In my opinion, globalization is about community, or rather the lack of it, and I would suggest to you that perhaps 99% of your trade does not involve you in your community and so is part of the global marketplace. When you buy milk from the grocer on the corner, do you know where it was produced and how, do you know the name of the salesperson or store owner? If their store burns down do you join with your neighbors to build a new store because that is part of your community – part of your economy? Or is almost everything that we once thought of as community now disposable or at least interchangeable? Isn’t that the American Dream: independent wealth, meaning independent from community?

I do not believe that people need to understand this problem to fix it. We didn’t create the global marketplace intentionally. It happened because it was profitable. And we don’t necessarily have to intend to recreate local marketplaces/community. We simply need a mechanism that makes it profitable to trade locally, at least occasionally, maybe 5% of the time. Imagine if 5% of the money spent in your community was involved in development of local human and natural resources. The Global “Domestic” Product is about $62 trillion. Imagine what $3 trillion could do if invested in community. And imagine what might happen if we could keep that $3 trillion circulating locally rather than heading out to sea. http://reconomy.net