Our Beliefs

• Healthy economies are almost always local. 

• Businesses either extract wealth from a community, or build the wealth of a community.

• ‘Affordable’ housing is not affordable if it requires owning a car.

• Huge wealth inequalities are not healthy, giving the wealthy too much power. 

• The best prize life can offer is “the chance to work hard at work worth doing.”

• Businesses and manufacturers have the same responsibility as teachers, farmers, nurses, and clergy: to serve the people. 

• Unfettered, transnational capitalism is overwhelmingly racist, exploiting the labor of POC to increase the wealth of White people while interfering with that country’s ability to develop its own businesses.

• Our reliance on the automobile (regardless of the fuel used) wastes resources, destroys the planet, and destroys community by making us more isolated, alienated, and competitive.

• Martin Luther King’s final speech provides the blueprint for how people can reclaim power and affect change.

• State and national governments are controlled by big businesses; any reform cannot rely on them.

The rationales:

A. Local economies are inherently more resilient and humane. If a large company goes out of business, hundreds (thousands?)lose their jobs across the world. Or an entire city loses its financial center. If a small business does, only a few lose their jobs, and the effect is limited to that city. It’s making dozens of small bets rather than a few large bets. There can be no world economic catastrophe because each business is contained. Secondly, many large employers, especially retail employers, tend to ‘extract the wealth’ out of a city, rather than ‘develop the wealth’ of a city. They make the city’s economy very fragile: if they leave, the effects are devastating. 

This dynamic can be expanded to the world. If a US corporation builds car parts in Mexico, Mexico does not develop their own businesses. Sending ‘aid’ to developing countries seems altruistic, but it often interferes with that country’s ability to develop its own business capacity.  Instead, countries that are rich in resources should use their resources to diversify their economy and build their own local businesses, rather than just supplying other countries with those resources.

B. When a company becomes huge, it can control the government through lobbying and contributions. It can start crafting laws that benefit the company to the detriment of the citizens; it becomes really powerful while the individual becomes weaker. If companies were kept small and local, they still may have power, but the differential would be much smaller, and the effect more localized. 

C. Everyone wants a meaningful life, which means working at something meaningful. If I work in a place and never see the actual effect I’m having, the contribution I am making, my job can become meaningless, and that can render my entire life meaningless. If, instead, I work with a small group of people to create something worthwhile, and actually interact with my customers, I see the effect I’m having and my life can become more meaningful.

D. John Ruskin teaches that each part of a community agrees to a social contract: to contribute to the society and make the world better. Teachers, nurses, pastors  . . . The same is true of the business and manufacturing class. Their purpose is not to make money, it’s to supply goods and services and jobs to the world. When the finance industry sees that increasing profits is the prime directive, it betrays the people and forfeits its right to exist.

E. Almost all consumer goods are manufactured by people of color (for example, electronics in China, Malaysia, Indonesia; clothing in Central America) by workers earning very low wages. Nike, for example, manufactures no shoes; it contracts out its manufacturing to factories that can supply it shoes at the lowest possible cost. It’s a very exploitative model. In the short term, it seems like a good idea: the US gets cheap shoes and China gets jobs. Unfortunately in the long term it is bad: the US loses its ability to manufacture necessities, and small Chinese businesses cannot develop. During COVID, I worked at GE making ventilators, and our production lines were often shut down because we couldn’t get the parts, most of which were made in China. 

F. Our dependence on the automobile has become problematic in many ways. Our streets are clogged with traffic; the manufacturing, use, and maintenance of the auto are all detrimental to the natural environment; wider lanes and highways have made our cities ugly;  it promotes low-density sprawl and single-family homes, leading to more isolation and fear; road maintenance (expansion, repair, winter plowing) is very costly; it favors transnational, extractive corporations and hinders local businesses that depend on foot traffic; our dependence on the auto hinders poor people from employment options. Most importantly, our reliance on the auto is bad for our mental health. In much of the US we are isolated in our cars, cursing other drivers, increasing our anxiety and feeding our alienation and competitiveness while decreasing our sense of belonging and cooperation.

Shifting to alternative fuel, be it hydrogen or electricity will not address most of these problems. 

G. In his last speech, MLK says that in order to revolutionize the world all we need to do is withdraw our economic support from businesses that do bad things and give it to businesses that do good things. Individually, we have no power, but collectively, we have tremendous power. Bezos and Musk did not ‘become’ billionaires. Every dollar that they have was given to them by us. If we don’t like what they do, all we have to do is not buy from them. If we hate large banks, all we need to do is withdraw our money from them.

Step two is to give our money to businesses who make the world better, mostly small, locally-owned businesses and producers. Again, to develop our own, homegrown wealth, rather than letting our wealth be mined by transnationals.

• A civilized country is not one in which the poor drive cars; it's where the prime minister uses public transportation.

• Automobiles promote a culture of isolation, alienation, and competition and enriches corporations that produce and maintain automobiles. 

• Public transportation promotes a culture of connection, community, and cooperation, and is an asset to the county.

• Auto-centric development produces roads and sprawl and promotes the development of companies that extract wealth from Dane County.

• Public transportation promotes walkable neighborhoods and locally-owned businesses that develop the wealth of Dane County.

Humans have universal needs: Survival, Love and Belonging, Autonomy, Growth, Power, Fun.

If these needs are met, people are happy. If these needs are not met, they are unhappy.

Unhappy people can choose to get their needs met or seek pleasure to anesthetize themselves.

It's true that our minds create our worlds, but before that, the world creates our minds.