The Better Planet Guide

The Idea of a Local Economy by Wendell Berry - extract

UNSURPRISINGLY, AMONG PEOPLE WHO WISH to preserve things other than money - for instance, every region's native capacity to produce essential goods - there is a growing perception that the global "free marketii" economy is inherently an enemy to the natural world, to human health and freedom, to industrial workers, and to farmers and others in the land-use economies; and furthermore, that it is inherently an enemy to good work and good economic practice. I believe that this perception is correct and that it can be shown to be correct merely by listing the assumptions implicit in the idea that corporations should be "free" to buy low and sell high in the world at large. These assumptions, so far as I can make them out, are as follows:

1. That stable and preserving relationships among people, places, and things do not matter and are of no worth.
2. That cultures and religions have no legitimate practical or economic concerns.
3. That there is no conflict between the "free marketii" and political freedom, and no connection between political democracy and economic democracy.
4. That there can be no conflict between economic advantage and economic justice.
5. That there is no conflict between greed and ecological or bodily health.
6. That there is no conflict between self-interest and public service.
7. That the loss or destruction of the capacity anywhere to produce necessary goods does not matter and involves no cost.
8. That it is all right for a nation's or a region's subsistence to be foreign based, dependent on long-distance transporti, and entirely controlled by corporations.
9. That, therefore, wars over commodities - our recent Gulf War, for example - are legitimate and permanent economic functions.
10. That this sort of sanctioned violence is justified also by the predominance of centralized systems of production supply, communications, and transportiation, which are extremely vulnerable not only to acts of war between nations, but also to sabotage and terrorism.
11. That it is all right for poor people in poor countries to work at poor wages to produce goods for export to affluent people in rich countries.
12. That there is no danger and no cost in the proliferation of exotic pests, weeds, and diseases that accompany international trade and that increase with the volume of trade.
13. That an economy is a machine, of which people are merely the interchangeable parts. One has no choice but to do the work (if any) that the economy prescribes, and to accept the prescribed wage.
14. That, therefore, vocation is a dead issue. One does not do the work that one chooses to do because one is called to it by Heaven or by one's natural or god-given abilities, but does instead the work that is determined and imposed by the economy. Any work is all right as long as one gets paid for it.