David Bollier Interviews David Cayley

"He belongs to a school of political ecology in which I would give E.F. Schumacher a very proud place..."

- David Cayley in conversation with @DavidBollier on the legacy of thinker Ivan Illich. (Listen via the link below or the usual podcast platforms)https://t.co/TaPxoBUC6F

— Schumacher Center for a New Economics (@Center4NewEcon) December 7, 2021

Things That Would Have Helped a Long Time Ago

A University of California, Berkeley, study found nearly half of postgraduate students met criteria to classify them as depressed. Take care of your #AcademicMentalHealh by being aware of the common stressors that postdoctoral researchers experience on their climb to success#RRI https://t.co/iyjAQvR2cZ

— Krzysztof Potempa (@BRAINCURES) November 13, 2021

When You See Things from the Narrow Perspective of RC Social Teaching

Solidarity and subsidiarity: https://t.co/zXeES8mbuG

— Tradistae (@tradistae) June 25, 2021

How to Build a Small Town in Texas

"How to Build a Small Town in Texas" is the title of my first @SubstackInc post and my first proper long form writing in English. Saddle up, partners. https://t.co/728hzZ2OPF

— Wrath Of Gnon (@wrathofgnon) July 6, 2021

If We Adhered to Scale, We Wouldn't Have a Gynocentric Social Order

We here at the Schumacher Center always love when E. F. Schumacher's Small is Big gets referenced in larger news outlets. This short article by Richard Lord describes one CEO's experience reading that book.https://t.co/afUvAXWgSI

— Schumacher Center for a New Economics (@Center4NewEcon) June 28, 2021

Joe Norman Interview

My early release this week is my chat with the great Joe Norman @normonics on the Dangers of Civilization at Scale. https://t.co/ONZTN7AoBn

— Alex Kaschuta (@kaschuta) June 28, 2021

Story of a Family-Owned Business?

When Dave Nelson returned to the farm in 2007, he and his wife had the opportunity to buy a fertilizer and farm equipment company. Thanks to good timing, a focus on relationships and smart branding, that small ag supply company has grown much bigger.https://t.co/picHGOKusP pic.twitter.com/e0MoCZuifV

— Farm Journal (@FarmJournal) May 20, 2021

Something for localists to emulate? Or do we need to be careful about scale still?

A Discussion of Ivan Illich

Episode 86: Grace and Danger, Series 2, #1 Ivan Illich's insights on how government and large institutions impede beauty spontaneous order in society https://t.co/2q2qxypwZF

— David Clayton (@pontifexbeauty) May 20, 2021

What "Reactionary"?

Dreher: I’ve been coming to Central Europe for three years now, and I’ve been hearing the same thing from young Catholic conservatives: what you Americans and western Europeans are today, we will be tomorrow. https://t.co/fooYyygRoQ

— The American Conservative (@amconmag) April 26, 2021

Let's be precise: We are looking for state solutions to ethical problems, and mass population centers are an ethical problem, caused by and in turn causing the state.

Can anything be done to prevent the slide of decadence in large mass population centers made possible by wealth founded upon cheap energy?

While ultimately each one must decide on the question of G*d and live that decision, institutionalized "religion" is not enough to save a West suffering from the cancerous growths that are states and their mass population centers; those growths must be directly addressed. Dreher is wrong to think this is a problem of "liberal democracy" -- it is a problem of oligarchs exercising control over the state (and their struggle with one another), and changing ideology of some of these "elites" masks the underlying problem.

Medical Anthropologists Should Stick to...

Whatever it is that they are supposedly good at. Writing about politike and political organiztaion using analogies based on micro-organisms is really a bad argument. Complexity and all that.

“Human cultures, like cell cultures, are not steady states. They can have split purposes as their expanding & contracting concepts of insiders & outsiders shift, depending on levels of trust, & on... available resources & how many people need them.” https://t.co/BDXyrpw9fp

— Josh Hochschild (@JoshHochschild) April 13, 2021

A Human Scale

Mono-centric conurbation (the Progressive modern city) vs. Poly-centric federation (the traditional / medieval city) by Léon Krier. One machine scaled, one human scaled. pic.twitter.com/p9SXlMLwzQ

— Wrath Of Gnon (@wrathofgnon) June 14, 2018

#Localism

"Reciprocal, face-to-face relationships...are naturally abundant but made scarce by the anonymity of large-scale economics. We have the power to change that, to develop the #local, reciprocal economies that serve #community, rather than undermine it."https://t.co/iWTORI8MW3

— Schumacher Center for a New Economics (@Center4NewEcon) December 23, 2020

The Tyranny That is the Nation-State

"(...) it is crucial to remember that nation-states were the first form of centralised authority imposed on free human communities and that the nation-state is the tool with which the exploiting class has long kept us in line." https://t.co/GZjvUZT0kK

— frackfree_eu (@frackfree_eu) December 14, 2020

Dismantling Tyranny by @WinterOakPress

The nation-state, with its fake “democracy” its “legitimate authority”, its controlled media, its academic institutions, its police & its monopoly on violence, is the very real and immediate means of oppression.https://t.co/KOJ9e8Qcuw pic.twitter.com/KCZvqO1vRa

— 'In Truth We Trust' (@SikhForTruth) December 14, 2020

Mass Population Centers Are Dyscivic Sh*tholes

American politics are geographically polarized by density. The next decade will be a battle to see which political party can win the suburbs and the mid-sized cities. pic.twitter.com/g6LqYkmefX

— Ben Winegard 🌲🌲 (@BenWinegard) December 6, 2020

Small Is Beautiful

"Go back to the human scale: human needs and human relationships, and from that springs the ethical response of #stewardship to the environment."

From the archives: "Small is beautiful – an economic idea that has sadly been forgotten"https://t.co/F7TINWcELD

— Schumacher Center for a New Economics (@Center4NewEcon) November 24, 2020

Related:

In the third episode of the #SchumacherConversations podcast, @GarAlperovitz and John McKnight discuss the centrality of appropriate scale in building a new economy and reflect on the ideal balance between bottom-up and top-down mechanisms.

Listen here:https://t.co/f3Mh1JT2qT

— Schumacher Center for a New Economics (@Center4NewEcon) November 23, 2020

Schumacher on Scale

"All this, I believe, hangs together – smallness, simplicity, and non-violence, all related to the #humanscale, all related to the humanisation of human work, all conducive to the re-integration of the human being into the productive process..."

~E.F. Schumacher

— Schumacher Center for a New Economics (@Center4NewEcon) November 18, 2020

True Leadership?

Doubtful. More like a counterfeit that is akin to being a presumptuous functionary.

A primer for newly elected Councilmember’s in CA. My book recommendations to help with your learning curve. https://t.co/V7XKwzdkiF pic.twitter.com/hFBuv4DmZA

— Michele (@Michele714) November 9, 2020

Related:

It was a pleasure to be on the show. @StrongTowns has been a refuge for me over the past few years as a non-partisan, local-focused network figuring out how to make their communities stronger from human, fiscal, and environmental perspectives #triplebottomline #positiveaction https://t.co/2dupaSYs4E

— Chelsea Lawson (Ursaner) (@pwnerchelsea) November 6, 2020

Bottum-Up Revolution Podcast

A Bit Simplistic and Romanticized

Plenty of hunter-gatherer tribes that were violent against others -- but the violence was directed outwards. Violence within the male population was generally policed by the men themselves.

“Somehow we have lost touch with one of the fundamentals, namely, what is the proper #scale of things? And when the scale is wrong, then there is violence.”

-E.F. Schumacher, Nonviolence

— Schumacher Center for a New Economics (@Center4NewEcon) November 10, 2020

Scale Does Matter

Someone didn't analyze enough variables...

Size doesn't matter for #devolution or reform, writes our Principal Research Consultant, Mark Morrinhttps://t.co/dSKf1SYEeO

— ResPublica (@res_publica) October 21, 2020

NEW REPORT | Size doesn't matter: The arguments for place-based #devolution | Local government in England, regardless of type or scale, rarely corresponds with the footprint and jurisdiction for real economies or wider public services. https://t.co/bKWYRR9vp3 1/11

— ResPublica (@res_publica) October 21, 2020

Our new report that argues in essence that there is no one size that fits all - I personally believe that we need unitary local governance everywhere but that this can be either large or small - we need unified governance to deal with all the externalities that fuel disadvantage https://t.co/8Ft8AOidak

— Phillip Blond (@Phillip_Blond) October 21, 2020

Federalism Movement in Lebanon

Now, PRINCIPIA POLITICA is read in #Lebanon. #Federalism is unavoidable. https://t.co/OYLUy68jY3

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb (@nntaleb) September 28, 2020

Lebanon is about the size of Connecticut, with about twice its population. If federalism is warranted for Lebanon, how about Connecticut? And if American states should be broken up, then our obsolete federal system (which makes an appearance now and then) should be replaced.