Survival__ Structuring Prosperity for Yourself and the Nation - Charles George Smith [200]
And since self-interest discounts most small purchases (just as it discounts the innumerable small fees and taxes imposed by the State) then no large-scale body of consumers can be motivated to expend energy on behalf of a small town which ceded its water rights to a global corporation.
The global company holds all the power and all the advantages. The only entity with sufficient power to counter that of concentrated global capital is the State. But since global capital can easily purchase the cooperation of the State, then what recourse do citizens possess?
Local government is still marginally in the hands of the citizenry--if they demand it.
At least there is a feedback mechanism: votes, boycotts, protests and the like still influence elections at the local level. Demands for transparency in city council deliberations and decisions might actually be met because the local Power Elites still depend on local citizens for their power base.
Unlike the Central State and global capital, the local power Elites cannot afford to ignore the feedback from their citizenry. (Recall that the citizenry of the U.S. flooded their national elected officials with pleas to vote against the bank bailout TARP legislation 300-to-1 in 2008. The pleas were ignored, TARP was passed into law, and undoubtedly 99% of the incumbents who voted for TARP will be re-elected as usual in the next election. That illustrates the futility of citizen feedback on a national level.)
Local government can raise capital via special assessments and taxes. This means it can raise enough money to counter the worst excesses of information asymmetry when dealing with concentrated capital. It also means it can construct its own complexity fortresses to mask the insiders' looting and sweetheart contracts with Power Elites from its citizenry.
Whether that locally raised capital is spent wisely or squandered depends on an engaged citizenry.
In other words: no local community can field the resources needed to fend off global capital without an engaged citizenry who can disempower local Elites should they sell out to concentrated capital (rentier-financial Elites). The blandishments of global capital will win the day unless the local Power Elites are effectively guaranteed of losing their own power.
The same can be said of school board members, church officers, and indeed any power Elite in any organization. Protected fiefdoms generate monopolies, cartels and other forms of looting and exploitation. An active, engaged citizenry is the only feedback which can counter the forces of windfall exploitation and concentrations of power.
As all levels of government become insolvent, then local government must be forced to leverage what remains after the insolvency.
Here are two examples of leveraging existing assets, solutions and skills.
If devolution of fossil fuels proceeds as expected, then providing safe avenues for non-auto transport might prove beneficial to a community. In the current paradigm, then costly plans will be designed by costly consultants for new bikeways, cross-country skiing trails, elevated bridged and so on. All are good ideas but once money vanishes, then as per Principle 10, the alternative is to leverage what assets and solutions already exist.
Thus a city could "create" a bikeway (and a cross-country ski-way in winter) by simply closing off an existing central street with a few concrete bollards and a few signs. The cost of this leveraged solution is extremely low, well within the means of a small community. The bollards and the signs could even be produced locally.
Yes, the closing of a street is a politically fractious issue. The benefits must outweigh the disadvantages in the eyes of the community and an open, transparent debate