Pie & Politics Event Showcases the "Locavore"
Keynote speaker highlights ways to take local control over economy
Photo Courtesy of Marie Ketring
Article from the Ashland Current | Fri, 06/25/2010 - 11:58 | By Andrew Broman
“Locavore: One who finds they have an appetite for community.”
A person committed to strengthening local economies has given rise to this new term, which David Morris highlighted during his speech at during the 14th annual Pie and Politics event at Big Top Chautauqua on Thursday night.
Even some large-sized corporations are starting to respond to the consumers' preference for local stores and are trying to disguise their corporate roots, said Morris, who founded the Institute for Local Self-Reliance in 1974. He pointed to Starbucks' recent campaign to eliminate its name from some of its coffee shops. No longer known as “Starbucks,” one Seattle outlet has been renamed to “15th Avenue Coffee & Tea.”
Interest in developing local economies stems not from a nostalgic desire for “yesteryear,” Morris said, but from a realization that buying local is a matter of economic health. Americans have understood the importance of supporting local economies since the days of the American Revolution. Morris argued the American Revolution was not a only battle over taxation but a battle over local versus corporate control.
“What animated the Boston Tea Party was the anger and fear of large corporations,” he said. Colonists were reacting to England's decision to tax tea sold by local merchants but to exempt the British East India Co. from paying the tax.
He said colonists realized that “economic independence could only happen if you had economic self-reliance.”
Reclaiming the economy from corporate control requires changes in law, which often disadvantage locally-owned businesses, Morris said. He offered several “rules for today,” which he thought could help strengthen local economies:
“We've created a system where those who've made the decisions do not feel the impact of those decisions,” he said.
“Locavore: One who finds they have an appetite for community.”
A person committed to strengthening local economies has given rise to this new term, which David Morris highlighted during his speech at during the 14th annual Pie and Politics event at Big Top Chautauqua on Thursday night.
Even some large-sized corporations are starting to respond to the consumers' preference for local stores and are trying to disguise their corporate roots, said Morris, who founded the Institute for Local Self-Reliance in 1974. He pointed to Starbucks' recent campaign to eliminate its name from some of its coffee shops. No longer known as “Starbucks,” one Seattle outlet has been renamed to “15th Avenue Coffee & Tea.”
Interest in developing local economies stems not from a nostalgic desire for “yesteryear,” Morris said, but from a realization that buying local is a matter of economic health. Americans have understood the importance of supporting local economies since the days of the American Revolution. Morris argued the American Revolution was not a only battle over taxation but a battle over local versus corporate control.
“What animated the Boston Tea Party was the anger and fear of large corporations,” he said. Colonists were reacting to England's decision to tax tea sold by local merchants but to exempt the British East India Co. from paying the tax.
He said colonists realized that “economic independence could only happen if you had economic self-reliance.”
Reclaiming the economy from corporate control requires changes in law, which often disadvantage locally-owned businesses, Morris said. He offered several “rules for today,” which he thought could help strengthen local economies:
- Give states the power to tax Internet sales. Local stores are put at a competitive disadvantage because they must pay sales tax, while Internet companies are often exempt from paying.
- Create a tax scheme that penalizes chain stores as they expand in numbers to reduce the amount of money siphoned out of a community.
- Make it more difficult for government entities to acquire through eminent domain properties with a long history of local ownership.
- Prohibit gas stations from selling gas at a loss, which undermines locally-owned gas stations, which cannot afford to sell gasoline at a loss.
- Find ways to add the cost of environmental damage into the price of energy commodities, such as oil.
“We've created a system where those who've made the decisions do not feel the impact of those decisions,” he said.