Oct./Nov. 1983 RAIN Page 15 diversity, and not take ourselves too seriously. Jerry Yudelson says that “market penetration" is a male chauvinist term; he prefers "market envelopment." We should seek not a smothering but a gentle envelopment so discreet, pervasive, and reassuring that people don't even realize it's happening. That seems to be the pattern so far. While polls show Canadians' concern with "the energy crisis" dropping steadily for the past six years, Canadians are spending more and more— over $1000 per household to date—weatherizing their houses. In other words, they're doing it, not as a panic measure to which their government exhorted them, but as a part of everyday, rational economic behavior. Just so, by the turn of the century, we should all wake up to find soft energy has crept up all around us, not as an exotic intruder, not as a special effort, but as a commonplace reality, one that can subtly nurture a gradual but comprehensive change in how we see the world and our place within it. Soft energy will continue to teach us, as Lao-tse said some two and a half millenia ago, that Leaders are best when people scarcely know they exist, not so good when people obey and acclaim them, worst when people despise them. Fail to honor people, they fail to honor you. But of good leaders who talk little, when their work is done, their task fulfilled, the people will all say: We did this ourselves. Amory and Hunter Lovins are internationally known energy consultants. Economic Development by Harriet Barlow Wl? learned the difficult lesson that commitment is not a substitute for competence and that quality is not ensured by philosophical correctness. If you are titillated by contradictions, you'll thrill to the history of the alternative movement's forays into the arena of economic development. Consider the dynamics: anarchists, libertarians, individualists, anti-profiteers, technologists, transformationalists, and how-to people trying to integrate the values of stewardship, equity, democracy, and self- reliance into the production and service sectors of their communities. The miracle is that occasionally, the alchemy worked. Business was done, and done well. We set out a decade ago with immodest goals and modest know-how. Bonded by our values, we intended to translate the wisdom and guidance of E. F. Schumacher, Hazel Henderson, Murray Bookchin, and Tom Bender into productive work. We stepped aside from the worlds of the Akron steel worker and the Boeing engineer and the unemployed black youth, certain that in our limited context we could demonstrate an ecological strategy and practice of economic development that, once seen, could transform society. As of this writing, we have not restructured the economic system. Any way you keep score, the economy is in a sorrier state than it was 10 years ago. Capital is more concentrated and those who control it are less accountable. More people are unemployed, and the underground economy we so romanticize cannot sustain the growing underclass. We have created few jobs. We have upended no dinosaurs (I don't think we can claim credit for the sorry state of the nuclear power industry), and our one major institutional effort in the economic development area, the Co-op Bank, was.botched. We were long on values and short on skills. The categories in which we did best were those attempts at building community economics, such as land trusts, that depended more on process than on management skills. We knew little about the marketplace realities we eschewed. We resisted learning as if "ethical business" were an oxymoron. I remember the comment of the National Center for Appropriate Technology search committee regarding a job applicant from a major corporation: "We don't want people who think like that." No one asked if we needed someone who had the knowledge that applicant had acquired over 15 years of marketing management. Unfettered by know-how, we set out enthusiastically to establish food, energy, waste, housing, health, and information businesses. We tried worker self-management and collectivity. More on-the-job-learning. We wanted to pull the rug out from under the Bottom Line, but found ourselves straddling it in order to survive. Contradictions and confusions. We, like the federally funded community development corporations of the sixties, were plagued by a confusion of roles. Did we exist to do business, politics, or service? Does a co-op give credit? Do you hire on the basis of need, friendship, or competence? Do you carry a product made by an a.t. collective even if a superior product is offered by a Grumman salesperson? We learned the difficult lesson that commitment is not a substitute for competence and that quality is not ensured by philosophical correctness. A similar confusion sprang from our schizophrenic relationship to the grant economy. Only a handful of Steve Baers held back from grant funding. In 1980, a
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