Press 79 Garden St. Cambridge, MA 02138 Japan is number one in quality of secon4ary education. The U.S. is thirteenth. _Japan's crime rate is less than one-fifth \hat of the U.S., and Japan requires only 7~1q of the lawyers per capita as the U.S. Their. education, health and welfare ministries have a bureaucracy only 1115th that of , , ours. Worker satisfaction and productivity, product quality and business competitiveness is fa:r superior to that in the U.S. S1'milar successes have occurred in governm~nt operation, politics and democratic decision-: making. There is no magic involved_..:_only a determination that organizations be de- • signed and operated to serve the public - good, that people and organizations deal with responsibilities to each other and not just their rights. Japan's careful and thorough evaluation and selection from sys~ terns used elsewhere stands as an example to us as much as the success of the choices they've made. A good, thought-provokiJg ' call-to-question of many of our basic as- • sumptions. •
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